“darling, there's a place for us;
can we go, before I turn to dust?
oh my darling, there's a place for us.”
-Joanna Newsom, “Monkey & Bear”
Ophelia let her eyes lazily wander up and down Jack’s body with the air of a seasoned veteran examining one of her greener recruits. She was toying with him, she realized, and with the position she was in, being unable– no, unwilling, she bullied herself into thinking– to speak, she clearly had his attention, whether she wanted it or not. She mentally shrugged. Since he seemed intrigued enough, at least with the possibility of sweet, sweet nicotine, Ophelia decided she would be intrigued with him, too.
Before the confident (and maybe a bit too bold, Ophelia thought) boy could assume her silence meant she was giving him the cold shoulder, Ophelia held up a slim index finger, nails bitten to the quick.
With a practiced flourish, Ophelia retrieved her phone from the pocket of her jacket. Her thumb beat a rapid, erratic rhythm on the touchscreen. She turned the screen towards Jack and raised her eyebrows.
I could have written anything, Ophelia thought. I could have told him to fuck off just as easily as I could have given him an invitation to violate my personal space in every sense of the phrase. She had had the chance to let him in or kick him out. Most of the time, none of her feelings towards people ever drifted very far past “slight boredom.”
This time, however, she was bored enough to do something unusual.
Jack stooped to read the sentence on the phone’s display.
“I’M A VERY GOOD LIAR.”