Smile

She is a woman of many smiles; always been. There are smiles she keeps only for me, and there are others to be worn with strangers, outside, sometimes for survival and sometimes just for the fun of it. Night smiles, summer smiles, smiles that mean entire sentences - you name it, she has it. I have come to know her by these - come to understand her mood based on the curve of a corner and her impending explosions on the tightening of skin. Pressed, thin smiles are for calculating, half-smirk is superiority, lips apart for fleeting joy. It is the teeth you have to watch out for, though. A full smile with all teeth showing can only mean one thing, but by then - you’re too late.

She has great teeth for smiling - white and square, and all real too. No wonder I have grown somewhat wary of unnaturally straight teeth over time. I would realise weeks or sometimes even months into knowing a new acquaintance that I had gravitated towards their crooked, charming smiles full of cavities and yellowness. The latter must’ve been from smoking, or drinking coffee perhaps - from before. When you still could. The novelty of that pulls me in, even after all this time.

When the black outs started, years ago, sometimes her smile would be the most light we’d get for days. Its 200 watts would light up the small space - it could crawl into the smallest crevices of the room, and often would find its place to the back of my neck and lodge itself between the tendons. It gives you an eerie feeling, to have to rely on that smile. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels it, but it’s hard to face the other way with the bubbling of survival throbbing at your temples. You square that face with the smile plastered on, and you hope for choices to be yours, sometime soon. Those moments are bleak, let me tell you. But aren’t all now, anyhow?

Her and I met when we were younger, when going out still meant something sane, when you could pop down to the corner store with friends and grab a tinnie and crack it open in broad daylight and take a peaceful, fizzy drag. Summer nights like that used to stretch out infinitely, with fun to be had and a future no one had to worry about, and her smile would frame our careless, intoxicated giddiness like a shining beacon. I remember my first night like that, but somehow, I cannot recall my last. Life is like that, isn’t it - we could be doing things for the last time all the time, and we’d be none the wiser.

At any rate, we became inseparable. She was cunning and fearless, and always took on a dare - but she wasn’t stupid. Even back then, even with all that was to happen still ahead of us, I respected her for the cut in her eyes, for the silent, quick calculations in her head. She never bit more than she could chew. If anything, without it ever occurring to anyone except me, she made her life, her whole self out of these dares and games. They sustained her just as much as they fed the idea of her. She wouldn’t be where she is now without all of those she used to practice on - including me. 

In a way, I have always been a fuller, more evened-out side of her - she could take cover inside of me, put herself to rest in my company and open up in a way that made her, if not vulnerable, for she never was, then at least somewhat less guarded. There was a time when I found happiness in how well we complemented each other - pride in how she’d chosen to take her leave from others with me. The now is a different story. 

She stirs in the dark. Her mind is elsewhere, I know, but her body is close so I feel her convulsion as she jolts from a dream. I want to place my hand on the small of her back, just to calm her, but I think better of it. I usually take these small pockets of joy for myself whenever I can - quick, sweet feelings of control. But just from the curling of her body I know it wouldn’t end well for me - her weakness is not something she likes acknowledged, not even by me.

She sits up now, straight and alert like her teeth, and the small hours of solitude steal away quietly. Her eyes cut around to me, like they always do first thing when she wakes up. She must’ve had a bad dream; I can tell from the heavy glean in her eyes.

Fuck.

I try to shrink my body down molecule by molecule, to become invisible in the dark, but she has the eyesight of a cat. Something else that has come in handy. Her lips crack, pink tongue over the whiteness that emerges. It takes everything in me not to flinch, but self-control pays off - she decides otherwise and one of the better smiles spreads across the lower half of her face.

Quit staring. The words aren’t unkind, but I drop my eyes anyway. She moves across the small space and stretches herself in measured movements by the window, all the while peering into the darkness. It’s pouring down, an unpleasant battering on the tin roof of my skull that hasn’t stopped for days now.

I’m going out today. You want to come with?

What do you need to go out for?

She remains at the window, staring into the swirl of darkness.

I have some business to attend to, if you must know. News from the others.

