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Flurry
Madeline Truong
Isobelle Carmody Award
for Creative Writing
Winner
All you need to know about me:
I am 13 years old
I have Asperger’s Syndrome
I became an only child three months, two weeks, six days, eight hours
and twenty-seven minutes ago
I hate anyone who calls me Jessie
I hate myself
Puddles:
Drip, drip, drip. The rain spattered their plastic coats, one blue, one red – clinging
to the bright material in astonishingly stark contrast to the gloomy landscape
around them, sequinning the girls in glittering, fat droplets. Gumboots splashed
into the once still, murky puddles on the uneven path. Forlorn, soggy autumn
leaves lay patterning the ground. Their wet, slapping hair flew around, clinging to
identical, flushed, beaming faces, giggling hysterically on a joke only they seemed
to hear. Throwing their short, stubby, toddler legs into the sprinkling surface of
the next puddle, they squealed in delight. Twirling in childish dreams.
That was our special thing. You were the only person I ever understood.
Some days, pain just bounces off me. As if my body has been
saturated with it.
The world is more than upside down, that would be too simple to
work my mind around. It’s become a mutation where everything’s
fake and distant. Like the fake cream you buy in aerosols, now
smeared disgustingly over my life. Masking all the damage it does to
you behind foaming sugar churned up into ‘yummy goodness’.
I need to remember this before I go, because it’s part of you, like
you were part of me.
Rain:
We were born a team. Like the fat, luscious drops you feel in that
exhilarating, tropical rain, alive and bursting with life. The type that
draws you out of your hiding place just to dance under the gaping
heavens.
‘Everyone deserves a friend,’ you said on our tenth birthday – tumbling scarlet
hair, deep blue eyes – ‘I need you, you need me, it wouldn’t make sense for us not
to be together.’
‘
Three months, two weeks, six days, eight hours and twenty-one minutes ago…
*Pant*pant*pant*
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