the remainder
Four teenagers sat in a far green patch, almost as dewy as the grass beneath, a sheet of newspaper under each. They liked it here, in the sun and wind and the slight miasma from the slum behind the fence; they were optimistic realists. The taller girl had brought along a book, but like the others, had abandoned the distraction, no they were here at last. Stories, playlists, adrenaline, these could wait. They were talking, the conversation went and came in waves. The silence was not a picturesque ocean wave crashing on the shore, but the humidity and unsettlement was equally palpable. They were volatile. New to each other, but somehow familiar in their hesitation and desperation to feel something that was not solitude. They were not very similar. None of them were from the same country, only one of them was from this country but still, she felt none of them felt they belonged (yet). It took time to adjust from simple convenient name tags on a screen to people with dimen...