Firefly

This year has left the neighbourhood untouched by its usual weirdness. Not as much happens anymore since Nina is gone. Still the same kids, just all grown up. It's sad really, we don't even recognise ourselves anymore.

Two years ago Nina was sitting on the bench that belonged to the Gypsies camped up behind the abandoned circus tent. They owned it once, but they closed it down. Nina used to say the Gypsies hated the kids coming to watch them, they lacked surprise on their little faces, they were unimpressed by them, and when they grew up the gypsies hated them even more. Those kids never had a passion for playing, for learning, all they wanted was to rip them apart and eat their heart. The Gypsies closed the circus because they weren’t the freaks anymore, she said, we were. Our generation is sick, we are useless, we can’t change anything, we don’t fight, we just exist like shitty parasites.

She was walking in the fields behind the train trucks with her red hoodie, always the same hoodie, no matter what season, she looked sad that windy day, he remembers it as if it was yesterday, when he found the courage to ask her what was wrong—see you wanted to be careful with Nina—she crossed her arms and said I don’t belong here, to this place, to this world, do you see a happy ending Stich? Do you see one? I look forward, in the direction of my future and see an empty road that ends, and all I know is I’ll get there before everyone else. To the end, Stich. Sometimes it pisses me off, but sometimes it feels so sweet like rotten candy left melting in the sun, you know. At least I know where I belong, on that road that ends there is a place for me.

There was never a place for Nina to feel like she belonged, he agreed, she had such bad luck. She fit in the neighbourhood because she was absurd, with her pitched black scary eyes and hair as straight as uncooked spaghetti, but she didn’t belong. Anywhere. She looked good in red, her face was like of an angel but when she talked you felt dirty straight away. She had very few boundaries, you see. I do what I want, I do as I please, I’m not waiting for you to agree, Nina used to say. Oh you didn’t want to argue with her.

The weirdest things happened always here. Always when it was summer and we had enough time on our hands, and Sorceo didn’t have to study to finish his exams, and Almo came back from America, he was still skinny like a fucking stick. Nina didn’t feel like they loved her as they used to when they were kids. They grew up together, they were like bread and butter. She knew they figured it out, she knew they saw her eyes becoming every year harder to look into, something deep would grip around your chest and wouldn’t let go, when you stared at her long enough. Everyone leaves Stich, she said when we were watching cartoons high as kites one night at my grandpa’s place. You can’t make anybody stay, you can’t build a home, you can only keep walking until you ask yourself why you are walking. And I try not to, Stich. I try not to.

Nina remembered everything, she always observed and talked about it such a long time after, like she needed a week to gather her eyes and her thoughts from the ditch in her mind and fish an idea out of it, then she would turn it into a statement and made everyone wonder what it meant. People didn’t like her a lot for that, kids our age didn't like to think. It was uncool.

There was a year a man dressed like a pirate was walking around day and night in the neighbourhood. The kids swore they had seen him peeing in the bush and he was an Hermaphroditus, that means he had both female and male genitalia. He did look like a woman, dressed like a pirate, with a beard. The kids started to call him Jack Sparrow. Because that city wasn’t that big after all, commuters would only travel a few miles a day, and Hollywood movies were still nice to watch.

Jack Sparrow stayed around long enough for the good people of the neighborhood to get used to him, then disappeared. Nina said he had found the money to get operated, and get rid of his female genitalia. He kept the man’s one, she said. Who right in their head would want to be a woman if they had a choice? She was harsh about it. About herself. She wasn’t good at being a girl, acted like a tomboy but had a soft heart, you see. She always loved too much and hated it, you’d know because she would set things on fire when it was all over. I’m sick of this Stich, she said as I watched her burning his picture, the picture he took with the new girl, prettier, she talked less, she had bigger lips and never complained. I’m sick of this, how do I not know the difference between love and obsession. Between obsession and desire. When am I going to learn Stich. I’m sick of this, my heart can’t take it, Stich. My heart is sore. And she cried on the fire, she was screaming, it looked like she wanted to die there, drawn in her tears. That was the first and last time I had seen her cry. She really liked that guy, she said it was because of his eyes and his hands and how he used to hold her throat when they made out, like he wanted to eat her alive. And she liked it because she was visceral, she owned herself so bad she needed to feel it back, she needed that spark. It was that or set shit on fire. There was no middle way with Nina. Her tears put off the fire and she looked at me with her eyeliner melted on her face and said: “I’m never crying again Stich, I’m never crying again.”

