turn into something

“Who’s that -- ah, I’d know that jacket anywhere -- yes, it’s Kristie! How are you!”

She was singing:

Believe you can shine when you're silver
and I promise you gold
And whenever you're dark inside,
don't let go

My insides swelled with a startling sense of mortality. Unbuckling my seatbeat and throwing it away, I rose to my knees and wrapped my arms around the driver's side headrest. The Subaru's broken struts jarred my hips painfully over each pothole, but I was absolutely consumed with a strange, almost superhuman sense of here and now. I rested my cheek on my folded arms and gazed out the window, up at the full moon, as we rolled through a stretch of country somewhere behind Clarendon.

Jess's boyfriend Tim looked at me quizically, but I think he learned to stop asking questions a long time ago.

"I didn't feel close enough to you," I told her before she could ask, and grinned. No matter how many times we spam I love you to each other I don't feel like I can ever really express how incredible, how unique and beautiful and loved my best friend makes me feel.

We pulled up to our destination - a pizza shop - to find it dim and the WET FLOORS signs out even though I had phoned in my order twenty minutes prior. I wasn't going to take no for an answer, so we marched up to the door and I pulled my fist back to pound when it unlocked and opened inward. I hesitated, fist still at the ready, and looked up (and up and up, he must've been at least 6'5) to a man who's nametag read MIKE. I grinned sheepishly.

"Pollard?"
I nodded. His face brightened and he produced a box from around the corner, pushing it into my hands with a smile.
"Go on. Take it."
"For free?"
He flashed his teeth in a big grin. "I already voided it out. Go for it. Have a good one."

I decided it was a good day if a big tall skyscraper of a man gave me a free dinner when it must've looked like I was getting ready to punch his face in.

Of course, the best tried-and-true remedy for any sort of heartache is to Party Like a Rockstar. The first time I drank with Jess, I rummaged through her cupboards, looking for something to drink from. I found a clear shotglass, which simply read, "CHAD." I don't know who Chad is, but it struck me as funny, and has been my official shotglass since.

"Chad me," I ordered Tim, holding out my glass.

He scoffed as he poured my drink. "I ain't drinkin' no vodka unless it's Smirnoff. Nothin' else has the taste I look for in my vodka."

Jess snorted. "Well, we're the Sisterhood of the Discount Liquors, and this is $8.75," she announced, throwing it back.

With the first and second shots, we tried to come up with reasonable (and some not-so-reasonable) scenarios as to why Mr. Craigslist had gone AWOL. By the fourth shot he was loudly declared an anal assassin, and by the sixth all misery was forgotten as we dragged out the Larkin tapes for a Buzz Ballads karaoke session.

"I WANT TO BE THE GIRL WITH THE MOST CAKE," I wailed into the voicemails of people I haven't spoken to in years. "HE ONLY LOVES THOSE THINGS BECAUSE HE LOVES TO SEE THEM BREAK."

After awhile I couldn't find my phone, and I was running out of numbers anyway, so we headed to bed. Being alone sobers me up quick, and I thought to myself, No, really, why?

Oh how I've shouted, how I've screamed:
"Take notice.
Take interest.
Take me with you."

I tucked my arms behind my head, placidly watching the ceiling fan turn in the darkness...

...realization dawning on me that,
as a sub,
you are one of the few lucky enough to understand, in all its bittersweet patriotic glory, the meaning of the verb wait.

The wind never blew so hard as today, even up on the mountain, where lately it’s been warm enough to sun yourself on the hillside and blow off your coursework, half-listening to strains of music playing from tailgates.

 

Coming back to the Rut was a welcome detour from the unpredictability of life at SVC; I planned my weekend so I could sleep in solitude, write, even bake cupcakes, and I hate baking because it’s so damn exact. I really would rather have some leeway to create, which I have with cooking, but I was kind of grateful for the mindlessness of the whole thing. I held the mixer in place (Black & Decker pecker wrecker! I giggled to myself, reminded of the constant togetherness of suite-style living) and gazed out the window at the sunshine glinting off the young blades of grass.

