Blame The Weeds (gxg)

19

With sleep crusting my eyes, I tumbled from my sheets and hurried into the bathroom to puke. It was the fifth night I'd dreamt of Mei Jin, and no stopping it yet. When Freya had spoken of her talk with Graham, I'd assumed he knew what happened. In reality, she'd forced ignorance on him. At least a few weeks, she'd explained to me, I can't tell him yet. But it wouldn't matter in the end because Mei was dead and he'd never see her again. I knew it had nothing to do with me—wasn't even my business—I just didn't like pretending. And it didn't stop the nightmares or sickness. More molten rancid chunks of last night's chicken dinner choked their way up my throat, plopping into the toilet.

"Kareena? Are you sick?" Rue asked. My guttural groan was punctual. "Should I tell Freya you can't go?"

Rue had woken me claiming Freya was outside, all done up in a nice dress, and I was on the cold tiled floor, gripping the toilet seat.

"Ten minutes," I croaked.

"Are you sure?" Rue asked. I dry heaved, but nothing came up.

"Maybe twenty," I said.

~

The night air whipped through the Jeep as Freya hummed along to a song on the radio, and I gripped the fabric of one of Rue's yellow sundresses as it brushed my legs. Sitting in my lap was a clutch Gabrielle had shoved into my hands, and inside was lip balm from Rue, and pepper spray from my father (for rouge deer, bears and chipmunks, he'd said). Freya's eyes drifted to me often, but I turned my head away to watch the whipping lights. Most of my energy went into keeping my hands still because my stomach flipped when Freya looked at me, or when I looked at her, or worse, when we looked at each other. I'd never had such a hard time with eye contact.

When Freya slowed the Jeep a few hundred yards down County Line 753, she turned left in the dark. The driveway was long and gravelly and so very quiet. It was only crickets out there.

"Where are we?" I asked, My voice cracked from disuse.

"Home," she said.

The headlights shone on grassy land with a trailer resting in the centre. It was barely protected with dilapidated white siding and a recessed front porch graced by five wooden pillars buried into the earth. Freya parked in long-marked tire tracks and sighed.

"Now that you've seen me cry like a baby, you can at least see where I live," she said, and stepped out to walk around to my side. She opened the door for me in the dark. I unbuckled and stepped out, straightened my yellow dress, and took her hand. She squeezed mine, her face too shadowed to see. It was so real, especially when she leaned towards my lips, that I flinched.

"Sorry," we said at the same time. I cleared my throat. "It's okay," we both said—again. That made me smile.

"All these grasses are Festuca rubra," I said, glancing at the swaying blades. "Nothing eats it, no one cares about it, so it lives all over the coast. It likes the shade; it doesn't need much sun. Likes the cold, too."

Freya reached into the open window of the Jeep and pulled out a hoodie. This one was dark blue and smelled strongly of sugar, sap and pine. A bizarre stray tear leaked from the dam behind my eyes as Freya gently fit the soft fabric over my head, helping my arms through the sleeves and my frizzy curls through the top. The saltwater tears smeared against my cheek, gone as quickly as they appeared.

"There," Freya said, stepping back in the dark to regard me. Her flowy white dress was rumpled, and her hair was long and loose around her arms and chest. The strands reflected some moonlight filtering through the trees above us so prettily I didn't hold back in saying so.