#some comments under it are phrased as haikus

[mynameisrobiniamadumbass]

everyone who phrased

their comments as a haiku

you passed the vibe check

[ay0nha]

Some Unholy War | Theseus Scamander (III)

SUMMARY: You knew why he was on your mind. The sweater you wore was thick, not quite oversized, but spacious enough to remind you its fit was meant for its owner. Its scent exposed Theseus as the one to leave it beside the fresh towel his mother left on your borrowed quilt. 

PAIRING: Theseus Scamander x f!reader  

WORD COUNT: 2K

WARNINGS: canon-typical things, mentions of food/eating, angst, family dinner during the holidays, flashback, mutual pining, semi enemies-to- lovers, always a protective Theseus, SLOW burn, teenagers being dumb, **poets please don’t come after me, I tried my best with the haikus** , etc.  

A/N: HELLO. This took me longer than I would have liked. This flashback is a filler, bleh. Rather than this sitting even longer, I figured I’d post! Next part, we’re getting into some Good Stuff.  As always, thank you, @kalllistos​​​​ . Comments are always welcomed. Enjoy. 

PART I, PART II, PART IV

—YEARS PRIOR—

Your plate was full, everything delectably placed yet so unsatisfying. There were only so many times you could push the vegetables around until they fell back into their original place. Eyes were on you, and you knew you would have to feign your appetite, or the suspicion would intensify.

“This is delicious, Mrs. Scamander—” You hummed through a mouthful of food. You knew what you were playing at with the action—so eager to compliment you couldn’t wait until you swallowed. There was no doubt it was convincing, but you struggled to believe your own performance. “—Again, thank you for having me, I—”

“Nonsense!” She hushed you quickly, as she had every Christmas. The act was familiar, perfected over many years. “The holiday wouldn’t be anything without you.”

As the finale, you would wear a polite smile that would last until dessert; in between, you interjected, answering questions posed or even offering small insights into the topic. But you relaxed into your role too much, being caught in the eldest son’s gaze.

“What?” You held back a hiss despite his polite eyes. They were full of curiosity. You were too defensive to see how enamored he was, rather deciding not to be scrutinized.

His voice was quiet, knowing his extended family was prone to eavesdropping.  Therefore, his words were clipped, “You alright?”

Even with the distance of the wooden table, you noted his voice was broken by adolescence. You would have noticed it sooner if you hadn’t avoided him so intently—the School Boy Hero. The name alone taunted you, reminding you of the success he would gain with ease and the distance that you had created. It was intentional, but it wasn’t exclusive.

Theseus was unfazed. Although there weren’t shared courses, he carved out time to find you. He greeted you like you weren’t the recluse of your younger year—as if you weren’t under the watchful eye of professors and students alike.  It bemused you how one could smile so widely all the time. And now, he picked up on your act.

“I’m fine.” You tugged a smile for those around you. Despite the years of acquaintance, your presence at the Scamander family table still weighed on you.

You were eternally grateful for their hospitality and generosity. The Scamanders accepted you every year when your parents chose a getaway. However, each year, your childlike wonder at the decorations wore off. The reality hit you that you were out of place in their home, no matter how welcoming the family was.

He started again, pausing to determine his phrasing. “It’s just that you haven’t…”

“Theseus.” Mrs. Scamander started, warning humming in her throat. She always read you well. The best, really. “What was it you were telling me the other day?” The question was intriguing solely due to Theseus’ tense reaction as she turned to you. “He told me how well you’ve done with divination.”

Theseus’ ears burned, but his confidence stayed. You spoke before he could embarrass you further.

“Oh, well…” The moment was perfect for placing your fork down. You collected yourself well enough to appear bashful. “Theseus exaggerates.”

“Divination is—” One uncle started, suddenly being able to hear from the end of the table. “—not a profound subject, love.” There were murmurs of agreement, but you remained steady. “Focus on Ruines…”

“...Ancient Ruines is—” Another joined in, holiday intoxication booming with their words. “–far more valuable, well—” A bark of laughter. “–for everything! I—”

More piped in.

“If anything is—”  Valuable, the sentence was finished by an echo of another. The overlapping conversation became unintentionally jovial, and attention shifted from you. “It has to be flying.” People nodded at the practicality of the suggestion. “I was always good at that.”

You grew tired of their critical haikus. The envy of a large family had left you. It was a constant dream to have open arms around you that provided everything unconditionally. But that was a facade, a liminal space only explored in literature and even more complicated in reality.

“She has an aptitude, actually.” Theseus’ voice carried well, too well. “Shouldn’t that be celebrated?”

The table responded with silence, their young family member no longer meekly looking for attention. Family dinners required debates.

“Of course!” Mrs. Scamander raised her cup to you, winking with tenderness. The action alone told you enough; once it was just adults in the room, her words would be as sharp as the knife in her hand. “I wish I had such talent.”

Mrs. Scamander was an intentional person. She knew the power of the topic she chose and remained purposefully quiet. She took in how Theseus’ demeanor confirmed her suspicions of his growing fondness for you. It was plain as day, but due to your ages, she knew the ignorance of mutual feelings would guide everything. More importantly, though, she was able to see how Theseus simmered with a maturing defiance that she was delighted he grew into. Further proving she had raised her son right.

You valued his comment. Oddly, it made every pea on your plate worth it—something of a smile emerged in private amusement. Theseus stewed, but it dissipated being privy to it.

—

Your fingers were stiff from the cold.  You cursed the winter and how it made you physically fumble for the months it endured. It was as though your body rejected how it influenced you. Yet, your mind was made up long before the leaves started to fall.  

You were leaving.

The plan was formed with caution. You prided yourself on your caution. It was a skill you inherited despite your parent’s apathy. The middle of the night would be far too obvious, expected. The sweet spot was when even the troublemakers would be sleeping when the sun rose with an icy fog that would cover you.

You’d finally be—

A knock made you jolt. You were able to slip away for a breath before the celebrations continued. There was pushed aside the guilt that flooded your stomach with the soft ask of entry.

You debated ignoring it, pretending you’d fallen asleep, but you’d already said yes.

Theseus drew the short straw of a rigged game. You missed his gait when he turned the hallway to find you. You curled further into the thick sheets as your only form of resistance when he finally entered the room.

“...been sent to get you.” He snacked on the sweets in his hands. He swallowed them in one go to continue his objective. “They’re threatening charades.”

“You’re letting the cold in…” There wasn’t a whine attached to your words, but there may as well have been. Thankfully, Theseus read through your words to find their instruction. It beckoned him closer after you heard the confirming click of the closed door.

