Ellery & The Enigma

Ellery Like Celery

It was a surprisingly and ungodly warm day in June. It wasn't supposed to get that hot before July and Ellery who felt most comfortable in weather with temperatures below zero and her window wide open to the elements, was in the poorest of spirits. She sat on the floor of her bedroom in her parents house stripped down to the lacy thong that she had purchased after her chemistry final, and a bralette with more lace and ribbons than actual support. She felt most cute in these underthings, but they brought less satisfaction than usual. She'd positioned herself in front of the shitty desk fan that had been fine for her dorm room, less fine in this heat, and tried to find comfort in the air blowing against her damp skin.

Her stomach felt pudgier than it had when she had arrived home from university, and she wasn't a fan of the way it gently ballooned over her waistband. She had not exercised before finals and was too concerned about running into old classmates to venture over to the gym that she technically had a membership to near her parent's building. The moment her window slid open and the exchange with the boy with one leg in, one leg dangling, would later feel like some kind of out-of-body experience. The window slid up and a shoulder then a head leaned into her room. She stared at the boy—he was wearing one of those trendy dad hats and a long-sleeved t-shirt—and he made a sort of apologetic 'oops' expression and paused.

"I take it that this isn't the fourth floor," he said with a touch of irony.

"It's the third," she replied, and couldn't fathom what else to say.

"Oops. Sorry to interrupt your... cool down. I snuck out to buy candy because my mom thinks I'm studying for my summer course." He flashed the white shopping bag around his wrist with the telltale bright coloured candy wrappers inside. "My name is Luca, by the way."

"Ellery," she briefly wondered if this was some kind of heat-induced hallucination but dismissed it because the phrase felt too much like something to be found in one of the romance novels she'd borrowed from the library.

"Like celery brilliant! Anyway, I've got to go to the next floor but it's been a pleasure Ellery." then he popped back out and the fire escape rattled as he climbed to the next floor. He didn't close the window behind him, and she imagined heatwaves just rolling into her room with a tinge of annoyance.

Ellery thought about Luca quite a bit for the next few days. She avoided her old group of high school friends, dogs her neighbour's shar-pei and hoped that he would appear in her window again. It embarrassed her just how much she hoped because she had spent a lot of time trying not to be that kind of girl, but she felt safe in the realm of her imagination as long as no one else discovered the fascination and didn't speak a word of it to anyone.

She took Otis on a walk, not because the shar-pei wanted exercise or because she wanted to risk running into someone after her ridiculous display at the Christmas party, but because his own her obsessed about her dog's weight and didn't want him getting fat based solely on aesthetic purposes. On the bight side, she was paid $20 extra for every walk she took with him as long as she took a photo and sent it to his owner. They took their usual route through a few residential streets with cute tree-lined sidewalks to the park where they both sat under a large maple tree and Otis took a nap on her knee. She was wearing jeans that had so many holes that has drool didn't even touch the fabric, just dripped onto her skin which was unpleasant, but not unbearable. It was a beautiful hot, but not too-hot Saturday so there were many families and groups of teens lounging on the grass and playing summery outdoor games. Unlike the other dogs present, Otis was completely apathetic toward the baseballs being thrown between masculine men and their progeny. There was a small group of boys gathered under a tree staring disbelievingly up at the leaves. One of them carried a small pocket dog under his arm that kept yapping at the moving branches.