jessewestend

Working on a new chapter of the novel... i like what i have so far because its cute...

August DeRicci .
Exposition

When my car pulled to her door she was staring at me like Sylvia Plath at the waters edge. Her fine, milk-white, New England skin shone like the surface of a moon's moon and I couldnt see an inch of it without thinking very bad thoughts. My eyes ran down her shoulders and stopped at her delicate fingers clutching that ghost-white cloth purse. A simple bag filled with complicated secrets. She had always been much like that purse: Delicate, thinly veiled skin covering a macabre collection of shady secrets. Her name was August and she was trouble.
She had always referred to herself a writer, but I generally used harsher words to describer her. Maybe it was because before that day she had never shared any of her writing with me. She never really showed me anything. Her touch was all I knew. And so I always tore down her image in the absence of that privilege. Almost all my friends just assumed I hated her because I could be so mean. Perhaps it was out of self-defense or perhaps I was aware of the way anger fueled our lust.
In the end, we were eternally "just friends" engaged in our unique style of contorted dialogue. August never really spoke, yet it seemed all we ever did is talk. Somehow everything important, everything worth hearing, ended up lost in translation. I knew I was missing something, I just didnt know what it was. A part of me didnt want to know. I remember laying awake at night wondering if it were the good or bad that stayed just out of my reach. I don't even think we knew what our secrets were, only that we couldn't share them. We could only talk around them in our own little way. And so we would lay in silence for hours, half-watching movies we had already seen before either my words or her childlike hands made the first attempt at contact and Augusts embraces spoke volumes to me. They told me how she had been loved before, and how it had gone wrong. They told me of her childhood, and spoke a great deal about her future. I knew her strength, and I shared her weakness. God did I love to listen to her but my ears still ached for the sound of something dangerous. Something real and vulnerable. My heart burned at the thought of it and it became an obsession. To hear more than stories about other people or work. To listen instead of interpret the things she had already told me so many times in her repressed way.
"Talk! I would say. God damn you, August, say something. Just talk... please"
I begged, for I knew that while her hands could say so much her throat would remain forever silent. And all I had was this atom bomb of emotion welling up in my heart; an encyclopedic collection of things to discuss, describe, detail while my hands, while all of my expensive tattooed skin grew ever colder to the touch. Her hands fell on deaf ears, and my words just bounced off of her skin. And yet somehow, beneath it all... we needed each other. We were just terrible at it. Terrible at everything.
So when I pulled up outside her apartment, and she stood there with her sweetly slouched posture I could feel it immediately. She was staring at me like I was the oceans eternal edge and finally I knew why. Or maybe I just hoped that I did its all a bit fuzzy now. Memory is so easily clouded by emotion.

The Writers
Hey, Gigi, I said as I poked my head out the window of my midnight blue Cadillac We all called her Gigi but none of us really knew why. Whats going on?
Michael is being such a dick.
Hows that?
I dont know he justargg.
He argg? I joked.
I see youre feeling clever today, She said as she paused to light a cigarette. So can we watch it? Please?
I dont know. I just watched it yesterday.
Soo. She replied. She had a way of becoming the cutest thing in the world when she wanted something. It was transparent. It was annoying. And it was also impossible to ignore.
Fine. I started the car, changed my iPod to something she wouldnt bitch about, and lit my own cigarette. So whats wrong with you again?
Nothing. God. I dont like talking to you about him.
I had so many clever come backs but decided against them and just sort of smiled as I pulled around her dense, tree filled, neighborhood. It was too early in our day to piss her off.
Gigi?
What?
Did you bring it?
Maybe, she said, once again in that annoyingly cute voice.
Jellycones by The Unicorns came on and my head bobbed all over the place as I flew around our little college town. Sundays were always dead so I had the streets to myself. She hated it when I sang so I made sure I was off key JELLY JELLY JELLY JELLLY JELLLY JELLYY CONES!
She sighed, of course, and turned the music down. So, if I did bring it you have to give me something to edit too or I will feel weird.
Aww, itll be like our own little gay writing class.
How did you know it was about a gay girl? she demanded.
I didnt. Dorkass. She actually laughed with me and blushed a little bit. She always amazed me. As cold and robotic as she was, sometimes she could be so human.