Brick Wall

“It doesn’t look real. It’s like a painting or something.”

He says this whilst turning the photograph in his hand and twisting his head, like he’s trying to pierce the image with his gaze. She thinks of the photograph, taken the day before she left for University, she and her three sisters lined up in height order in front of the farmhouse. She had been at the short end, wearing a white shapeless dress that flapped against her prickling skin. She tries to think of a word to describe it and thinks of pastoral. But she doesn’t like using words like that, not in front of people she doesn’t know.

“I guess. Like, when I was younger all I could see from my window were fields and trees. I think I imagined there were giants or fairies or something out there. But when I was fourteen or twelve, there was a new barn and all I could see was this brick wall. The bricks were those big grey ones, not like red ones and ...”

She starts to think she’s been speaking for too long and can’t remember what the question was, or if there was ever a question. He’s been looking at the photograph for some time now, and she wonders what he’s seen, and what he might be thinking; whether it’s her or one of her sisters. She takes a long pull on the joint, holding the smoke down for as long as she can and then breathing slowly out, letting the smoke trickle from her mouth. She passes the joint to him, reaching out with her left hand for the photograph. He makes a small sound of surprise, as if he’s just realised he’s looking at a photograph, and hands it to her, his finger and thumb pinching the corner, holding as little of it as possible. She puts it face down on the desk.

She sits on the bed, one leg on the floor, the other pulled up underneath her. She watches him smoke. The orange tip of the joint pulses as he breathes in. The glow seems to extend around him like an outline and makes his face clearer. She sees how dark his eyes are, and the way his skin’s both red and white. His nose has a bend in it, like it’d been broken, and she wants to ask what happened, to hear the story and know the details. She wiggles forward towards him, across the blue checked blanket, the blanket she’d brought with her in case she got home sick.

“What is it you’re studying?” He asks without breathing out, so that he sounds like he might be dying, and passes the joint to her.

“Maths.” She says, and he nods his head, as if he understands.

Nick Drake plays on the small CD player on her desk. She wanted people to think of her as someone who liked Nick Drake, but she finds she likes it, the way it makes her think of ivy on walls and moss on gravestones. She closes her eyes to hear the words more clearly, but then opens them again, knowing she isn’t alone.

It was his jumper she’d noticed about him first. Big and woollen, with a pattern made out of tiny neon triangles. If she was younger she might have tried to count them all. That was the kind of thing she used to want to do; know what a million was and what it looked like.

She takes the joint from him and he looks up at the light bulb. She stares at the triangles, dividing the jumper into smaller sections, tracing the outline with her eyes, before moving onto the next. This way, she can be sure she’s looked at every triangle on the jumper. When she’s finished she looks up.

His face looks like he’s asked a question, but she can’t remember hearing anything.