Free Burning Moon by Jo Watson

life.
    And so I blew some more.
    Harder.
    Maybe a bit too hard.
    I winced as I caught the glimmer of a tiny fleck of spittle tumbling through the air with a trajectory that put it on a collision course with his finger.
    But no matter how hard…
    Or how much…
    That lash wasn’t going anywhere.
    So much for my much-needed wish.
    “Oh my God, I can’t believe this !” I jumped up and flung my arms in the air.
    “What?” Damian was clearly taken aback by my sudden and rather dramatic outburst.
    “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or shoot myself.”
    He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
    “Nothing is going right in my life at the bloody moment and I keep making a complete idiot of myself. I mean, I set myself on fire— fire, for heaven’s sake —and now I can’t even blow an eyelash off a finger, and, and, and…”
    Damian’s eyes followed me as I started to pace up and down the embankment waving my arms in the air like a rag doll in a tumble dryer.
    “This has got to be some kind of elaborate plot against me! My life cannot be going this badly, surely?”
    “Lilly…” His tone was soft and soothing, which made me want to slap him. “That stuff could have happened to anyone.”
    “Name one person that it’s happened to. One person.”
    Damian rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “This girl at university once wore mismatching shoes to class,” he offered pleadingly.
    I swung around and looked him directly in the eye. “That’s hardly the same. Besides, did her fiancé leave her at the altar the day before and did she embarrassingly throw up on everyone in class? No! ”
    I kicked some sand into the water, hoping it would serve as a good exclamation point for the end of that sentence. “You know what these past few days have felt like? They’ve felt like someone, or something, has been conspiring against me, turning my whole life into some kind of sick joke. I’m almost expecting Ashton Kutcher to rise up out of the water disguised as a merman and shout, ‘Surprise. You’ve been Punk’d .’”
    I kicked some more sand into the water, trying to make the mother of all exclamation marks. It was all very dramatic. But I didn’t care, because that eyelash was the straw that broke this camel’s back. It wasn’t about the lash. This was about the fact that I felt victimized by the world. That I felt like somewhere, out there, was a cinema full of people with popcorn and Coke laughing at me.
    “He-he-he-he. Look, she’s gonna get sick, she’s gonna get sick.” *Hides behind a tub of popcorn*
    “Ha-ha, look she’s wearing pajamas on the plane.” *Laughs so hard, Coke shoots out of nose*
    “Wa-ha-ha, she’s on fire! She’s on fire!” *Slaps knee and sprays popcorn everywhere*
    I was angry, and kicking the sand into the water wasn’t generating the kind of punctuation marks that could even remotely emphasize my current state of distress; in fact, my toe was sore. I think I hit a shell or, knowing my luck, a giant, rusty metal anchor, and now I was bound to get tetanus.
    “I guess I’m just tired of crappy stuff happening to me.” I walked over to the table, sat down, and hoped that we were close enough to the Bermuda Triangle for it to magically suck me in.
    “Guess what my wish was?” I said.
    “What?”
    “That bad shit would stop happening to me.”
    Damian walked over to the table and sat down. He looked genuinely concerned.
    “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it, but do you know what it felt like when he didn’t show up, in front of five hundred guests?”
    “I can’t even imagine, Lilly.” Damian reached across the table, and for a moment I thought he was going to hold my hand, but at the last second he picked up the bottle of water and poured us both a glass.
    I mentally sighed; my life was a complete disaster zone.
    We sat there in silence, sipping our sparkling water and listening to the bubbles pop and fizz. For some reason I thought about