The wound in my mouth is starting to heal, but it is still there rough and taut. I touch it with my finger while smoking a cigarette climbed in my tree, my favourite hiding place, my only hiding place. The stars are shining above my head, between the leafs, not knowing what is in my head.
The summer is just here, and with it the shiny people and the happy faces. I don’t have a happy face, so I’m weird. I never said I wanted to be smart and educated. I never said that I want a career, a husband, a tan, a perfect life. The absence of happiness in me doesn’t make me sad, just makes me real. Life was so much easier when all I had to do was live it. I like it out here at this hour, it’s quiet. I can see my mom through her window, sitting in her bed, talking with someone on the phone, smiling. With that smile that used to make me so happy, when a smile used to be enough.
Billy Corgan is singing in my headphones, and the cigarette ashes are vanishing in my hand.
My dad’s car interrupts my private concert. Turns on the corner and parks behind my tree. My dad and his car, his old cool car that my grandpa gave him once, a long time ago. His cell starts ringing, with some kind of a pathetic hip hop ringtone. He answers it really fast. I guess because he is embarrassed someone could hear it.
-Hi, just arriving home. No, outside, next to my car. No, today I can’t, I’m already here. How about tomorrow? I may be free tomorrow. About seven? I’ll made something up, a meeting or anything like that. Ok, great. I miss you too. I have to go inside. Me too. Bye.
Dad hangs up his phone and gets inside the house and leaves me here, up in my branch, barefoot. Trying to see if I actually heard what I heard. I light another cigarette and try to put the lighter in my back pocket and then, I slip, just like that. Me and my lack of balance and one second later and I’m on the ground. A cold pain starts to spread from my back to the rest of the body. I can’t breathe, not well anyway. I feel my heart beating in my head. Everything goes black. And then the sky, with all its stars. I stare at a plane moving with its red blinking light until it hides behind somebody’s face.
- You fell, really hard. – A woman is talking to me, maybe my age, maybe older. – are you ok? - She says with a cigarette on her mouth.
-Yes, I’m ok. – I seat up.
-You dropped this. – She says giving me my cigarette back. – Do you live here?
-No. Yes, I live here. This is my house.
-Cool – She says. – So, I live across the street. Just moved here with my mom.
-Welcome neighbour. – I say touching a bump in the back of my head.
-I’m Rubí – she helps me to stand up.
-I’m Anna.
She is staring at me with a smile. Her hair looks funny, like she is just waking up from a nap or something. She has blonde hair and a happy face, but I like her. But her eyes are not so happy, who knows why.