All me

She goes outside to sun her legs and lies on the grass, anticipating
ants. Sure enough, there's a tickle against her skin and she leaps up,
scratching feverishly. Moving slowly to the bench, she glances at her
feet, pale pink against the grass. Her toes are hairy but she loathes
plucking them because it makes her eyes water, and anyway no one is
going to see them. As she sits, she notices a pale film of sawdust on
her wrist, left over from cleaning out the guinea-pigs. Experimentally,
she licks at it and then reprimands herself for doing something so
strange. She hopes no one was watching. Slumping back, uncomfortable
and getting cold because of the breeze, a ladybird crosses her line of
vision. It twirls around in circles on a twig near her head, as if it
doesn't know where it is meant to be going. Maybe it doesn't. She turns
her head away, feeling itchy again. Things with more than four legs
give her the creeps.

Maybe she doesn't like it outside after all, although she desperately
wants to get a bit of colour in her skin before she goes back to
school. She tells herself she'll have plenty more sun in Lyon on the
French exchange, and her partner has a pool. She suddenly wishes that
it was hotter, and gets up to go inside, leaving her clogs lying on the
lawn. The gravel of the drive is soothingly painful, and she savours
the feeling when she reaches the smooth patio slates. There is an
insect bite on her wrist where the sawdust had been, no wonder she had
been so itchy. There is one on her neck too. When she goes inside she
sees the cupboards are washed in sunlight, and she goes so close that
they fill her whole vision with endless white and she feels like she is
falling.