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| Picture by Maison Margiela |
Crossing the industrial zone there’s some abandoned white buildings and a sand path. It brings you to the little forest that treasures the borders of the village and right in the middle of it, there’s a river. If you asked me what’s the most bittersweet thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I’d say it was Molly’s death.
She lived in the suburban area. We used to be best friends in high school, and she was the ultimate exotic creature ever made by the obscure forces of nature: a pretty girl. We were only thirteen when it all happened, but we already wore lipgloss. Teenage friendship is some sort of enchantment. I remember Molly’s room, it had a lilac aura and pink pillows. We laid on her bed with our legs up, the mirror reflected our shiny cheeks and she told me her dad was gross. There were all kinds of little nice things on the night table: plastic bracelets, silver earrings, butterfly hair clips, chewing gum. We put glitter on each other’s eyelids. We would hang out every afternoon, often in the abandoned buildings that only we happened to acknowledge. There was some graffitis from past generations, and we wrote our names near the corner of a wall, with a red marker that Molly had stolen from class. She drew two little hearts around them.
Gym class. I glimpsed something on her, a strange blush in her smile. I knew she was hiding something from me, something that she really wanted to tell me. When I asked her, we were sharing a cigarette on that haunted building’s rooftop, the afternoon was dying. She first burst to laugh, but then she looked at me with auburn eyes and made me promise I would never, ever tell anyone. If you tell someone it’s gonna be over. I promised. She had made out with the Physical Education teacher. Regularly, since a week ago. He was a late basic bro, quite attractive, almost thirty, the grey sweatpants were an extension of his body. I remember his big rough hands. And those three hours after, we were happier than ever; we were high on life, excited by our own beauty. Molly’s ginger waves danced and jumped to the blurry music of our shitty phones, and when we got tired we laid back under the clouds. I heard a seagull yell in the distance, and a month passed calmly by.
Molly is vomiting on the concrete floor. I held her soft hair, and she quickly recomposed after throwing her soul up. She wiped her rosy lips with a delicate movement of the hand. Her period was late. Tell him, I said. We were leaning against our building wall. She looked somehow in control, but angry at herself. She had never, in her entire short life, hesitated. The chained heart necklace reflected on her collarbone for a brief moment, and I gave her a cigarette, which she took between the twinkling nails. Lucky strike, the age we looked depended only on our grade of confidence, and on Molly’s premature breasts. I heard somewhere that they gave that brand of tobacco to the Vietnam warriors, as a charm.
Molly’s face resting in the river. Her neck was bruised with swollen marks, the chained heart necklace shone on the livid skin. I notice myself perish throughout the years. But even to this day I sometimes see Molly move between the berry bushes, grin inside every flower bulb, fly over the suburbs with seagull wings. Captured in the air, ever blooming.