Fox in the Ear

Alina had spent the last three days here, always on the same stretch, over the same bridge and the same gravel. And every time, she had not been alone. On Monday it had been Robert. Robert Pattinson, from Harry Potter IV, and also the one from Twilight. She laughed quietly to herself as she ran. Her, in dark blue constellation leggings, a grey shirt, breathing hard, and him as if he were on a secret mission for British intelligence. On Tuesday it had been Richard. Gere. A little too old, but that was exactly what appealed to her: the Pretty Woman Richard, elegant, grey at the temples, the type with polished shoes, while she herself looked beside him like a schoolgirl in gym class. She could practically feel people’s looks: Of course, there she goes again, that cheap little thing, running around with sugar daddy Gere now.

On Wednesday, finally, Johnny. Depp, unmistakably as Captain Jack Sparrow. He arrived with tousled hair braided with beads, a slipped bandana, no tricorn hat. And yet he moved so lightly, so uniquely. Even the ducks by the water seemed to stare while he shuffled along beside her, mumbling and gesturing some half prophecy to himself. She almost tripped over a branch, so tangled was she in the memory.

“Three days, three guys,” she muttered. The worst part, the absolute worst, was that none of them had been real. All figments of imagination, crushes she painted in bright colors inside her head like a hormone-flooded teenager. Deep inside her, without consciously thinking it, lay that small, silent knowledge that the voices and images did not come from nowhere. That she had built them herself. And Lukas, the bastard, was proud of it, she knew that. In her head she heard him: Well, Ina, three men in three days? Pattinson, Gere, and Depp? Impressive.

A girl was still allowed to dream, right…

She snorted, and in the next moment she saw herself running. The gravel crunched beneath her shoes, sunlight cast stripes through the willow leaves, she heard the dull pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Over the bridge, past the lamppost, along the water. That was how she ran in her imagination, chin lifted, as if the whole scene belonged to her. Reality was more sobering. She was sitting on the bench. Right next to the gravel path she had been fantasizing about so vividly. Never relaxed enough, her gaze fixed rigidly on the water. Her running shoes gleamed, brand new. Yes, she had started running. At least a little. And only when she thought no one would see. As soon as she believed she felt eyes on her back, she stopped. Mini stages, where she paid more attention to whether someone was watching than to her actual performance. She sat there doing what she always did. Dreaming. Instead of running.

She knew movement would do her good. That her back longed for it, her legs, her arms. Even the pressure in her chest, that soul ache that wrapped itself around her body like a strap. So she closed her eyes and imagined herself crossing the bridge. How the sun drew a rainbow in the water, how she brushed the railing with long strides, as if she could fly. How she could carry all of it with her, the back pain, the pulling in her legs, the pounding heart, and turn it into something beautiful.

She had managed to go outside. That was her victory. Not the steps on the gravel, not the bridge, not the path. Going out. Allowing herself to be seen. In that ridiculous constellation-sports outfit that screamed for attention, even though she wanted nothing more than to be invisible. Just like her heart-cherry-pink winter jacket she did not wear because she liked it. Quite the opposite. She challenged herself, wanted to endure those colors. To tease herself out, force herself to show up even when everything in her screamed against it. She did that often. Makeup was almost unbearable, at most a discreet line of eyeliner, a hint of tinted lip balm, and those tamed, medium-brown hairs that took more effort than she wanted to admit. But sometimes she put a single earring in her ear, a fox. A smiling head in front, the backing a dangling tail. That was her pattern. Showing herself without really being there. Staging herself while a part of her sabotaged it at the same time. Lukas loved exactly that contradiction. That was why it was so hard to draw clear boundaries between him and herself. Sometimes she no longer knew who was driving whom, whether he spoke her thoughts or whether she imagined them as his voice.

She pictured herself gasping, sweating, stumbling, and the whole world laughing. That was exactly what she feared now and prevented it, the flushed head, the sudden burning in her face when she ran too long. And as if he had been waiting for that moment, he was there. Lukas. Or what she called Lukas.

“A tail in your ear, and not even the right one.” Right. His humor. Dirty, playful. “Oh, Ina. The fox is just like you. Cunning, pretty, and gone the moment someone looks.”

She swallowed, bit down on her lower lip. He was right. Of course he was right, that was what made him so unbearable.

“You wear the thing because you want someone to notice. But God forbid anyone says something. You want to sink into the ground. Like today, when that guy at the traffic light asked whether it was a fox or a cat. You stammered, smiled, ran for the bus. I swear, your head was redder than your winter jacket. But you know what, Ina… this is all you.”

He gestured vaguely at the water, the willows, the gravel path. “The nature that follows you, the bridge that carries you, that’s you. Don’t think you can run away from yourself. You’re shouting with every step: Look at me! An accident of physics on legs, cream-colored sneakers—hey, are those glittering? A fox in your ear, and you think nobody notices?”

Something in her tightened, because his words touched too closely on what she never admitted to herself. And then came the anger. Anger at Lukas. Anger at herself. Anger at that endless chatter in her head that ruined every little thing, twisted every smile. And before she knew what was happening, it happened. She jumped up so violently she thought the bench would tip over. With all the force of the pent-up energy nailed into her chest, she flung her arm up, drew back, and her fist crashed into his face. Lukas toppled backward, slid off the bench, landed on the ground. Only water, wind, gravel. No movement where he should have been. And a tiny, terrible thought: If he had really fallen… whose face had she just punched?