Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
It was hard to imagine how she’d grow. The red choker that had been slipped over her head and onto her neck as a baby was brittle and seemingly unbreakable. She was certain, by the age of 6, that it was the only way her head could stay on.
But she kept growing, albeit, slowly. By 13, her best friend looked like her babysitter, towering over her by two feet, and putting her words in front of her with a zest and confidence that Tiny hadn’t found.
She didn’t take up much space, which made her a low maintenance guest, visitor, tagalong, sidekick, groupie, whatever it was that people needed, but maybe didn’t know that they needed. She was more of like a ‘plus half’ than a ‘plus one’, and for that reason she was able to experience so many of the things that others who were too loud, opinionated, and proud, only wished they could do.
Tiny took snapshots in her mind, and secured people’s private thoughts and actions like a vault. There were a select few who had cracked the code though. She was a memory hoarder. But were her memories real or imagined?
There were four eggs left in the fridge. How many could she eat this morning without having to be the one to go out and buy some more? Carrying eggs gave her anxiety. Too delicate, and couldn’t be handled precariously, like many of the things she typically carried: a notebook, a pen, hand sanitizer and a tape recorder, and something to eat in case of emergency. No matter where she tagged along, these things gave her stability, as did the thick, red circle around her neck.
“Ouch!” Her friend tugged at the loop, and he asked her if she’d ever taken it off. She’d couldn’t imagine it. “I don’t know where it came from.” People had asked her before, what it meant, how she got it, if it hurt. Growing typically happens without one noticing it, so if it did hurt, she must have been living with the pain for a while. “Sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s all there is to it,” an invasive crystal healer had once offered to her. She’d laughed uncomfortably in response, wishing he’d get out of her head, and that she could politely walk away. “Would you look at your lover with disgust? No? Then why do you look at yourself that way?” It wasn’t her fault, he’d assured her. Was it that easy? Take herself out of the equation, and the choker would have been someone else’s burden to bear. It didn’t have to be a burden though. She knew that other people had been in the wrong place and wrong time too. She’d heard about them in the news, seen them commended for talking all about it.
“That is brilliant,” the drummer told the lead singer. She watched them exchange laughter, energy and ideas with abandon. How can I be more inside myself, she wondered, rather than sitting here, with my thoughts in front of me while the words that should come out of my mouth stay sitting in my brain? Until finally, someone turned the attention to her. “What do you think about it Tiny?”
“I think it could have been deeper. A bit lower, maybe even a darker for a moment. You know when you hear a song that makes you yearn for something but you don’t even know what? That makes you think of a lost opportunity for love, feel a desperate need that you feel has to be immediately met?”
The bassist started laughing. “Holy shit. I feel like I might have to be high for something like that, but yeah, cool.”
How come they never asked her to play too? They had said it in passing, but it never seemed the right time. She contemplated asserting herself with a tone of entitlement – that seemed to be the difference between people getting what they wanted and not – but opted to continue being good company and breathed in second-hand inspiration.