Sight of The Sun //Nude

I'm not usually early. Not to dinner, not to school, and certainly not to masquerade parties. Perhaps it comes from refusing to acknowledge the time - I'll get there when I decide to, and this pretence of control helps me to hold on tight to everything. Today, though, I'm five minutes and seven seconds early and I hate myself for knowing it. (I don't want to care, I really and truly don't. And yet here I am, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my cave and looking at the chalky, faded drawings that never quite went away.) This morning I gripped the envelope with hungry hands, wanting nothing more than the words within. I want to say that I glanced carelessly over them, not noticing the slant of his handwriting - slightly to the right, just a little bit messy - and forgot about each syllable as I carried on as normal. I am the Queen of not-caring, ruler of the extensive lands of not-giving-a-fuck, and yet there I was, sitting and waiting. Finally, I despaired and made my way down to the shoreline to find the place where I first looked at Jude Ripley and saw him as he was.

Yet still I wait, tossing rocks just a little too angrily at the wall and watching them bounce away and tumble along the ground. (I remember when I was very small, tossing stones into the ocean. Ursula told me that it took so many years for them to reach the beach that by throwing them back I was forcing hundreds more years of gradually edging toward their goal. I smiled and tossed yet another, this time in her direction.) Finally, there is the sound of footsteps and I forget that Jude brought me here to tell me something. I have words of my own to say. "You're late," I say, scowling. "And you really, really need to explain some things, because I'm lost." I spit the words before I even realise they are on my tongue, and again I am the hot-headed child that climbed out the window on the first day of fourth-grade. "I am sick and tired of not knowing what's going on, Jude. It's been four years, and I still don't understand." I take an unstable step toward him, fierce and bold, my hair unbrushed and windswept. "Surely you have something to say?" I insist, before realising I haven't given him a single breath to speak with. Hands on my hips, I stare him down, doing my best to tear him in two with my gaze.

In truth, he owes me nothing, but I am Nessie Libertine and always I have expected the world.

He splutters an excuse, irrelevant and inadequate. (I'm not really furious with him for being five minutes late, I'm angry with him for leaving me four years behind in a veil of confusion and hand-holding and sideways glances.) Jude Ripley looks at me and acknowledges my words without answering a single question or bending to any one of my numerous demands. He doesn't give me what I want, not right away, away, and I wonder why it is that I've chosen him to love - (I can admit that, although I'd never utter it aloud) - when countless other people would give in when pressed with my scowl. "Jude," I say, feeling my eyebrow crease with the weight of a hundred questions that slam into one another inside my head. "Please." This word is unexpected, a strangled whisper and foreign to my tongue. I am Nessie Libertine and I do not say please. (Or sorry. Never sorry.)

I take another step toward him, this one a little more hesitant. Part of me wants so much to hate him - I am still that child throwing stones and I will never escape her - but I end up simply shaking my head and chewing at my lip, hoping to taste blood. He asked me if I was sure, and I consider it for a second. Four years, I am sure of that. But I am not sure of many things. (I know I am crazy, deep, deep down. And I know that I take too much and give too little and never forgive anyone properly.) Sure, I am Nessie Libertine and two of my sisters died on television, and sure, I'm lonely, and sure, I'm afraid. But what else? I'm a liar. "I want you to answer me, Jude," I say, "I'm sure of that." This isn't the truth - in reality, I don't know. (I'm yearning for something, but if it's space or answers I can't tell. Either way, I request something from the boy in front of me, because if I didn't I wouldn't be Little Girl Libertine and she is all I know.)

For the first time in my life, I am patient. Not, perhaps, as patient as the ocean as it gradually seeps it's way into shore as the tide rises, and certainly not as patient as my youngest brother as he waits for the world to return everything it has taken from him. Even so, I do not breathe as I wait for Jude Ripley to explain away the past. (Give me the future, Jude, because I'm through with waiting for it to come to me.) "The truth is..." he says. "The truth is I..." I close my eyes and exhale heavily, because as I count to one, two, three I realise he has nothing more to say. The silence hangs in the thick, salty hair, making the space between us infinite, bigger than it has ever been. I dig my bitten fingernails into the flesh of my palms and pray for the strength to wait for the last few syllables that Jude has not yet offered. I count to ten, and they do not come. Patience, a skill I have practised so infrequently during my fifteen years, fails me.

