Black Feathers

友情 - f r i e n d s h i p - 友情

I'm lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, my hands under my shirt, my fingers feeling the hollows between my ribs and pressing into the skin. As my gaze starts to wander, my attention is half split between ritualistically counting out the bones – 2, 4, 6, 8, perfect matching pairs – and a slight splash of paint on the ceiling coving.

I can still remember decorating my bedroom ceiling when I was 13, wobbling on a ladder and laughing with Clara, as I tried to evenly spread the navy-blue paint with a cheap roller. She had slept over, both of us in sleeping bags in the living room while the paint dried, and we had finished the job the next morning with a tiny brush and what felt like a million tiny white spots. My neck and arm were horribly cramped by the time we were finished, but it was so amazing to lie down and look up at our painting of the stars in the night sky that I forgot the pain completely. (For a few minutes, at least, then I tried to sit up and started complaining like an old man with a creaky back.)

Now, all I can seem to focus on is the tiny smear of blue on the white edging. It doesn't bother me enough to get up and cover it with Tippex or some white paint from my art kit, but almost every time I can't sleep and my eyes adjust to the dark, I catch myself staring at it with some sort of hypnotic fascination.

Before I can fall into deeply contemplating the meaning of that splodge of paint and what its place was in the universe, my phone buzzes and I roll onto my side to reach for it. Unsurprisingly, it's a text from Clara.

'Lincooooooooooln' the message reads, 'answer meeeeeeeee'

'It should be illegal to drag my name out that long' I reply. Already expecting what she wants, I sit up and pull my hoodie on. It is my favourite, black with a sad, white emoji face on the chest. The strings are frayed from me chewing them so often. Although the heating is on in the house, it's cold outside and I always feel it. "You don't have enough meat on your bones", my mum will gently scold whenever I complain of how chilly I am. I know she just says that to be nice, seeing as I still have far too much 'meat' for my liking. My phone buzzes again as I am tying my shoes.

'Come over. I want to see you and talk about stuff 💕'

'Alright. I'll be there soon'. I grab my keys on the way out, calling out to my dad to tell him I'm going to Clara's, and grab my bike from the porch.

✨✨✨

It turns out it isn't just cold, it's windy too, and although it's only a 15 minute journey to Clara's house, my legs are aching from the exertion of peddling. She opens the door to let me in when I knock and she seems excited to see me, a huge smile lighting up her pale face. I wheel in my bike while chattering – asking how she is as if she doesn't already text me every detail of her life – and it gets unceremoniously dumped on the floor. She climbs halfway up the stairs and sits down while I take off my shoes, her long, spider-thin legs crossed at the ankles.

I leave my trainers by my bike and turn back to see her watching me, still wearing that seraphic smile. It has struck me many times how beautiful she is; even before her cheeks became hollowed and her green eyes sunk, when her limbs hadn't shed their baby fat to become as thin as a ballerina's, and her stomach and waist weren't yet caved to the point I can almost wrapped my hands around them, she had always carried a certain ethereal charm about her.

Clara is, without a doubt, my best (not to mention my only) friend. When we were 11 we made a pact to never date like her 'yucky big sister' did with many boyfriends. (And although we weren't the type to break pacts anyway, 3 years later she eliminated the possibility completely when she pulled me outside at a school disco and mumbled into her plastic cup of tap water that she liked girls, and wanted my help asking one of the girls in our year to dance with her.)