Read Online Bats or Swallows by Teri Vlassopoulos - Free Book Online
Authors: Teri Vlassopoulos
Tags: Fiction
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night before. Afterwards they’d driven to Savannah where he doted on her, buying pecan candy, cold bottles of water, a big straw hat. She hadn’t meant to bring it up again in Ocracoke, had just been reminded about Houyhnhnm while looking at the horses. People always talked about the part where Gulliver lives with the tiny people or the giants, but not the horses, and it was her favourite part.
Day 16: The air is heavier out here, swampy. The grass by the beach is long, each stalk broad and pale green.
When Thomas and Nikki returned to Toronto three weeks later, it wasn’t as hot anymore. They had lunch together one more time before going to their separate apartments. When their drinks arrived, Nikki started crying. She kept dissolving into tears as they ate, but she insisted on staying. Thomas put down his fork and petted her hand. “Are you mad at me?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
Nikki wasn’t angry and she wasn’t sad, but she couldn’t stop crying. Or, she was both of those things and more. Mostly she felt stripped of the protective cocoon of travelling. Far away from home nothing fazed her, but now that she was back she felt somehow betrayed by real life. By Thomas too for bringing her back to it.
It was like the confusion she’d felt after running into the sheet of glass in her studio. She remembered being utterly perplexed by how the air had suddenly solidified, how it had hardened and slapped her so hard she bled. A friend of hers who worked on the other side of the room said she’d exclaimed, “What the fuck,” when it happened, but she didn’t remember saying that or anything at all.
“I don’t know,” she said to Thomas. “I’m overtired.”
Day 18: The rattle of large groups of crabs scurrying on sand.
People asked, what did you see on your trip, what did you do ? Nikki hesitated before answering. They didn’t do much really: they drove and they talked and they looked at things. They went entire stretches without talking. This wasn’t the answer people expected, so she’d describe the exact shade of red of a Red Velvet cake instead. Rusty brownish red, the bloom of a drop of blood in a cup of buttermilk. Nikki still has the journal she kept on the trip, but she never flips through it, although sometimes she’s envious of the girl who wrote only little phrases, tiny summaries lit up by the glow of those heat-blurred days.
Day 19: I just sat in the groin of a riptide.
Nikki’s legs and arms were scarred up by mosquito bites for the rest of the summer. She got them at the very end of the trip on Ocracoke Island. They’d fallen asleep naked, and the mosquitoes had ignored Thomas and gone straight for her. They’d left the tent flap open a crack for air, and when she woke up in the middle of the night, her body hummed with itchiness, worse than when she had chicken pox as a child. The itchiness was more like a presence than a sensation; it hovered an inch above her skin, hot and throbbing. She wrapped herself in a sheet and when she woke up in the morning it clung to her, dotted with bright red spots of clotted blood. She’d thrown off the sheet and ran straight into the ocean, kicking up sand behind her. The water was freezing and frothy and angry. She sat down and listened to the foam fizz as the waves retreated.
At that point on the island the currents were powerful enough to be riptides. There was a sign with a diagram of the beach that charted out the anatomy of the surrounding ocean and Nikki copied it into her journal. According to the diagram Nikki was sitting in the groin of a riptide. It wasn’t a bad thing. You’re safe sitting in the groin because you’re tucked in snug between the tides.
Thomas followed close behind and sat down. They sat for a long time while Nikki waited for her itchiness to subside. The sun climbed higher and coloured their shoulders and the apples of their cheeks.
Nikki also learned from the sign that if you’re too weak to swim out of a
Day 16: The air is heavier out here, swampy. The grass by the beach is long, each stalk broad and pale green.
When Thomas and Nikki returned to Toronto three weeks later, it wasn’t as hot anymore. They had lunch together one more time before going to their separate apartments. When their drinks arrived, Nikki started crying. She kept dissolving into tears as they ate, but she insisted on staying. Thomas put down his fork and petted her hand. “Are you mad at me?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
Nikki wasn’t angry and she wasn’t sad, but she couldn’t stop crying. Or, she was both of those things and more. Mostly she felt stripped of the protective cocoon of travelling. Far away from home nothing fazed her, but now that she was back she felt somehow betrayed by real life. By Thomas too for bringing her back to it.
It was like the confusion she’d felt after running into the sheet of glass in her studio. She remembered being utterly perplexed by how the air had suddenly solidified, how it had hardened and slapped her so hard she bled. A friend of hers who worked on the other side of the room said she’d exclaimed, “What the fuck,” when it happened, but she didn’t remember saying that or anything at all.
“I don’t know,” she said to Thomas. “I’m overtired.”
Day 18: The rattle of large groups of crabs scurrying on sand.
People asked, what did you see on your trip, what did you do ? Nikki hesitated before answering. They didn’t do much really: they drove and they talked and they looked at things. They went entire stretches without talking. This wasn’t the answer people expected, so she’d describe the exact shade of red of a Red Velvet cake instead. Rusty brownish red, the bloom of a drop of blood in a cup of buttermilk. Nikki still has the journal she kept on the trip, but she never flips through it, although sometimes she’s envious of the girl who wrote only little phrases, tiny summaries lit up by the glow of those heat-blurred days.
Day 19: I just sat in the groin of a riptide.
Nikki’s legs and arms were scarred up by mosquito bites for the rest of the summer. She got them at the very end of the trip on Ocracoke Island. They’d fallen asleep naked, and the mosquitoes had ignored Thomas and gone straight for her. They’d left the tent flap open a crack for air, and when she woke up in the middle of the night, her body hummed with itchiness, worse than when she had chicken pox as a child. The itchiness was more like a presence than a sensation; it hovered an inch above her skin, hot and throbbing. She wrapped herself in a sheet and when she woke up in the morning it clung to her, dotted with bright red spots of clotted blood. She’d thrown off the sheet and ran straight into the ocean, kicking up sand behind her. The water was freezing and frothy and angry. She sat down and listened to the foam fizz as the waves retreated.
At that point on the island the currents were powerful enough to be riptides. There was a sign with a diagram of the beach that charted out the anatomy of the surrounding ocean and Nikki copied it into her journal. According to the diagram Nikki was sitting in the groin of a riptide. It wasn’t a bad thing. You’re safe sitting in the groin because you’re tucked in snug between the tides.
Thomas followed close behind and sat down. They sat for a long time while Nikki waited for her itchiness to subside. The sun climbed higher and coloured their shoulders and the apples of their cheeks.
Nikki also learned from the sign that if you’re too weak to swim out of a
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