"The truth is what?" I say, my lip quivering, a mockery of a toddler about to fall headfirst into a tantrum. "Is that really all you've got? Half a sentence? Is that what this is? Four words with no meaning at all?" I laugh, shrill and almost hysterical, and it cuts deep into my skin how much these moments mean to me. This morning, when I awoke, I glanced across at Learna's empty bed, and the bed beside it that Kipling lay curled in. The rise and fall of his chest, flutter of his eyelids, murmurs of sleep stirring on his lips. The flurry of angry words that filled my mind a moment ago dies, stopped short and dead by the memory of my sleeping brother in my mind. Enough is enough, and home is waiting. "Goodbye, Jude," I say.

In my life, there hasn't been much to give up on. The thing about not caring is that it leaves you with so very little to believe in. I suppose I believed in Penelope, but that was once. (Once was such a very long time ago I've almost forgotten her cold hands trying to tame my wild hair and her sweet smile offering an end to days of sulking.) After that, I made a point in not believing in anything for a long, long time. Least of all Jude, because how could I possibly afford to care? It is only as I finally give up on him that I realise I trusted him all along. My heart skips a beat and then two, and I am left without the thundering promise of life in my chest. It doesn't matter, because Jude Ripley is not offering all that I asked him for - he's silent, breathing in uneven gasps and letting me walk away.

And so I do. Finally, after far too long, I take a step toward the entrance to the cave. The cave I entered as a child years ago, when my sister still reigned her kingdom of beauty and seaweed. It feels, today, as though in all that time I have never truly left the dim, damp space - we are pressed between two rocky walls, covered in sketchings and words that tell a story of four useless years. I make for the sunlight, afraid that if I do not grasp it while I have the chance I will be lost forever. That is when Jude Ripley finally finds me. He reaches forwards and holds me, pressing his lips against mine and making a thousand promises I'd give anything to have him keep. His arms are solid and after so many years of falling apart, I am finally together. (I asked him questions, and this is his answer, and now I understand why I always want for the things I cannot have. Because waiting - it brings the things I didn't know I needed.) For a moment I resist, and then I let myself tumble headfirst into my very own empire.

"I asked you a damn question, Jude," I say, and then kiss him again, breathless and disorientated in the very best way possible.

I do not deserve the boy that stands before me. I do not deserve the words he speaks - the promises he makes are something that only the good are entitled to. Little Girl Libertine has never claimed to be kind or valiant or sweet-natured, and although I ask for the things only Queens should reign, I do not expect them. Certainly, I do not expect Jude to echo my feelings aloud, his words smooth and beautiful. "I just want you, Nessie Libertine, I want you always. I want you when it's raining, I want you when it's sunny, I want you when you're angry, I want you when you're sad, happy, whatever. I just need you, all the time, you're everything to me, you have been all this time. Without you I'd be dead and that's the truth."

As he speaks, I shake my head. Because although perhaps he isn't lying - it might be that these things are what he wishes for - they are so far from his happy ending. The world owes this Ripley brother everything, and here he stands before me with the audacity to ask it for me. It is all I can do not to refuse. Unkind and ill tempered, I am a treasure trove of stolen smiles - it is almost as though I snatch them from the lips of my family as I enter the room. Always silent, I have spilled insanity into the District. The therapist rolled her eyes when I first appeared, a boney ten year old with eyes like the ocean and hair like the bonfires my brothers used to build in the summer. All knobbly knees and bare feet and grazed elbows, I sat tight and refused to answer her questions.

"My favourite eye colour is your eye colour, my favourite laugh is your's, my favourite smile, my favourite everything. Everything about you, I love it all the most." I stiffen, unsure if Jude is blind or stupid or perhaps both. I shouldn't be anyone's favourite anything, and yet I meet his eyes and feel his entire earnest demeanor sinking over me. It's heavy on my chest, almost drowning me. Always, I am Nessie Libertine, the girl who could not swim. Oh, Jude, I think. Every part of me aches to reach out and push him away, to insist that he is wrong, that although these moments are the ones I have yearned for since that very first day, he should reach for the stars.

Instead, I take a deep and shaking breath and nod. "Those are awfully big words to say, Jude." My tone is not accusatory, but even. A statement, a fact. "Suddenly, you're a poet." I struggle, biting back a torrent of icy, bitter retorts that could so easily come flowing in like the shore. They are my defensive mechanism, my alternative to accepting and believing. It takes everything I am and everything I will ever be to smile at Jude Ripley and say, "But you're my favourite everything, too." (This time, it sounds like an insult, but I mean it as anything but.)