I woke up quite early in the morning. I heard a whole lot of shuffling and banging upstairs, and I think it woke me up. I was still feeling very tired, but I couldn’t sleep. Probably because my mind was thinking about so many things all at once. I was thinking about my essay that I had to write. I thought I should probably get up pretty soon and go to university. I needed to get a good portion of my essay underway, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to finish it on time for Monday. It was Saturday, so I only really had two days left.
Then I started thinking about what would happen even if I did finish my essay. After I’d finished my whole degree, even. What would I do after that? I didn’t know what kind of jobs to get with a history degree. I guess I could be a historian, but that doesn’t sound very exciting. I wondered if maybe I could work in a museum. They have a lot of history in museums, so that might be good. I quite like museums, too. They’re always so big and quiet. There’s this nice museum that I’ve been to a few times. It’s not too far from university. It’s very interesting and has a lot of very interesting stuff in it. But what I like the best is the flower garden that’s right next to it. They have this big garden filled with a whole bunch of different kinds of flowers and plants and trees. My favourite flowers that I see quite a lot are these little purple ones with yellow in the middle. I can’t remember what they’re called right now, but they’re my favourite. I like some of the red ones, too. Especially the ones that are very dark red, kind of like this lipstick that I have. I thought maybe I could work at the museum, and every day, I could visit the flower garden. Maybe I could even eat my lunch there on sunny days. That would be so nice.
Then someone knocked on the door. I wasn’t sure who it was, so I didn’t say anything. I was worried maybe a stranger was going to come in. The door opened a little bit, and someone said, “Franny?”
I thought it sounded kind of like Lily. Then the door opened all the way, and I saw it actually was Lily. She stood in the doorway. She was dressed entirely in tennis clothing. She had on this white top that was cut quite low. And this short white skirt which was very short. Then she had on this fluorescent pink headband to keep the hair out of her face. And around her neck was a very beautiful gold necklace.
I sort of looked down at myself then, to make sure I was decent. I realised I had fallen asleep with all my clothes on. Even my shoes. I could feel them on my feet. But I had the blanket pulled up to my chin, so she probably couldn’t tell.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said. She didn’t really sound too concerned though. Before I could say anything she said, “Listen, I was wondering if you want to play tennis with me? My tennis partner bailed.”
I kind of just stared at her and didn’t answer. I wasn’t too sure what to say.
“Look,” she said. “I know we don’t really know each other. I know you’re probably not too thrilled about the idea. Neither am I. But I’m already in my tennis gear. I can’t not play now; it would be such a waste.”
I could tell she really quite liked herself in those tight little clothes. She kept looking down, and adjusting her skirt a little bit, making sure it was straight. She probably thought she looked quite good in it. She was right, though. She looked very pretty. Prettier than me. She had this very small waist and these very nice legs. She looked quite fit and athletic. But I wasn’t really that interested in playing tennis with her. I had my essay to write, after all.
But I didn’t really want to say no. She did let me stay the night at her house, so I thought it would be rude to just reject her like that. I sort of felt like I had to say yes, to be honest with you. And I figured the tennis wouldn’t last all day, anyway. I could just play one game with her and then go to university to write some of my essay. And I’m actually quite good at tennis. I used to play quite lot. I don’t play anymore though. I eventually decided it was too competitive, and that it just made people very mean and always want to beat each other. But I thought I could at least play one game with her, so I said okay. She threw some tennis clothes on the bed. She must have been holding them the whole time. I didn’t even notice.
When I started to reach for them, she said, “Don’t put them on just yet. You can just get changed at the club, we’re already running late.” She left the room to let me get up properly.
When I got out of bed, I felt a little bit sore. My head wasn’t feeling great, and I had this weird pain in my leg. I investigated a little bit and found this big bruise on my calf muscle. I didn’t know where it even came from, but it hurt quite a bit.
I went upstairs and got my bag from its hiding spot. Then I went into the bathroom to get changed out of my dress and back into my skirt and shirt. I probably should have just changed into my tennis clothes, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I just held on to them instead. I found Lily and she gave me a glass of water and a banana. I felt quite dehydrated, and my throat was a bit sore. I didn’t feel like eating the banana, but I did drink the water. It was very refreshing.
Lily drove us to the tennis club. I’ve myself never learned to drive, but I have been meaning to. There just never seems to be any time to do it. During the university semester, I’m too busy and exhausted with all of the studying I have to do, so I can’t learn to drive then. And then, during the holidays, when I’m on break from university, and I don’t have any studying or anything to do, that’s when I feel even more exhausted. I have to spend that time recovering and re-cooperating, so that my mind is all set for the next semester when I have to focus again. During the holidays, I sleep more than anyone I’ve ever known. I’m a sleep addict. My ideal is about twelve hours of sleep per day. Maybe even more than that.
