it's not a sonnet, but...

[cpolk]

...I wrote a challenge for 30minutemuse. I suspect it's literature, since it's tiresomely autobiographical, though not written prettily enough.  I suppose if I kept going with it, I would use it to point out how the Interstitial person lives...

anyway, most of you aren't on that community so I added it to my own LJ too. First draft, wobbly, all that.

Title: We're not From Around Here
Rating: PG? I don't know. I'd give it to a 13 year old...
Challenge: The new guy (or girl)
Author's Notes: Original fic. not in a fandom of any sort. not a whiff of spec-fic about it.


"You should see this girl," Tonya lifted one ring-encrusted hand, showing me the deep mahogany lines on her long pink palm. "I don't know where she thinks she is, but I'm telling you, honey, this ain't it. You know what I'm saying?"

"What do you mean, where she is?" Our knot of girls skirted a crowd, Exco wearing Lebby boys flashing chains and wet-look gel. They glanced up, ignored the rest of them, looked twice at me. Not because I'm pretty--but because they couldn't tell what I was, off first glance. Lots of people can't. Lots of people, this fucks them up so bad they actually ask me. I can't get over that. I don't walk up to people and say, "So, what's your background?" They don't even realize it might be rude.

"I mean she's just not from around here, you know? She looks like she should be in your neighborhood. Going to your school," Tonya said, winking at me. "Sportin' your fancy nails and that ugly skirt you gotta wear." she tapped my hands with her own, rich walnut over maple, her own nails easily a half inch long and lacquered a fawn brown to match my color - if you ignored the dangling charms set through drilled holes in her ring and little fingernails. She's my cousin - her mother is my mother's twin sister.

"Like her mama picked the wrong daddy," Kesia said. She nodded her proclamation of wisdom, and three heads nodded in chorus. "'Cept nobody told her that." Laughter as we clattered up the curved ramp to the food court - all of us in low tight flares and platform sandals, shirts cut close to our thin waists, pushed up breasts, outcurved asses. dressed alike, if you forgave some things - My hair fell in curls, where theirs tumbled down straight - a combination of lye relaxers and human hair weaves, like Kesia had, or perfectly ironed in inch-wide ringlets, like Tonya had. Tonya told me privately that if any of her friends had "good curls" like mine they'd do the same thing I did, so ignore their talk of irons and perms.

My mother chose the right father. I suppose you could say that. My mother fell in love with a man who happened to be wealthy. He happened to fall madly in love with her. They got married. They had me.

Oh, and he happened to be white. I was visiting with my cousin, a trip across town while Mom and Tante Jacqueline braided each other's hair. Tonya had enough power in her clique to make her crew tolerate me, and that was enough for these trips to the mall, these Saturdays, where I would trail along with them to Hop and to Face Up and drag through Wal-Mart and To the Rafters, staring longingly at the bookstore they never entered. I was careful to buy things along with them, but not too much - I bought clothes based on their opinions, but they weren't things I normally wore.

We crowded around the chinese food kiosk - their saturday special was big enough for two people to share, and fished through our little purses past cell phones and makeup to find cash enough to pay for a special, when I stared longingly at Salty's little sign - Butter Chicken, Jasmine Rice, and Naan. I wanted that, not MSG laden red sweet sauce drowned stuff.

"I'll meet you, I want indian," I said.

"That'll make you stink," Kesia said. "You'll smell of it."

I can think of worse fates. I stepped over, ordered the special, asked if they had Lassi. They did, and so I asked for Rose and got it, the woman smiling wide at me as I paid. I turned around into a crowd of hot Masala boys and girls, all of them peering at me to figure out what I was. I balanced my tray, smiled at them, and kept my head high.

I knew as soon as I saw her - this was the new girl. This was the one they were all talking about. She sat up perfectly straight. she held her fork in her left hand, tines curved downward as she properly cut an enormous cinnamon bun into dainty peices and ate them. a paper napkin spread across her lap. She wore a printed cotton skirt and a tank top, the colors subtly blending in shades of blue and green. she sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, tucked to the left and out of the way.

But I noticed what they didn't, my cousin and her friends. She wasn't to these manners born. She'd learned them, practiced them. Was practicing them right now, though she was very good--she set her knife down to smooth a lock of curls back over her shoulder, where they'd fallen. you don't touch your hair when you're eating. I know it's a stupid rule, but you don't - if your hair falls, you excuse yourself to fix it, but better to have your hair not fall in your face at all. It only happened because she bent her head too far forward to look at her food, anyway.

She looked up at me, and I realized that I was staring - staring into eyes that matched mine, a light tawny brown instead of black coffee eyes. She stared at me too, gave me the once over and knew that my flares and my platforms were not my usual skin, and looked at me again.

I smiled at her. "I like your hair."

She grinned back. "Thank you. I like yours, too."

"Jenny!" Tonya bellowed. "You gonna stand there all day?"

I looked at the crowd, gathered around a long table, looked back at the girl who watched me, her gaze tilted along the axis of her straight, narrow nose.

"You'd better go," she said, and went back to her cinnamon bun.