Although the room was Newt’s, you always had a knack for filling the space you occupied. With the bed pressed against the window, the illumination of the Christmas lights was only to your advantage. You looked beautiful.

The butterflies in Theseus’ stomach were more like birds. Most likely crows, highly intelligent, and sent by you. You’d been off, secluded, despite the company surrounding you. Yet, he couldn't miss how your posture straightened at his presence. Those crows fluttered with pride.

“I had a dream about you the other night…” Your mouth was hidden behind your clothed arm. Your voice was muffled as you looked out the snowy window, but Theseus clung to every word. “A premonition, really.”

“... surprised your subconscious let me linger.” He teased, hands finding solace in his pockets.

You knew why he was on your mind. The sweater you wore was thick, not quite oversized, but spacious enough to remind you its fit was meant for its owner. Its scent exposed Theseus as the one to leave it beside the fresh towel his mother left on your borrowed quilt.

“Go on…” He encouraged you, not letting the silence seep too deeply. He learned its repercussions.

“It’s hard to describe.” You mumbled. You hadn’t regretted bringing it up, but you wished you chose something else as a justification to talk to him. “You were just there…” You said, confused at the feelings elicited by the admission. “We were talking like we are now...”

“Surely the conversation was more enthralling…” He knocked lightly. Theseus glided up beside you, shoulder fitted against yours, a comfort given.

“We were older.” You had to suppress a yawn at the memory. You were so tired, you weren’t sure if you could trust your own remembrance. “I didn’t recognize myself, but I knew it was you—your hair was longer, but it was…you.”

Even in your dreams, Theseus possessed a natural grace, a simple elegance, an understated presence. Tall and slim, he moved slowly, like a giraffe. His voice was both husky and calming. His eyes gave a sleepy appearance, and they fixed on you in such a manner that it was impossible to look away when he was talking to you. And when he reached to grab at your sleeve with those—

“What did we do?” He hummed, more intrigued.

You couldn’t tell him the truth, especially with the wide-eyed wonderment he wore. So he guessed. His age showed in his theories. In his mind, the two of you were clowns performing in front of a crowd or waking up late for O.W.L.S.

As they became more elaborate, you fell into a haze. Theseus was older now, in his final years of school. His face had matured, but youthfulness clung to him well. Theseus was boyish, and your dream confirmed he always would be. You struggled to accept how desire spread through you.

“Am I close?”  His question felt like you had been splashed with ice-cold water.

“Not quite.” You said after a beat. You could feel a fear starting to smother every single trace of happiness that was rushing through your system just a moment ago, and you swallowed thickly, digging your fingernails into your palm.

Yet, the guilt wouldn’t stop you from your plan.

Through the fog of absolute fear, your mind managed to notice a tiny detail. You could claim Theseus could have no understanding of your desire to disappear, that he was one of the most privileged boys in the school who never thought or met many consequences, but it didn’t change one single fact:

Theseus Scamander, whether you wanted it or not, knew you well.  Perhaps better than anyone. But above all else, you couldn’t help but be curious, looking at him so pointedly as he spoke. Would his lips still taste like those sweets? He was close enough to find out.

Just once.

Just the once couldn’t hurt. Could it?

“We had sex.” You blurted your words as if it would quell your thoughts. As someone who prided themselves on emotional maturity, you were flustered.

There was no reply save for a subtle retexturing of his breath, the gap between inhalations infinitesimally smaller, the length of his exhalations protracted.

“It’s a joke.” He said as if he’d forgotten. His face always got splotchy when he felt uncomfortable. Theseus scratched at his brow, then tinkered with a few curls that had gotten too long.

You stared at him for a moment, that light in your gaze growing soft, before you took a deep breath, looking down at the string you found between your fingers. He even understood your poorly timed, poorly executed humor.

“I don’t remember the dream, really.” Lying was becoming second-hand nature. It worried you, but only enough to settle with half-truths. “We were looking for something…Something that was…” You concentrated. “Important, I think. But it was too foggy to make anything out.”

Theseus was already looking for a solution, willing to white-knuckle it through anything.

“You knew where we were, though.” You hummed your words like a compliment. “You guided us through the fog like you’d been there before.” The truth tumbled out of its own volition. “...Like you knew it was the only place you could truly hide.”

You saw a flash of distinction across his face.

No, distinction was the wrong term. Recognition, rather.

Theseus wanted to speak before you did. You wanted to beat him to it. Yet, your names were called by a distinctive voice that reminded you both of the awaiting festivities.

“C’mon—” Theseus held out his hand, using his strength as a counterweight. “—they’re waiting on us.”

“And if I want to run away?” You mused with honesty, being pulled until you staggered into him.

“Can’t that wait? I’m quite good at charades.” Theseus said, shooting you that crooked grin of his, the one that you suspected had gotten him out of trouble multiple times.“You can run away after—promise.”

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuouki Yuugiroku 3 Short Episode “Very Similar”

This translation is from the 3rd Yuugiroku game “Hakuoki Yuugiroku - Taishitachi no Daienkai,” and I will not be referring to it as such since it’s too much of a hassle to copy/paste/look up the title every time plus I reserve the right to be lazy since I don’t see anyone else translating anything from this game! xD lol... as such, this why I will only be tagging this under ‘Yuugiroku 3.’

ANYWAY.

when i was taking a break from filling up my queue with ssl stuff, i ended up translating this for some reason. lol. should probably have done something from kyoka-roku since there’s still that rain scenario stuff and the other char povs to do, but since i have translations for about 95% of this game (not counting yuugiroku 1 [have a patched psp iso file but I don’t care to learn how to extract text from it as i’m lazy] and 2 [have various tl for this... very unorganized plus some of it is incomplete] which are bundled onto this vita game), i figured that it didn’t matter if i got a tiny head-start. The only thing I can’t translate/have no translations for from this game is the section that has no text where the guys comment on various drinks or something (can’t remember what they are aside from sake cuz i distinctly remember Saito saying something about sake and tofu lol), and the misc dialogue that occurs when you select something in the menu or during the mini-games.

In regards to this content, I think this was in what was referred to as the “Appreciation section” [not sure+too lazy to check jp mtl], though the translation of the text on the right on the first image below the cut is ‘episode’ in Chinese so I will be labelling this as such... There are a total of 9 in these in the game.

all images used in this post are my screenshots aside from the game box art (this is the limited ed bonus version). do not repost elsewhere.

enjoy~

Hakuouki Yuugiroku Taishitachi no Daienkai - Episode “Very Similar” 

Translation by KumoriYami

Characters [text on bottom left]: Hijikata, Okita, Sakamoto 

Hijikata: Ah, I'm back.

