Page 8 of Carter

She let out a shaky breath. “Don’t be like me, Leah. Y’promise?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

“Don’t… be like me.”

“Okay.”

Then she repeated it a third time, but the words died off and her eyes closed. She passed out, and I had to remove the lit cigarette from in-between her fingers and put it out on the ashtray on the night able.

I turned around and hurried out of there. Shut inside my room, I spent the rest of the day eating my fish and chips and reading out of my shelf of ninety-nine cent books I bought from the local used bookstore around the corner. I was smitten for raunchy romance, even if I was too young to fully grasp the concept of love. I’d have bought other genres, or books from acclaimed authors, if I wasn’t so strict with what I spent. But when you’re given a fifteen dollar a month allowance, making every dollar stretch as far as it can go is pretty important.

It was actually a small hobby of mine, counting coins and recording what I had, hoping to hit a hundred just for the sake of actually having a hundred dollars in my hands. Money had always been a beautiful thing to me, and I loved numbers.

In a world that had gone to shit, numbers made sense.

I also liked that I was actually good at something.

It was around midnight when I was finally dozing off, with the smutty novel spread open across my chest, that I heard a tapping sound coming from the window. For a couple minutes I stirred only slightly, thinking I was just half-dreaming the sound. But the more rapping there was, the more I stirred, until finally I opened my eyes in the darkness and slowly moved to the window. Pulling aside the bed sheet I used as a curtain, I looked out.

My bedroom faced the side of Carter’s trailer, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary. All the lights in his trailer were off. Confused by the noise, I rubbed my eyes thinking I’d just madeit up in my head, but when I opened them again, I finally noticed the small gift bag on the windowsill.

Cautiously, I unlocked the window and pulled it up just enough to grab it. Once in my hands, I hurriedly opened it and looked inside. There wasn’t any gift bag paper. In fact, the actual bag itself still had its fifty-cent price tag on it, and I instantly knew this was done in the hands of a male. I knew who that male was straight away when I saw the contents.

I raced to the bed and tipped the bag upside down. Five bottles of nail polish fell out, and I grabbed at each of them hastily. Turning on the lamp next to my small bed, I stared at them individually. They were all different colours, but one of them stood out. I grabbed it and spun it under the light, smiling like a fool.

This was the exact one Graeme had thrown on the ground. Carter had returned for it, and he had replaced it for me. And in the process, he’d bought me more.

Nobody had ever done this.

I’d never been treated to gifts in my life, not even from Uncle Russell on my birthday. That’s why I cherished the nail polish Cheryl had given me so much. I always felt like an intruder. An unwanted entity that survived without love. Like a wilting flower deprived of sun, I was wasting away alone most of my childhood.

Until this.

Until Carter.

Until he showed me a tender and giving piece of his soul I wanted to keep all to myself.

I never wanted someone more than I wanted him in that moment.

Carter

Dirty blonde hair.

Deep brown eyes.

Sun kissed skin.

Pink lips plump.

I should never have let her in.

That was the first strike against me.

Five

Iwatched him sing every single day by the creek. We sat under the shade during that summer. Me, with a notepad and pen in each hand, and him, with his guitar in both of his. I watched him create music from scratch, and I hastily scribbled away the lyrics he recited to me. Sometimes they worked, other times they didn’t. Sometimes he’d write an entire song and then crumple up the paper and throw it in the stream.

We argued a lot about it. I didn’t want him to butcher his songs by throwing them away right after they were done. They were pieces of him floating into the stream, never to be realized again. It upset me more than it should have, but it was only because I was passionate about his music, probably more than he was.

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