Flickr Fiction Friday: The Power of Eve

His face was red.

Their faces always got red, or, sweat flushed and ruddy if their skin was dark.

They always sputtered, blinked, protested, entreated, hands clenched and angry or limp and defeated. They always groveled, begged, a time or two they’d threatened, but it hadn’t gotten them anywhere, hadn’t changed a thing for any of them, didn’t shift a pebble from the ton of gravel that was the power of Eve when she’d made up her mind.

“No.” She’d said it coolly, or as coolly as one could say no when one was caught by surprise, lying in the yard, reading, trying to snatch a cool breeze from this overly warm evening. Why her mother hadn’t warned her, she had no idea. It was irritating, how Mom and Dad were always trying to surprise her, to get her to be spontaneous, come “out of her shell,” act more her age. And now this boy was kneeling on the edge of her blanket, and she’d had to close her book, make nice and talk to him, and now turn him down cold.

His face was red, but for once it seemed to come more from shame than from anger. He raked his thick fingers through his hair, and it stood up like rust colored exclamation points. He scratched his ear, and furrowed his fuzzy eyebrows.

“Oh.” He nodded a bit, swallowed. “Well, okay. Sorry I asked.”

“Don’t be sorry.” She sighed, fastened a button on her shirt and rolled over onto her back. Above was the fractal formation of the tower, the sky a smudged and fading yellow-orange.

It was weird to have a power line in their back field. Almost every house in the subdivision had one next to their back fence, high voltage wires zapping their pace-makers and making them fear brain cancer, but Eve’s folks had one right on their property. The city gave them a whole three acres because of it, and because of it, they had a bigger house (to go with their bigger chance of brain cancer) than anyone else on the block. Nobody wanted to live there, underneath the high-voltage lines snapping and sparking, but everyone in Rancho Heights envied Eve’s family. They envied them their swimming pool, the pergola with the kiwi vines off the back porch, the mini-golf course, their gazebo with the wisteria and the water feature, and their great big rose and vegetable garden. Eve and her sisters had been the most popular girls at Rancho High forever, and Eve was in even higher demand with every boy on the football team. This boy cleared his throat.

“I wouldn’t have asked, but… well Conan said…”

“Conan is, who? The nose tackle guy? Black hair? Ski-jump nose?”

“Yeah. Conan… he said you were really good.”

Eve sighed, and pushed her hair back from her forehead. “Well, I appreciate the compliment, but ‘good’ is not the point. It’s not fair to me, you know.”

“I know. I mean, I think I know. But…if it’d help, I could pay you…?”

Eve rolled her eyes and sat up, waving her arm at the house, the yard, their possessions. “I don’t need money, really.”

He nodded, chagrined, rubbing his damp palms on his jeans. “Yeah. I kind of got that.”

Eve looked uncomfortable. “Well, the district pays me anyway. Look, I’m not trying to be mean. I do it because I love to. It’s just – every year, it’s the same thing. The whole football team starts talking about me, and then it’s a mad rush, and everybody wants me at once. It’s almost the end of the semester. I can’t, really. I just don’t have time.”

He stood, brushing invisible grass off of his knees with big hands. “Yeah. Coach said you’d say that.” His face is plainly regretful, but a smile crinkles his eyes, and uncovers an unexpected flash of humor. “Maybe next semester?”

“First week?” Her eyebrows arched above the metal frames of her glasses. “It won’t help to have this conversation all over again at the end of next semester.”

“First week,” he promised. “Coach said you’d say that, too.”

She stood and slid her feet into her sandals. “You’re a defensive guard, aren’t you?”

He blinked, then grinned. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“You’ve got to be the biggest guy in the whole high school, and you’re new. Where’d you transfer from, Texas?”

“Montana.” He looked down at her, smiled and tried to speak quietly as she walked him to the gate. “I hear you graduated when you were thirteen.”

“Fourteen,” Eve shrugged and pushed up her glasses. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Seems like a big deal to me.” He looks properly impressed, then his eyes light with a flash of humor. “Senior year must’ve sucked though, huh? Couldn’t even drive yet!”

Eve winced. “Thanks for reminding me.” She held open the gate.

He paused, his big hands suddenly awkward. He studied his nails, shoved his hand into his pocket. His face was red.

“We’re playing Calistoga Sunday night. Probably the last game I’ll be in for awhile, Coach is gonna bench me when he gets my semester grades, but… maybe you wanna come? Grab some tacos at Tito’s after?”

“Me?” Eve, glancing around the empty yard, at the pergola, the gazebo, hears only the soft splash of the water from the fountain and feels immediately silly at her own question – And her hackles rise. She hates sounding stupid. She hates feeling like the world is laughing at her. She hates kids her own age, hates their little in-groups and code words. “You aren’t going to get anything out of me with tacos and football games. I’m still not going to do it.”

He took a step back, stung by the frost in her voice. “No. We said next semester. I’m just asking about the tacos for no reason. I mean, I mean, I’m asking for a reason, I mean, I have a reason, but not that one.” His face is redder now, and his ears glow like live coals. He hasn’t run away, though, hasn’t taken his eyes from her face.

“Oh.” Eve blinked, glanced back toward the edge of the yard where her blanket and her books lay stacked beneath the power lines. “I… sorry. Yeah. That might be really fun.” She looked up at him, pushed up her glasses and tried out a smile. “Thanks.”

Eve watched him shamble down the drive with that particular loose-limbed, football player walk, and was surprised how good she felt. Hope had the uncanny power of making Eve feel like a ton of gravel had been lifted from her shoulders. She wandered back to her blanket and flopped down on her back, dreaming bigger dreams than the tower above her.


This week’s picture(entitled Power) was taken by Flickr photographer Michael Nagel, and will likely be Flicktionated by the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Ms. Teaandcakes, Elimare, Chris, Aquafortis, Valshamerlyn, and Miss Mari.

9 Replies to “Flickr Fiction Friday: The Power of Eve”

  1. Oh, wow, that was lovely. I liked the way she was so certain of everything, even her own immortality, but he could still surprise her by being a genuine person …

  2. I wasn’t sure at first what he wanted from her, either, until the whole football team plus coach got mentioned. But that made it fairly clear to me, plus her description of the tower rising in a fractal pattern made me assume it was math.

    This brought back memories of being a chemistry tutor my junior year of high school, which I hadn’t thought about in years…It now boggles my mind that I could ever have tutored chemistry.

  3. Oh dear. Sorry, Donal. The Secret of American High Schools is that *all the football players are dead thick, and all the nerdy girls have to tutor them.* Generally, they only think about grades when they’re being threatened with being benched.

    *This is all, of course, a vast and horrific generalization.

  4. What does he want her to do? Is it secret American High School things or did I miss something?

    American high school things are so complicated.

  5. What does he want her to do? Is it secret American High School things or did I miss something?

    American high school things are so complicated.

  6. What does he want her to do? Is it secret American High School things or did I miss something?

    American high school things are so complicated.

  7. Power. How appropriate. And Isolation, of course, to go right along with Power. Interesting, the juxtaposition of her power and his power. A neat, self-contained story, which makes you think. About power, and isolation.

    Liked it. It’s left me thinking.

  8. Power. How appropriate. And Isolation, of course, to go right along with Power. Interesting, the juxtaposition of her power and his power. A neat, self-contained story, which makes you think. About power, and isolation.

    Liked it. It’s left me thinking.

  9. Power. How appropriate. And Isolation, of course, to go right along with Power. Interesting, the juxtaposition of her power and his power. A neat, self-contained story, which makes you think. About power, and isolation.

    Liked it. It’s left me thinking.

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