Six Feet Under

Chapter 18 //

Street Collins

2:10 P.M.

Although the street I lived on wasn't abundantly charming either, Gail's street was much more nauseating and vile. The clouds were peculiarly gloomier here, and the dark branches of the trees swayed closer to the ground, the dying leaves likely to fly away due to the dry air. Not a single square foot of the concrete sidewalk wasn't cracked, whether it was caused by the roots of a persistent tree trunk, or by other mysterious circumstances. The road was slimed with tire grime, and the sewers rang of dirty water droplets louder than I was used to hearing. Not a single house we passed was brightly colored—they were all blacks, olive greens, muddy browns, or navy blues. Many of the fences that bordered their front yards were comprised of saturated wood, shades, and shades darker due to unstoppable rainfall. One house had a ghostly, dark purple, children's play bike sitting hauntingly in the middle of the driveway—covered in dirt, the home to a pack of racing ants, probably left there to rot.

The further we persisted, the lonelier the houses became. The number of broken-down cars increased in every driveway that we passed, as did the overflowing trash bins. One house was abandoned, with smashed windows and vegetation climbing all over the outside walls, but eventually sneaking into the house itself, wrapping themselves around the yellowing window panels. Just at the bottom of the abandoned porch, was an overbearingly giant pile of shredded cardboard boxes, all dripping wet. It was a graveyard of previously opened packages.

In this melancholic picturesque, I felt quite out of place—with my bright white shirt and the happy, calico pattern that was on it. But Gail, with her disheveled converse, tousled hair, and eyes as dark as the background of a cityscape at night—my God, she fit right in.

We hadn't spoken to each other once the whole walk. In fact, I didn't even respond to her when she offered to have me come to her house for the afternoon—I just followed her off of the bus. Will was with us for a short while, but at this point, he had already gone home. Although the coloration the same as the other houses, Will's was slightly happier than any I had seen at that point. Maybe because a woman, I am guessing his mother—opened the front door of it with a pair of wide, open arms, ready to lovingly embrace her son. I scoffed regrettably under my breath, thinking the action was kind of childish—but when Will complied instantly, jumping into his mother's arms like a preschool-age boy—I immediately felt bad about myself.

    Gail walked at the pace of a snail. Whenever I looked over at her, simply unable to conceal my curiosity about the possibility of her looking at me—she was not. She stared pensively into the ground that she walked on, without glancing up for a second to see where she was going, or for any possible obstacles that may lay in her path. Her right hand secured firmly on the strap of her backpack while her feet scrapped the sidewalk with every step. If there was any emotion behind her face, it was impossible to perceive. She paced forward with the static motions of a statue, imperceptibly—eyes as glazed as they were on the bus this morning when I first saw her today. Time did most peoples' battles justice—but for the short 30 hours that I had known Gail, it hadn't aided her once.

    At some point, we passed by a house that caught my undivided attention, as it was more out of place than my own self. It was the first house I'd seen on this street that enhanced the sunshine that must've been somewhere within the sky—theoretically. It was white, and must have been repainted recently, as it was blindingly bright—as bright as a layer of fresh snow under the blazing sun. The grass of the front yard was heavily landscaped with probably the most unnatural of chemicals. The house had beautiful, large bay windows and the roof reached so high that it could have touched the clouds. On the left side of the front yard, grew a prodigious and vast, wonderfully green willow tree—lazy leaves swaying gently in the light-hearted caresses of the wind, looking like a fairytale.