The drive wasn’t too far from her house. She lived in this very wealthy neighbourhood, so it had tennis courts quite close by. I don’t live in a wealthy neighbourhood myself. I don’t live in a dump or anything, but our family isn’t too rich. My father works for a computer company. I’m not really sure what he does, though. He earns a bit of money but not too much. Or I guess he used to. My mother doesn’t work very much anymore. Fairly occasionally, she works in an office. Usually one full day and one half day each week. I suppose she doesn’t earn too much money. So we don’t live in the nicest area. I don’t think there’s a tennis court anywhere near our house.
We parked in the club’s car park. I took the bundle of tennis clothes that I was holding and followed Lily up the stairs and inside. There were quite a lot of people there wearing tennis clothes and holding tennis rackets and tennis balls. I felt quite out of place. I was just wearing my normal clothes, and I didn’t fit in very well. I looked out the window at the people playing on the courts. They were mostly very terrible players. I guess it’s because a lot of them were quite old. I had a very good technique when I used to verse old people, when I played a lot. First, I’d hit the ball to the left side, and the old people would run to get it and hit it back to me. Then I’d hit it to the right side, and they’d try to run to get the ball. But they’d still be recovering from running all the way to the left side from before. That way, the old people would be too tired to get the ball, and I’d win. It was quite funny at the time, but I suppose now I think it’s a bit mean. It probably isn’t too nice to be old and not be able to chase the tennis ball that some stupid little girl keeps hitting so far away from you.
Lily led me across the room. “I’ll just sign in while you get changed,” she said. “We can grab one of the courts on the— Liam!”
Liam was this boy on the other side of the room that she had spotted. He was very tall and had thick brown hair. He was very attractive.
Liam turned as Lily was running over to him. She sort of clung onto him in this crazy jump-hug. I thought it was a bit strange, but I could tell he liked it very much. He had this smile on his face as she hugged him, and his hand squeezed very low down on her back. Almost on her bum. It was a little bit embarrassing.
When they eventually let go of each other, she was staring up at him all cute-eyed like girls sometimes do. She had her hands behind her back and was sort of swaying her hips side to side as she talked to him. “I didn’t know you were going to be here this morning.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I hadn’t planned on it. I was going to spend the day at the office—oh, did I tell you? I’m working at my uncle’s firm for the summer. In the financial law team.”
“Look at you,” she said and jokingly poked him in the chest. I have a feeling she just wanted to touch his muscles. He was quite muscular. “Mr Lawyer.”
He sort of gave a dry smile at that, so Lily quickly started talking again. “How long are you here for? Would you like to play a game?”
“Yeah sure, that sounds good.”
“Fantastic,” she said and kind of jumped up a little bit. I think she was quite excited to play with him. I guess she forgot I was there. “I’ll just—” She stopped and turned around to look at me. I guess she remembered again. “Ah, just hold on a second.”
She came back over to me very quickly. She seemed in quite a rush. I could see this sort of apologetic look on her face before she even started talking to me.
“Hey, Franny,” she said. “Do you mind very much if I play a quick game with Liam? It won’t take very long. Maybe twenty minutes. Thirty at most. Then I’ll come straight over and play with you, promise.”
I hadn’t said anything yet when Liam came over to us.
“You two all right?” he said, looking at me. I felt quite shy. He was so tall. I could hardly even look all the way up at his face, it hurt my neck. I had to look at his chest instead.
“Liam, this is Franny. Franny, Liam,” Lily said and gestured between the two of us.
Then I did something very embarrassing. Liam put his hand out towards me. He wanted to shake hands with me. I guess that’s probably what you should do when you first meet someone. So I went to shake his hand, but I really struggled to do it because I was holding all those tennis clothes. When I put my hand out, I accidentally dropped everything all over the floor. I felt very stupid.
“So do you mind, Franny?” Lily said.
“No, I don’t mind.”
Then Liam said, “I’m not stealing Lily from you, am I, Franny? I don’t want to butt in on your game.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t even look up at him. He was way too tall. I’m quite short.
“It’s okay,” Lily said. “She said she didn’t mind. We’ll just have one game and then Franny and I will play afterward. You can come watch us, Franny.”
“Come down and referee the game for us,” Liam said. “You can make sure this little one doesn’t cheat,” and he poked her back in the chest, kind of touching the top of her boobs. Lily looked like she really liked that.
I didn’t want to referee the game, but I thought I probably shouldn’t say no. So I just nodded my head. It was a bit quiet and awkward for a moment.
Then Lily said, “Liam, can you go grab us a court? We’ll meet you there in a minute.”
