The Scar

   When ever Mel came round I made a special point of making sure that she got as stoned as possible. I would tell all the other kids to leave us alone and shut all my doors. Then we sat there, cross legged on the floor and I packed as many cones as she wanted till we were no longer able to look each other in the eye on account of how stoned we were.

   This was the only way that I ever got to spend some time alone with her. I wanted her time at my house to be for her an adventure in fairyland. Afterwards, one day she went into the bathroom and completely shaved her head. For months after that I used to go in there and look at those clumps of her curly yellow hair lying around on the floor and on the sink.

    As a result of knowing her I met a lot of her friends, (and people who said they were her friends), all of whom started arriving at all hours so that I had no track of who was in my house and when. The funny little pills the doctor had given me made everything seem to be okay even when the reality I subsisted in was akin to falling from a cliff toward the blades of a helicopter testing farm. There was nothing I could do. Teenage wasteland ruled.         

   Some of Mel’s girlfriends were very pretty girls and after we had sessioned ourselves into purple and yellow chessboard pieces, the forbidding of opening my door would inevitably be ignored and someone with some other someones would defiantly open the door and attempt to come in, drawn by the scent of freshly burnt grass and looking for a free toke. After a particularly vicious screamed reiteration of the previous 'house rule' directive which was delivered with such vitriol that I'm sure some of them wondered if they hadn't been better off back at home with their abusive parents... A feebly muttered, ‘No one told me’ was their usual defense to my objections.

   One of Mel's friends was a brown skinned girl named Sassy and I asked Mel one day about an ugly scar on her shoulder that I had noticed since it was impossible not to notice.

“It’s a burn.” Mel explained.

“When Sassy was living in Queensland she was going out with this boy from school and he really loved her, and I mean, man, he really loved her!"

 "He saved up all of his money and bought her an actual real diamond engagement ring and asked her to marry him and she said 'okay', so we all thought that was great, it was really cool. We all knew how much they loved each other, us kids that is."

"They were too young to actually get married legally, but as far we were all concerned they were definitely gonna be married one day and they might as well be married now, since they loved each other so much."

 "Everyone... except all the adults that is, we all thought it was cool like, you know, ‘good on them, man, if that’s what you want to do, then go for it!', but the adults all thought it was too much for them too soon, that it was only like puppy love or something and they were taking it too far by being so serious. All the adults were against them being together."

"Everyone knew that they were going to be together forever, all of the kids, that is. They went around together like that for a couple of years. Everyone knew they were engaged 'cause Sassy was always wearing the engagement ring,"

    "Then one day the boy found out that his Dad had to move to another state for work, and so the whole family had to go with him, and you can imagine what the boy felt like when he heard that! Obviously, he didn’t want to go, but there was no way that they were gonna let him stay since he was still only in high school, you know?"

"There probably really was some way they could have let him stay but they just flat out refused to let him stay there, they said that he absolutely had to go with them.

    "He was totally freaked out.  He promised Sassy that as soon as he was old enough to leave home and come back to her that he would and Sassy promised that she’d wait for him. Man, they were so in love! 

   "On the actual day that the family were ready to fly out the boy missed the flight. His parents went totally crazy. Everyone, the teachers, the cops... everyone was out looking for him and no one could find him. They thought he must be with Sassy but she didn’t know where he was. The cops questioned her because they thought she was lying and that she was hiding him somewhere, but she didn't know where he was.

   "Eventually, Sassy, the boy's parents and the cops all went to a special secret place in the bush where Sassy and him used to always go to to be alone together. It was a really beautiful hidden clearing at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea and there he was. They found him there. He had hanged himself.

   "After that Sassy never got another boyfriend. A few months later, at a party on the beach one night when everyone was sitting around the campfire getting high and drunk, Sassy took off her engagement ring that he had given her and she threw it into the coals of the fire.

   "Later on, when it was like red hot, she grabbed it out of the flames and pressed it into her shoulder, and that’s how she got that scar.”

Reviews

[DarkBitterCoffeeAtMidni..]

I like this I couldn't seem to pull myself away from the words. Not even for a sip of water xD. It would sure be a page turner. Man the power of teenage love is a powerful thing. Truly is.

[Brett Hernan]

Thanks! You made me feel encouragement with your thoughts. This was a tiny fragment from a much larger set of events, I've been thinking about and considering them for the last 15 years as all of them are worthy of expanding upon.