 

Help, I’m alive.

 

Some time later I pulled the golden cupcakes out of the oven and patted myself on the back for pulling my thoughts together long enough to do something logically. When I was finished frosting them, I moved to the sink to rinse the spoon when something in me flipped its lid.

 

I was about to rinse frosting off the spoon.

 

Who does that?!

 

I suddenly felt old and upset with myself. I was pretty certain I was in a healthy, youthful mindset and tried to fill my days with simple impulsive things that make me smile. I am when I’m in my element on the mountainside, anyway. What is it about Rutland that brings me down so much?

 

Earlier today I had visited the farmer’s market, just because, all done up in greens and sandals even though it was a little cold and windy. Outside the Co-Op, a Twelve Tribes musician was tuning his fiddle. The sound pulled at my insides as I made my way through a small crowd to get to the vendors.

 

“Love your shirt! C’mon in!”

 

I looked up to a woman of about twenty grinning broadly, a big golden hoop in her nose and a massive mop of frizzy black hair pulled back. She looked me right in the eyes. I felt good and warm and smiled. Everyone in the market looked me in the eyes while we spoke, honest people doing it all by hand.

 

After tasting a pretty intense goat’s milk blue, I stopped and chatted with an energetic lady at the Putney Winery table.

 

“So,” I said, eyeing the taster bottles, “say I just had a really bitter blue cheese, which of these would stand up to it?”

 

She immediately launched into wine-pilot mode and poured me a blueberry wine – “the nose is very deceiving, you’re thinking it’s going to taste real sweet, right? Well, taste it, go on – that feeling you’ve got on your tongue, like this” – she clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth – “that’s from the tannins in the apple skin. So it’s really very dry, very crisp.”

I was just so in awe of her enthusiasm and her encyclopedic knowledge of their wares. I nodded while she kept topping off my Dixie cup, tasting rhubarb and apple-maple and black currant wine. I walked away a little buzzed and very introspective. Outside, the sunlight sparkled, the fiddle was singing.

 

It didn’t feel like Rutland at all. It felt just like Bennington, or Church Street, or the bargain market in Belgium.  Some place with a sense of community and humanity. Not at all the Rutland I remembered, the one that ties up my tongue and casts a shadow on my personal growth. Maybe I’ve been looking at it in the wrong light.

 

Or maybe I’m growing toward it. A little tender sprout getting some backbone.

 

I licked the spoon clean of lilac-colored buttercream, flung it in the sink, and went outside, flopping down in the sun. Sasha came trotting over and curled up by my side.

 

With my fingers in her fur all warm from the sunshine, I tried to imagine what it was like to be her, knowing full well she’d lick the spoon every time she got the chance.

 

I want to be like that, too.

 

 

Master Marty (grand-manager of Domino's Pizza, Bennington) broke the subtle understanding between submissive and employer that submissive qualities are not subhuman, which I respected him so much for supposedly understanding.

He stood facing the window, slow-moving cars and grey sky on windshields reflected in empty eyes, in silence. I felt a rush of adrenaline when it dawned on me what it was about the situation that looked so familiar.

Get out.
No, please. I fucking love you, listen to me!
Get out.

I took a breath and braced, because that look is, in my experience anyway, worn by one of you about to lose control, who steadies himself and prepares the barbs to save face.

"Go," he said in a low, steady voice. "I don't want to see you. I don't want to hear you. Get out now." 

I looked at him placidly, taking time to digest his words, knowing my presence was infuriating him beyond belief.

He turned quickly and glared. "Faster." 

I exposed my palms to him in compliance and shrugged, smiling. I remember what it's like to beg, and I'm not like that anymore, Master, I sneered in my head and not without great satisfaction.

Without the slightest twinge of guilt or the tug of a proverbial chain on my neck I pulled my uniform over my head, folded it neatly, and tucked my keys to the shop in the folds of the fabric.

