"I just don't know!" shrieked Linda as she threw herself on the bed in anguish while wildly kicking her feet in frustration. A loose brown sandal slipped off and in flight narrowly missed the head of Ann who stood watching the antics from the doorway. A neighbors dog startled by the noise began barking in protest. Ann picked up the offending sandal and threw it to a corner in the room.
Yasmine grimaced in disgust at the barking dog and haughtily commented, "With that ruckus you'd think we were in one of the garrison neighborhoods of Trench Town rather than Cherry Gardens...."
"Yasmine, you're such a pretentious snob!" Ann quickly retorted. "Just because you went to Immaculate doesn't absolves the fact that you attended a primary school on the fringes of the Downtown Kingston community...not that there's anything wrong with that...."
Leslie, who until now sat quietly sat in a corner of the room, slowly rose and moved towards Linda who was now motionless facedown on the bed. A tall, light-skinned twenty year-old girl with dark green eyes and naturally auburn hair, it was Leslie who held the quartet together with her calm demeanor. Although young men were always fascinated in trying to guess the size of her breasts under her school uniform and subsequent shapeless blouses, she was unaware of her figure and hid her face behind large glasses that seemed to always be on the verge of slipping off the tip of her nose.
Leslie placed a hand on the back of Linda's shoulders. "You know, I find that sometimes if we took the drama out of a situation and really listed the pro's and cons, we can probably find a solution to the....."
Yasmine rudely interrupted with, "You know Leslie, if you allowed a little drama in your life you'd find that there is more passion awaiting outside of those books you always have your nose buried in."
She sat down with flourish in an over-stuffed chair by the window, flicking strands of her stiffly over-processed hair from the tiny beads of sweat on her forehead. A short and slightly overweight girl of nineteen, she compensated what she thought of as her "short-comings" with aggressive panache. It was Yasmine who always dared the boys in the primary schoolyard into various acts of boyhood bragging that sometimes resulted in childhood scars those boys would look on in later years with slight remorse and memories of the moment it all went wrong trying to prove themselves to that over-bearing girl. She smoothed her hot-pink capris and crossed her legs at the ankle in an effort to minimize the effect of her pale fleshy calves.
Ann moved towards the bed, her track shoes making squeaking noises on the polished floor tiles of Linda's bedroom. She was wearing a loose t-shirt with oversized shoulder pads, the fading picture of Michael Jackson on the front. Her neon blue tights stopped loosely below her skinny calves, an issue she had with her legs since her hormones kicked into overdrive in her early teens. Being the oldest of the four just shy of twenty-one she always tried to shock her friends with alleged expertise on men, sex, and other adult issues, but in reality she herself was just as naive as the rest of them.
"You know Linda," Ann said in a loudly pronounced way trying to be assertive, " this may not be such a bad thing. My experience tells me that it is better that this happened now while you're young rather than later when you are in..."
Yasmine smirked as she cut Ann's preaching with a sarcastic, "What the hell do you know about being an adult? I know you're older than I am but it is only by a few months, and in MY opinion you're just as clueless as the rest of us."
Ann whirled around and towered in front of Yasmine, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing with anger. "Why must you always play the role of 'bitch'? Is there something you have against the world, or is it only latent anger at your parents for being poorer than your friends?"
As Yasmine angrily rose to tackle a common argument amongst the two, Linda lifted her head from the sheets and glanced sideways at Leslie who seemed oblivious to the familiar quarrel between her friends. Linda turned to her side and using her forearm as a prop rested her head on her palm while she looked thoughtfully outside to the poinciana tree that was brightly peppered with red flowers. "It's not what I'm going through that bothers me," she said softly, "it's that I have two really different solutions and I'm not sure which is right for me.....or David as a matter of fact...."
Leslie stiffened slightly at the mention of David's name. She loved her cousin dearly ever since they were toddlers playing in the sands of Hellshire while their parents haggled with the lone fisherman's wife who fried fish to the brave few who ventured out to the remote area, and wondered if she violated that childhood trust with her secret crush on David, the football star of their high-school years. David, the tall golden skinned young man with brown hair kissed with blonde highlights, stood as a minor celebrity amongst the university crowd for his achievements on the football team at Georges. It didn't hurt that his family also owned one of the most successful businesses in the corporate area, and were frequently photographed doing the rounds of the Jamaican cocktail circuit.
"I'm sure that David would be flattered, as usual, with you putting his interests first, but what do you really want?'
Linda suddenly sat upright on the bed and adjusted her clothes. "Will you two be quiet!" she loudly snapped at Yasmine and Ann, who stopped mid-argument. "Someone's coming!"
No sooner has she uttered those words when the door flew open.
"Well, if it isn't the rass man himself," snickered Yasmine loudly towards David who stood in the doorway. "What the hell are you dong here?"
No comments:
Post a Comment