The Best Thing He Ever Wrote

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

“Since you were ten years old?” Olivia half whispers and mid-sentence, half shouts. She stops playing with the spoons and looks up at me so hard, intense, that I almost want to leave her to sit on her own. She only blinks once and even then it doesn't seem like she actually has at all. She lets go of my eyes and I have to squeeze mine shut for a second as though she was pinching them. I'm not sure what to say because thirty seconds ago we were talking about her being bullied, and now... Well now, I kind of admitted that I liked her and that was kind of one of my last intentions. Not intentions that don't really exist, real ones, like a hundred just to make sure that that certain one stayed on the bottom, where's it's always been.

Now thirty more seconds down the track, I still haven't said anything. The one thing that makes this all so much worse is that my body is betraying me. Making my cheeks feel like fire, if not hotter. Maybe I should go outside and cool down.

“Hmph,” Olivia grunts, this soft contented kind of sound. It makes me feel, if it even counts, a tiny microscopic bit better. At least she isn't cringing away from me or stuttering over words that basically say that I'm a creep, “You know what we should do?” she says.

And what I have in mind probably isn't on her list, “What's that?”

“The museum is only a couple of minutes down the road. Let's check it out. It's meant to have some really wacky stuff in it.”

And that wasn't on my list, defiantly not on my list, “Ok.” I say reaching for my keys in my pocket. I mustn't have sounded very keen on the idea, and well, I'm not. Olivia frowns down at the table for a moment before facing me again, “The best part about it, is that it's free and is heated.”

I smile at her, standing up, “Let's hit the road,” And once Olivia is standing up I add, “toad.”

“I am not a toad!”

“Hey, you called me a weird looking ice-cream.”

She laughs at me and I wish it was five minutes ago when I hadn't said anything stupid like when I was ten years old. I wish that I could stop being so pissed at the people who threw eggs at Olivia, like Johnny. So I try and swallow that down and I laugh along with her instead.

A strange abstract statue of a man stands against a twisty tree in a painting. His legs bend in a funny way and when you reach his feet, there aren't any at all, just flippers. He has no arms but instead wings and his face, well, his face looks like an older version of George Bush. Except instead of teeth he has fangs, and other than wearing a leaf over his bits, he wears nothing. This painting is so strange that it makes me feel dizzy and I just don't understand the logic of it. I walk down past that painting until I reach a frame, about as tall as me and two meters wide. Inside it are words, so many words. Thousands if not millions, tiny little dots. I wonder if Olivia can read them or if it’s just my eyes. I'd left my glasses down at the shop, and it wasn't by mistake. I feel Olivia brush past me and continue walking while I stand at the frame of words. I wish I had asked her to stay by me and read some of them to me, but I feel it's too late now that she's already looking at something else. It always feels too late.

I walk only a step further to reach a stand, on the stand is a fat little woman sitting on a donut eating a book. I don't get the sense of it either, but maybe it's just me. Maybe it's one of those pieces of art that only arty people or smart people get. Actually, I don't get a lot of the stuff in here. I wonder what that's saying. I guess wondering isn't really necessary.

“Brandon,” Olivia calls, “I like this painting, it reminds me of you.”

I walk over to her, not bothering to take sight of any of the other strange bits and pieces around me. I want to ask Olivia what she means by 'it reminds me of you', because I don't think I remind her of anything.