Unfortunately for you, I answer to a much crueler Master than you could ever hope to be, Master Marty, and He is called self-respect. If you knew what that was, you probably wouldn't be where you are, throwing food at the wall when things don't go your way, verbally abusing respectable men who should have long since retired and have devoted fifteen or more years of their service to you, not because there's nowhere else to go but because they respect you and care what happens to your business, which is more than I can say for you now.

A respectable Dominant inspires obedience through the want to please, not fear and terror.
If I knew years ago what I know now...

Well, anyway.

I'll try anything and work myself into the ground trying to do the best damn job I possibly can. I find no shame in cooking to pay for bills in college, or selling merchandise, or answering telephones. It does shame me to allow someone to speak to me like that.

Those are my thoughts and my life's mission,

to signify.

 

 

On this particular slow Sunday afternoon, we were standing behind the register, a mass of black stripes and wide grins. I hugged myself tightly, arms crossed over my chest, in our conversation punctuated with loud, sudden bursts of laughter.

 

“Then I went home and re-evaluated my life,” I pointed out, “and realized I had just spent three-and-a-half hours at work for fun.” We laughed, especially because today Michael had done the same.

 

And it’s not unusual for Dave, around eight o’clock in the evening, to look at his watch and say with a laugh, “Welp, it’s close enough to five. Spose I should go home soon?”

 

“This place seems like a pretty chill place to work,” Mark commented (it was a regular party, everyone just kept accumulating, even though it was just Mikey and I on the clock). Mark was a hardcore straightedge kid, and Michael seemed to like the life just fine too, something that hangs in the back of my mind. I dig it up when I have time to think.

 

I tried the capsule and I tried the smoke.

I tried to aid escape like normal folk…

…but I never seemed to get the joke.

 

Absentmindedly picking the prescription label off of the back of my cell phone in my pocket.

 

KRISTIE POLLARD TRAMADOL 50MG.

 

I scratched with my thumbnail, half-listening to their banter (“His name is Fat Man, and he lives in Rutland, there’s videos of him on Youtube eating shit like, bowls of gravy, whenever we hang out we drive by his house…”) feeling amused and alive, but mostly sunk into my own thoughts, something I call “counting chickens”.

 

The old adage says; “Don’t count your chickens ‘til they hatch.”

 

But it stops there. I think a lot of people forget to “count their chickens.” – pick apart their feelings, count and name everything that is good and right in their world at the time.

 

Earlier that day, breathing frost hard from the effort of de-icing Icky Thump and waiting for my car to thaw, I had checked my phone to find a text:

 

Hay watch your self commin in roads not to bad but a lil slick take your time and b safe. Mikey

 

 I giggled to myself because of Mikey’s horrendous spelling, but my muscles stopped seizing and shaking the cold out of me almost instantly, and I felt the familiar warmth of camaraderie.

 

Truth is, nobody really wants to slap stickers on CDs or explain time and time again that 4.99 after mail-in rebate is not 4.99 at the register. But we do it and we do it together. We want to come in because of each other. Especially when we really don’t want to come in, when horrible customers put us in tears or box after box of insurmountable shipment is waiting, because at least we really don’t want to come in together and that’s when we need each other the most. And after a few exchanged greetings when you walk in the door, you can collect yourself and say, alright, here we go. Let’s do this.

 

In the short silence that follows a sale (somehow, it seems polite to let the customer walk out the door before resuming conversation), I told Mikey, “I’m glad I work with you guys.”

 

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I woulda bailed on this job a long time ago if it weren’t for all a’ you.”

 

 I spend my days with all my friends.

They’re the ones on who my life depends.

 

Outside, the sky had darkened quickly and the temperature dropped, a bitter and invigorating cold. I tried not to look behind me as we split, tried not to imagine packing up and preparing to go back to study, drama, and peeling pepperoni apart. I’ve perfected the art of waving someone off behind me so I don’t have to see them go.

 

The good times never seem to last.

 

In the ambient light, I removed my phone from my pocket to check it for text messages, and saw that my scratching had faded the lettering from the prescription label; all but

 

                       DO

 

which I found ironic, because that’s what those little guys are supposed to prevent from happening – doing. Doing, and feeling, and living awake.