“Sure thing,” Liam said and left.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Lily asked me again.
“It’s fine.” And it really was fine. I was actually kind of glad. For some reason, I really didn’t feel like playing tennis any more. But then I said, “Is it okay if I don’t come down and be the referee?”
It’s very embarrassing to admit, especially because I played tennis for so many years when I was younger, but I’m not too sure if I know all the rules. Sometimes, when the referee would say I lost a point, I wouldn’t understand why, but I didn’t want to ask and sound stupid, so I’d just keep playing.
“Of course,” Lily said very quickly. “You don’t have to come down if you don’t want.” I think she secretly wanted to be alone down there with just Liam.
“Can I just watch from up here? On one of the tables?”
“Yeah that’s okay. I’ll come back up as soon as we’re done.” She turned and started to leave, but then stopped. “Oh, Franny,” she said. “Can you look after this for me?” She took off her necklace and handed to me. I don’t know why she even wore it to play tennis. It looked like something she should have worn to a ball. “Protect it with your life,” she said. Then she put her hand over one side of her mouth, and leaned in toward me, as if to whisper. “It’s only worth about two grand,” she said, not in a whisper.
I sat on one of the tables. Not near the windows though. I wasn’t in the mood to watch them play tennis. I was feeling quite upset all of a sudden. I started thinking about my dad, and that he was dead. I didn’t tell you it before, but he killed himself. It was very horrible. I didn’t even understand why he did it. It made me feel very upset.
But then I started wondering. I maybe wondered if it was actually a good thing. I mean, he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t want to die. So maybe it was good that he got what he wanted. It’s probably quite selfish of me if I wanted him to be alive even though he didn’t want to live. It’s his life, so maybe he should get to do whatever he wants with it. I was thinking about all that. I wasn’t too sure though. It was all very confusing.
Then I heard this whistling from across the room. It was quite strange to hear, since all the other noises were just tennis balls being hit, and some people making some very strange grunting noises when they were playing. But I heard this whistling, and it sounded very nice. I saw this little girl across the room. She was lying on her back on one of those wooden benches. The ones with no backrests or anything, only a long seat. Her arms were hanging down, and she was swinging them. She was whistling, too. I think she only just started whistling, because I didn’t hear it before. What I thought was odd, though, was that she didn’t have any shoes on. She was only wearing these nice green socks. They were light green. Kind of like lime green but not too bright. They were quite cool. But the strange thing was that I couldn’t see her shoes around anywhere. I thought maybe she would have taken them off, and they’d be under the bench beneath her or something. But they weren’t. It’s almost like she came to the tennis club without wearing any shoes at all.
I think I was feeling quite lonely, because I hardly didn’t even notice myself getting up and walking over to her. I just left my tennis gear on the other side of the room, then went and sat down on the bench next to her. Her eyes were closed, and she just kept swinging her arms and whistling. She didn’t see me, because her eyes were shut, but she must have heard me. I guess she just wasn’t bothered.
“Hello,” I said to her. It’s funny, because I almost never talk to anyone. Sometimes people will come up and talk to me, so I have to talk to them. But normally, I don’t like starting conversations. I just felt like talking to her, though. She opened one of her eyes and looked at me. She kind of peeped at me. Then she closed it again.
“Hello,” she said to me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Franny.”
Then she opened both of her eyes and looked at me. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you might have been my new tennis coach.” She sat up then, so she was sitting on the bench with one little leg hanging on each side. She was so small, her legs didn’t even touch the ground. She was wearing some tennis clothes. A little red skirt and a white shirt. Underneath, I could see that see was even wearing a white sports bra as well. Which was interesting, because she was so young, and looked like she didn’t need to be wearing one at all. Then she said, “Darren is meant to be coaching me today, but he isn’t here yet.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know why I was apologizing. I had no idea what to talk to that little girl about. I didn’t even know why I came up to her at all. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
The little girl only stared at me for a moment, kind of squinting her eyes at me. She looked quite suspicious. I think maybe she was trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. But then her face lightened up, and she hopped off the bench. She was standing then, and she shuffled closer to me. She was quite short, kind of like me. But I was still taller than her, even though I was sitting down. Probably because I was so much older. She leaned in close to me and said, “Can I tell you a secret?”
I nodded at her. I actually kind of wanted to know what the secret was. I was even a little bit excited to hear it.
She said, “I hope Darren doesn’t show up today. I don’t even like playing tennis.”
