The slides were out of focus from this angle, but Lauren couldn’t bring herself to raise her head. There were thirty minutes to go, but Lauren didn’t think she was going to take anything in.
Her chin dug into the back of her hands, and she really tried to concentrate, but her gaze kept shifting to the plastic water bottle that stood between her and knowledge.
She didn’t like buying bottled water. It was expensive and wasteful, and really bad for the environment.
Normally she had a metal bottle with a silver screwcap, the body covered in vibrant rainbow stripes. And somewhere, somewhen, she’d lost it.
It had fallen from her bag, or she’d put it down and left it, but when she’d gone to fill it that morning, it wasn’t there.
So now she had this plastic in front of her instead, and everything was wrong.
It wasn’t the reusable nature, or even the flag it was wrapped in.
Her mum hadn’t reacted when Lauren told her she liked girls. It was like she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to deal.
Lauren had waited for some reaction as the heat crept into her cheeks, then she’d just gone back to her room.
But last Christmas, when she’d returned to halls, she’d found it in her bag. When she opened the paper and saw the rainbow that swaddled the bottle, she’d cried.
Now Lauren had lost it.
And after the illness, which had been oh so fucking quick, she would never get another.
She stared at the plastic bottle, the lecturer’s words floating past her, and in her mind searched for her mother’s most precious gift to her, unaware of the tears running over her chin and onto her folded hands.
Calum Kerr is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing. He founded NFFD back in 2012, and is back writing flash after a break.
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