 

Tucked away in the top drawer are my “lasts”. The last few drops of Equate Nighttime. The last few crumbles of shake and stems in a bag.  The last Tramadol.

 

All here, just in case. They’re still here because the fear of having them not here is greater than the want nearly one hundred percent of the time.

 

This little memento on my phone, the result of the nonchalant wear-and-tear nervous habit during conversation, encouraged me somehow.

 

I was chicken counting, the fascinating and highly-charged friendship of Mark and Michael, the feeling of waking up strong in the morning, pushing my limits and staying on my feet just a little longer fighting the fasciitis.

 

While alcohol changes you, cocaine empowers you, and heroin lights your fire, none of those really ever appealed to me even at my lowest. To get by, I scrambled for things that would numb and calm an anxious and hypersensitive individual, and soon became acquainted with the feeling that follows with these types of friends – awareness of your own mortality, and an alarming lack of concern.

 

Two hundred milligrams of Tramadol at once felt like being systematically disassembled from the brain down, like HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Within twenty minutes, my speech would slur mid-sentence, and I knew it was time to lay down and prepare for The Big Chill, a sudden and intense panic attack that swept all of the warmth and relaxation away leaving clean, cold, surgical steel for a soul. I’d shiver violently and struggle to raise my chest to fill my lungs, starving for oxygen. If anyone were to be present, they could see me struggle, but they couldn’t begin to empathize, and I understood what was meant that when it was said that every living creature on Earth dies alone.

 

And as quickly as it began, I ceased to care, genuinely believing each breath would be my last. Long, deep, empty sleep would follow soon after. I’d wake and pop another fifty to keep me trucking. I didn’t really hear anyone, ever. Except maybe Steve Wilson.

 

Tonight, standing still with the wind singing in my ears, biting my exposed skin, I ran the pad of my thumb over DO, thoughts of hope and adventure fresh in my heart;

 

…and resolved to go back and work on cleaning out that drawer, one crutch at a time.

"Eh," I shrugged nonchalantly, "Cry me a river."

Silence, then;

"I already have."

“…And this has never happened to me before.” I nuzzled the phone, cradling it between my shoulder and face.

 

My doctor exhaled sharply on the other end. “Hmm. Have you got any ibuprofen?”

 

“Mhm, I do. But the pain hasn’t – I haven’t needed to…”

 

“-Take any yet. Good,” he injected. “Well, ah…Don’t take this the wrong way, Ms. Pollard, but is there any possibility you’re

 

( dear God please no that doesn’t happen to people like me )

 

“Um, yeah, actually,” I spat quickly, shrilly, my voice rising with anxiety. “I mean, I’m always – but I just – I don’t want that. You know?” I laughed nervously, and more heartily than I thought I was capable of.

 

He laughed, too – a careless kind of laugh that was both soothing (you’ve probably heard this a million times before, haven’t you, and how often does it turn out to be nothing?) and taunting (well, I’ve heard this a million times before, and that’s just the nature of man, Ms. Pollard, and as a man I’ll never feel your pain. Ever.)

 

“No, I suppose you don’t. Well, we can’t be sure, but you may or may not be

 

( i’ll give you anything. am i paying in spades? )

 

so give us a call on Monday, and we’ll check you out. Until then, try not to worry about it. It could be any number of things.”

 

“Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks for the call.”

 

“No problem. Have a good night.”

 

The line fell silent, and I clung to the static in the connection’s wake.

 

The guy who put his hands on you has got nothing to do with me.

 

Sorry. Sorry. I trust you.

 

I fell over onto my side, letting the mounds of blankets break my fall, wrapping my arms around my stomach and hugging myself tight.

 

Then I started to laugh.

 

Ahahah, this is it, I thought, a little overdue, but this is it! A textbook example, a tragic and highly unlikely story, condensed into two small paragraphs at the beginning of the chapter.