I was a little disappointed. It wasn’t a very good secret. But I thought it was quite nice of her to tell me about it anyway. If I met a stranger, especially one that was so much bigger than me, I wouldn’t tell them a single one of my secrets. I smiled at her. She seemed like a very friendly person. “I don’t like tennis either,” I said. But she just went and lay back down on the bench. She didn’t really look like she was even listening to me. I thought that maybe if it was a different person, and not that little girl, it might have irritated me a little bit. But she seemed so nice and little, I just felt quite happy talking to her. She closed her eyes and started swinging her arms again, but she wasn’t whistling any more. I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there for a while.
I looked around the club, and everyone was pretty much gone. They must have all gone outside to play tennis. There was an old man and woman sitting at one of the tables, drinking some water from their bottles. They didn’t really seem to be talking to each other much. Mostly just taking sips of water. And there was still some person at the front desk. They probably had to stay there though, since I think they worked there. It would probably be quite boring having to let people into the club all day to play tennis and not even get to play yourself. But I guess it wouldn’t be too bad if you didn’t even like tennis. Then you wouldn’t care whether you got to play or not. I wondered if I could maybe work at a front desk like that somewhere. I bet there are places all over the world that need people to work at the desk. I could probably be quite good at that. You mostly just have to say hello to people and tell them which direction to go. I’m very good with directions, so I could probably do that very well. But I’m not so good at saying hello to people. I probably couldn’t do that part too well.
Then I remembered I was still holding onto Lily’s necklace. I held it in my palm and looked at it a little bit. It looked like a very expensive necklace. I know that people think you’re very shallow if you care a lot about gold necklaces and jewellery. But to be honest with you, I think I’d quite like to have a lot of nice jewellery and expensive things. I know it makes me very shallow. But I just quite like that stuff. I just think about how cool I would be if I wore lots of rings with diamonds and sapphires in them. And necklaces like that one. I would be very beautiful. There would be so many people coming up to me and wanting to talk to me and know all about my life and how I got so many pretty things. They’d wonder how they could get necklaces like mine. But they wouldn’t be able to. Because I’d be the only one in the whole world with beautiful things.
I was thinking about all that stupid stuff when the little girl said, “What’s that?”
I didn’t notice she was watching me at the time. She was looking at the necklace. She had even sat up to get a better look. She seemed quite interested.
“This?” I said. I held the necklace up and looked at it.
She stretched her arm out towards the necklace and pointed very close at it. “That,” she said. She touched it with the tip of her finger, then quickly pulled her hand back, as if it had been boiling hot or something. I thought that was quite funny.
“It’s a necklace,” I said. Then I said, “My father gave it to me for my birthday.” I don’t know why I said that. It was a lie. My dad never gave me a single necklace in my entire life. But I said it anyway. She didn’t say anything; she just kept looking at it. She was very quiet and very still, and it suddenly made me think of something very upsetting. It made me think of when I found my dad hanging in that closet. I just stared at him for a while. He was so still, just hanging there by his neck. For a second, I thought it was a joke or something. I didn’t know it was his real body.
I was still holding the necklace. Suddenly, I wanted to get the horrible thing out of my hand. I was thinking about how Lily told me how much it cost her to buy, and I felt very disgusted all of a sudden. I started hating Lily too, just by thinking about it.
“Do you want it?” I said.
This time, the little girl just said, “Huh?”
“Come on. You can have it. I don’t want it anymore.”
She kind of took a step away from me and looked very uncertain. Almost a little bit scared. I got very impatient and reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her towards me. Thinking about it now, I was probably quite rough with her. I’m a very nasty person. Sometimes I hate myself. She didn’t cry out or anything, though. She just went very quiet. I pulled her towards me and turned her around, so her back was facing me. I put the necklace around her neck and linked it up around the back like you’re meant to. Her neck was so small. I could almost wrap all the way around it with one hand, if I wanted to.
I finished tying the necklace, and she slowly turned around to face me. She didn’t look too scared anymore; she was just looking at me.
All of a sudden, I felt much better when I saw her wearing it. She looked very beautiful with that necklace around her little neck. It made me feel so happy. I smiled at her and told her how nice she looked. She started looking down at the necklace, or tried to, at least. It’s quite hard to do that, because your chin gets in the way. Then she looked up at me with a big smile.
“Can I really keep it?”
“Of course. It looks much better on you.”
Just then, she looked over to the entrance of the clubroom, and she waved crazily in that direction. I looked over, and there was a man in tennis gear there, waving at her. I guess it was her coach, Darren.
She was suddenly all energy. She hopped around, sliding on her socks. “I have to go now,” she said. “Darren makes me carry the balls if I’m late.”
I thought that was quite funny, because he was the one who was late. She didn’t say goodbye; she only turned and ran off to him. I moved over to the bench she had been sitting on and sat there for a while. I was trying to feel something. Anything. But I couldn’t. So I just got up and left. I had to finish my essay.