the morning passes in a haze of drizzle, heavy rain beating into a sleepy town, where stolen lunch money is enough to make front page news. the trees rise higher than any ambition ; generations are born here, grow up here, marry here and die here, and if he doesn’t escape the cycle, archie will end up that way, too. he’s stood beneath the bike shed to keep his cigarette dry as the bell for third period sounds, a labored groan as he stubs the remains out against the spokes of a jet black raleigh and makes his way to class. chemistry’s always a recipe for disaster and each week archie’s transferred to a new partner, told to watch and not touch, given to each student to babysit in turn like a class hamster as he struggles for a passing grade, and despite his confidence in his own ability to create chemistry, he couldn’t figure out one end of a bunsen burner from the other. magnesium flashes white when you burn it -- that’s the only staple fact he’s learned, for most of his practicals are spent setting fire to the lead inside his pencil if not testing what explodes.
he was never one for sitting, observing, recording and analysing. his passion isn’t in patterns, but in the here and now, in the brush stroke of an oil painting, or a line of verse in a poem. he excels in the arts -- there’s a limitlessness to them, a sense of freedom that he can’t find in a test tube or on the buttons a calculator -- and it’s a flare that makes him hunger for more, despite his lack of ambition. knapsack’s slung onto a desk -- back left, his name carved into the drawer -- as he waits for the lucky victim of this week’s class to join him, hands searching for his beaten up text book, and that’s when he sees her. it’s her hair that snags his attention, the sheer quantity of it, a blonde so pure it’s almost white, and flowing down her back, but it’s her eyes that keep him interested, eyes with a kindness in them, a wholeness, and somehow he can’t shake the feeling that he knows her. it’s more than just an inkling. when she turns his way, archie realises he does know her, an influx of memories spilling through his cerebellum. he’s eight years old, an indiana jones hat clinging to his head, and she’s in a white dress and vines like wendy darling. it’s a boy from his class’s party, but the two of them are busy playing their own games under the shelter of dinner table shrouded by a gingham cloth in a make believe world where nothing else exists. “fuck me,” archie exhales, without realising the statement’s left his lips aloud, and suddenly her eyes are on him and it feels like he’s a child again, his cheeks hot with embarrassment, fingers offering hara a salute while he pulls his thoughts out of the gutter, hoping to hell she remembers him, too.
