Nessa wanted to find magic words to fix Charlotte in an impatient flurry. Nessa wanted to say, “Fuck you,” but she didn’t. “You look sad.”Ĭharlotte bared her teeth. Rolling with the punches was what she did. Nessa shrugged her shoulders, as if that could roll away the sting. I’m not an attention seeking whore like you,” said Charlotte. “Go away.” Charlotte kicked her feet against the wall and pressed her waxy lips together. She took a deep breath, wiped her sweaty hands, and sat down next to Charlotte. Nessa tried to act casual once she got to the top, banging her knee hard as she hauled herself over the ledge and ripping a fresh hole in her cargos. She had to be careful not to break the tree, a cheap recycled–plastic genericus - who’d waste water on a decorative tree for children? The plastic bark squished beneath Nessa’s sneakers, smelling of paint thinner and the tired elastic of granny underpants. The mica in the concrete glittered and scoured her palms as she braced herself between an imitation tree and the wall and shimmied her way up. Nessa, recognizing the posture of a fellow animal in pain, climbed up to see what she could do. Charlotte’s family were licensed refugees from the burning lands and the flooded coast, not quite landed, but a step apart from refugees that didn’t have dog tags.Ĭharlotte sat on the roof, dangled her legs off the edge and gazed at the wounded horizon, as she did every lunchtime. Charlotte and Nessa met in Year Eight of Narrabri High School.
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