Page 43 of For Flag's Sake
I stare, unseeing, into the abyss of potential, then shrug.
Flag it.
My stomach will forgive me, even if Maple may not.
I eat another bite from the massive bucket of maple pecan ice cream balanced between my legs, groaning despondently as the warm, woodsy flavor cascades across my taste buds. “This is delicious,” I moan.
“You should stop eating that,” Birch tells me. Again.
“Youshould stop eating it,” I grumble. I hug the frigid plastic closer to me, hovering over it as I shove my rather too-large spoon deep into its depths.
“This is petrifying,” he mumbles, slashing a rag-holding hand out lightning fast to dab up a drop of melted ice cream from the counter before me. I sneer at him.
“Go somewhere else if you don’t like it,” I suggest through a mouthful of buttery bellyache.
“And leave you here, with all my stuff?” he asks, horrified.
“I think, technically speaking, it’s actuallymystuff.” Not that I care all that much. I have sobbing to do. Ice cream to eat. Arguing over the semantics of ownership falls low on my priority list.
Birch doesn’t feel the argument is deserving of his attention either, apparently.
Oh well. Fine by me. I can focus on the things that really matter in life—eating my feelings, even if I can’t parse the flagging things out.
I spenthoursalternating meditation, journaling, and running today. Then, when none of them were working on their own, I started combining things. Journaling with my eyes closed while I thought meditative thoughts. Journaling while I ran a mile. Running that same mile with my eyes shut, trying to clear my mind of the increasing suckitude of my situation. Then, in a last-ditch effort to not be a massive loser, I tried all three at once. What did I surmise from this experience? Exactly zero things about my own inner workings.
I am useless, and I should die. Or maybe that’s dramatic. Maybe I’m onlymostlyuseless, and I deserve a horrible stomachache instead of death. In the end, both result in me alone and in pain. An outer representation of the few emotions Ihavebeen able to deduce.
Gold stars for me. Yippie. I can stick them to my red flags and pretend they mean something.
I shovel more ice cream into my mouth. It tastes of salty tears and candied pecans.
“I never knew you were so dramatic,” Birch huffs.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” I reply. “Just like me. Just like all men everywhere. We’re alldoomed.”
Footsteps sound behind me, and Birch sighs in relief. “Thank heavens you’re here,” he says. “He’s getting a little too pathetic for my liking, and he’s over halfway through his bucket. That was supposed to lasta month.”
“Go away, Birch,” a soft, beautiful, sweet,flagging lovelyvoice says at my back. A small, warm hand lands between myshoulder blades and slides up, over my neck and into my hair. “Ivy?”
At the sound of my name in her soft, beautiful, sweet,flagging lovelyvoice, I crumple. What little decorum I’d managed to hold onto disappears, and I become nothing more than the feelings I’ve been running from.
“Maple,” I croak, leaning into her hand. I relish in her touch, unsure when it will end and unsure if, when it does, I will ever get it back. “Rosy Maple, I’m sosorry.”
“Hush,” she says. “At least until Birchgets the flag out of the kitchen.”
“I’m not leaving this kitchen,” Birch tells her. “The two of you can find somewhere else for Ivy to have his existential crisis. I told you on the phone, I need him out of here, and I also told you the consequences if you don’t fix this mess.”
“Birch,” she grits.
“Maple,” he retorts.
In the ensuing silence, I scrape a layer of ice cream with my spoon and push it past rolling tears to punish my stomach.
“Fine,” Maple hisses after I’ve swallowed and gone digging for more pain. “You’re so annoying.”
“Leave the bucket,” Birch replies. “The last thing we need is spoiling dairy hiding in crevices throughout the house.”
“You can have your stupid bucket. Whatever.”
