Trodden Down (PART ONE)

(Written on request, by James)
(Note, this is not typical of this blog)

Finally, it was Saturday. I really had the jitterbug. In two weeks time, I would be seventeen. I’d have this sense of freedom and the passion of learn how to drive was slowly and surely making me both nervous and excited. I’d even have my own car. Mum had picked it out, insured it and everything. Things were piecing together, so neatly, so securely. Everything was just right. Saturday meant boot day. It also meant finally seeing Joel.
Don’t start assuming things, I mean, I *wish*, but he was nothing more than just a teenage boy behind the counter. In that shoe shop. And I mean he was ALWAYS there. Not that I kept checking… but just everytime I walked past, gawping at that pair of paint spattered Tuks he just glanced around, and caught me through the mesh of the window. The most glorious flush of crimson invaded my face and I scurried off. Subtlety is definitely not my style.
“Cee, are you ready? I’m just going to put the keys in the door!” Mum hollered up the stairs.
“Yeah sure Mum” I sort of hollowly answered. The truth was that I’d been ready for hours, I was just so nervous. I had no boots to quake in, so some battered Converse had to take their place. I supposed that I had to put on something that was alright to change out of to try the boots on with, if you catch my drift. The only thing missing was my hat, scarlet and floppy, it fixed itself behind my ears and over my forehead, and nestled just at the nape of my neck. I was ready. Just not very prepared.
Mum locked up and we stepped off the porch and onto the road. A rather large drip of rain plopped off the roof of the porch and went right down the back of my neck. I turned around in disgust to face the house, but just wiped it off. I couldn’t stop smiling for one, and an insignificant raindrop was not going to dampen my mood. The car jittered into life, and Mum started asking mundane questions about school. I automatically started answering, but there was no real thought behind what I was saying. I was watching the raindrops as they ran down the windscreen, cheering them on silently, watching them race. The rain was heavy now, and the feeling of being inside a tin box, warm and dry, was increasingly nauseating. I just wanted to be outside in it. I wanted to splash in the great big puddles, fill my shoes with water and make my socks so wet that they felt like great big balloons of water to wade in. But I was rattling around in a car, bound for the city centre, in the middle of October. The oddest thing was that I felt more trapped inside the chassis of the car than my imagined state in the puddles. I just really wanted to get out, smiling and dancing, and forget about all of these overhanging burdens.
“Celia, are you listening to me? Have you got a pound for the meter?”
“Oh, yeah. Here” I prised the pound coins from my pocket and handed it to Mum. My hands were extremely cold, I could feel it spreading up my wrists from the tips of my electric blue fingernails. The car had somehow stationed itself in the car park just below the shopping complex, and I rather dramatically decided to drag myself out of the car. Now that we were inside, I wanted nothing more than to just sit there and wait for the car to dry off. Even though I could feel that under my hat my hair was dry, I flicked it and rolled the long, brown bang-like bits at the front as if I were wringing them out. Smoothing down the front of my coat, I made my way to the meter, nonchalantly pulled the ticket out of the machine, and stuck it to the inside of the windscreen.

TO BE CONTINUED

(On request?)

Tatty bye,
Haze

(p.s. on blogworthy terms, I saw Francesca after Clarinetix [which was totally hilarious] and it was so lovely, she makes me happy amidst all of the poop I have somehow stooped myself in)