Today I went to a
Red-Cross Baby-sitting course.
And we had to pair up with a
partner,
so the girl sitting next to me
turned to me to
practice
heimlich positioning.
So she stood up behind me and
put her arm across my chest and
we went through that position,
and then tried the other one,
where she put her arms around my stomach.
I could feel her breathing against my
ear, and her hair smelled
sweet and fresh and for the first time ever,
I wondered if my hair smelled like my
watermelon conditioner.
Then we switched,
and I put us through the
first position,
and I liked hugging her waist and
feeling her against me.
We sat down after that and learned about
CPR, and the instructor said we wouldn't be
practicing listening for breathing on
our partners,
and I let my mind wander to
a place where we could,
where she put her ear down
to my lips,
and her brown and blonde hair
fell over her ear and onto
my face.
I shook myself out of that
reverie,
and tried to pay attention,
but my eyes were drawn to her,
so I studied her instead.
An over-large grey sweatshirt,
with an icon of two green hockey sticks.
Blue denim shorts with
light blue lace on the ends,
black hightops,
and her socks were the same
hot pink as my own
shoelaces.
We practiced bandaging each other
up, so I wrapped
a strip of gauze around
her right forearm
and she did the same to my left.
And at the very end she rolled up her sleeves,
and I saw why she had me
wrap up her right arm.
Her left contained a
tile of faint scars,
criss-crossed like
spider-webs,
along her arm.