skonen_blades

Her name was Humility.

It had a nice ring to it and after a while, a person forgot that her name was also a noun. I’m not sure what her parents where thinking, though. I mean, you can say ‘what’s in a name’ all you want but Humility? Isn’t that one of the seven Virtues or something?

At least it wasn’t Kitten or a type of fruit or something. Her parents were fairly famous musicians in their days so I guess they didn’t really feel the rules of child naming applied to them.

I guess I’m one to talk. My name’s Reindeer. People call me Rain or Dear for short. I really can’t win.

So, Humility and I were down at the Jonestown 31 Flavours eating Mint Chocolate Chip – Maple Walnut double scoops when she broke down right there in the parking lot and told about what was going on in her life.

She’d approached one of the teachers because she thought he was hot. He was giving her good grades and she was enjoying the back seat of his car. It was risky and hot and so far, it had been a good arrangement for both of them.

Now, though. Well. She’d fallen in love and she was pregnant.

Snot flowed freely out of her leaking, sobbing, lost face. People are so ugly when they cry. We were friends and all but this was the kind of scene I really wouldn’t expect from Humility. She was all hardcore, right? I was just an acolyte, really.

I stood there staring open-mouthed until a voice inside me told me to go and comfort her or something.

Gingerly, I put my arm around her and led around the corner of the building with a shout of “What are you looking at?” to a few skateboarders that had gathered like prairie dogs to watch the girls cry. I could see on their stupid, young faces that we were a huge mystery to them. I hoped that men got smarter as they got older.

Humility’s ice cream had melted down the sides of her cone onto her hands. What was left fell out and onto the pavement. The gaping, sticky, empty cone looking like an eyesocket or something to me so I took it from her and threw it on the grass along with what was left of mine.

We came around into the alley and sat down. It was awkward but she didn’t care.

We sat there against the wall near the dumpster for an hour while Humility wordlessly cried it all out against me.

I’d gotten boobs before all the other girls. I sort of knew how she felt but not really. I mean, guys got stupid if I wore a tight shirt. That’s all I knew. Sometimes they tried to touch me but a scream usually scared them off for good.

Humility was actually carrying on an affair with a teacher, though. I idolized her.

As her cries turned to sniffles, I remembered that she was pregnant and I starting wondering if there were technically two of us or three of us there in that alley. The power of that thought blew me away.



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