Tree house in The Forest

We're walking in the forest by my house and we're quiet. But, my chest isn't quiet. It's screaming at me to tell Billie to slow down. She knows the path, jumping where logs make bumps in the mud, bending low where trees form short canopies. I bump and scratch and trip and follow with a frustrating sort of blindness that makes me think that maybe I should just tell her to stop. But, I don't because I'm scared for no reason.

There's a little house not entirely build into a thick tree that doesn't lean too straight and looks a little like it's about to fall, but it doesn't. It just stands there and stares at us, waiting for us to get into the house before the pallid winter drizzle drenches our boots.

Inside the little treehouse, it's warm even if that's not possible. Billie nudges me onto a beanbag that swallows me and holds on so I can't get up. There are small white fairy lights on the ceiling and it's blinding me a bit.

She tucks her blue, blue hair behind her ear, crouching by a small compartment between the wall and the tree, pulling a notebook out of it. It's stuffed and spilling its contents from its sides and as she hands it to me, silver glitter stains our hands. But, the page she shows me is orange. A goldfish sort of tangerine.

"It's our vision board," she says, sitting down beside me. Our thighs are close and warm. Burning.

The notebook trembles in my hands. "It's nice," I say.

But, it's not what she wants to hear. She flips onto the following page, circling tiny women wearing strapless bras and high-waisted bikini bottoms. They're the sort of naked that people consider visual art.

"It's beautiful, Lockland," she says, her words in my ear, lips hot against my earlobes. "The human body, I mean. I want our film to be like that. Raw. Sexy."

I don't agree, but I don't disagree. Instead, I sit there and stare until staring burns my eyes and she thinks I like it too much to look away. But, all I can see are those tiny, tiny small fairy lights on the backs of my eyelids. They're swimming warmly like goldfish. Golden in a place where there's no light.

We eat sugary waffles out of a tin and stare at the collages in her book, fingers glittery and red, warm but not safe in her little house of trapped dreams and wayward desires.