The Ned Wood Archive

Ellie

Phoebe can tell soon as she gets back to the tent.  She’d sussed out that Ellie had planned to meet up that morning.  Now she susses that it hasn’t happened.  She tells Ellie that she, Abi, and Lauren were planning to cruise the markets for glamware a bit later, soon as those two get up, and she expects Ellie to come with them.  Then she gets Ellie to tell her all the gossip from Friday.  What happened, what didn’t happen, how she feels about it, and what’s she’s going to do now. 

And Ellie tells her.  She tries not to expose all of her raw emotional nerves, but they show through anyway.  Ellie’s not one for bursting into tears, what she does is go silent or answer “dunno” to the direct questions.  She starts factual – they know about Menstrual Cramp anyway, but she goes over the breakfast and the bands again and how her phone ran down cos she didn’t have her booster pack and how they just walked and talked and then she tells about Dead Pioneers and about Mysterines and about Sharon van Etten and she tells about that orchestra and that classical music that was just right at the end of the evening.  

It’s just the two of them sat outside the tent. On the grass, but that’s fine. It’s dry. It’s too hot inside and neither of them can work out how those two can sleep through it, but there you go. A couple of the lads next door try and start a conversation, but even they can pick up the “this is girls’ talk” vibe so they leave Ellie and Phoebe alone. Gradually Ellie opens up and moves on from just the facts to the emotional stuff too. She tells Phoebe about sitting at Carhenge watching the people and just chatting and about hanging out up in the treehouse thing at the Woods and looking for mermaids in the lake and about the kids playing chess up at the Park and how good the Lebanese food was and how it was so much fun just being with him.

And then Ellie tells Phoebe that it was a really fabulous day.  She says that she’d felt a connection with Joe.  She tells how he made her feel special.  She even tells Phoebe what Joe had said about her being the sun and about going up the Ribbon Tower and giving him her number and agreeing to meet up at the showers.  

“So, basically, he didn’t turn up and he didn’t call,” says Phoebe.  “Ain’t that just typical?”  And she gives Ellie a massive hug and Ellie knows that any grumpiness from first thing that morning has just evaporated quicker than the dew under that morning’s baking sun.