Bubble Gum and Scraped Knees

Arden and Beau had adored each other since they were children. Their relationship blossomed over apple juice Pop Tops and making jewellery from raw pasta. Cultivated over Letter Land and hide-and-seek. Solidified over Beau helping Arden cheat on the algebra test and Arden helping him paint his toenails on the creamy carpet of her bedroom. The two couldn’t be separated ever since they’d locked eyes on the first day of primary school. The only problem was that Arden loved Beau, but Beau loved boys.

Arden was in year six when she first glimpsed a maze of ugly bruises on Beau. The murky purple and rotten yellow hues were stark against his pale skin. She had never seen so many bruises before. Young Arden didn’t know what to do. So, she fished out her packet of bubble gum and handed him a piece. She then purposefully scraped her knees raw and bloody while playing Bull Rush, so the other kids noticed her wounds over Beau’s. But she never told anyone about the bruises.

Arden was bent over the bathroom sink, getting closer to the mirror to refine her winged eyeliner. She was getting good in the art form of makeup, no trembling lines or coal smudges. Beau was beside her, styling the loops and swirls of his blond hair as he sang along to the music playing from his iPhone resting in the bowled sink to amplify the volume.

It was their first high school party. A girl’s sweet sixteenth from their biology class. They didn’t remember her name but committed her street address to memory with ease. Arden passed the pencil over when she was done, and Beau traced some blackness under his baby blues. They sought the other’s approval once they turned away from the mirror decorated with mementoes from their beautiful relationship. Movies stubs and bus tickets, pressed flowers and lyrics inked on napkins, foggy polaroids squares stuck to the watermarked mirror with sticky tack. All just remnants, glorious and useless remnants.

At high school graduation, Arden’s whole family had come to cheer and applaud as she crossed the stage. Beau only had his timid mother who didn’t make a peep when his name was announced. He told Arden that his father couldn’t get the time off work, but she knew he preferred it if he wasn’t in the crowd anyway.

After the ceremony, Beau came up and kissed Arden on the cheek, his smile brighter than the sun high in the sky. He was finally free. He reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out a coloured box with a pink ribbon wrapped around it. Arden’s heart swelled at the gift sitting on the velvet fabric just for her. It was a pearl necklace.

Just like her grandmother’s one she’d lost at a Halloween party they’d gone to the year prior. She’d dressed up as a flapper girl, he’d gone as a struggling jazz player, striped suit and all.

Arden was stunned that Beau had even remembered the lost piece of jewellery, and even more stunned that Beau had saved up to replace it. Just for her. Forthcoming, Arden would only don Beau’s pearls on special occasions, always afraid they would slip through her grip and be lost to her forever.

It was abundantly clear to Arden and Beau that they’d spent all their high school days dreaming about being free of the place but never once considered they were leaving one jail cell just to be transferred to another one. But right now, it was time for a prison break. That night they had magic in their blood and disappeared into Wonderful—the theme of their year twelve formal—as they danced under the strobe lights, club smoke twisting trendils around their ankles. They stayed out all night and walked home with sore feet and cloudy heads. Beau’s hand was warm in Arden’s as the morning sun touched their backs.

It was after graduation when things started to change beyond Arden’s control. Slowly but surely; lines wonky and smudges dirty. They both got accepted into the same university, just like they had always planned. Arden in criminology and Beau in multimedia, majoring in music production.

They skipped classes to drink crap and overpriced coffee on campus and rode the tram to the beach where they would bake under the hot sun for hours. They moved out of home and shared a cramped apartment next to a bowling alley where they both got part-time jobs. They went to house parties, university events and nightclubs. They were happy and had everything they had ever wanted since they were children. But they weren’t children anymore. Now they were young adults and just as confused and undecided as ever.

Halfway through their first semester, Beau met Elliot and things started to shift as if everything they knew had been built on sand. Now, Arden loved Beau, but Beau loved Elliot.

The unbreakable relationship of Arden and Beau was cracking like fine china. Beau attended his university classes, even spent his free days on campus. Elliot was in sport science and worked at the university’s bar. He gave Beau free drinks and never carded him, but always carded Arden.

One night, Arden returned home from the bowling alley and found Beau drinking alone in the kitchen. She noticed the bruises on Beau instantly. The sight had stopped her heart. She hadn’t seen bruises on Beau since he’d moved away from home. The gloomy purple marks travelled down from his collarbone and underneath his shirt. When she questioned him, he told her it was nothing and downed another shot of vodka with a grimace. Arden didn’t believe him, not for a second, but lifted her shot up to her lips in a false sense of comradery. She told herself it was the alcohol’s powerful scent that brought tears to her hazel eyes, the stinging and spilling ruining her makeup.

To be festive, Arden and Beau threw a Christmas party that year. Arden wore a red dress and the pearl necklace Beau had given her. He wore a mint green button-up shirt and light blue jeans. The apartment was crowded and joyful with old and new friends. And Elliot.

About two hours in Arden couldn’t spot Beau or his boyfriend. She weaved through the throng of cheerfully drunk people in red, green and black to check the bedrooms. Both clear. She was passing by the bathroom when the sound of breaking glass reached her ears over the loud themed music.

Arden pushed open the door and her breath caught in her throat, trapped and painful. Elliot had blood on his knuckles and kneeled above a fallen Beau, his hand gripping him like a vice. The mirror was shattered beyond recognition and blood marred the off-white tiles.

She screamed, shoving Elliot away from Beau rashly, desperately. If Elliot said anything or tried to do anything, Arden didn’t witness it. She just kicked the door shut after he left, sweat thick on his forehead like the blood spotting his hands.

They were curled up on the bathroom floor, the tiles chilled beneath them. The song Silent Night seeped in from the living room through the thin walls, the melody sickeningly sweet for the situation.

“We’re all killers,” he announced suddenly and softly, not bothering to wipe away the tears that strolled down his cheeks, tears that were familiar to him, like an old, visiting friend. “We’re slowly killing ourselves,” he added. Arden could see the dark stain of blood on his favourite light blue jeans. Right where his knee was; Arden had a scar on the same knee.

“And the people we love the most,” she agreed, picking at her nail polish indignantly.

Demons played like children in the shadows that stretched around them. They sat in the dark bathroom, tongues silent and lips unmoving, for what felt like forever. Beau broke the spell, his warm shoulder shifting against hers.

“I’m sorry I don’t love you like how you want me to love you,” he whispered, words carrying across the air littered with the smell of copper and salt and the eternal scent of Adren's makeup on the counter. Arden’s heart jarred in its bone cage, her unsteady pulse scattering across her ribs. “You know if I could, I would.” Arden found herself nodding. She reached for his hand, fingers twinning together.

“And I’m sorry Elliot doesn’t love you the way you deserved to be loved.” Beau’s pearls were suddenly heavy around her neck as a thought grew in her mind like a seedling. She remembered a playground and a packet of bubble gum.

Somewhere along the line, in between the desperate urge to grow up and the crushing realisation of what growing up entails, popping bubble gum and scraping knees while playing had evolved into downing shots of clear liquid that tasted like gasoline and retrieving bruises from the ones they sold their hearts to for a pretty smile and empty promises of love. Always unintentionally chasing the highs and lows, always chasing the saccharine and the sour.

In the shadowed bathroom, with the silver glow of the moon filtering down on them through the small window, Arden decided to finally do something she should’ve done a long time ago.

One week later it wasn’t Beau with the bruises or the escaped blood staining his clothes, it was Elliot. And Arden was left standing with blood printed brightly on her knuckles and popping a wad of bubble gum between her teeth.