THOSE WHO SUFFER LOVE

04-25-06 . 2:09 pm

I sit on the ledge of a wall- It's the edge of a planter. The planter is full of weeds- They don't ever clean it out. There's a sock in there. I don't know how socks get into planters like that, right next to elementary schools. There used to be a cardboard box of candy there with a Spanish label an the colors all washed out so it was almost only white and blue. But it's not in the planter anymore. I can see it sitting in the storm drain. It's rained a lot lately.

Across the street, a lady in a nice tan suit and blonde hair with brown roots talks to her gardners. One of the gardners leans up against his truck- It's tan too, just like her suit- and casually brushes something off the lady's suit. She laughs, throwing her head back. Her teeth are very white. You can't see her eyes beneath her brown turtleshell sunglasses. It all looks rather suspicious.

A kid behind me blows this whistle. He keeps blowing it, even though there's really no one around. The school got out early. All the kids have gone home.

My sister's bus is late, so I just sit there and read. It's cold and windy and looks like rain. I hope her bus comes soon.

A wad of my hair is stuck in my shoelace. I can tell it's my hair because of the color and the length. I don't know how that happens. How it eneded up in my shoelace. I pull it out and try to drop it in the planter, but it gets stuck on one onf the weeds. I think that now someone is going to commit a murder there. The gardner is going to kill the blonde lady in the tan suit. And the police are going to canvas the scene and they are going to find my hair stuck in the plant, and people are going to say that they saw me there. So the police are going to take me in for questioning, ask me what I saw. And I'm going to say that I didn't see anything, just them talking in front of her house. And they're going to ask me why my hair was there, and I'm going to say that it was stuck in my shoelace, so I pulled it out. And they aren't going to believe me because why would my hair be stuck in my shoelace? And I will have to get pulled out of school for questioning, and I will have to be a witness and it will be strange.

I'm watching a lady walking her dog when I think this.

When I look down, back at the planter, my hair isn't even there anymore.

I call my mom and ask why my sister's bus is there. She says she doesn't know. So I hang up and keep waiting.

And it really looks like rain, and I'm nervois because I'm too tired to have to walk home in the rain.

The bus arrives ten minutes later. My sister walks out. She is wearing the same clothes she always wears.

"Hi," she says.

"Yeah," I say.

We start walking. She walks along the edge of a wall. There aren't real sidewalks on that street, just the road and then the sides of the houses.

"We aren't doing the play tonight," she says. "Mr. Herrera changed it so now we're just having portfolios of our work. I think we still have to go, because some of the other classes are doing stuff. I tried to call mom on the phone, but I don't have enough minutes on my phone."

I keep walking. "Oh."

"What did you do today?"

I pull my sweatshirt closer around my body, putting my headphones back on. "Nothing."

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