Call Me Crazy!

Chapter Six: A Rusty Yellow Bicycle

Okay so I know it's been a little more of a wait for this, but I hope anybody who's reading enjoys! 

Chapter Six:

 

A Rusty Yellow Bicycle

 

I think I was around thirteen when I gave up and accepted that my life was nothing but I huge heap of failure. That my mother wasn’t gonna stop crying herself to sleep at night and that one glass of wine just wasn’t enough for her.

And last of all, that dad was never coming back. He just didn’t care whether or not I beat Gillian Thomas up for calling me a bastard. Or that I started to wear heavy eyeliner and paint my fingernails a sombre black.

It was like he had died at first. Mom never spoke of him and you daren’t bring him up for fear that she’d get that horrifying glazed look in her eye and the vodka would come out. But then as quickly as that funeral, death phase came about, it passed.

Mom tried dating and she even started to wear lipstick and I hated her for it, she got over it too quickly for my taste. But she still cried at night, so not only was each smile bright and annoying they were lies. Big fat phony lies that she painted on for the nosy neighbours.

But time passed and so did my ‘dark’ phase. I mellowed out I guess, came back to reality to discover that no, the world did not revolve around me and that by now nobody cared that Penelope Landon didn’t have a dad anymore.

And through all my moaning and groaning, my torn purple tights phase and my heavy metal phase, there was one constant. One tiny beacon of light that no matter how hard I stomped and screamed, just wouldn’t go out.

That light was Rebecca, she didn’t care that I called her a ‘preppy little bitch’ and that I failed to buy her birthday gifts or that I ‘forgot’ that her foot was there when I ran it over with my bicycle. She just kept smiling for the both of us, rubbing my back when I finally let her see me cry and telling me that: ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s a dummy for leaving you, you’re great!’

I really honestly don’t know how I deserve her, because even though I’m resigned to the crap-tastic failure that is my life, I always have Rebecca to futilely tell me that the sun shines out of my ass. And maybe my bitchiness will one day cause me to lose her, but for now I am happy to have her tell me how great life is. And for now, she’s happy to do the same.

Folded in a little ball in the middle of my bed I laugh over the tacky ‘year book’ she made on the fifth anniversary of our friendship. I guess it was cute - if not a little creepy - that she kept count of each year we’d been friends but that was just who she was. She kept a fluffy diary and had slippers with teddy bears stuck to the front. She was kind of like a mix of Cher from Clueless and Phoebe from Friends and admittedly it does grate but I’m sure my miserable Chandler-ish look on life grates on her too. She’s just too nice to say so.

Turning the book closed I run my hand over the shiny blue exterior, made up with a huge picture of us both at eight, me with my lips pulled back in an uncharacteristically large smile and her with her tongue poking out. Her arm is slung around my back and we’re sitting on the edge of her pool, our legs hanging over the side into the shivering blue water.

I remember that day, she had invited the whole of second grade to her 8th birthday pool party and that’s where our friendship bloomed. She commented on my flip-flops and I told her I ‘kinda’ liked her braids. And a year later my dad left and she stuck by me, granted there weren’t really anymore smiley pictures after that but she was always there. I’ve never really thanked her for that, for putting up with me.