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My Friend
Calida Evans
When we were little we used to ransack the house for pillows and
blankets and build the biggest cubby that the world had ever seen.
He’d pull every single blanket off of his bed and I would temporarily
forget that he’d probably peed on those blankets last night. We would
spend the day under blankets, pillows and coffee tables and the air
would be hot and stuffy and it would smell like pee. We didn’t care.
He didn’t stop wetting his bed for years, even though he got into
huge trouble. It was like it was his way to get back at the world. He
always had his ways to get at people. He would never eat with knives
and forks properly or use a napkin. It was disturbing and disgusting
to watch him eat, he gave me a front seat view to the insides of his
mouth full of mashed up food that had a reddish colour to it because
he lived on a diet of tomato sauce. I asked him once if he even tried
to use the cutlery and he just giggled and said ‘Nope’ and went back
to stuffing his face.
I have never seen him brush his hair willingly. His hair did what it
wanted and it was never exactly the same. Once, when he hadn’t
been dragged kicking and screaming to the hairdressers for a while,
his hair was so long that all I could see of his face was a great big
blond mane of hair.
I’m not sure what colour his eyes are. One of our friends swears
that they are green, like hers, but when I looked they were hazelnut.
Whenever he wanted something he would open his eyes really wide
and present a creepy half smile, half smirk. I think it was meant to be
cute but it looked disturbing to me.
He had this vendetta against buttons and refused towear anything
with them. He spent half the time in too short sweatpants and
t-shirts that were actually long sleeved shirts that he’d grown out of
and hadn’t bothered to buy new clothing. It wasn’t that he couldn’t
afford it, our parents certainly could, he just didn’t like anything. He
absolutely hated jeans and didn’t even try to learn how to tie shoe
laces ‘til the end of grade four. He got it eventually, but I think it was
only because of the threat of losing computer privileges.
He would often spend the whole day on the computer playing
games. He would groan, complain when I wanted to have a go and
he would walk slowly while trying to elbow me as he stomped his
way up the stairs into his room. If he wasn’t on his computer, he was
watching television or playing on the Wii. The only sport he ever did
was swimming and I really wish that he wasn’t that good at it.
Most of the time he was a harmless kid but sometimes he would
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