 

Alcohol and its Consequences

 

Cynthia attended a party Friday night. All of her friends were there, and Jack, her crush, was there, too! Cynthia decided to have a couple shots of liquor to help her relax before approaching Jack. When Jack asked to talk to her alone upstairs, she was thrilled! But under the influence of alcohol, Cynthia and Jack made poor decisions. Now, Cynthia thinks she may be

 

( but when you come it’s like a thousand Julys )

 

What do you think Cynthia could have done differently?

 

I laughed at these improbable scenarios, right in my Healthy Living teacher’s face. Fuck you Cynthia, you stupid whore, way to go. You’re another notch on Jack’s belt now. Yeah, let’s think about what she could have done differently – we become the things we do – because she’s going to be thinking about it for the rest of her life. Over and over. Even if it goes down the sink at Planned Parenthood, that’s gonna haunt her forever.

 

I do the stuff I do for a reason. It’s not always right, but I have a reason.

Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.

Am I?

 

Ever seen Donnie Darko? When Donnie lays on his bed, laughing and crying because it all finally makes sense, waiting for the roof to fall in and end the universe as he knows it?

 

I sniffled and looked up at my own reflection in Incubus’s tank, mouth still spread in an anxiety-riddled laugh.

 

“This is ridiculous,” I told him. His turquoise fins shimmered as he chased an air bubble across the surface of the water, totally oblivious to the universe crashing down around him just outside the Plexiglass.

 

Today, the universe didn’t need to tell me I told you so.

 

I’ve never been so alone.

And I’ve never been so alive.

 

I watched placidly as a short, harried woman stalked in, plopped her purse on the counter and shoved a copy of Batman: The Dark Knight rather violently at me. "I need a return on this," she huffed, out of breath.



"Sure thing," I smiled. She looked away and drummed her fingers impatiently.



I wish I could be that important someday.



I listened as she continued to chew out Mikey for not moving fast enough as I straightened the bagging station. Something that puzzled me to no end was the concept of a gift return. Why on earth would you ever return something that was given to you? They obviously had you in mind when they picked it out for you. They went to the store and they wrapped it for you. Appreciate that effort. If you've got two, give one to someone who hasn't got one at all. A shelter maybe, or Salvation Army. Just keep giving.



Earlier that week in line at Hannaford's, an older man bundled in dirty, ragged layers and I stood together and watched our Christmas contributions take shape. Between the two of us, we were able to give the Food Shelf a whole case of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.



"Awesome," I said. We smiled at each other. I'm sure neither of us really had the money, but whatever. Whoever goes to the Food Shelf probably has even less than that. I've peeked inside those bins and seen nothing but green beans and creamed corn. I imagine if I'm ever down on my luck like that, it would help to have something a little more filling and comforting than green beans.



I saw several crisp fifties and wrinkled twenties stowed away in the woman's wallet as she opened it up to collect the twenty-four-fifty-nine from her kick to the gift horse's face, and left in a hurry without saying a word.



Mikey and I stood in silence for a minute before he raised his pen in the air pointedly.

"People oughta remember," he said, rapping the pen on the merchandise cart, "that we ARE the company. If we didn't show up, Christmas wouldn't happen at all."



I nodded and watched him push his entire body weight, maybe a scant one hundred and thirty, against the cart to get it rolling. The effort made him exhale sharply. "And if they piss us off," he sang, black eyes glittering mischievously, "weeeee get to deactivate their credit cards!"



He cackled and pushed off, sailing down the aisle.



I sat gingerly on a box of tagged returns waiting to go out behind the register, stretching my legs out to ease the pressure on my feet. I peered down into the box between my legs and tried to imagine the people who returned each one. If they were all like her. I shifted my weight and a bottlecap fell from my pocket, clattering to the floor.



I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. At work, everything escapes me for a while. The bottlecap's timely appearance in conjunction with my mental break crouched behind the register had last night's consequences hit me like a ton of bricks, and I almost toppled over as my heart pained me suddenly, and hard.



"He's lookin' at you, he is. He's all checkin' you out n' shit. I think he juss wants ta get laid. Let's fuck with um', alright?"



"E's been gone a while, 'asn't he? Actin' like a five year ol', he is! We'll find 'im, Kristie, dontcha worry…"



"When does it start feeling like you've done the right thing?"



