November 4, 2023.
My mother had always forbidden sleepovers. No matter how well she knew my friends or their parents. I had gotten into the habit of asking despite knowing her answer ahead of time. A no, followed by a speech I had grown to memorize.
I would ask, she would shout, we would fight, and we would do this almost every second week.
One day I asked, prepared as though I were her teleprompter, but she didn’t go according to her script. No one had given her the licence to improvise.
I chose to ignore that, because my 10 years of persistent nagging had awarded me a bird in the hand. I was so excited to do all the classic sleepover activities, I had made a mental itinerary and hoped we had enough time to tick them all.
1. Help Aunty Nicki make the sides for the braai in an attempt to get on her good side and receive another sleepover invite.
2. Swim in the pool but stopping as soon as I swallow any pool water, pool water gives me the worst tummy ache.
3. Help my buddy Benji steal a bottle of 1818 from his dads mini bar.
4. Watch Music and Lyrics, featuring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, whilst my friends couple up and touch each other under the blankets.
[preferably in that order]
Before we could do any of that I went outside to help Dezzi find more sticks for the fire. He spotted a perfect stick in the tree and pulled out his slingshot. The whole week he had been claiming he had perfect aim and planned to prove it by having a stone in his slingshot hit the loose tree branch.
He aimed, he missed. We laughed.
A thud abruptly cut us short.
He had killed two birds with one stone.
We did what what was necessary to get my perfect sleepover dream back on its track. We each took a sip from the vodka bottle, collected the plastic tray that contained the meat, placed the birds next to each other on the tray and laid them to rest in the hole their dog had just dug to shit in. We covered the hole and jumped into the pool to mask the smell of guts with chlorine.
We killed two birds with one stone.
All that was left was the friendship incest session.
Cover Art: Michel Majurs, Split (2000).
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