Cherished [As Loud as Anna's Hair remix] by Angela Meyer

I told her that her necklace was nice because sometimes it’s nice to compliment girls who are a bit fat. Makes them feel a little better about themselves.

Ha! She laughed and said my ex girlfriend gave it to me. I didn’t know she liked girls the way I do in secret.

When she kissed me her silver bikie rings on her stumpy fingers pressed into my ribs. She was urgent and tasted like curry. I tried to run a hand through her blood-coloured hair but it got stuck. In a photo taken on her sixteenth birthday it is waist length, shiny and brown. I asked her why she changed it but she only laughed.

My friend Amy saw us and had an O of horror on her mouth. She told me later she even felt some pang, like jealousy. I looked at her but she looked away too quickly, afraid I might kiss her too. They all say they’re cool with it, the ones who know. But they don’t hug me the same. They’re stiff dolls holding their little strawberry-scented tongues.

I still get nervous when we are alone, when our dewy fingers clash in the night. I think about running. She sits with an open chest, steel-blue veins radiating from her areolae. I have the sheet up to my neck until she encourages it down. Someone will hear, I say. Anna says let them.

Simon called her a skank the other day. You can do better, he says, because she is crazy-happy-free and her tight jeans make her tummy spill. She drinks a lot and talks about drinking in class. And before and after. I think she hides something but I can’t ask.

Simon kisses boys too in secret. Once he embarrassed himself cracking onto Ben who is macho. He was upset later and drank too much Bombora and slipped under the surface of the pool. We were all skinny dipping that night. I had never seen anyone as sexy as Anna – large and full of laughter on the slippery dip, cornering me in the pool to the tune of male erections. But I had to rescue Simon. He’s cut himself before and he was asking everyone for painkillers. Codeine, he said, full strength.

I don’t think it is going to last. I never wanted to be in a relationship because I’m focused on study, and Anna sees other people. I see her slipping slippery notes in class. We all pretend to care less. We are all nonchalant and dismissive of the poetry being forced down our throats by Mrs. Banton and we all want to throw things against walls so they smash and everybody notices. But we don’t.

As Loud as Anna’s Hair remix by Angela Meyer is licensed under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licence. It is a derivative work of Emily Maguire’s CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licensed story. The original is available at http://www.remixmylit.com/storiesremixes/emilymaguire/. For details on how you can reuse the original and this remix see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/