Good Monsters
2:16pm Wednesday 16th April 2008
Clementine has several looks on his face. His mouth has wandered from the screen his eyes watch, and creased lips enjoy the buttered popcorn that we bought earlier (put all our money in an empty cup - the last pennies of a minimum wage salary). His eyes seem to echo the moving pictures and you can catch John Wayne smiling on them - the tint of his teeth, the soft sparkle in his eyes are all there. His Clementine's nose, broken and bruised, seems numb with pain and the numerous ice packs and vanilla flavoured ice cream - when the ice packs went warm.
Next to him Toby who, apart from a bruised fist, several bleeding knuckles are the only change in Toby's pocket; she found a pound in her jacket and 20p in loose change at the bottom of her bag. Made two beelines to the sweet counter, blue eyes caught in battle between sherbet lemons and jelly babies. The first beeline though was a dead end behind a birthday party with a 10p short mother caged by the twenty small glances of dread at having to remove 10p of snacks and sweets from their shopping basket of fillings and heart attacks. And the second beeline, well, Toby lost the feeling in her hand and got Clementine a dodgy nose - as her opinion often will, a couple of quiet suggestions to nobody in particular taken the wrong way.in her opinion.
The rest of our pile of battle wounds and bruises, broken things and bloody things appeared after Appleby did. His flies left open after hearing a shouting Toby at the door to the men's, you would have laughed at the way he slipped and slid into a wet floor sign, clipped Gypsy who screamed for a few seconds, but lost her audience to the twenty other small screams somewhere at the sweet counter.
Appleby, doesn't nurse too many bruises, but after a while when John Wayne smiles in Clementine's eye and Toby passes out because of the pain, I spy the dark emergence of a black eye, that tomorrow he'll cover up with a large palm, and later tells of false encounters that seem far placed from the fact he smaked his face into a ladies handbag and got Gucci imprinted on his cheek. Whilst Gypsy, who, twenty minutes after she lost her tooth to Appleby's slip, we comforted as she screamed and wailed and stole one of Clementine's warm ice packs to cover a swollen mouth, and took a minute breather to glare at the twenty glances of excitement, that wander into screen two. Gypsy looks for a second at my bloody mouth, and I'll wander if she'll faint from the dried blood and stains on my T-shirt. She does, whilst Clem shifts a semi conscious Toby from his shoulder, and Appleby fingers his cut eye.
Isn't it Funny what friends will do?
Hannah
Age 16