I tense, even though our voices are low. Here, another set of ears is never too far. I can just make out the slow and heavy movement of bodies on the other side of the paper thin walls.

Good?, I ask.

The corner of her mouth tightens, her guess is just as good as mine. But then she turns and beams at me, her grin perhaps a fraction too wide. 

Let’s bloody hope so.

In this place, everyone fends for themselves, but if there’s a natural leader, a good person for chaos, it’s her. I’m sure it’s her many smiles. She passes it out as some sort of currency, and people believe in it, take it like medicine. It’s hard not to, considering the alternative. She continues to be that shining beacon, except our humble group of friends from before has grown significantly. In a way, no one expects anything from her, at least not explicitly. And still, she’s the one to square her shoulders and march on, for if she didn’t, we’d all be gone by now. She likes to remind us of this, too.

I go with her, of course. I’m not sure why, maybe because the opportunity to go outside presents itself so scarcely nowadays. Otherwise I’d never choose to spend this much time in her company - not with her awake, anyway. There was a time when things were different, when I only knew the one smile. It’s always been in her nature, I’m sure of that, but I can’t even blame her for the course things have taken. Still, her offers are very rarely just that, and so the choice isn’t really mine. 

As we leave the crumbling gate behind, I find myself falling in step behind her, my footprints tracing hers, like a baby duckling following its mother duck. I feel ashamed, but what’s there to do? You have to let those lead the way who can. 

We pass an old supermarket, dark and stripped bare, and I instinctively reach to grab her arm. She spins around to look at me. Fuck, now she’s annoyed. I hesitate, but the pull of a want is too strong. 

I’ll be quick. Give me 5. 

She thinks about it for a second and a calculating curve appears in the corner of her mouth. I know I have her. She nods. Before I even reach the crackling glass, she’s already slipped into the shadows. I stare at the space she occupied just a second ago, and I’m not sure what to settle on: relief or panic. 

Inside there’s not much left of the original aisles, but it’s been some time since I’ve been out. I enjoy reminiscing, even if others find it too hard. Some say there’s no point to it, and there isn’t really. But it’s a small sutainance for those who want it.

I walk between the shelves, running my fingers along their vast emptiness. I try to squint, to blur my vision until I can trick my own eyes into seeing what isn’t there - packets of two-minute noodles, plastic sleeves of chocolate dipped biscuits, small cartons of flavoured milk. I never even drank milk, and yet here I am, daydreaming about buying a bunch of those ridiculous straws filled with different flavours. They were meant for milk, I remember, but I wonder if people ever used to suck anything else through them. Something alcoholic. Maybe Bailey’s, that wouldn’t be so bad. 

The light above flickers, or I think it does. The hairs on my legs stand up one by one, so that it feels like something is crawling up them - something there but not there. I brush the feeling away, and try to unsee the bulging shelves, ripe and colourful for the taking. It makes hunger all the more biting, all this daydreaming. It’s time to go. I turn sharply and head for the cracked glass. 

She isn’t waiting for me by the entrance, and the street makes me feel small and big all at the same time. Like I’m the only person left on this earth, but one that’s about to vanish soon anyway. I steal towards the shadows of the nearest alley, in the direction I’d seen her disappear. I try to move fast but without sound, something she’s so great at, and something made much harder by the way my body is put together, bones that clink against one another every step. Clink clink clink. You know I’m coming. 

I couldn’t be more alert, and still, somehow, I miss it. By the time I reach the periphery of a lone remaining lamppost, I have to double back on myself to avoid stepping into the light. Its stark contrast with the rest of the alley makes me squint, hard and painful, but I’m in luck - no one has sensed my arrival.

Her face is still enveloped by the shadows, as if it was her birthright to only have to reveal herself to those she chooses. They are speaking in low and hushed voices, so I cannot make out what it is that makes her shift her posture and blink too fast, but I know it’s not good. I blend in with the crumbling wall behind me, my eyes wide and never leaving her dark-rimmed face, and though I feel myself seized by terror, the last smile flashed at me cuts through my body like relief.