Sakamoto: Yo Hijikata, I've come to visit.

Hijikata: ...! You are Sakamoto! What are you doing here!

Souji: We were just talking about HIjikata-san.

Hijikata: Me?

Sakamoto: Yeah! You and I were born in the 6th year of Tenpō [天保], really what a coincidence!

Hijikata: What nonsense, weren't there a lot of people born in that year?

Souji: That's not all, Sakamoto-san is also the youngest son of a rich family.

It's no wonder why [these] two [have] faces that looked completely spoiled by everyone and the world around them.

Hijikatta: Are you qualified to tell me that?

I suffered a lot during those days/years [the actual word used is "years" but the phrase used can mean either "in those days", "during that time", and "in those years"].

Sakamoto: That's right, have you tried being a merchant?

If you're capable of doing that, you should go and open and up your own store. [theres no damn pronoun subject in this sentence but based on jp mtl  and context, im assuming he's telling souji off]

Souji: Hijikatasan, you opened a store/ran a store? With his temper? That's not the way to joke [That's not something to joke about/That's a bad joke?].

Hijikata: Shut up! I also didn't think that suitable for me to do.

Sakamoto: After your parents also died early. [Weren't you] raised by your eldest sister who is [now the] closest to you too? Actually, that's another a coincidence!

Souji: Eh, it is like that. I was also left with my elder sister after my parents died early.

Sakamoto: Oh, then you were also brought up by your elder sister!

Souji: I don't remember so who knows.

Sakamoto: You don't remember....... you can't remember your own sister?

Souji: Mah, it's more complicated for me.

Sakamoto: (whispered) Although I don't understand that, it's better to not ask questions.

Hijikatta: ��(whispers) Yeah, the exterior of this guy is [already] super troublesome.

Souji: By the way, doesn't Sakamoto-san have a friend who is sick and bedridden?

Sakamotto: Ah you're talking about Takasugi?

That guy is bedridden [literally: 'to fall gravely ill, never to recover' (idiom)] because of tuberculosis.

Hijikata: Tuberculosis.......  it's said to be an incurable disease, [we?] should go and meet him while he's still alive.

Souji: Hm....... There are similarities even in this aspect?

Hijikata: What did you say?

Souji: Nothing, just thinking aloud.

(”art” cg)

Hijikata: That reminds me, this morning you drew on my face while I was asleep!

Souji: I obviously used prepared ink, [so] I don't know how you managed to remove it.

Hijikata: I was desperately worked to get it off! It would have been a disaster if I didn't leave without checking a mirror!

Souji: It would be better to have all the mirrors inside headquarters hidden away next time I draw.

Hijikata: Souji, you.......!

Sakamoto: I don't know if the relationship between you is good or bad.

I've heard that the Shinsengumi rules and ranks are well respected [maintained/adhered to.. i guess?].

But this doesn't look it's harsh to a deranged degree.

Souji: that's right, even though Hijikata-san looks like this, he's a very tolerant person.

(cg 2)

Hijikata: Hmph, it's annoying how you say whatever comes to mind [say whatever you please].

Souji: I'm serious, I truly respect Hijikata-san.

Hijkata: Shut up. If you're going to be making stupid comments, hurry up and leave with Sakamoto. I have documents I need to write!

Sakamoto: What? It wasn't easy for me to come/I finally managed to come [yet] you're so cold and detached.

Souji: Hijikata-san is such a person, but as he says, we should go. Ah by the way Sakamoto-san, are you able to write haiku?

Sakamoto: Oh? I'm only able to write basic phrases at the level of an ordinary person [I can only write basic phrases].

Souji: I have a lovely book of haiku, would you like to take a look?

(oni cg with horns + sound of thunder)

Hijikata: You stole my haiku collection again! I will absolutely not be letting you off today!

--------------------

did this in june lol. 

i do like these short stories... not that yuugiroku 3 has any real plot to speak of, though i have no idea when I’ll translate another of these or anything from this game again for that matter since i still got ssl and ginsei no shou to work on.

[fluentlanguage]

#clearthelist July 2018: French, Welsh, And Why I Am Not Learning Chinese Yet

Welcome to my latest language learning update through #clearthelist. Clear the List is a support and accountability blog group sharing monthly language learning goals.

The Fluent Show

Fantastic month for the Fluent Show as we reached 270,000 downloads in under a year. YAY!! Thank you so much.

I loved the conversation Lindsay and I had in the episode “What is Fluency, What Is Mastery…And How Do You Get There?”, my top pick for the month. Every ambitious learner should hear discussion, so do check it out.

What Happened in June

June was always going to be a busy one, because it was the first launch of my brand new course German Uncovered. This is a story-based German course going from zero all the way to B1. There was much to do, and it meant a few early mornings and evening shifts. If you’re on the course, give me a shout. I’m so excited to finally share it with you.

In June, I also attended my first Canterbury Pride celebration and took a lovely week off travelling to Marseille. I also attended the People's Vote March in London.

Learning Welsh

Welsh is still my main language, though it came up a little short this month.

Cymraeg Gogledd neu Cymraeg De?

One thing that slowed me down was my belief that I should switch from the Northern Welsh accent (which I’d studied for 2+ years) to the Southern Welsh accent. Why? Because I moved from North to South in England.

This turns out to be a silly idea. When people tell me “everyone will understand you no matter what accent”, they are right. When they say “only a few words are different”, they aren’t right. Even though it’s possible to understand both types of Welsh, learning to speak them both is harder than I thought. Just look at these two sentences:

1. North Welsh: Dw i eisiau gorffen cyn yfory.

2. South Welsh: Dw i’n moyn cwpla cyn yfory.

As far as I know, these are supposed to mean the same thing, but all native Welsh speakers will understand both.

My tutor at the Welsh class I attended told me “no mixing your accents”, which has made the idea of switching what I’ve studied next to impossible. My italki tutor is a lot more chilled, saying it doesn’t really matter as long as I’m not taking formal tests.

Conclusion: Welsh accents are confusing. I think I’ll declare Project Southern Welsh something I don’t want to continue. I stopped making progress because I felt trapped in this whole accent confusion, when it’s not that relevant. For now, I’ll speak how I speak and let life go on.

Let’s look at the goals from last month.

