“Kinda,” I said.
The Fault Was In Our Stars by John Green
8 min @ Sublime Espresso Bar, Kensington Market, TO
I knew I used the wrong word from the sour look on Aunty’s face. I have, not I got. Since the day I reached Aunt Clarice’s house she’d been teaching me to talk right. Aunty said I had a ‘stick mat’ when I talk. People would know I come from foreign. Which was funny because England was Foreign and Jamaica was Home. Even Aunty still called it Home when she said we have to change now we come a Foreign.
But talking right is hard when I want to tell a story. The words them come too fast to catch. It’s different if I’m writing. I can see them when they stay wrong. Aunty says the spoken word is more important than the written word. I don’t think Master Grey would agree. Master Grey says I could be a writer one day. Back a yard everybody love a story from Teeny. And this was a good story. I knew Aunty was dying to know why Missy Lancaster suddenly cut her hair into bangs.
the stream of hot black liquid
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
8 min @ Sublime Espresso Bar, Kensington Mkt, TO
Kent stared at the espresso machine and thought about the scene in “The Pope of Greenwich Village”. It was one of the classic films that Bobby had turned him onto when they started acting classes. Kent wanted very much to poison the lady waiting on her skinny half vanilla latte. He wanted very badly to poison everyone who ordered these fake coffees. Not that they weren’t already poisoning themselves with the high fructose corn syrup that killed the bitter beauty of the coffee.
He needed to get a real barista job. A place where people actually wanted to taste the coffee. Instead, he took subtle revenge burning the beans and heating the milk to liquid hydrogen temperatures. He imagined the burning of the first ill-timed sip being something like the burning sensation of lye. What does lye do to the body anyway? He should Google that.
Kent looked up at the sound of the metal bouncing off the glass. Fifty cents in the tip jar. Typical. Bobby told him he made dollar tips on the lattes. Kent kept hoping for an interview.
I hope we can discuss it further
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton
8 min @ my desk, TO
Mandy didn’t have much hope it’d go her way. Her mother always said “We’ll see”. But it always looked the same. Bad news for Mandy. She never got the Malibu barbie she wanted. (She got her sister’s with the hacked off hair). She never got her skinny jeans new. (She always got her sister’s with the worn out knees and ass cheeks.) And now she wasn’t going to get to go to Radiohead. This was probably the last time in her lifetime they’d play together. Her mother thought that because Bono wouldn’t retire and go away, all rock star stuck around forever. But Mandy knew Thom Yorke was evolving to his next level of amazing and this moment of musical history would not ever happen again. Fourteen was officially the worst year of her life and no she didn’t think she’d revise that.
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