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Punks-Something You Forgot

Minnie was 14. She liked wearing bright red lipstick and getting high. It was two o'clock in the morning and she was still up, even though it was a Wednesday night and there would be school in the morning. She had already decided she would not go.
It was getting too hard to go.
She could not stand the hateful stares and the constant whispers.She knows the teachers are offended by the sight of her. And keeping her head down had only gotten her tripped. And spit on by fucking Melissa Walker.
Laying on her back in her bed, Minnie pounds the thin mattress with her fists. She is angry.
She was angry most of all with Tommy because he had not shown-up that night. He had not met her at the arcade and so she has smoked the whole gram of pot to herself, in her basement bedroom.
Even though he had paid for it.
It was not like her mother noticed a damn thing anymore. Locked in the spare bedroom, with her over-the-counter sleeping pills. The ones she sent Minnie to get every other day."Get me three boxes. The purple boxes." A rattling of bones from the darkened room.Sometimes the alarm clock would go off for hours, playing rock songs on a background of static, before her mother would snap out of whatever those fucking yellow pills are doing for her. Forgetting, they are helping her forget, Minnie knows that now, wishing everyone would forget about her.
Where the fuck is Tommy? Tommy always showed-up to be with her. Tommy loves her

And of course Tommy shows-up; he knocking at her window and instead of running to open the side door to let him in, she just opens the window and then she feels bad for not rushing to him.
Tommy's right eye is swollen shut and his white shirt is blotched with blood. She takes it off him, as soon as they are in the basement standing next to her bed. "Tommy," she says, as he drops to her feet and sobs,"Why is it so hard? Why is it all so fucking hard?"
His ragged fingernails scrape up her naked legs and she drops the ruined shirt, so she can run her hands through his hair.
And she cries because he is. Only quieter, so he won't know.



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