I realized, with a wave of guilt, that I was playing the same game that generated the pile of returns beneath me.



Smile. Receive. Thank you's. And back they go.



Ever thought from here on in, your life begins and all you knew was wrong?



Except the Universe doesn't give me cash, twenty-five percent more store credit, or allow me to exchange for one of equal or lesser value. I've gotta start from scratch and do good things to deserve companionship. It wants me to learn from my mistake because there's not a whole lot of room for returns in the mechanics of the Universe.

…I’m just a sales associate.

Nope. You’re a superhero.



“I’ve been trying to eat this piece of pizza for thirty minutes now,” I groaned to Lisa, swinging my customer’s DVD over the deactivator. My stomach growled as I waved them off and stuck my fork into the dough.

Lisa took a sip of vitamin water and swallowed. “I think they wait until we almost have it to our lips before they decide to check out. It’s a conspiracy,” she said matter-of-factly, screwing on the cap before loading up the merchandise cart. I heard her sigh deeply as she and the cart rolled back onto the sales floor. It was two hours to close, and she’d apparently been there since we opened – “Today was ‘hang around the gate until Lisa opens’ day,” she had informed me with a hint of annoyance when I clocked in earlier that morning – and was scheduled to close with me, too.

My entire management team works roughly sixty hours a week between their two jobs to keep up with the economy and mounting debt. Though I’m five to twenty years their junior, depending on who you talk to, I feel ridiculous when I complain about my comparatively inane problems. No doubt Lisa’s only meal of the day would be our Sbarro’s splurge, and I wondered if Mikey had eaten at all. When he pulls his shirt off at close, I can see his spine through the pallid skin of his back.

And me, well... as a part timer, my responsibilities are nil.
It makes me feel powerless to help them.

I can use my organizational skills to help bust out a box of shipment faster. I can use my listening skills to help carry some of the load when someone needs to vent. I can try my hardest to get a smile out of them, usually at my own expense, to help pass the time. Most of the time, though, I feel I’m more of a hinderance than anything – I cower in front of intimidating customers, I can’t remember how to do a special order pickup, my employee account won’t allow me to do returns without management so they have to drop whatever they’re doing to help me. A lot.

There’s another part-timer on our team besides myself – Little Michael (“I only call him little because he’s younger than Mikey, but don’t call him that to his face,” Lisa half-whispered), a hardworking guy my age with good vibes and a genuine grin, who I only cross paths with during the busy seasons. I know he works equally hard to try to ease the pressure on Mikey and Lisa and Dave.

We don’t hear a whole lot of complaints from Dave, but Lisa tells me he needs a girlfriend.

My nest is on Mount Anthony, my broken school-issue mattress with the dent in the springs from the sheer weight of visitors, my cozy bedspread with the bamboo shoots, my Rolling Stone cutouts my roommate taped next to my head.

My mama bird is a double-edged sword. Food’s always at the ready, but it’s not always what I want. Or fully cooked. There’s transportation up the hill, but you can’t always count on it to arrive on time or even at all.

And though I’m thankful to just have a nest – a place to drop my stuff and come back to after class, and after work, and not always have to be moving, arranging, couch-surfing – after spending Christmas break back at FYE, I want to be part of it all.

I want to carry their burden, drop to my knees and beg to be permanent, transfer out and back to Rutvegas. I want to go down with my ship.

But what I want more than anything…

Riding with friends on the way to Burlington, having since exhausted the Would You Rather game, we discussed what we might do if we stumbled upon a magic lamp, one that grants us anything we desire.

“First I’d wish for a watch that changes my appearance when I wear it, so I can be in gay porn,” Corey declared. “Then I’d wish for a ridiculous amount of money…and a ton of puppies, I guess. What about you?”

“Hmm…Well,” I began slowly, “I think if I wished for a lot of money, I’d get lazy. I get by okay without looks, so that’s fine. I think if I tried to correct the problems of the world, I’d mess something up by accident. So…I’m not really sure.” I turned to look out the window.

