Rosanagh has beautiful, dirty shoes. My summer with Anna.




An Introduction.





i
love you and your baked goods. x X x





(He, a monster, a rotter, a horror, writes to her of me, "Your friend is so quiet".)




1.



Here, I'm daydreaming; tears, tears, tears at my desk and in a pool and a little bit of drowning, a little bit of arm waving, and a life guard who hasn't slept in three days.


Where's his beautiful girlfriend?




2.


Imagine! I imagine everything. I complain, my imagination is rubbish, where are the dragons and the monsters and the vampires. I am lying. My imagination is super hot and super good because I'd been imagining that we were in love. I needed a gossip (with diagrams and cups of tea and pens and paper and string and wool) to sew up the holes in the story line.





3.



I used to do this when I was 14 too, on work experience, sit in Burger King on my lunch breaks and think about how I don't want to go back , not back to the office, to the carpets and the chairs and blinds and desks. My nail varnish is lovely. My hands are green from the ink on the files, and so are my finger prints on the table top and my smudges, my leftovers.



She said, I cried and my tears fell on Tom's wrist.


We kiss in the kitchen, my brother's dirty plates on the counter next to us.



4.



Jess and I ate ice cream on the beach. It was lovely. We walked around Snape Maltings. We used to walk there from Iken. It is my favourite walk. We, children, would climb all over the sculptures.






I was her favourite. I imagined we fought over the breakfast room table.

I wished I were a man so she would fall in love with me. I was tired of everything.





5.



(For Laura)



We hung around, like 14 year olds, by the motorway and talked.



Anna and Jordan left, home, and it was just me and him. He sat next to me on the pavement, a hand on my leg. I leant against the railings. The North Circular. There was a tiny little kiss on the lips when we went home in the morning and a tiny bit of hand holding. "it was so nice. i've been brainwashed. he is a dick but he is also quite ok sometimes"




6.



I'm watching Guillemots with a mouth full of bonjela. I watched Guillemots with a mouth full of bonjela. "i am waiting to see guillemots and i have a cold and i want to eat oranges. love you and love to radiant ray xxxx"








7.



I will take another hit for you

and I will take it in the head.



Are you going round the bend? and and and –



He's smoking outside my house. I'm sitting on the curb next to him. There are bores in the kitchen and there are bores in the sitting room.



8.


Anna and I walked to the Rhythm Factory eating chicken nuggets. The Horrors were ace. We liked the music and we wished we could have heard the words. The monsters were all out, out of the closets and the dressing up boxes and from beneath dirty beds with dirty sheets, and faked eyelashed and spidery legged. The other bands were like this: just noise noise noise. We left and ran home in the rain.



9.


This:


i am at work and it is so hot i am going to melt on my desk and they will say "where is olivia" and i will be a little pool of blood and guts and skin and fingernails on the floor by the floppy disk drive and i will seep into the carpet and down through the ceiling to reception. i'm going to make a necklace out of office supplies. i love you. xxxxxxxxx



10.



(I have sticky chocolate all over my fingers and in my mouth and on my teeth and gums and throat. I'll put myself to bed now. I can't really tell you and me apart. You're drunk. I can't speak I'm so sad.)



11.



I fell out of bed and onto a tube and onto my swivel chair at my desk with Oatso Simple from Maccy D's. My summer, of chaos and coffee and Vincent Vincent and the Villains and Long Blondes and Anna and overheated offices and the night bus home and work and that secret, secret feeling, I AM A NIGHT PERSON, and filing and desks and outlook express.




12.



(What should I wear? I wanted to wear clothes to make him fall in love with me. Wear a towel, I liked how you looked when you came out of the shower, she says.)



We bought beer for the children outside and sat in the garden and ate ice creams at the pub. We ate other people's chips.



13.



We shared lamb pasanda and rice and naan bread, all exhausted and with ringing ears. I was happy. We are a gang. Walking home, we sang our hits of the summer. We talked about everything in the world over lunch too. Anna is leaving. We said, we'll act it out tomorrow. Anna will play Liv, Liv will play Anna and Jord will be Hannah. Liv as Anna will say, I'm crying, feel my cheeks. Anna as Liv will feel my cheeks and Jord as Hannah will say, I'm crying on the inside. I will make him a cue card. I won't cry. We have had a hot summer.


Anna and I know all the lines. Jordan cried and I held him and stroked the back of his head as the car went past and Anna went to San Francisco.



15.


Anna and I have black pens and we are leaving words all over, on walls, in toilets, in San Francisco too, Anna. Write to us back. We'll drag you down. We're more fun than her, so come with us. Come come come come come come come come come come with us.




16.



I'm wearing a towel, at my Dad's house, shiny and sweaty and red and clean from a bath. I can hear the sea outside. I need some food. I'm warm.





17.



(that I wanted to stand very close to her, with my head on her chest, breastbone, the kiss on the cheek goodbye. A full room, and me, wrapped up in them.)