Listening

I had hoped to continue watching the series Ffit Cymru. But the show’s focus on weight loss as a measure of all good in the world started getting on my nerves. So I watched perhaps one more episode, and my listening in Welsh came up a little short.

Reading

I had hoped to finish the book Sgwp (there should be a ^ on the w but my keyboard can’t cope), and I’m getting behind on this one. But I did take my edition of the magazine Lingo Newydd with me and read it on the beach in France. Result!

One cool new resource I’m using in Welsh now is parallel.cymru, a website featuring parallel articles in Welsh and English. I’m loving the fact that I can read more on screen now, and I even submitted an article myself.

Click here to read my article on parallel.cymru in English or Welsh

Speaking

My goal was to fit in two 30 minute sessions with my tutor Gwyneth, and I did succeed. Scheduling these in advance was a huge help. I was a worse speaker than usual due to the accent kerfuffle, and due to speaking French for 10 days this month. But overall, mission accomplished.

Writing

I wanted to stick with poetry and write a haiku in Welsh, but I didn’t get it done. I didn’t even write much else. WARGH.

Daily Contact Goal

In May, I logged 14 days of contact with the Welsh language. Pretty good considering I was very busy with the German course, and also spent 10 days in France. My most used resources were Lingo Newydd, Ap Geiriaduron, and italki.

Speaking French In France

My second language of June was French, as I recorded my first bilingual podcast in French and English and then took some time off in Marseille. I had a great time, and noticed the difference a week in the country makes.

I was able to speak French pretty well anyway, as it’s a language I’ve studied on and off for 22 years. The week in France worked wonders for my comprehension and my speaking confidence. I refreshed all those everyday phrases like “you’re welcome”, “that was awesome”, or “for takeaway, please”.

I also learnt I enjoy being not-perfect at French. Here in England, I speak a foreign language almost every minute of every day. It doesn’t feel all that foreign anymore. But in French, I am still a learner. There’s a challenge, and that felt great because challenge means progress.

We didn’t stay in the main tourist quarter, and so a lot of people were amused and curious about this German and English couple where only one half speaks French. My husband relied on my French skills and I could tell that speaking the language was an advantage almost everywhere.

Good to Remember: People Switch To English For THEIR Reasons

In a busy restaurant, the host told me how to get to my table in French. It was noisy, and I didn’t understand what he was saying. I said Pardon? and he switched to English. I told him that I do speak French and he can speak to me in French.

His answer? “It is very busy here and I can speak English. In other words: He was too busy to slow down. He didn’t care if I speak French well, and he wasn’t judging my language skills. This was about getting something done.

If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, remember that people switch languages because it’s best for them. When someone switches to English, it’s often because they have other things on their mind than your language progress. Click to read more about this and get tips for dealing with the situation.

Goals For July 2018

Now that I’m in the intermediate haze with Welsh, I find it more important than ever to keep going forward. Happy to put French to one side and focus on Welsh again this month, especially because at the start of August I want to go to the National Eisteddfod again!

Listening

So disappointed I can’t watch the World Cup with Welsh commentary! I need to get ready for the Eisteddfod so it’s time to hear a lot of Welsh. I will Listen to Welsh For 90 Minutes Every Week Doesn’t matter if it’s the Pigion podcast or a show on S4C, the most important thing is that I hear a lot of Welsh right now.

Reading

Try and Finish The Book Sgwp Same as last month!

Speaking

Have 1 Long Lesson and 3 Conversations Loved having shorter classes in June (I scheduled 30 minutes at lunch times) and I’ll keep going with that, but as we know I struggle with yes/no in Welsh so I’ll also book a long lesson to drill these specifically.

And it’s time to catch up with my exchange partner!

Writing

Every month, I read about poetry and I read some poetry. But I’ve not written any. Goal: Write 1 Poem, Any Kind

Maybe asking myself to even to a Haiku was too much, a hurdle in front of getting started. So I will dial down the ambition one more. Easy.

Finally there is one more language I am playing around with, but here’s why I’m not learning Chinese right now.

Chinese

I’m still not learning Chinese. I’m going at the pace of two words a week. There’s so much in this language: words, tones, characters, all of it unknown to me. I can best describe this as a Prep phase, way before “learning the language”. I don’t want to put pressure on myself at this stage at all, and all I’m doing is driven by curiosity.

I had a similar phase in Russian and Welsh, where I’m currently at A1 and B1. Prep phases feel so valuable to me, especially when the other language is different from the ones I already know.

The Prep Phase And My Languages

Here’s an overview of the languages I know:

I speak German and English at native levels. (C2)

I’m fluent in French (C1?).

I’m conversational in Welsh, if the conversation partner helps me. (B1)

I’m somewhat conversational in Spanish, if the conversation partner helps me loads. (A1-A2)

I can read Spanish, Italian, some Latin. (A1)

I can read Cyrillic and exchange basic pleasantries in Russian. (A1)

I’ve never done much with Asian languages.

If I started to learn Romanian or Swedish I probably wouldn’t need a Prep phase. But with a new unfamiliar system, I find this extremely useful. If I decide to take this further, dabbling with tones and apps could turn into learning Chinese for real. But for now, I’m just learning about the language.

How Was YOUR Month?

Do you have a Prep phase too? Are you struggling with accents in your target language?

I would love to read about what you’re up to in the comments below!

If you want to join the linkup and share your own goals for the month, hop on to Clear The List with Lindsay Williams and Shannon Kennedy.

[the-revisionist]

The Tristan Chord, chapter 20

xx. Calder Valley sunset view

Trigger warning: mentions of abortion, underage sex

1. the escape artist

It’s the Year of the Abortion. Gillian only calls it this in her head and in her diary: Written in a looped, thickly traced imprimatur of deep, cheap ballpoint blue—wishes she had an oh-so-symbolic red pen but doesn’t—underlined, defiant, and knowing full well that her nosy mother would read it. Despite this bit of all-caps bravado she does not quite possess the courage to write down all the things she wants to put to paper. Like how the morning after the D&E that began and ended with a doctor’s lecture and scowl, she stared into a toilet bowl of blood��oily clots and thickened skeins, specimens poised on the water’s surface as if on slide under a microscope, like in science class, she should be in science class—and her knees buckled and it was an act of sheer will to keep upright because she has already caused enough trouble, is the source of her mother’s tears and rages, her father’s silences, Robbie’s wounded befuddlement as she froze him out, all of it worse than the blood in the bowl, than the abortion itself.