When I sit passenger side and have the luxury to sweep the suburbs at night with my gaze, I peer up at the top floor, into the windows of passing buildings. I think about the people inside, and what it must feel like to have your own space.

Yours, completely yours, things where you left them, everything where you want it!

On a walk, I listened to wet tires sing over concrete in the distance and stood dwarfed before a colonial. The very center window of the very top floor had a pirate flag pinned over it. My heart twinged and I fought a crazy urge to fly up the stairs and beg to be let in. How cool, how you, whoever you are!

It’s so much more than space, isn’t it? Does it feel good to be home?

Home.

I must’ve been a sight in my oversized coat with the furry hood, wide eyes bathed in streetlight. Warm tears flooded my eyes and my breath, visible in the freezing night air, came ragged and shallow. In that moment, I understood the pangs in my chest when I saw a well-decorated bedroom on television, or when I passed the high school kids walking who don’t know what they’ve got going for them.

I finally came to realize what my first and only wish would be…

…if I could ever just be lucky enough to find that lamp.

 

I’m drunk.

 

I held up the half-empty shotglass, sloshing cheap brandy over my hand. “Nn’m I gonna die?”

 

Roger laughed heartily. “Naw you ain’t, that one’s number seven, it is! You still got summore, y’gotta drink it up!”

 

I looked to my right and up at Tom, pushing the shotglass in his face. “Really? Nm’m I gonna die?”

 

“No, you’re not gonna die. C’mon, you can do it. Drink it.” Tom refilled his own shotglass and pressed it to mine, briefly looking into my eyes.

 

But right now, I’m so in love with you.

 

Boldened by the previous six, I threw it back and gulped, shivering as it tickled my spine and set my chest ablaze. Almost instantly, a headrush took me over and my vision began to fall away; Jess comatose on the loveseat, Roger with hands clasped and forearms resting on his knees. My senses became too much and I fell into Tom, laughing and burying my face in him, shielding my eyes and my ears from the outside chaos that turned my stomach.

 

I tightened my grip on his t-shirt, gathering it into a ball and digging my nails in to keep me upright. The seventh caught up to me with a mighty roar in my ears, and I struggled to look up into his eyes, pleading silently for that dizzying confusion to end.

 

The Christmas lights, the warmth in my face, my numbed fingers fumbling with the blankets, all gave way at once to a sort of liquid tension that spilled from me without apprehension.

 

Lay my hands on heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars

While the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car

Nothing quite like the feel of something new.

 

It came from him so easily that it alarmed me, coaxed my adrenaline and tightened my focus momentarily though I was fighting sleep and losing terribly. I turned to face him, struggling to control my tongue and shape my words as clearly as possible.

 

“Mean it,” I slurred with determination, “or take it back. Please.”

 

I fought it just long enough to watch his eyes as he took in my plea, and I was gone.

 

 

 

 

The next evening found me in a pleasantly removed corner of the earth, coyote tracks and no cell phone reception, bathed in green light – “It’s blue, y’know.” “Whatever.” – and sunk into cold pillows. I pulled the electric blanket over me and the aches, pains, misery and exhaustion of working retail during the holidays dissipated, and I fell quickly into deep sleep, waking suddenly when I felt him leave the bed some time later.

 

 I blinked sleepily and watched him as he re-entered the room, hoping my eyes would do the begging for me.

 

It worked.

 

The sweat in your eyes and the blood in your veins are listening to me.

I wanna rip it up and swim in it until I drown
My moral standing is lying down.

 

Reznor, since our encounter in Manchester, had come to know me better and understood completely.

 

He coached me as three fucking years of anticipation sweat out of me, wrenching my heart and lower abdomen as it made the pilgrimage through my pores and out into the open. I brushed my damp matted bangs out of my eyes and gasped the oxygen from the charged surrounding air.

 

He dug into the sensitive skin of my back as we locked eyes, and Reznor spoke from deep inside of me, snaking through my marrow, as this corner of the world held its breath for me in suspense.  

 

This is the only time I really feel alive.

