mona lisa smile

“Damn butterflies, so pretty but so chaotic. I’m kind of envious of them, really.” Muttering the last bit of her sentence, Sabrina ran her tongue, dyed blue from sno-cones earlier in the day against her patriotic red lips. Chaos theories, the Mandela Effect, those were the things that kept her up at night — texting her brother oddball links on missing people, nonexistant movies and the deaths of Kings during the War of Roses. “Long live Steve, the first man that I loved and mourned.”

      For a moment, he sat in silence following the inquisition. Sure, there had been moments when he’d felt like he had been subjected to things that perhaps hadn’t been intended for him but he’d fallen into them and had to go along with it. Still, he just assumed it was one of those ‘when life gives you lemons’ types of situations. “In some ways, yes..but I just roll with it.”

Pale ivory slip dress falling just below her knees, the flimsy skirt of it fluttered gently around matchstick thin legs as she prodded a combat boot against the dry turf. “You roll with it,” she repeated softly, expression still entirely vacant as she peered among the flames. “Wow. Solid wisdom. You should consider becoming a psychologist.”

Sabrina had spent most of her teenage years in the shadow of her older brother, a once popular cliche turned to the shadows. Hidden away in the shadows of Percy, longing for the day that she would be considered as one of the cool kids — something she would later cringe over. Fourth of July was just another day for her, a day that seemed almost as annoying as Valentine’s Day or Thanksgiving. None of them really mattered, all Hallmark greetings. “Yeah, actually yeah. A lot.” She glared toward the fire, hues of blue and orange swirling together to form enough heat to make the Devil cry. “Maybe, we’re all in the wrong time frame — like the Monoply guy and his monocle or even Curious George and his damned tail. Like someone fucked up and we’re the result of a butterfly effect. Anything is possible, right?” Sabrina muttered, inhaling the smoke that raged into the sky.

“Are you cold-blooded? Like what the fuck?” she asked, placing both hands on her face, attempting to save the foundation she’d applied that morning. “Lord have mercy, I’m melting,” she shook her head, letting out a dramatic sigh. “Do they have an ice cream truck around here?”

“God, it’s so damn hot,” Arden said, pouring bottled water obnoxiously onto her face. She’d just stepped out of a water sprinkler and still didn’t feel refreshed. “This is fucking inhumane.”

Paper cup clasped in hand -- one she’d just purchased from a gap-toothed child manning a lemonade stand further down the street -- Lennox had been sipping silently and watching Arden’s melodramatic antics from the sidelines. “Maybe you should grab a sweater,” she commented crisply, heat sticking to her gaunt collarbones like syrup as they shifted with a slight shrug. “Seem chilly.”

“Look at this tiny little cactus I bought,” Teddy all but cooed, holding the succulent proudly out towards the person he was talking to. “I’ve decided I’m gonna become a plant guy. A real life Mother Nature, y’know? Starting with cactus’s only, they’re impossible to kill or something.”

Ivory frames sliding down the slim bridge of her nose, Lennox peered vacantly over the top of them like a trucker inspecting the gutted entrails of a possum caught under the front wheel of their vehicle. Waiting a good ten seconds or so before responding, the pad of her thumb butted them up over her eyes again as she abandoned her attempt at appearing interested. “Symbolic choice. Y’know," she trailed off, wafting a hand between Teddy and the cactus, “prick father reunited with his potted prick son.”

Thaddeus: hey, we've got a show coming up now that the tour's over. wanna come?

Thaddeus: i can comp you some free tickets

Lennox: wow. sounds completely riveting.