Thus a resolution to be good: Extra chores around the house, studying more, assiduously avoiding any kind of interaction with and/or mention of boys. No matter how hard she tried, though, the perpetual undercurrent of parental resentment lit up her nerves and sent sparks of rebellion flying through the house. She swore at her mother’s passive-aggressive comments, matched her father in sulking, and got horrid, lurid purple streaks in her hair that unleashed a torrent of abusive verbiage from her mother more extensive and obscene than announcement of a pregnancy did. Her father had just sighed and said Oh, Gillian in that way he had, half a haiku of disappointment that cut her a thousand times more than the elaborate brow-beatings from her mum.

Then summer. The streaks in her hair grew out and when she bobbed it she appeared alarmingly wholesome—particularly in a school uniform, so it is a relief to chuck it in the bottom of the closet for a few months and avoid the leering sarcasm of certain headmasters: playing the nice girl next door now, are we? Being good, she realizes, is a tiresome affair, garnering no tangible reward, nor even a baseline of respect. She starts staying out late again, staggering in at any time between midnight and five in the morning, and usually digesting a late-night snack of leftovers and opprobrium from whichever parent had stayed up late for the honor of shaming her.

These nocturnal preoccupations come courtesy of another big event in the Year of the Abortion: Antje, Gillian’s best mate, buys a used Fiat. She lives in a council flat with her mother, who is Dutch; her father, a drunken native of Sowerby Bridge, occasionally shows up at the flat for attempts at reconciliation with his wife and daughter until his fists and his drinking override the tenuous established peace, and he ends up leaving again for the deleterious combination of rehab and flophouse.

Gillian has no idea why Antje—possessive of blonde supermodel good looks, who was also smart, cool, and widely admired by all—has ever given her the time of day. She possesses no illusions about her own appearance, and suspects they are friends largely because she makes Antje look good in comparison—pretty, but not too much so, the Belinda to her Dido—this comparison leaping to mind thanks to Maurice playing Dido and Aeneas the other week whilst she and her parents were having tea at his; after too much sherry he tipsily enacted the plot with salt and pepper shakers and various other condiments. (Dido was a bottle of Ballymaloe Relish.) Conveniently she could blame her parents for mixed messages. Her father, always kindly biased toward one and all, said that she was beautiful, while her mother would only say, with grudging suspiciousness, there’s something about you.

In comparison to what Antje has splendidly in spades, something is really nothing, and that elusive something did not serve her well in the plan she had hatched last year to be noticed by the great and mysterious Eddie Greenwood. Antje knows him, had introduced them at an outdoor party near the reservoir one time, where Eddie said ta by way of introducing himself and then later don’t lean on that, love when she dared to press her ass against the precious shiny flank of his newly renovated Corvair. Via the social misfit’s favorite kind of osmosis—artful eavesdropping—Gillian absorbed several facts: he was the older brother of her classmate Robbie, worked in a garage as a mechanic, which she liked because she liked working with autos and fixing things too, and Christ in heaven he was the gorgeous eighth fucking wonder of the world when he dove flawlessly into the reservoir. Awkwardly, and with Antje’s eh, why not? approval she set to the task of befriending Robbie in hopes of getting closer to Eddie. Similar to John Elliot’s impervious ignorance to the subtext of Gillian’s frequent interrogations concerning his estranged wife, Robbie seemed oblivious to her persistent questioning about his brother, and before she knew it she was in too deep with him. Which was easy enough to do because he was kind, laughed at her dumb jokes, and appeared interested in her to a degree that no one else was. Exempting the strange force of Robbie’s desire for her, nothing remains of the fantasy she craved nor the relationship she never meant to have.

So she finds herself at the reservoir once again on a summer night, but this time alone with Antje—their hair damp from a swim, trading a joint, and staring up into the encroaching night as just-visible stars knit infinite, unseen pathways into blackening blue.

So that’s that, eh? Antje says.

That’s that, Gillian echoes.

Antje hums sympathetically. Brilliant plan didn’t work.

Nope. Gillian releases a cloud of smoke, an offering to the starry sky. Didn’t fucking work at all.

They collapse into giggling that leaves them breathless, because there is nothing else to be said about it all.

A fortnight before the school year begins anew they go to a punk club in Manchester, all cavernous chill, blood red anarchy symbols and slogans on the grotty walls, bloated with smoke, and with a bad band doing covers of Joy Division until they’re booed off stage and someone starts cranking the real thing through the speakers. While Antje flirts with some bloke from the shit band because she thinks he looks like Adam Ant, Gillian tries finagling a pint from the bartender, who rolls his eyes at her alarming baby face and tells her to piss off—and finds herself pressed up against a woman at the bar also vying for alcohol.

The woman smirks and buys her a pint. Gillian is relieved the club is dim enough to camouflage her burning blush. Over the past year certain feelings have, on occasion, simmered within her, forcing periodic, half-hearted self-denials of the realization that she fancied some girls a bit, and watched them much the way she did certain boys and thus in a manner distinct from that of her friends—not the casual critiques of how Claire wears her lustrous hair and how Rita does her flawless makeup and doesn’t Sandra look amazing in that skirt, but something different. She is ensnared by ineluctable details: softness and grace, perfume and clean sweat, the long legs of the headmaster’s wife, just to name a few.

In the dark of the club the color of the woman’s eyes are unfathomable. Her hair, long and wavy, looks dark brown, auburn—or maybe that was a trick of the magenta light that hovered sadly around the empty, beer-sodden dance floor. She wears the seemingly incongruous combination of a leather motorcycle jacket over some sort of flowery print dress, and Doc Martens. So incongruous it seems genius, at least to a fifteen-year-old. She lives in Hebden Bridge, she tells Gillian, and studies art at Bradford. She smokes. Curlicues from her cigarette unravel slowly in contrast to the pounding, transformative flurry of music relentless as hummingbird wings.

Day in day out. Day in day out. Day in day out.

Gillian’s heartbeat matches time with Joy Division until Antje roughly grabs the scruff of her collar and slurs into her ear, we’re leaving, Mike is taking us to a party.

Irritably she wrinkles her nose. Who’s Mike?

Our new best friend, Antje hisses, so stop flirting with this dyke and let’s go.

This dyke. The phrase vibrates, her neck prickles. But as Gillian shrugs apologetically and turns to go, the woman grabs her rucksack by the strap, fishes out Gillian’s notebook of French that she was studying in preparation for the fall, and scrawls a name and an address on a blank page in the back. Only the name swims into cohesion: Julia.

Stop by sometime, yeah? Julia says. I have interesting friends. She smiles. And better drinks than here.

