Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

What’s wrong, asks Nico, his voice sounds very distant.

I shake my head and look at the ring, all I can see are the small stones, Mama and I are the small white stones and Papa the big green one, I think, then everything goes blurry and something warm starts running down my legs but luckily the warm stuff running down my legs is just sperm.

What’s wrong, Nico keeps saying.

Nothing, I say trying to get myself together, go get me some toilet paper please.

Nico goes into the bathroom. The burned girl has woken up, at least she’s moving around in her bed. Nico comes back with a roll of toilet paper.

Will you please tell me what’s up, he asks.

I wipe my nose.

Tell me.

Quiet, I whisper. My jaw, the wounds, everything is throbbing, the toilet paper is grey and so hard it hurts when you wipe your eyes and makes you cry even more. I take a deep breath, I look over at the burned girl, she’s not moving around anymore, maybe she’s trying to fall back to sleep, maybe she’d like to say something, like we need to stop screwing and crying I want to sleep, cut it out she’d probably like to say but maybe she can’t talk, I think, and then that if she can’t sleep we have something in common she and I, but we don’t have anything in common because I can talk and I can say something right now and I want to. I take a deep breath.

We saw it, I whisper.

Saw what?

How he stabbed her at the playground.

Nico looks at me incredulously.

What?

There’s no what about it goddamn it, we were sitting at the top of the slide and we saw the whole thing. How he took her in his arms and then how he executed her with his knife, how Jasna laid there in her own blood and puke.

You can’t be serious, says Nico.

You don’t know a thing about death, oh it’s natural and a part of life, you don’t have a clue.

Nico is silent and stares at the bedding.

Who, he asks at some point.

I shred the rough toilet paper between my fingers.

Tarik, I say, it was Tarik.

You have to go to the police, Nico says for about the hundredth time since we woke up.

I jump out of bed and pull up the shades.

Leave me alone, I say, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

You can’t act like nothing has happened. Like I said I’ll go with you if you want, you don’t have to get through it alone.

Get through it, I can’t hear it anymore. The fuck you’ll help me get through it, you have nothing to do with it, I say.

I do now, says Nico.

I throw him his clothes.

Here, I’ve got a visitor coming, you have to leave.

Looking hurt, Nico gets dressed. We take the lift down to the ground floor together without saying a word. When we’re at the exit Nico looks at me for a long time.

What, I say.

I really don’t want to say this but if you don’t do it I’m going to.

What are you going to do if I don’t do it?

Go to the cops, says Nico, you open yourself up to being charged as an accomplice if you don’t say anything. And so do I.

Do you really think I didn’t think about that?

Think it over, otherwise I’ll see it through myself, seriously, says Nico then he turns and leaves.

I stagger to the lift and then back to my room like I’ve drunk too much Tiger Milk, that’s exactly how I feel. The burned girl is sitting upright in her bed slurping from my plastic container, she looks at me reproachfully. I crawl back in bed, her breakfast is on my side table, muesli with yoghurt, I dip my spoon into it hiding the muesli beneath the yoghurt like the polar bear on Terra X burying itself in the snow, I bury the flakes of grain under the cold yoghurt but the muesli sticks to my teeth and I try to chew it up anyway.

Jameelah and I need to talk, but even the thought of that is out of the question, game over, might as well leave the playing field and hit the showers. Amir, I think, I need to talk to Amir, I have to tell him everything, maybe that will make him come to his senses, I should have done it ages ago, why on earth haven’t I done that, I think.

The burned girl clears her throat.

You’re bleeding, she says.

I turn to her.

There, she says pointing to her mouth.

Shit, thanks.

In the bathroom I look in the mirror. Everything is bright red back by the stitches inside my mouth, blood is trickling out of one of the wounds. I shove toilet paper into my mouth and bite down on it.

Thanks, I say again.

I’m being transferred, says the burned girl as if it’s any of my business.

Nice, I say pulling my phone out of a drawer. I go out into the hallway but I don’t have any minutes left so I go down to the information desk.

I desperately need to make a call, I say putting a piece of paper with Amir’s number on it on the counter in front of the nurse, Nico wrote it down for me just this morning.

She dials the number and hands me the receiver, it rings a few times until finally some bureaucrat answers.

I would like to talk to Amir, I say, Amir Begovic.

That’s not possible, says the bureaucrat, the inmates can only use the phone from six until eight.

When I get back to my room the burned girl is gone. I still have the taste of blood in my mouth so I go into the bathroom and rinse it out. There’s blood and bits of muesli when I spit out, everything hurts like I’ve just gargled lemon juice. I open my mouth as best I can and see that both sets of stitches on my lower jaw have popped out. I sit down on the toilet, close my eyes, and try to think of jokes instead of the pain, it’s something Jameelah and I came up with and it usually helps but this time it doesn’t so I shred toilet paper and sit there on the toilet seat trying to deal with the pain. Then somebody knocks on the door.

Where are you, I hear Jameelah call, I have to tell you something. I really have to tell you something!

When I walk back into the room I see Jameelah jumping around on my bed. Her hair has grown over the summer and now goes down past her ears almost to her chin, the way she laughs and her hair flies around while she hops up and down, it looks beautiful.

I have to tell you something, she shouts, I really need to tell you something!

What is it, I say.

It begins with L and ends with S!

Tell me!

Guess, says Jameelah letting herself plop down on the end of the bed with her legs crossed and looking at me expectantly.

Just tell me, you idiot.

Okay, what did we talk about at the beginning of the summer? In the bathroom? About what we wanted to do during summer break?

You slept with Lukas?

Bongo, Jameelah shouts and starts hopping on the bed again, bongo bingo bongo!

Cross coincidence, I say.

Why?

Why do you think?

What, you too, says Jameelah, no way!

Yes way, I say and to prove it I pull the bloody sheets out of the drawer. Jameelah shields her face with her hands.

Here in the hospital? Cross.

I smile.

Did you bleed real bad too, I ask.

Nope not at all, says Jameelah.

Are you guys a proper couple now, you and Lukas?

No idea, maybe. What about you and Nico?

No idea, I say, and even if we were what does that mean these days.

You sound like a grandmother. Like a forty-year-old, says Jameelah.

No seriously. Actually I don’t even know if I want to be together with him.

Don’t overthink it, says Jameelah, anyway it’s crazy, right? So we’re like cosmic-virgins or virgin-soulmates except more like the opposite, deflower-mates, what would you call that connection?

Deflower like deforest?

No, deflower like devirginize, says Jameelah, but the point is we need to think up a word for friends who lose their virginity on the same day.

Oh right, I say, yeah.