james rhodes : “things I knew & didn’t know”

I knew her from school. When I say I knew her, I knew of her. It was her scruffiness that marked her out. The school uniform of white shirt and blue tie was supposed to represent the decorum that prevailed, but I’d never seen anyone wear decorum in such a ramshackle way. Her shirt flailed from the edges of her navy skirt, creased like an old man’s face. The tie hung limply around her neck. Her hair was crimson and deep brown, framing pale features. I could never decide whether it was her cheekbones that were high or her skin that was sunken. Hazel eyes circled by dark shadows spoke of secrets and sleepless nights.

 

She was a hard person to place. In an age when everything was black and white, she was charcoal grey, the element the periodic table had failed to capture.  Who her friends were and how many she had it’s hard to say. I suppose there were the smokers behind the sports centre, as she dragged forcefully through smudged red lips, exhaling heavily into the white winter air, the filter of her cigarette stuck through skeletal fingers and bitten round nails.

 

She rode the bus into school. She lived out up in the hills. I could see her house from my bedroom window. It lay brow-beaten by the winds in winter and basked in the bloodletting of the sunset in summer. I’d been up there once, not to see her, but with friends. There was a trail you could walk along into the woods. I remember how still it was. The silence was all you heard. You could see the planes banking round, but their dull roar was eaten up by the miles in between.

 

She was always loud at school. She’d talk at a rat-a-tat rate punching out the sounds, while her eyes marched over those within range demanding their full attention. She pulled at the silver cross round her neck. Religion was something I never understood. I didn’t know whether the cross was a spike to stop anything getting at her from the outside or to keep things within. She had one friend you’d always see her with. A lad a few years older. No-one really knew who he was, just that he’d come to live with his grandparents after he had a fight with his step-dad. You’d see her riding round in his car, skirting around the edges of dusk, trying to fend off the stillness of cold nights spent inside.

 

It was the first time I’d thought of her since leaving school. The day I heard she died.

 

I didn’t even need to read how. There were things I now knew. I didn’t want to hear about the knotted ropes or the scribbled notes, or how the creeping dawn chased the shadows from her face.   

 

James Rhodes works as a researcher & lives in & around Manchester. He writes both fiction & non-fiction.  ‘Things I knew and didn’t know’ is his first published short.

 

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