Outside the dark air is purer and sweeter, even as a lorry roars by, and the guy named Mike points at a white van while Gillian stops dead on the curb and thinks ax murderer.

Then Antje presses the keys of the Fiat into her palm, the sweaty warmth of her hand a shock. Follow us, she says.

Don’t have my license yet, you know that.

Don’t get caught, then. Before crossing the street to the van, she squints playfully at Gillian. That woman gave you her number?

Well, address. Yeah. So?

Oh nothing, Butterbean, Antje coos.

The nickname, used ever since they were in grammar school together, soothes Gillian’s ire just a touch. Don’t mean anything, she grumbles.

Jesus Gillian, you were looking at her like a bloke, Antje cackles—and nudges her gentle-like, nipping at her with a quick, blurry kiss on the cheek, and says, S’all right, silly, I don’t care. You only live once.

Following Mike to the van she sways through the street and the trench coat she wears flutters and flares; a streetlamp coronation drops a wreath of light on her blonde head. She pops into the van and she’s gone. Even though they remained friends for years after this, Gillian has always framed this image as a closing shot, the final scene in the movie of their youth because twelve years later Antje will be dead of an overdose in some bloke’s apartment in Manchester and Gillian will be married to Eddie and the first thing she will think of when hearing about it will be, you were always looking for the perfect way out, you always wanted to escape the shit life here, well you did, you finally did. In death, she envied Antje more than she ever did in life.  

2. A different shadow on the wall, a stranglehold of a certain feeling

A few weeks pass before Gillian makes the move one day after school. Getting into Julia’s building is no problem; the lock on the main door is broken, and every floor is connected by a thread of dingy hallways reeking of cabbage or unidentifiable root vegetables—a hundred years of cheap food sweltering and stewing in misery. Standing in front of the correct door on the fourth floor, she knocks. And waits. Knocks again. Nothing. While anxiously biting her lips, she hears an ominously slow thumping on the stairs that grows closer and closer. Then singing, a basso profundo of all force and no tone: Reap the wild wind.

Then, exaggerated and trilled ridiculously: Reeeeeaaaap the wwwwwwild wwwwwind.

Appearing at the end of the hallway is a large man with wild, curly black hair and a herringbone overcoat. He grins at her, which does absolutely nothing to soothe the panicked pounding of her heart; at a glance she can tell that she barely reaches his shoulders, her waist is probably as big as one of his thighs. Slowly he sways toward her, hulking and humming Ultravox, drunk or stoned or both and, like a battered old ship guided to shore by an invisible tugboat, lumbers right past her to the corner flat next door.

Fumbling with a set of keys, he nods at the door of Julia’s flat. She’s not in, love. Be around in about an hour or so.

Oh.

You’re welcome to wait, he says, and the door to his flat slowly opens. Want to come in?

N-no, I’m okay. I’ll just wait out here.

He smiles again. Smart girl. Prolly watch all those slasher movies, don’t ya? They’re like a public service announcement these days, aren’t they? He pushes the door open wider. Tell you what. I’ll leave the door open so we can chat.

Gillian remembers she has a Swiss army knife in her rucksack. My luck, she thinks, I’d probably end up stabbing myself if he comes at me. Okay, she agrees warily.

I’m James.

Right.

All right Miss Mysterious, you don’t have to tell me your name. Where’d you meet Jules?

Jules?

Julia, ya numpty.

Oh. Club over on Carlton.

You mean that shite place that always plays Depeche Mode?

Gillian hesitates. She likes Depeche Mode. No, the one with the anarchy symbols.

Jesus Christ you’ll get the clap from just sitting on the shitter in that dump. Fancy a cuppa?

Sure.

She hears a clatter of dishes, the sound of a kettle popped, running water.

You’re just a wee bairn, he says. What’re ya doing in a shithole like that, eh?

Listening to music, she replies, and trots out the lie she has prepared for nearly every stranger she meets: I’m eighteen.

If you’re eighteen, he snorts, then I’m bloody Methuselah.

Tired on being on the backfoot, she decides it’s time to grill him by seizing on his weird accent: You Irish?

He gasps. You wound me, child! Glaswegian, born and raised.

Sorry.

Trust me, I’ve been called worse. He carries an old wooden desk chair into the hallway and presents it to Gillian with a florid curtsy and she thinks of an old cartoon she saw with a bear pretending to be a butler. Thought ya should be comfortable, he says. Five minutes later he brings out a cup of tea, goes back into the apartment, and Gillian feels like she’s being set up for some Monty Python skit and a giant blancmange will come barreling down the hallway and smother her to death.

I’m assuming she wants to paint you, James calls out into the hallway.

Gillian squeaks. Me?

You’re pretty enough.

She paints? Then Gillian remembers: She’s in art school, numpty.

He sighs. There’s nothing more painful than a wasted compliment. O the fairer sex, thank heavens I don’t have to bother with you lot.

That was a compliment, then?

James laughs. Come inside, take a look. I have some of her paintings here. Her flat’s too bloody small for most of ’em.

Gillian hesitates.

I swear I’m not a rapist.

That is s-something a rapist would say.

Fair point, ya cheeky little bint.

He ignores her. She finishes the tea, frowns nervously into the empty cup until the curious embrace of fate wins out and she surrenders, wandering cautiously through the open door into his flat.

It is larger than expected. One half of it is sparse—mattress on floor, electric plate, small refrigerator—but a migration and density of objects creeps along the southern exposure: paints in containers and on brushes clustered in empty rusted coffee cans, the effect of it all pulls the eye to the canvases in various states of process that crowd and dominate the wall that they lean against.

The biggest canvas is the most colorful one, a painting unlike anything she has seen hung in dusty museums or anyone’s home. A landscape of the world on fire—swaths of red-orange-gold meltingly thick on a blue and lavender background, the brightness chasing a darkening violet blue to the very edge of the canvas, to where you imagine the night begins. Her eyes flicker among the alternating lines of drenched color and she marvels at how these individual, distinct lines come together into a thrilling whole, as the frames of a film coalesce into a single second of motion. Something else magically takes shape: A hauntingly familiar hatched stack of lines near the bottom of the painting, its identity confirmed with a 90-degree head tilt.

That’s the mill! she exclaims.

Yup, he says. As the title evinces.

There is a ribbon of rough white canvas at the painting’s bottom right. She kneels, and there it is, in a thin pencil scrawl almost too illegible to read: view of calder valley sunset no 27, the milll.

Oh.

