Untitled - Will give ice cream in exchange for opinions*

Outcast

Hi,
This is something I just kind of threw down last night. It's really rough but I wanted to get opinions on it before I went any further. It could be the start of a short story I suppose but I'm not sure.

She was lost. I could see it in her eyes. I had heard the back door shut softly and I groggily stumbled out of bed, halfway between drunk and hung-over. The kitchen was a state, the pale sunlight reflecting off the empty bottles strewn around the table. I stuck my head out the back door. Jen was sitting hunched inwards with her back against the wall of the house. She looked at me through a fuggy cloud of smoke, her eyes unfocussed.
“Since when do you smoke?” I asked her, not knowing what else to say.
“Do you care?” The eyes wavered as she tried to look at me. “Maria, do you care?”
My mind was blank. I nodded slightly.
“Well then”, she slurred, a hint of drunken laughter in her flat voice. “You will be very glad to learn that this isn’t tobacco.
I looked her hand and sure enough the long fingers were wrapped around a roughly rolled joint. Her fingernails, which she had always kept strong for her guitar, were chewed to nothing and her hands shook, the ash dropping sporadically onto the patio tiles.
It became clear to me. Jen had been the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect daughter. She had been very religious, a devout Catholic although you might have doubted it given her interest in rock music and beat poetry. She had made a pledge when she was eleven, her confirmation pledge and had sworn that she wouldn’t drink until sixteen (and between then and eighteen only under parental supervision) and that she would never take dangerous drugs. She had been an A student, not always the most consistent but a very bright girl one of the highest achievers in the school. She was confident in herself, people often took her for arrogant but she wasn’t. She had been happy, contented. Surely no one should be begrudged that.
Now she began talking, words tumbling haphazardly out of her mouth, running into one another.
“When I first tasted alcohol it should have been a rite of passage. Not drinking with family that’s just boring. The first time I actually swallowed the demon drink”, she tried to make quotation marks with her fingers. “Was in my first few months of life. My Granda’s tradition is to give all his grandchildren whiskey when they’re babies. He gave my sister one hundred pounds as well. No, when I first drank behind my parents’ backs. Should it have changed me? Altered my banal existence maybe? I remember the first swig I took. It was a Monday, the day before home ec and I needed sherry for my cake filling. I put it in a coke bottle, the bottle had no label though, I hate when the labels fall off. Then, in a lonely impulse of delight (get it?) I drank some. It was disgusting and sweet and it didn’t affect me at all. But I was convinced my Dad would find out, that he’d smell it off my breath. My Dad has a terrible sense of smell”. Her eyes were half shut and her head lolling, knocking against the wall. Each time it hit her brain must have clattered around her skull but it was like she didn’t notice. “I drank to glasses of water to try and drown the smell and I nearly choked myself on a mars. But even then I was paranoid and I had to go brush my teeth. No one noticed. It was a pathetic first drink. But the cake filling, that was good.”
Suddenly I was in a cheesy film with odd grainy flashbacks. Jen getting drunk so many times, falling asleep in chairs, pressing her face against the ground, ringing me, and saying she loved me, thanking me, apologising. The rare occasions when I had seen her upset and the not so rare times when she had seemed low or distant, her dry, cynical humour, the way she was always tired. These clips of her seventeenth year of life flashed in front of my eyes and melded into the moment I was in, the reel ran right on to Jen sitting on the cold ground at six in the morning.
“I can’t sleep”, she said. She was kneading her forehead with her right knuckles, her shoulders twitching. I failed her and in that moment I realised it. Right then and there my aching brain and churning stomach were telling me that my friend was falling to pieces.

*I'm not really going to give you ice cream but please comment anyway.

I don't mind the ice-cream, but will ya comment on my "untitled story" ..

.. that was cheeky, I'll read over yers now and edit this as I go along.

Really good story. I enjoyed it. Would love to see more than this though, it would be interesting to see how the night progressed.

takola

I'm with boneyarsebogman on this one.. It's a good story.. Dying to find out what happens next??

Outcast

Ah the pressure guys! I kept writing but there's not a lot happening. I can't work out if I should have a big cataclysmic climax or just let it run...tell me wat you think.

I sat down next to her so that our shoulders were touching.
“Are you ok?” It was a ridiculous thing to say, it fell awkwardly on my ears.
“You know I can only give one answer to that question”, she told me. “I don’t think I have ever responded no when someone asked me if I was ok. I always think it’s really strange when people do it.”
“What’s happened to you Jen?”
She tilted her head backwards, trying to catch the tears in her eyes. It didn’t work though. She blinked and two drops snaked their way down her cheeks. I had only seen her cry once or twice and was always amazed at how beautiful it made her look. When I cried my face went blotchy but she was something right out of Jane Austen, dramatically miserable. Now her eyes were bloodshot but that was not uncommon. Most mornings she arrived in red-eyed. If anyone ever told her she looked tired she’d throw it off mockingly insulted, maybe under it she was actually hurt. She opened her mouth to speak but a sob caught in her throat and she coughed angrily. You could always see the tension in her shoulders.
“Come on, you know you can tell me what’s wrong. We can talk about it”. I knew I wasn’t helping but I was desperate, I couldn’t stand silences.
“I don’t know”, she said and bit her lower lip, trying to stop her tears. “I’m just being stupid; you have enough problems of your own without me bitching at you about every little thing that happens me”.
“It’s what I’m here for; please tell me what’s bothering you!”
That was it. She snapped. Whatever it was that was holding her shoulders so tight and her head up crumbled. Her face contorted and she threw her head violently into her hands, tugging at her short choppy hair. Her whole body was jerking next to me and I heard air painfully catching in her throat as she gasped between sobs.
“Jen, Jen, please”, I whispered my own voice faltering as my eyes filled with tears. I was terrified; my whole body was burning with concern, with guilt. I didn’t know how I felt but I knew she felt worse.
“NOTHING”, she practically vomited the word. She looked up at me with tears pouring down her face and now I saw something else in her eyes, she was angry. “It’s nothing, nothing should be wrong with me but everything is and I don’t get it, I don’t know…I don’t know…”
Suddenly she stopped and fell still. Eyes closed she drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the cool morning air and breathing right out. Then those eyes looked at me again, dewy drops in the lashes. I didn’t say anything. Maybe it wasn’t the time for words but that wasn’t what stopped me. It didn’t happen often, especially in those days but I was speechless. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug and she dropped her head on my shoulder. It was almost like I could feel how empty she was, how utterly drained. She hiccoughed and we drew apart, stood up as one and went back into the house.

“Sorry, it’s so early”, she said as we both stepped into the kitchen. “You go back to bed. It’s fine. I’m just going to get some tea; I can read or watch some TV or something”. There was no way I was going to sleep. My earlier sluggishness was gone. I had never been more awake and my mind was filled with a glaring clarity, each thought shooting round my head so quickly that I had hardly noticed it before another pushed it out of the way.
“You sit down, I’ll make the tea”, I said to her. I attempted a smile but from the look on her face I knew she could see it was fake. I knew it too. I hadn’t been trying to convince her or myself. It had just been the thing to do. The kettle took forever to boil and it was, of course, the only noise in the room. I deliberately clattered the cups as I took them down. Looking over I realised Jen was massaging her temples, her eyes were covered. I quietly grabbed a half empty bottle of scotch and splashed some into the bottom of both teacups. We needed it, to keep away the dew, just like the Dutchman.
I handed it too her. She took it with her left hand and with her right, in one fluid motion, she rubbed her eyes and pulled her hair back off her face so that it fell back tousled around her cheekbones