Young Writers Society

Day Eight: The Patchwork House

Luci:

'I'll heading off in the afternoon, probably before you get back from school. Big fancy wedding in Rigon. Lunch, dinner and breakfast, the whole jobby, I'll have a team of eight and my own kitchen! It's a good few miles so I'll be gone for three days, can I trust you two to get along?'

'No,' I said. He glared at me. 'What? Honesty is a virtue, Uncle.'

'Behave,' he warned us. 'Mele, remember what I taught you? Grab it as close as you can to the earth, then pull.'

She clasped her fingers around the stem and leaves and slowly pulled it out of the ground. She was getting the hang of gardening, slowly. I imagined that there were no gardens in cities, only tiny, wilting flowers sitting on windowsills. She no longer flinched when her fingers got scratched by the thorns, and it wouldn't be long until she built up a few callouses. Until then she'd have to deal with it.

'You and Valeo are looking close,' I said once Uncle was out of earshot. 'He hangs around more now that you're here. Three years isn't too much of an age difference. It could work.'

'There's no point to that stuff.'

'You mean boyfriends? Does that mean you've never even kissed a boy?'

'Never.'

'Do you want to?'

She flinched and stared at me. I looked. I glanced at her lips. Only once. I wasn't thinking about it. You know, when someone says 'don't look behind you' and you just have to look, or that button you're not supposed to push, and you have to do it. The door you're not supposed to open that you just have to peer through. The flame that you know will burn but you just have to touch it anyway.

The forbidden fruits you have to taste, even when it's for our own good.

Okay. Maybe it crossed my mind for a second. I could blame the male condition- I was fourteen and hurtling through puberty and there are things that crossed my mind during those times that I was completely oblivious to just a few years before. I could, but I won't.

In this instance I blame that dark fascination we hold with things that we're not supposed to have. To love things that we're not allowed to love.

Philosophy aside, we had stopped working and now and stared at each other, and I did think about it. Just for a second. Trust my childishness that I couldn't hold a straight face for long after that. I smirked.

That was the first time she ever took a swipe at me- a punch, straight to the gut.

I curled forwards and reached for a weed, trying to do the manly thing and pretend it didn't hurt when her knuckles had caught me right between the ribs.

She sat up straight again, drew a deep breath and stared dead ahead, in that way she always did when her thoughts were spinning. It usually accompanied that flat tone in her voice that was never quite a question but never quite a statement.

'You've seen it, haven't you?' She asked.

'See what?'

'Valeo.'

Valeo. There could have been a thousand things she meant then. Did you see his shoe laces where knotted strange? Did you see him walk into that lamp post and pretend it didn't happen? Did you see him whistling to birds? Of course that's not what she meant.

'He guards himself well, but every once in a while he slips up.'

Sometimes during the summer the older kids would persuade Busman to take us down to the river on days off, where we'd escape the heat by diving in beneath the icy water.

Valeo always wore a tee-shirt when he went swimming, and he'd always retreat to the shade of the trees and bushes while he dried off and changed into a clean shirt. I thought it made sense, because if we stood too close to the river then just when we had dried off someone come and push us back in again.

One day I'd climbed up into the branches to get some peace when he came to sit beneath. When he leant forward to peel off the damp shirt I saw the ripples and lines, like fissures in his skin.

'How do you get scars like that?' She asked.

'I don't know. We all have our secrets. Right?'

'Right.'

'Some people just have bigger secrets than others.'

I hated the atmosphere. For some reason it felt gloomy even though the sun was shining. 'So, what are you reading these days?'

'Duka Pala. He's a love poet, you won't have heard of him.'

'Duka Pala... We five break dawn all in time, but by night all but two are left behind.'

'Show off.'

'Which one are you reading?'

'I can't remember what it's called. It's in my schoolbag.'

I stood up to go in search of it while she yelled from the garden. 'Where are you going? Don't you dare get muddy fingers on my stuff!'

I rummaged through her bag. Work books. Poetry- not that one. I'd never admit to her that the space she used to curl up in the library was the same place I used to hide myself years ago, or that the reason I could recite some of them was because I'd sat pondering the same ones over and over. Perhaps we'd finally found something we could share.

A notebook. A diary? No. Just random doodles, paper folded in the back, some scribbled out notes...

A pulse of hot blood ran through me before I had even realised what the word was. Greenwood, in hurried, swirling letters.

I opened the pages at the back; print-outs of various newspapers.

Ale Greenwood. Twelve year old dead, the local newspapers said. The ones printed in other regions weren't so reserved. Nobody had even heard of our little town until that day.

She'd even made notes on it.

Louten Road- near Bakers Hill. Twelve year old classmate last to see her alive- took in for questioning. Suspicion dropped because of age. Road covered in blood, body torn up, only pieces found. Local police send word to other towns, watch out for suspicious travellers. Killer never arrested.

June 8 '13 / Aug 6 '25 = 12 years 10 months

She had asked my birthday when we were on our way home from school. I thought it was just a random question. How could I be so naïve?

Why was it that every time we started to get along she had to go and do something stupid like this!

I turned on the stove and held the edges of the paper in the crimson flame until the paper burst and smoked, then dropped it into the soot bucket, as Uncle called it. Mele came running in and stared, wide-eyed, at the burning papers.

'What the hell are you doing?'

'Me? Why are you even looking that stuff up? You're so messed up.'

'Put it out! Everybody whispers and tells ghost stories, there's even a memorial. Of course I'm going to look it up. Now stop being such an idiot and put it out!'

'You can't leave anything alone, can you?'

I stamped as hard as I could the whole way up the stairs and closed my door over, left ajar just enough so that I could smell the burning pages and hear Uncle come in and turn on the tap. When I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs and towards my room I locked it tight and closed my eyes.

Why couldn't she just leave it alone?