10 Things I hate About Her (10 Things #1)

4. Help Me Find Her

"She does not know

her beauty,

she thinks her brown body

has no glory.

If she could dance

naked

under palm trees

and see her image in the river,

she would know.

But there are no palm trees

on the street,

and dish water gives back

no images."

~William Waring Cuney

***

When Juliana was little, she liked watching snails march slowly down her driveway. They felt so tiny compared to her, so fragile; they needed her protection like how her parents protected her. There had been a boy on her street, Matthieu, who liked jumping on the poor critters. Juliana shared her displeasure with Val, and the two hatched a plan to get revenge for the snails.

A few days later, their plan kicked off. Val ran a lemonade stand, selling small plastic cups for fifty cents. She smiled as she charmed the small group of middle-aged women who liked to jog in the morning.

Matthieu and his friends watched Val from his driveway a few houses down.

When the women left, Matthieu hopped onto his scooter; there were no snails that day. The boy grinned, his chubby cheeks bulging as he drew closer, his electric scooter whirring as it sped toward Val's stand. He stretched out his right hand and tipped some already-poured cups onto the ground. Plastic cups hit the floor and tumbled over themselves. Juice seeped into the hot pavement.

Matthieu didn't know that Juliana hid behind the maple tree in their front yard, recording his abusive behaviour with her mother's camera.

He laughed as he went around the cul-de-sac and shot down the other side of the street. Val looked ready to jump over the table and fight him. Juliana went over to her sister and touched her shoulder. "It's alright; we got him." She shared the video of him spilling the lemonade they had made.

Once his mother saw this, she would beat his little bum and the snails, who were unfortunately dead and probably had no living relatives, would get their revenge. She and Val high-fived and began their five-year-long war with Matthieu.

Matthieu moved after he turned twelve. The day Matthieu was supposed to depart, he had knocked on their front door, holding an envelope with a handwritten letter in which he confessed how much he liked Juliana and inserted his email address at the bottom so she could contact him later. Juliana had been surprised; she had simply thought of him as an annoying bug that liked comparing her skin colour to poop. Somehow that bug had fallen in love with her. Maybe the bug would have regained its senses if she had hit it a few times.

Juliana had always been the observer. She had watched her sister fall in love, get her heart broken, and run away from home. Juliana had watched her friends fight and break up over simple things, and, for the most part, she was always objective. Until prom night, Juliana had never entertained any of those feelings for herself, although the fire was quickly snuffed out and only lasted a second. It had been there. A flicker of warmth. Desire. And guilt.

Something hit Juliana's forehead, and she lifted her head. Her blurry vision took a while to clear. A rolled-up piece of foolscap paper rested on top of her exam. She had finished her test, then ran out of energy and must have fallen asleep.