Mycelium Memories

Del

2030

The rough ridges of tree bark bit into the worry lines of Del’s forehead. She crushed herself closer, nose flattening against the trunk. Breathe in. Breathe out. Become one with the moss and the ferns and the crisp packet under that bush over there. 

Focus Del, you are a tree. Not a hot sweaty mess of flesh. A tree. 

An itch niggled her shoulder where the cotton seam of her t-shirt rubbed. Her skin against the bark scraped like sandpaper as she shifted to scratch without removing her face. She imagined she had interrupted the supply line of an ant colony. The tap tap tap of thousands of insect feet replaced the rush of her heartbeat in her ears. She imagined them crawling over her skin.

Be. a. Tree. Trees don’t give a shit about ants on them.

She listened for the tree’s growing pains. Like the aches in her knees that she sometimes woke up with. Like the anxiety mum said she, ‘just needed to push through’ to make friends at the new school.  Just be yourself, she had said, as if being herself wasn’t the whole reason she’d had to change schools in the first place. 

Trees on the other hand, didn’t care about being awkward or odd. Tree’s just were.

‘Come ooon. Are you guys done yet?’ 

She cracked an eye open to glare at Alex. That girl had somehow managed to make even the maroon St Mary’s uniform look good. She should have been out of place in the woods, with her designer bag, perfectly contoured makeup and acrylic nails. Instead she looked like a fairy. Dappled light caught her tight bleached curls in an orange halo, and her multiple piercings tinkled like bells when she moved her head. Del noted that this tinkerbell had chosen her bag to sit on, likely crushing the half eaten sandwich in there beneath her perfectly formed ass. She met Del’s stare, daring her to say something about it. Del said nothing. A tree did not start fights over sandwiches. She shut her eyes and concentrated. 

‘You feel anything?’ Mara asked a little breathlessly from the other side of the trunk. Del could feel the heat of their fingers almost touching were their arms wrapped around the tree, but she didn’t think that was what was meant.

‘I don’t feel it yet,’ she admitted.

The heat from their almost touching fingertips disappeared as Mara came to inspect her progress. She could feel the closeness of the other girl’s body, smell the faint whiff of strawberry and vanilla perfume and sour coffee breath. She wondered if Mara could tell she’d given up on being a tree. She hoped the crystal deodorant mum insisted she use would hold up against the fresh flush of sweat she could feel trickling down her arms.