He laughs not unkindly, his heavy, bearlike tread creaking the floorboards as he walks over to the painting.

It’s something, isn’t it? he murmurs, as if seeing the landscape for the first time. Folding his arms, he sighs with undisguised affection. Bitch has the nerve to paint better than me.

Another cup of tea and several biscuits later she’s so caught up in his conversation, his world—he talks of his hometown of Glasgow and its art history, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and symbolism and Art Nouveau, all while doodling on a large sketchpad and continually topping off his tea with scotch—that she almost doesn’t notice Julia walking in through the flat’s still-open door. Late afternoon sunlight cuts across the room and the artist herself rivals the startling beauty of her work—same Doc Martens, same leather jacket over a frayed linen blouse, and an old corduroy skirt, and Gillian receives confirmation that her hair is a rich russet brown and her eyes, filled with sunlight, are light hazel, sort of green-gold. The sum effect is that she is unlike any woman Gillian has ever encountered before, different than her classmates, her teachers, her mum’s friends.

She rests a hand feather-light on Gillian’s shoulder as if they’ve known each other forever and Gillian hears the delicate racketing of silver bracelets near her own ear, a click-click as if something is locking into place—oh happy prison, keep me here forever—and Julia says, in a voice flecked with a toff accent that Gillian hadn’t noticed the first time around, James, you’ve stolen my stray.

3. drink and dope and Derrida and Depeche Mode

Gillian starts coming round regularly. First it’s weekends, then a sprinkling of days during the week after school, casually dispersed just so that she doesn’t appear a desperate clinger-on. Sometimes there are up to a dozen or so people crammed in Julia’s tiny, tidy flat—apparently she uses James’s significantly larger space as a default studio—sitting around smoking, drinking, eating, getting high, and talking about books, music, art. Even though she is terrified of saying anything amongst this gaggle of university students and penniless artists—she still hasn’t recovered from the shame of enthusiastically admitting she liked Wordsworth—nonetheless she feels remarkably grown up and sophisticated and is mostly content to sit around and take it all in. Well, to take in the restless hostess at the very least: At these times Julia is always on the move, fetching drinks, talking, pacing, trying to get people to eat homemade protein bars or granola or disgustingly verdant smoothies.

She’s a bloody hippie, James always says. Talk a good game, pretends she’s a Wire fan or whatever, but you see, whenever she’s alone she’s making fucking granola and listening to Joni Mitchell.

That James knows what she’s like whenever she’s alone has, on more than one occasion, guiltily tied Gillian into knots of jealousy; it’s not until she drops in on him late one afternoon to find him hung-over all the way into bleary-eyed incoherence and with a scruffy, peroxide-blond punk boy in his bed that his particular intimacy with Julia all makes sense. Insofar as anything she feels, thinks, or sees nowadays makes sense.

It certainly doesn’t make sense, Gillian thinks, that after a night of drink and dope and Derrida and Depeche Mode—some in Julia’s circle had grudgingly copped to liking the band, which made her feel cool again—to make granola at four in the morning but by Christ they are doing it. Everyone is gone, including James, who has staggered back to his flat, and she watches as Julia scoops the cooled granola off a baking sheet, dump it into a bowl, and shove it under Gillian’s nose.

Try it, says Julia. Not the burnt parts, though.

Gillian grabs a nutty, sticky clump of the granola and pops it in her mouth. It’s sweet and warm, and she could easily down the whole bowl. It’s good, she says.

Bet you can’t taste the spirulina!

No, because I don’t know what the fuck that is.

Julia laughs and sits across from Gillian at the space-green Formica kitchen table, which, as she had proudly told Gillian, had been fished out of a dumpster—by James, of course. She stretches out long legs, flexes her bare feet. Gillian notices that the bottoms of her feet are grayish-pink from running around barefoot all night.

So, she drawls, my little foul-mouthed friend, my sweet and tender hooligan—

Am I really a hooligan?

Don’t sound so pleased, Gillian. You certainly like to talk that way, don’t you? But that’s not you, you’re smart. Can’t help but wonder, though, if you’re thinking ahead. Do you want to go to university?

My father wants me to work in insurance, Gillian replies with a shrug. Civil service, maybe.

Julia bursts into laughter.

No, really.

Why?

Because I—like helping people? Gillian speculates helplessly. Which is bollocks because the thought of actually dealing with people all day sets her teeth on edge. It’s because the old man wants her to work in some boring desk job that will keep her out of trouble.

But what do you want to do?

Julia asks her this question all the time. Because she’s so unaccustomed to anyone actually asking what she would like to do with her future, usually she just shrugs or changes the subject. But the late night, the cheap chianti, the joint has worn down her stroppy protective layer.

I don’t—don’t know, she says. Travel. Go to France. Maybe Netherlands, Rotterdam—Antje’s got family there, we talked about going someday.

You’re learning French. I saw it in your notebook.

Yeah. Thought maybe if I got good enough, I c-could be a translator. I could live and work anywhere, then.

You could, Julia says softly. She has a habit of gazing so intensely at Gillian, and for such seemingly long, uninterrupted intervals—half a minute seems eternity—that Gillian wants to tell her everything but then she stops and wonders if Julia is really seeing her and not an object in light and shadow, something to be committed to paper or canvas in paints and oils and pens, rendered useless and casually discarded in the process.

Gillian stares at the floor. Are you really going to paint me? she mumbles.

You don’t want me to, do you?

With a don’t-give-a-fuck shrug, Gillian redirects her look at the kitchen wall, where there is a worn and torn film poster of Cocteau’s Orphée, and gnaws futilely at a hangnail.

I don’t usually paint figures. People. She pauses. Well, not anymore. Thought I was never good at it. But James said I should try again, and figurative work, that’s his thing—he’s so good he caught the eye of Lucian Freud, you know. So when I saw you, I thought you might—inspire me.

Me?

You’ve got a good face. An interesting face. Mark my words, there’s more beauty in character than anything you’ll see in a bloody magazine or on telly.

Gillian feels a blush coursing up her body, from chest to neck and further, and as the tips of her ears tingle, she blurts out, You should paint Antje. She’s way prettier than me. She’s beautiful. I mean, she’s, she’s like a painting come to life anyway. Like a, a Botticelli or whatever.

Why would I want to paint a painting? Julia grins teasingly. You sound like you’re in love with her.

No. I mean, I love her—she’s my best friend.

I like her. Bring her round again.

Nah. She’s too busy shagging this guy she met, he’s in a band.

Not that horrible Joy Division cover band? Julia is aghast.

