Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Clara Wright

Is there such a thing as pity crutches? Clara felt as if the doctor that had given them to her had only done so in attempt to preserve her dignity. Mild concussion and a slight sprained ankle and yet Clara had been carted into A&E in the back of an ambulance. It was Alice's fault, Clara thought to herself, hobbling through the lobby and taking a seat near the entrance; it had been her that had called the ambulance in the first place, probably bullshitted that Clara had no pulse or something like that because she knew then that the ambulance would show up faster. As birthdays went, it really had not been the greatest, especially not when compared to the ones that had come before it. Clara's 16th, the best of them all, was still as lucid as the reality around her, perhaps even more so. Cleo had done her trademark knock on the front door and then pulled Clara into the car of some older man she had never met. It was early evening and despite it being the middle of winter, the air was quite balmy, the sky streaked with the golden tones expected of summer nights. Sat in the back seat of this man's car, Cleo sat in the front flirting, Clara hadn't bothered to ask who he was, though she later found out he was just a friend of Eleanor King's latest husband; as most men that Cleo encountered seemed to tell her that they did, he had a casual predilection for younger girls. Whilst most 16 year olds would be left aghast by comments like that, practically running for the hills, Cleo revelled in them. She had been going through her Nabokov stage, a fervent admirer of the Lolita myth, revering Lana Del Rey (whom she claimed to have helped go viral) and any other baby-faced, female singer that warbled mellifluously about older men and cigarettes. Her perfervid pursuit of anyone over the age of 30, was what Clara back then had viewed to be Cleo favourite new method of doltish self-destruction. Cleo had surprised Clara that night, however, utilising the man only for vehicular purposes. He had dropped the pair of them off at their local park where Cleo had tugged Clara into a nest swing before perching cross-legged on it, opposite Clara.

"Stick your tongue out." She had said with a roguish grin, Clara frowning but obliging anyway.

"Why?"

"I've got something for you." Cleo replied, reaching into her pocket and producing a white, heart-shaped pill, placing it on Clara's tongue. "Now swallow. It's just E. We need to test it for the party later."

Forget any reservations Clara may have had at the time, she'd done it anyway, swallowed the whole thing dry. That blind trust, the nimiety of faith that she was willing to put in a person of such temerarious nature, it probably seemed completely senseless to anyone outside their relationship. But Clara would look at Cleo the way that little kids looked at adults, believing them to be a different species, untouched by fallacy, failure, ignorance. Everything Cleo told Clara to do, she'd assume Cleo had already done a million times before, because that was the level of confidence with which she relayed her commands. Even lying back on that nest swing, rocking back and forth, their glassy eyes on the sky, the garbled bullshit that Cleo came out with sounded like poetry to Clara.

"If you were a Disney princess..." She had said dazedly, tracing the outline of a candy floss coloured cloud. "Who would you be?"

"Uh...I don't know." Clara replied. "They're all a bit boring for me. Can I not be Uma Thurman in Kill Bill instead?" She added, Cleo rolling her eyes exaggeratedly. "Well, you obviously have someone in mind. Who would you be, Cleo?"

"Ariel." Said Cleo at once; obviously, she had only asked so that she could ultimately answer. "Because then, I'd be a mermaid and I could dive away from everyone's bullshit." She murmured, taking another long drag on her spliff and contemplating the smoke she had just exhaled as it danced in the breeze, before slowly passing it across to Clara.

"Whose bullshit?"

"Everyone's." Cleo said. "They're all a bunch of liars, Clara. Everybody lies and nobody cares about anybody else. Being nice gets you fucking nowhere." She sighed dramatically. "Speaking of mermaids..."