Chapter Five

Sorry for yet another slow update, I’m terrible at this! Thanks to all for reading/review/putting this on alerts, you guys are awesome.

It is Saturday night and you are lying on your tiered quilt, your left wrist aching. You broke it skateboarding when you were twelve, and some nights you swear you can still feel the pins they set in your arm to mend it. It is not an unbearable pain, the sting of ripping a band-aid from a cut; it is sporadic and numbing, like there’s something moving under your skin.

It has been exactly two weeks since Gallagher bit the big one, but it feels like two years. A detective came by today and asked contriving questions. He said it was routine. He had a fatherly-look about him. Against better judgment, you found yourself picturing his entire life before your eyes: a father of two, divorced and residing in a two-bedroom apartment living on Chinese takeaway. He was kind to you, but you detested authority by nature, something you had picked up from Gallagher. You hummed and hawed your way through his questions, until he put his notebook down, not impatiently but resolvedly, and said in the most innocent of tones, I may be mistaken, but I was informed that you were his closest friend.

One of your sisters looked ready to pounce on him, but you cut off her off. Who told you I was his closest friend?

His mother, he replied.

You felt miserable and useless as he handed you the number of his precinct, told you to call if you ever wanted to chat, and left.

The sun has already set, and through your cobwebbed window you can see the sky is completely void of stars. You couldn’t be bothered to turn the light on, so you switched your reading lamp on instead. Your mother and sisters are downstairs in the kitchen, amidst boxes of Chinese food and what appears to be every Scorsese film made in the past twenty years. You excused yourself, to no one’s surprise.

You are skimming Into The Wild as inspiration for Alaska. You stopped reading on the second page, but you have been staring at it for about an hour. You consider being spontaneous; packing all your belongings into a duffel bag and hitchhiking this very second, but you know it’s a ridiculous plan. Besides, you don’t own a duffel bag.

There is a knock on your door, interrupting your thoughts. You lay the book on your chest.

“What is it?” you say sharply, as if you were doing something more important than not reading and making half-hearted escape plans.

“Hey Frankenstein, it’s P - “

“ – What do you want?” you demand, testily; Gallagher used to call you Frankenstein.

There is silence and a scuffling at the door.

“What are you doing?”

“Studying.”

“On a Saturday night? Are you kidding me?”

You roll your eyes skyward, trying to stifle a sigh.

“Someone called for you before.”

This captures your attention. You pause and sit upright.

“Who was it?” you ask guardedly, not sure if you want to know. If it’s Ms Mason, you may have to kill yourself. She called your mother last week, to express her insincere condolences, while you eavesdropped on the other line trying not to be sick. The way Mason went on about it to your mother, you would have thought Gallagher was her son or something, instead of her daughter’s best friend.

“Some girl called Aldea or something. Weird name.”

“Hark whose talking, matriarch of fertility.”

“At least I don’t have one-hundred-and-twenty pages of mindless drivel to thank for my birth name, Francesca,” she pitches through the door, not missing a beat.

Ouch. You were named after a fashion magazine, breaking the monotony of goddesses, and she never lets you forget it. The corners of your lips tug upward, against better judgment.

“You’re smiling, aren’t you?”

You pull at a thread in your pillowcase. It is tie-dyed. You have had it since you were seven. P was the one who showed you how to make tie-dyes. It was right after your dad died, and she was trying to cheer you up so she took you onto the front lawn with a large tub of dye and tied old cotton shirts together with rubber bands. You watched, captivated, as they resurfaced from the dye, a multitudes of colors in bizarre swirls. You had never seen anything like it before.

“I told Andrea that you had a lot on your mind, and you would see her at school on Monday.” When you do not respond she continues, “Frankie? Can I come in?”

“Not now. I’m writing, okay?” Your family knows that writing times means alone time for you.

“Okay,” P responds firmly. You hear her footsteps trail down the hallway to the stairs.

It is silent now, aside from the distant chatter downstairs. The smile has wiped from your face. You pick at the lining of thread on your pillowcase, until it unravels at the seams. You can’t help but feel as if this is a fair picture of your world at the moment.

Into the Wild is a book by Jon Krakauer about the true story a man called Christopher McCandless whom, after graduating university, gave all his savings to charity, burnt his cash and set out to Alaska to “experience nature firsthand.”

Also, I’ve never broken a bone before, so I’m sorry if the description seems inaccurate.