Oslo is a Small Town

Found some old character sketches, and decided to re-work them. I'm anxious to see who these people really are.

Camille was the middle child of three and while most would say she was bored, the truth of it was that she didn’t really care too much about the way the rest of the world saw her. She loved the sun, and never wore sunglasses or shaded her eyes with her sweaty summer palm when she looked right into its mid afternoon gleam. Her baby brother claimed this made her brave, but really she just hated her face with large plastic rims around her eyes. And on really hot days she would cut the bottom of her pants and stretch her limbs across the pavement so each little pore in her skin making contact with the rough gravel would absorb its heat, would nearly burn. She said this was her favorite way to spend her evenings in the summer. I told her she was crazy, the biggest freak I ever met with Led Zeppelin playing too many decades too late on her stereo, perched right above her head. She had a way of pressing the back of her palm to her check to cover her blush when I said that to her, and as she turned to me I had to fight the burning of the asphalt on my back. “Thanks” she said with such a slow smile that my back would go cold. I wanted nothing more than to kiss the corner of her mouth when I caught a bit of happiness take form on her lips.

Almost as much as she loved the sun, she loved the thick black and grey clouds that rolled over one another from the western wastelands to her parent’s eastern home. And when I stood up to find cover from the rain, she stayed there, sprawled like a dead animal, belly up on her drive and let the rain come for her – let it take her. She stood then, too, and let her feet twist and step in a sing song dance-way to meet me head on. Her arms swaying, her lips heavenward, releasing a tiny hum that was nearly drowned out by the sound of her favorite Zeppelin, being drowned out by the downpour, and the occasional thunder roll. The lightening seemed to find a way to hold onto each of her white strands of hair, blonder than anything I had ever seen naturally. And with each of her glimmering dance steps, the electrical light trickled down her white jaw, hanging a moment before falling from her chin, her arms, in a white glistening sort of way. When she reached me, she bent over just close enough that I could have reached forward and found that tiny place in the corner of her mouth with my own. But she spread her lips and in the tiniest voice called me a coward.

I knew she was playing. She was always playing; so much so that I believed she didn’t always know the difference between Her World and The World. Or that, perhaps, to her they were one solid thing. Either way, I could do nothing but slide my fingers behind her ear and find the small curve of her neck and watch her breathing change. Her eyes closed a moment and she laughed her tiny slow laugh, the one where the left corner of her mouth twitched upward. She would pull away, almost abruptly as if to say she was almost mine. She would never let her face down, no, not her guard. That was her charm, her unattainable bliss.