sunkissed, worldless

09

"Adele, are you Christian?" Olivia asks with earnest eyes. She realizes she's always earnest. Olivia has no shoes on, neither does Adele, they left them at the door. Her feet are poised and raw, like she's stepping on dirt.

Though she has been helping out at the small farm Adele's mother set up after knocking down the backyard fence.

There's nothing really decorative about her bedroom except it used to be her brother's up until he left. Olivia has taken the dark grunge color palette in stride. It's not much of a palette, more of black, grey and white. Her mother's been telling her that it's no good wearing ripped jeans in front of your friends but Adele takes Olivia's side on the matter.

"No," she answers slowly, plays with the sheets. The pastor has long abandoned them for greener pastures. Don't really need a church for faith, or something like that. Or maybe she's just disillusioned from turning fourteen last Saturday, high school must've hit a little differently. "Why?"

"My dad says some black people are Christians." She says it with conviction, glances at her while hanging up her clothes while they're still inside out.

"Do you think I'm one?" Adele asks not because she really wants to know, not particularly, but because it's the natural progression of conversation.

Olivia thinks about this, clicks her hanger into her wardrobe. The laundry doesn't smell the most refreshing. "I don't think so," she says. Then adds, "They won't like you."

That wasn't a dig on her character. "We have black churches for that."

"Just not here," Olivia registers.

"Just not here," she echoes thoughtfully.

—

       Now the sun is like a yolk that broke
       into the corridor.
       Sleepwalk through its gold
       and you will see the original glitter
       that lit our move to the lounge.

It's getting late and they had to stop to camp out underneath the night. It's to find any patches of dirt amongst the lush but they do come across a substantial flat space. They unroll their sleeping bags and leave their bikes circling where the fire would go, trudges into the woods.

Her shorts may be good for the road, in the wind. But here the blades graze against the skin of her thighs, it's itchy. Adele resists the urge to scratch it for her dignity, even if it's only Olivia out here and she's even facing away, taking the lead.

They pick up sticks and twigs and loose parts of low branches, Adele doesn't know what species of tree this is. She would probably guess oak every single time. She's been to her state's national parks and there they had tall, menacing redwoods. 

One of her kindergarten classmates had offered to climb it.

Olivia tells that one joke with stick as the punchline. Adele chases it before Olivia could stomp on the delivery. They mime a sword fight with the long sturdier specimens, but the hits are soft and they're all too carefree or rather, uninterested in the outcome before continuing their search.

"What do you wanna do when you turn 18?" Adele asks out of the blue.

Olivia glances back just enough for her ear to come into view. "Hm?"

"When you're an adult," she clarifies, a little uselessly.

"I don't know," Olivia answers, awfully sober for such an abstract and corny question. Her stocking is caught on an offshoot, she doesn't seem to mind. "Does it matter?"

There's a woodpecker in the distance, it starts to drill relentlessly, echoing through the gaps between the trees. Sometimes she only brings stuff up when she wants to say something about it, not for the benefit of the other person. So she hesitates before she makes her confession.