Girl from Mars Read Free

smells here.” We were in the underground station, there was graffiti all over the walls.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” she asked.
    â€œSmell it. The smell here.”
    â€œSmells like shit, I know,” she said.
    Another time she showed me pictures from her vacation at a riding stable. “Right in the country,” she called it.
    But in the underground it smelled like City, likechewing gum and dust and neon. It was a smell you could really get hold of. A smell that hit you in the face and went straight up your nose.
    Whereas here everything smells so, so...I don’t know. Sometimes a bit like earth or like rain or shit. But if you don’t think about it, it doesn’t smell like anything at all.
    It’s the afternoon. Afternoons are all the same. Go home from school. Eat. Clear the table, wash the dishes. Go up to my room, turn on the radio. Sit at my desk and do homework. Go back downstairs. Make tea. Look out the window, where nothing’s happening but keep looking anyway until the water boils and I pour the tea. Maybe someone will phone and I’ll talk and listen a bit.
    In the city it would be different. In the city you can simply sit on the underground and watch the people. City people don’t sit at home hiding out in their little houses with chimneys on top. In the city you can get on the underground, get off, walk around, look at things. And everywhere it’s a little bit different.
    Would I be different there, too?
    I imagine what I would be like if I lived in the city. I’d have an underground pass so I wouldn’t have to use my bike. I’d have friends who lived in old houses with balconies. I wouldn’t need a map. I’d be out and about all day, I’d see people and do things. Interesting things, other things. Things I’ve never done before.
    Instead I sit in this small town at my desk and finish exercise number five. It is half past four. In a few hours or so I’ll be going to bed.
    Shit, I’m bored.
    No one else is home. The house is completely quiet.
    Sometimes it can be really quiet all around, but inside everything starts screaming very loud, and you just want to scream yourself, or kick something or spit or bounce off the walls or something.
    Sometimes I feel so big inside that I don’t seem to fit.
    I put on some music and turn it right up. I dance a bit. Then I sit by the window and look outside. I lie on my bed. I turn down the music and then I turn it off.
    I lie on my bed and listen. It’s an old house and sometimes you can hear the wood creak. The tree in the garden stretches its branches toward my window, scratches on the glass. Maybe it’s cold and it wants me to let it in, like a cat.
    At some point I hear my mother open the front door.
    â€œI’m home,” she calls, without expecting an answer. Someone turns on the TV. Dad has late shift. Dennis is in the hall talking on the phone. His voice gets quieter. Then he goes downstairs.
    Sometimes you just hear this steady hum, like a neon light or a fridge. It’s never truly quiet, but nothing is really happening, either.
    I start thinking about a city and then I think about nothing. Then I turn on my music again and turn it up loud. Damn loud.
    ***
    In the evening our house is even quieter. I stand beside my mother at the sink and dry a pot.
    My mum is only pretty now and then. She has a loud laugh and isn’t exactly thin. Since she started going gray she’s been coloring her hair red. I don’t think we look alike but everyone says we do. Once when I was little, I heard some stranger say, “Look, you can see that they are obviously mother and daughter.”
    Mum takes the pot out of my hand and puts it in the cupboard. Then she grabs a cloth and wipes the counter. Humming away, swaying lightly to the tuneless music on the radio.
    â€œHow was school?”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œAnything