“I’m telling,” I say, swatting at the swarm of mosquitoes that probe for my blood type.
She frowns before a rush of pee streams from her thighs. “Know what I think?”
I wait for more. Only she never says.
My parents think I don’t know they refer to Elise that way. The retard. I admit, she isn’t always
too bright and she talks funny but she brings me joy. Besides, who else is there?
Her lips are oddly shaped, like slices of pear left to rot. When she smiles back at me, green
chunks and pockets of dough sandwich between her teeth. I wonder when she’ll acquire some manners.
“Follow the leader,” Elise calls.
Spotty clouds cast a shadow. Elise turns blurry before she evaporates at a sudden twist in the
path. She’s light on her feet, I’ll give her that. I sprint until a knot hardens in my chest. Cursing my size,
I bend and rest against my knees to catch my breath. She’s vanished. My head tilts like a hound listening
for clues. A soft bird voice calls from a nearby branch. I venture forth and around the bend. The hush of
the swamp pillows me, its carpet floor deadening the usual clatter of the forest. I consider calling out but
sneer at the senselessness.
A faded cigarette packet flutters from where last year’s cattails poke. A rotten plank stretches
between me and the sulphur spring. The perimeter is spongy beneath my shoes and a stench of rotten
eggs belches from the water. I thumb my nose at the putrid smell. I’ve heard it said that the spring is
bottomless and can fill thirty bathtubs in two minutes. It’s hard to comprehend how somebody knows
this.
The sulphur smell reminds me of skunk combined with burnt coffee. Bubbles gurgle along the
water’s edge, an elastic cauldron of beige foam. At the heart of the spring the water yields black velvet,
a gasoline puddle skimming its surface. Silver algae undulate with feathery grace; rose-coloured orchids