Bright -2
The flower petals are like leaves, or thin gossamer sheets of parchment. Tinted fuchsia and excellent at floating on the constant puddle on the right side of the driveway. The puddle is there because of a depression in the pavement, which is usually pretty hot so it's recommended that your feet get used to it or you risk running through the grass. You can sail things on the puddle, carefully. The petals of the flower or maybe they are the leaf parts and the flowers are the actual long strands that end in white buds. Also, those don't taste sweet, like the honey suckle you can lick nectar from when waiting in line for obligatory Gatorade at camp. There is little use for those white buds, plus they sink in the puddle most of the time.
If plucked carefully off the "petals" individually can float. If the flower and petals are put in together it will float until any water comes over the edges of the thin skin, darkening the red purple tint until it sinks to the bottom of the puddle. The puddle dries out when the leaves start turning brown and the air is heavy with patience for a storm. All the flowers and extra wide blades of grass, hair ties and sand are just on the drive way then. A small offering to the hot sun. A slight that angers your mother. So, you must not sail petals, or hair ties or grass. Sand is for the sandbox that you cannot play in and you don't know why. If you do sail something it must be done quickly and picked up out of the water, soggy dripping. Also, taking anything off of the plants is not allowed but you can take any flowers that aren't whole off sometimes. Searching for flowers with parts missing takes a long time. Plus you can never prove that you chose a flower that was correctly deformed.
The flowers are on the side closest to the puddle in a semicircle around the giant island of plants surrounded by the driveway. On the right side are the giant long grass bushes. Like the ones at the back of the playground at school but different. It is easiest to get to the center of the island if you run through the grass bushes all the way to the mini palms. The ground is cool under the palms and if you put a towel down the red cloth rocking chair with the yellow legs will only sink a little into the wood chips and dirt. In the final hours before everything changed even more, you'll bury a tool kit that you can't figure out how to pack. When you find out the entire house has been razed from the drive way to the bay you'll ask if anyone found your toolkit, maybe one of the construction people, and if maybe they liked it and used it.
Chloe and her mother lived in the guest house at the start of the driveway. They lived there before Tori, who was very pretty, lived there. Chloe's mother was hurt badly. In the way that your mother was when she was younger. It's why you can't mention anything to do with razor blades, or sing the made up words to the See See my Playmate song. The grass and flowers on the driveway island are a major character in explaining the fairies you see to Chloe. While you know you've only see a fairy that one time at your grandparents house, Chloe seems really sure she is seeing fairies. That means you have to keep telling her about the ones you make up seeing to convince her to keep telling you about the ones she sees. Just in case she is really friends with fairies.
The only time you go to a pine forest with your father he says he thinks there might be fairies there. There are also tennis courts. The dead long needles encroaching towards the red and green surface of the courts. He gives you a journal that you don’t like but pretend to. Covered in pastel pink roses and without a lock on it. Your mother gave you a journal when you asked for one once. She covered it in shiny paper and put a cord in it. Every time you write in it you have to sit next to her and read aloud. You don’t that like journal either. You will always hate journaling, even when you wish you liked it. In the pine forest you explain about the fairies to him ( but don't tell him they are pretend) and especially tell him about Bumble. Later, when you are a bit older you'll write in the journal. You'll ask Bumble to give your father a message for you without knowing why. It might be because you know your mother will read it and get upset. You'll try to write the saddest poem you can think of that is also scary. It will be called the vampires daughter, and there will be illustrations including a stick figure with fangs dripping blood drawn entirely in pencil in one try.
There is a basket ball hoop in front of the garage, to the far right of the grass bushes. It's bad luck. The neighbor boys get in fights about it, fights that might be your fault and something happened once under it that involved yelling you think but don't remember anything other than both your mother and father were present. If they were still married during that yelling (according to your mother's timeline) you would have been less than 3 3/4 years old.
Sometimes when it's late and you are still out driving, you pretend to be asleep. The windows are always cracked because there isn't any air in the van. But they have to go down and up by the cranks in the side of the door. This is difficult and annoying to do both whilst the car is moving and after you’ve parked in the dark garage. The stab marks in the side of the van on the inner plastic part of the door have ridges on their sides. They look a little like waves, but scratch and make red marks if you rest an arm on them or brush against them too hard. It's easier to sleep because you aren't hungry when you sleep. Or too hot, or angry, or bored. Sleeping is the solution you have control over. Pretending to sleep is the next best thing to sleeping. You can breathe real slow even if your chest is burning, choosing to just forget about the pressure so you don't yawn and seem like you woke up. One time you woke up and just started at her, your mother. Tracing the lines of her face while clenching your hands. Or maybe you hadn't just woken up. Maybe you'd been looking at the lights on the bridge through the open window, taking the wind through your fingers at 90mph on I-95. All the writhing red and black feelings in your heart steering themselves into a visual examination of her profile. She turned and looked at you then, a glare on her face asking what you were doing. From tone alone, it was clear you had jeopardized the shallow balance of things. So much rested on her perception. Your lips might have been dry, or maybe they weren’t when you softened the air by telling her you were kissing her with your eyes. Years later she will cling to that as proof of your connection. Years later you will cling to that as proof of how far back you knew something was wrong. The garage was always the same and it was always scary. Eventually you knew that something was different, like how you never got home before the stars came out, and how the tires were always the same ones just covered in patches. However, the rain still came in low from the water and the breeze at night still smelled like home.