Tabula Rasa

At first I thought you were looking for wildlife - those small, sweet microcosms of existence. We hadn’t seen a praying mantis, or a beetle, with their spindly arms and heavy shells, in over a month. I’d been reading a lot about insects this summer and I knew pretty much everything about all of them. I liked Titan Beetles most because they were bigger than both my hands put together, but I don’t think I’d like to see one in real life. I don’t live anywhere near a rainforest though, so I should be okay. During these Indian Summers we’d been having recently, according to my Mother, all of the insects migrate elsewhere. They leave. They just leave, and I have never been able to figure out where they go. Despite my research, I don’t think ‘Elsewhere’ is a real place. I tried to follow a spider once, but I got too close and it spooked and disappeared. I drowned my misery in lemonade by the pool, watching my reflection in the rippling surface as the sun sank into the swathe of trees behind me. ‘Swathe’ is my word of the day, and it means ‘a broad strip or area of something’. As well as knowing everything about insects, I am also trying to learn one new word every single day. Without school, my brain was turning to mush, my Father tells me at least five times a week. This year I was determined to follow a spider to its summer destination, even though I’d already had my summer holiday to the beach. Watching your hands now, I was sure this was what you were doing in the row of trees that lived between our gardens. Then I traced a line from your hands to your face. Your eyes weren’t scanning for bugs, but dead locked on mine. With a start I looked away, turning my attention back to today’s saviour from the heat, a Cherry Cola. A moment or two later, cautiously, I turned my neck towards your garden once more. Your eyes were still on me, but they looked very sad and empty. Even though the sun’s beams were soaring down, a tickle of a chill made my shoulders flex and tense, and something deep inside my stomach fluttered. I thought of my favourite winged creatures and the warmth spread over me once more, tingling on my skin. Our eyes connected again and even though the chill stayed away, the stomach flutters crept back. I heard my Mother yell from the back door, my head turned in a panic and I felt my cheeks redden, fearful I had been caught doing something I didn’t yet know was wrong. It was only the daily call for dinner. When I looked back, you had gone, and you had taken the clearing in the leaves with you, a wall of shimmering green returned to its rightful place. I lazily rolled off the sun lounger and headed towards the house, my unfinished Cherry Cola flattening in the heat. “Come over here, honey,” my Mother’s palm instinctively reached for my forehead, feeling for a fever, before remembering what month we were in. “You’re steaming pink, how long were you out in that sun for?” I shrugged and fell into my chair at the dining table, the rest of my family already in place. We held hands and said Grace, my Father stood to dish out everyone’s food and I waited patiently, mutely, before my plate was handed back to me. I liked this tradition. I liked having my seat at the table and I liked my food decided and laid out for me, portion size and all. We began eating. None of us had realised how hungry the sun had made us, its slow simmer made our belly’s calls somehow quieter. We ate in a ravaged silence, chewing jaws and murmuring praise the only melodies in the air. Soon, we were all finished and full, our plates devoured, and not a lick of food left behind. Fat-bellied, us kids fell towards slumber as Mother and Father cleared the table. We groggily held hands and staggered upstairs, where sleep captured us before we’d had a chance to brush our teeth. I dreamt of lighthouses, of looking out across a beach where I stood, alone. I wasn’t scared, but I felt an uneasiness that roused me. A damp layer of sweat covered my skin, so I cracked the window and let in a cool midnight breeze. I thought of the spiders before drifting back to sleep. Morning brought a new light and the same uneasiness that plagued my night visions. I ripped off ‘swathe’ to reveal today’s word of the day. ‘Apoplectic’ - [ ap-uh-plek-tik ] - adjective - extremely angry; furious. I wondered if I had ever been apoplectic. My thoughts were interrupted when I heard the daily call - for breakfast this time - and I dragged myself from my bed out of my room to the stairs and as I was passing I looked through the window on the landing. I could see you. You were brushing your hair, a big, fluffy white towel was wrapped around you, but clearly you hadn’t tied it very well because it started to fall down, and you weren’t even moving your hands that fast. As it opened a little more, the wings in my stomach went wild. The second call for breakfast erupted through the house, a little more apoplectic this time, but I was stuck. I fell to my knees and shuffled towards the window, hiding behind the curtain so I could try and be stealthy, like a spy, but somehow I knew you were watching. The towel fell completely and a gasp jumped from my mouth and flew to your window. Hair in hand, your eyes travelled upwards. I didn’t care, the butterfly flutters were going berserk through every inch of my body and I couldn’t think of anything else anymore. You watched me part the heavy curtains.