Divided.

Divided. (Part 13)

“Happy birthday Daisy chain,” Jack said handing Daisy her birthday present. He hadn’t put much thought in to the wrapping but still it was perfectly wrapped up in dazzling pink paper with swirly string stunk on top and a birthday card stuck to the side with tape. 

“My birthday was a week ago.”

Jack knew that but he also knew that they couldn’t just meet up when they felt like it. It wasn’t as if he could drop it off on her doorstep either. They had to wait; to wait for an opportunity to sneak away to the disabled toilets in the centre of Hyde Park.

“Did you wrap this yourself?”

Jack shrugged, “my mum did it.”

Daisy hesitated and stared at his wide open eyes suspiciously, “your mum?”

“Don’t worry, she thinks it’s for a girl in my class,” Jack lied.

“What is it?” she shook the shoebox shaped box hard. It didn’t rattle, not like a bag of sweets in a box would rattle.

“Open it.”

Daisy sliced the paper open with her jagged and tough fingernails; her mum always kept on at her to stop biting them but she didn’t listen; besides, it calmed her nerves. The first thing she saw was an average looking box, just a box made out of cardboard coloured cardboard with brown masking tape stuck down to keep the slit closed. She tried for ages to rip off the tape.

“Do you want me to do it?”

“No” Daisy shouted, “I can do it.”

In the end Jack had to hand over his house keys and Daisy used them to cut in to the tape and eventually to pry open the cardboard box.

“What’s this?” she couldn’t believe her eyes, “You’re kidding right?”

Inside the box was another box, much smaller but still bigger than the rest of the presents Daisy had gotten for her birthday. She couldn’t believe her eyes, how could he afford so easily to give her something so valuable.

“Don’t worry we have loads.” Jack said, he didn’t want her to read too much in to it, it wasn’t as if they were best friends was it. His mother had given it to him; he’d had one of his own since he was 8 years old, it was only a basic phone really.

“Can I keep it?”

“It’s yours now stupedo.”

Daisy had never had a phone of her very own before. A mobile phone that was hers and just hers. She couldn’t wait to open the box up and see how it felt to hold.

It felt good; it was black and it was flat, much better than the mobile phone her mother had. In fact, she’d never seen a phone so sleek or so complex looking.

“Now we can video chat,” Jack sounded excited for the first time today, but it was very short lived because Daisy shot him a half-hearted look.

“Video chat?”

“You know, on our phones and no one will know.”

Daisy still didn’t understand what he was talking about. The only videos she knew about were the Disney princess ones she was allowed to watch on the VCR at home on Wednesday nights. The little mermaid was her favourite. Probably because of her want to learn more about the world she lived alongside. Sometimes she’d see herself as Ariel the mermaid, so boxed up by her parents with such dreams of exploring and learning about the world she was constantly told to ignore.

Daisy looked at her phone again that was able to do things she could have never dreamed imaginable. It was as if Jack was from another planet, she wondered what the inside of his house would look like if little things like phones looked like this one.