Magicians Secret // Big Mouth

1.1 Coin Behind The Ear

Over the past three years not that much has happened. Junior year of high school once seemed so far out of reach, but now that it's here, I can barely remember what freshman and sophomore were like.

SAT prep is annoyingly intense, meaning that for once I actually have to try and pay attention in class. This leaves my dazing time to be like a switch that flicks every time I leave the classroom. I walk the halls of school without any recognition of what I'm doing, my eyes focused on the back of someone's head until I reach my desired location. However, my daze has seemed to interfere with my school performance nevertheless, and I've been assigned compulsory extra study classes after school hours, meaning that I am practically chained to the unwelcoming gates of Bridgeton High School. Or at least, I'm supposed to be. Most days I skip school. 

"What's so interesting in your life that you skip anyway?" Jessie remarks as she sorts through my closet, occasionally pulling items from it and throwing them onto my bed.

In my arm chair by the open window, I pull a small plastic bag from my jean back pocket and clear my throat to get her attention.

Jessie pokes her head over my open closet door and once her eyes are instantly drawn to the baggie I'm holding up proudly, she laughs.

We roll up the weed into a spliff that we share on my windowsill, passing it to each other after each drag, our feet lightly touching the ceiling tiles of my roof. My window has a ledge big enough for us to both sit on, so it has become our designated smoking spot. I exhale a long stream of smoke into the air and stare out at the identical houses lining my street, a view that has always been still and unmoving, that no amount of drugs could make interesting. Although, to be fair, my weed tolerance is seriously high, so perhaps I shouldn't be so assuming.

My room hasn't changed much either, it's only become messier as more items of clothing and underwear add to the piles and get stuffed into my closet, but nothing moves out. Piles on piles of stuff that I've never been worried to get rid of: old school books, dated makeup, my old magic tricks, loose change and bobby pins appearing everywhere except for the times when I'm actually looking for them. 

My underwear drawers are the biggest evidence of my age: bras in tiny and large sizes, panties varying from full coverage with little bows on the waistband centre to complications of mesh and lace in every colour known to man.

Jessie attempts to blow rings of smoke, but only manages to choke herself up. I laugh at her as she clears her throat and hands me the spliff. Jessie doesn't like school much either, but gets good enough grades so that teachers don't actively seek her out as a 'liability'. She goes into the city quite a lot to see her pretentious boyfriend, Quentin, who has a pathetic attempt at a beard and wears turtlenecks and has a stretched lobe piercing. Jessie fawns over him like a fangirl because he's in college and buys us drinks, and even though on the few times I've met him he's been a total noob, she swears he's different when they're alone. Other than Quentin, Jessie pretty much just hangs out with me and Andrew.

At the back of my closet are my piles and piles of notebooks and diaries left unused and dusty from years of being gifted them and years of ignoring the incentive to write. The thoughts that constantly naw in the back of my mind only ever come out in ugly splotches and splurges, scribbled messily on the back covers of my school books, carved into a school desk, sometimes just words crawling around the back of my hand or climbing up Andrew's hairy arm in thick black marker. I can never manage to form anything sensicle, only short phrases that sounded lyrical in my head but look wrong in my eyes. In algebra class my creativity usually flares up, probably because the class is so deprived of anything interesting or thoughtful. 

I sit at my desk, pen between my teeth as I stare out through the window, watching a goldfinch perch on a spindly, leaf deprived tree cowering beside our school building. The bird has soft, silky feathers painted delicately with warm tones of beige, maroon and mustard, its bony claws clasp the small branch of the tree with precision, the firmness and decisive sureness mocking me. Without turning away from the tiny creature, my hand freely scribbles across the back of my pop quiz.