In May before everything happened something else occurred, something unusual: a crazy lady was throwing bunnies out of the window. What do you think about that, Nina asked lighting a smoke as she was digging her dog’s grave that May, that sticky and unfriendly May. Her dog was hit by a car, she kicked the man who run him over in the balls and he gave her a black eye. She still looked pretty, but she didn't cry for the dog. She said she wouldn't cry again. That’s right, bunnies Stich. What do you think about that? They reversed on the street, reproducing, eating, running on the road and getting hit by cars. A committee of responsible citizens in the area had decided to do something about it, to investigate and find out who was responsible for such a thing. They found the old lady in her living room, she was covered in bunnies, there were bunnies everywhere and she just kept leaving vegetables around for them to eat, she starved herself, with the appetite she had lost her mind. Nina said I wish I was crazy, just like her, I wish I didn’t see, or hear, or feel anything, because when you do, the world eats you alive. It eats you from the inside.

And here it is, my last memory of Nina I want to share before I feel like locking myself in a dark room and stay there, floating, blind, like I’m back in my mother's womb. Only safe place left is the memory of it.

Nina is sitting on my knees and she’s taking off her hoodie, the red hoodie I’ve seen her growing up into. I want to feel you, she said, and I looked at her and saw the fire coming. And all I wanted was to run.

I know you love me Stich, you always listen to me, you always look at me, Stich, I know you love me. Stich you know the empty road, I can’t see it anymore when I’m with you. You give me hope, that something makes sense, that it doesn’t have to feel like the Gypsies said, that the world doesn’t want to eat your heart. And she kissed my lips, her tongue was soft, she smelled of withered flowers. Every time they kissed me, a firefly died Stich, but I can feel the firefly pulsing in my stomach when you kiss me. But she was the one kissing me, she was always doing what she wanted, she didn’t know the consequences, she was wild like a carnivore. And when I feel the firefly, I can be a girl, I’m happy to have tits, do you hear me Stich, do you hear me? I know you love me, I know you always look at me.

She held me tight, I couldn’t even breath. I wanted her so bad for so long but I didn’t know why. I thought she was special, I only wanted a piece of her, for her to talk to me, to be with me. I was a fraud, I wasn’t sincere, I deserved the fire. I deserved my picture to burn in the fields behind the train tracks.

She was rocking herself inside me like a swing as she was whispering. I love you Stich, I don’t think I loved anyone before you. And it doesn't work, it never works for me Sitch. I don’t think I know what love is, I don't think I'm good at it, I can only sit on my roof at night and watch the lights of the city go off one by one, wishing I’d be anyone, anyone but who I am. But when you smile I want to feel everything, I don’t need to wish to be the crazy lady with her bunnies, I can be this fucking mess I am. I love you Stich, you hear me? Tell me the road has no end, tell me you love me.

And I said I did, I said I loved her, God help me, I said I did. And didn’t mean it. And the day after, when she woke up next to me and tried to hold my hand, I walked out with her but didn't come back. I left that day, I left for a road trip with the others, with Almo and Sorceo and the kids we grew up with. We left her there to rot. We left the neighbourhood and all the weird shit that happened there, we left her pyromaniac tendencies, her statements, her beautiful face.

And when we came back, we found out she disappeared. And they found her body in the fields, that May, where she used to go. One of her Gypsy friends found her lying there, with a dead fire where she burned pictures of me.

They never found out who did it and why. The kids had their theories. A vampire or a werewolf did it. We only really knew that someone had enough of her violent passion, or someone who had no passion and was only violent. Someone proofed her that she was right, the road had an end for her before everyone else's. Someone saw her beauty and realised it was too much. Someone showed her she couldn’t be loved.

I was scared of her. But I loved her.

Nina was the only girl I loved, Nina was a little galaxy, trapped in a jar and left exploding in a hundred shooting stars, Nina was a specimen travelling in a world far away where she was always alone. Nina was a firefly and the world was just too cold for her.