Another journal

Written during my month of writing.  You can find all the sections here.

Reassured that all the children were breathing and beds were dry, Emily brought a bowl of chips and a plate of cheese slices and pepperoni with her as she rejoined Mrs. James.

They munched quietly for a while and Emily tried to look objectively at the older woman. Mrs. James, like all her neighbours in the Royal Oak Trailer Court, was a fixture in her memory. She’d always been there in her single wide full of thick paintings from junk stores and knobby crocheted spreads. The woman herself was middle-aged and of middle height, gold-brown highlights covering incoming grey. A friend of her aunt’s, and just another one of the adults in her life since forever. Now here she sat, practically radiating some sort of heavy information.

“Can I call you Becky?” Emily asked before she realised it. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

The older woman laughed as she folded a slice of meat around cheese. “It’s about time. You’re an adult now, Emily—and it’ll be easier to have this talk if you’re not deferring to me.” Emily pulled her legs up into the seat of the chair and settled back. With as much carefree disinterest as she could muster she lit a cigarette.

“So. Becky. What is it you want to talk about?”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.