Tag: friendship

Amish Tracks (Part 1)

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Note: This is a WIP. I haven’t shared WIPs in years, but I am hoping that doing so inspires me to keep going and see the thing through to the end. The best comp I can give for this piece (and hope to achieve at the conclusion) is Perks of Being a Wallflower set in a small Iowa town. Please let me know if you have any parts you like, or things you want to see in future sections!

I hand Nick the nearly-spent joint, watching his thin lips puff at the damp butt; I imagine the molecules of our saliva mixing in the paper fibers, against my better judgment.

“Careful, Trent! Squirrel!” shouts Veronica from the back seat.

I swerve just in time to dodge the skittering creature, the neon contents of our Big Gulps – blue raspberry, lime, tropical punch – sloshing from side to side in the cupholders of my ancient Mercury.

“Jesus,” Nick coughs, hacking out a cloud of smoke that quickly vanishes out the window, into the golden-hour light. “I swear they’ve got a death wish. Remember how Mr. Larrabee would say the wildlife around here have scrambled brains because of the chemical runoff from the factories out east? God, I miss that guy.”

“Dude, didn’t he get, like, sent upriver for sexting Jenifer O’Hair? He’s a fucking creep,” says Veronica.

“There’s beauty in the breakdown,” I reply, pointing to the cassette-to-aux converter plugged into the dashboard tinnily playing “Let Go” through the car speakers.

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The Best of Friends

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The best of friends are glued together on the sofa, wrapped in a mélange of blankets, the blasting AC sprouting goosebumps on their exposed wrists as they pass a joint back and forth, the cold air decreasing their body temperatures, combatting the friction of the undercover exploration.

Ice spins around slowly in plastic cups of pinot grigio, box-poured. Around them, wasted partygoers are shuffling off to bedrooms, to nooks, to crannies, doors locked and clicked and fastened with bangles around the knobs to keep a separation between fact and refrigeration.

Muffled moans, the parting sighs of lips opening, tongues swirling together, the pitch of a pendulum somewhere in the apartment, swinging back and forth—slower and slower—as the two nestle somehow closer, the yellow haze overtaking them, fervent departure from friendship into something more. They melt together, lost to the desires boiling inside them.

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