Gillian’s silence confirms it.

They laugh.

Then, sighing, Julia looks out the window. Jesus Christ, it’s nearly dawn.

My parents will be freaking out.

You can call them. James has a phone—you could dash over and use it. Nothing will wake him now.

Gillian shakes her head. Fuck them.

Julia doesn’t push. She rises, relights the joint she’s been working on most of the night, and starts puttering about clearing up the party mess while Joni Mitchell plays jazzy and low in the background.

But you know I’m so glad to be on my own—

Calder Valley sunrise seems less spectacular compared to the painting of its sunset. Gillian stands near the kitchen window and she’s just tired and high enough—and crashing ever so slightly—to imagine that the pastel cresting of dawn over the tops of the buildings is a painting, something created in the vapid studio of her unimaginative mind. Absently she nibbles at her fingernails again and tastes the smoky bitterness from a joint on her fingers and amidst the layered bass that rolls through her like blood and the jangling guitar, Julia lifts the hair away from the nape of Gillian’s neck and kisses her there.

Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger Can set up trembling in my bones

Is this okay? she whispers.

I know no one’s going to show me everything We all come and go unknown Each so deep and superficial Between the forceps and the stone

Gillian is afraid to say yes, even more afraid to say no. She touches Julia’s hand, which rests on her hip—a tentative signal, a flashing warning light to go slow. Hejira means journey, this much she has learned from puzzling endlessly over Joni Mitchell. But there’s no telling what the point of the journey is or where it will end up. But this morning it takes her to this woman’s bed, where she’s stripped down blank and naked as a new canvas. Her partially clad, fumbling fucks with Robbie—and a couple others—did not prepare her for the wholesale vulnerability of being like this in someone’s bed. For appraisal with sight and words and where the hot greed of her response is tempered with a thousand kinds of touches and kisses, a sweet hell of foreplay where the ache created by the slightest contemplation of forever dwells—she knows it now and will never, ever forget it because it is here that she learns how to beg without regret.

Slow and gentle, Julia parts her legs and studies her cunt as closely as her face or any other part of her body; it is impossible to know within the fine, feathered interleaves of aesthetics and desire where the artist’s detachment ends and the lover’s appreciation begins.

L’origine du monde—the origin of the world, she says. It’s a painting. By Courbet. Beautiful. Almost as beautiful as you. She sighs. Christ. You are really lovely and I can’t help myself.

Gillian manages one last final, whispered please before it begins. The immersive shock of someone going down on her for the first time sends her shivering into a sublime state of frightening pleasure. She can’t relax, can’t enjoy it. Like diving, an innate instinct for self-preservation mingles with the exhilaration. But with slow persistence, and a couple soothing breaks—take a breath, love—she comes.  

Later, an impasto of fickle November sun and shadows marks the prints on the bedroom wall—a Georgia O’Keefe, and the pink flag of the Wire poster flutters a good-morning kiss—dapples their tangled limbs, and underneath her head her new lover’s heart marks time in a steady swishing beat, like an oar hitting water, while she breathes in the happiness of a moment that she never wants to end.

Maybe I’ll take you to France, girl, Julia murmurs before falling asleep.

4. the forceps and the stone

On the day of her 44th birthday Gillian takes her usual solitary, celebratory ramble and finds herself in Leeds, in the city’s beautiful main library and on the brink of an unavoidable chasm into the past. Prominently on display, as thick and large as a cutting board or even the bloody registry for Westminster Abbey, is a mammoth coffee table-type book called Contemporary Scottish Artists and she thinks of James for the first time in God knows how many years. The spine makes a tiny creak of protest when she opens it and she shoots a panicked look at the librarian, who is pretending not to watch her. She finds him listed in the index, and there is his work on page 457: a soft-lined impressionist pastel sketch of a handsome, fair-haired man sitting on a park bench beside the name JAMES HEATH ADAIR, the sprawl of his life contained within parentheses: (1958–2007). Nearly thirty years ago she had cried in his lap, face pressed into dirty, paint-stippled chinos, while he soothed her with hair-stroking and platitudes over the impossibilities of first love and helplessly, stupidly quoted Nick Lowe at her—you’ve got to be cruel to be kind—in order to justify his best friend’s sudden and permanent decampment to her native London.

Now she struggles, and fails, not to cry in front of the librarian who frowns openly at her, ready to give her the boot should salty tears mar the glossy pages of their fancy new book.

It takes another year to summon forth courage to look up Julia; the convenience of finally having a computer at home, after she scrounges up enough money to buy Raff a decent one for school use, affords her all the stealth and privacy required for this niggling, fortuitous task. Late one night, the shit internet connection somehow tremendously improved by three glasses of wine, she googles Julia and finds photos of a professor living in northern California with closely cropped gray-white hair and wearing glasses—here is the book she co-edited called Methods and Modalities in Art Education, and here is a photo of her in a studio wearing worn denim with a bandana at her throat, the same throat Gillian kissed fewer times than she wanted, here are hands that fucked and caressed in a black and white photo, caught in broad gesticulations as Julia stands in front of a class wearing a plain white blouse and a spangled necklace, here is her wry half-smile and Gillian wonders how many students have fallen for that smile and that seductive line about Courbet, and here is the reacquaintance of loss nestling soft and wild against her, here is its gentle unpredictability, here is loss begetting loss, and here she falls asleep on the couch after another few glasses of wine and thinking, I always knew you would end up in California.

Even though she drifts off to a vision of California cliffs and coasts, her unconscious mind teems with recollections of Eddie: Nearly two years after Julia left Hebden Bridge she ran into him on the main drag in Ripponden, where she’d gone looking for a summer job.

He’s alone, leaning against the old Corvair that Robbie claimed they’d rebuilt together, but later Eddie tells her he did it all himself because Robbie is a fuckwit. He’s just as beautiful as she remembers, tall and golden-haired, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, wearing a dark blue Fred Perry polo and a pair of Ray Bans. As she approaches, he grins. This close she notices his teeth, two crazy paths of crowded, crooked enamel. It releases him from the burden of perfection, from the fantasy that existed in her mind. It places him within her reach. He hoots with self-conscious laughter and shyly ducks his head, like James Dean in Giant confronted with and confounded by the mere presence of Elizabeth Taylor. When he removes the Ray-Bans and finally looks at her, she is lost to him.

chapter soundtrack:

“Digital,” Joy Division 

“Reap the Wild Wind,” Ultravox 

“Hejira,” Joni Mitchell

“California,” Joni Mitchell