Summer Fruits

That summer I refused to wear shoes.

I stood barefoot in the dirt, believing that summer meant footprints and unsure of how to leave my own while wearing anything except skin. I was already regretting it, was already stepping tenderly and with more thought than I preferred to use in this kind of heat. In one hand you held a yellow bowl and in the other your garden hose, which we were using to rappel down the crumbling hill outside your house. We really meant you, because my grip had slipped once on the make-shift rope and now you were too far ahead of me for it to be useful for both of us.

We were picking blackberries.

Summer had been chewing on our bones and I felt the dull ache of boredom in the fractures it left behind. This was the summer I learned that my breaths were hemmed in by the number of days I had left alive, and boredom felt like so terrible a fate that, when you asked me to do something with you, there really wasn't any answer but yes.

And now here we were, sweat-slicked in open sun. It was enough that my thoughts melted into sprawling, open-ended things, and it felt like a reasonable idea when I pulled off my shirt and attempted to throw it back up to the lawn. It only made it half-way; got snagged on patches of brambles. I felt a brief sense of loss, but only brief, because then I remembered that I was going to die, and found a lost t-shirt a rather lack-luster reason to feel…well, anything, really.

You took a second to notice, on your tip-toes trying to reach for a cluster of purple ahead of you, the hose looking snake-like and dead in your fist.

When you did look at me, you didn’t even say anything, just narrowed your brows and shook your head a bit.

I felt a curl of embarrassment up my spine, and imagined our mothers talking about this later. The cousin who pretended growing up was as simple as the decision to not wear a bra.

“There’s no one here.” My cheeks were hot.

You didn’t even look back at me. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

We continued picking our way downwards, trying to get closer to the center of the bush, until every step had me gritting my teeth against the thorns getting buried into the meat of my foot and I refused to go any further. You glanced at me sideways and I knew you wanted to tell me it was my fault for insisting on going barefoot, but instead you stayed silent and stopped walking and we both looked out on the mass of thorns in front of us behind us around us.

“Can we go back to the house?”

You looked down at the bowl, bloodied by a small handful of blackberries. You looked at me, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing; that when we went back up we’d have nothing to show for ourselves except sweat, and a bit of blood.

I tried again anyway. “I want water.”

“Here.” You handed me the hose, and I didn't know whether you were joking or not, but I held it up to my mouth and pressed down on the plastic lever.

Last night we’d showered together like we had when we were younger, sitting naked on the tiled floor and letting the room fill up with steam. After long enough we’d gotten overheated; light headed and thirsty and instead of drinking from the sink we’d licked the condensation off of the shower glass, giggling at the clear marks our tongues left behind and pretending that our thirst had been quenched.

That’s what I was thinking about as I gulped the luke-warm, chemical tasting liquid, excess dripping off my bare chest and running in rivulets down my legs.

You ended up deciding to walk back to the house anyway, the climb even slower and more painful than the one down had been. I was sluggish, and just a bit angry at the lingering taste of something toxic in my mouth, and so you tried to distract me. “What are you reading right now?”

I didn’t answer, and you spun the question back to yourself.

“It’s a book about a girl with anorexia. It almost kills her.”

A few months ago we’d taken a family trip to the beach and you’d refused to go swimming. I’d asked why, and you told me that you were on your period, that sharks could smell blood and so you couldn’t go in the water. You told me that when I got mine, I wouldn't be able to go surfing anymore. Not unless I wanted to get eaten. I’d gotten home and the first thing I'd done was look up how to stop myself from maturing to that point; your point. One website told me girls who were malnourished took longer to get their periods. I decided that was as good of a plan as any. I was already good at being hungry, anyway.

When we finally climbed our way back to the house I tracked footprints of mud onto the brand new carpets and the bright white bathroom tiles. The blackberries had gotten lost on the journey up, and so we took a bowl of cherries from the kitchen countertop. We ate them all in seconds and swallowed the pits, or else spat them in bloody chunks into the thorned bushes outside.