I have a thing for girls who feed me pills.

 

Somehow, it was harder to swallow when looking up into her eyes. So impossible to read. Sleep wrapped its thick wool around my head, my tongue. I sunk into a borrowed pillow, feeling very small but long since given up on fighting her – “I’m not going to be a creeper and just like, sleep in your bed.”

 

 “You’re not a creeper. You’re staying with me.” 

 

I covered my face in my hands and felt her gaze burn through my fingers. I struggled in vain to burrow deeper into the blankets, open and vulnerable spread out before her, when suddenly, all of my muscles quit at once. I hadn’t slept in two days. My arms fell to my sides and I looked up at her, helpless and beyond exhausted.

 

“Tell me a story,” I pleaded with slurred speech, “to get my mind off of everything. Tell me about…your life.”

 

She sat quietly for a minute before rising to her feet and plucking a book from the bookshelf.

 

How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

 

I watched intently as she read, drank the verses familiar and rhythmic, hypnotized.

Such an innocent choice.

 

Uninhibited by the constraints of the well-rested mind, the lust and confusion coursed through me, racing to my fingertips and back to my pounding heart.

 

You better lie down, girl. The angels are watching.

 

“It’s not right for me to make the first move like that,” I had reminded her so long ago.

But I itched. Ached. Stroking the soft exposed skin of my stomach beneath the blanket, putting me on the edge.

 

She looked up slowly and met my eyes, cloudy gaze unwavering, oblivious to my struggling as I fought the fire blazing in my bones.  

 

…And before sleep won me over, I saw the tiniest hint of a smile flicker across her face.

She knew.

 

“Damnit,” I murmured aloud, lost to the stanzas dissolving in the dark.

 

She says that I’m a mess, but it’s alright –

Whether it’s two weeks, two years, or just tonight.

 

You can occupy my every sigh.

You can rent a space inside my mind.

At least, until the price becomes too high.

I arched my back and squeezed my eyes shut as a yawn made its way up my jaw, prying it open. Miniature shivers rose in my legs and bubbled up to my shoulders. Tiny beads of moisture gathered at the corner of my eyes, misting them over. 

I blinked slowly and sniffled, nuzzling my calves against one another and gently flexing each ligament. Every time I stretched, a gentle wave of warmth would sweep up and down my heavy limbs.

When I had worked every last muscle, I'd arch my back and begin the whole process over again.
Yawning.

The shade of the sky gracing the mountains doesn't make much difference to me.
Blue and jeweled, cozy gray, framboos zacht en luftig, black as the night can get, I'm sleeping regardless.
Sleeping here on my feet. Behind laughing eyes at mealtime. Yawning, arching and blinking on repeat.

Waiting for the day when I will crawl away.

I drown my thoughts in downtempo ambience, let my mind wander and visualize notes in the glow of the blacklight.

Waiting to trigger and blow the big chill.

Pattering with bare feet on the floor, Joe Boxers collecting on folds below my ankles, trying to avoid my own gaze in passing...

"I can't sleep." 

I search the eyes of friends, and classmates and professors, for anything that might clue me in that someone else is as backwards as me. I'm open, awake, and sincere when everyone's turned in for the night. I wanna talk now. You're a good friend, you know. I appreciate you. I really thought it was funny, earlier. I just never had the energy to laugh until now. Thanks for being there for me. By the way, I'm dying inside.

It's at these hours I consider the value of telepathy.

"Why are you doing this?" He narrowed his eyes to look down at me.
"I'm horny," I replied vaguely.
"And that's all?" 
"Yep." I grinned, but the rest of me wouldn't cooperate, my own face calling me out on a lie. 
"Oh." 

He sat back on his knees. I remained on my back, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Porcupine Tree echoed softly. Feeling all your touching. Feeling all your lies.

Seen in through a windscreen. Seen it through the glass.

In the silence that  followed, I slipped back into sleep, trying to avoid his gaze.
Trying to hide what he knew I knew, and failing miserably.

Seen it in a bad dream. 
Seen it in your heart.

It took you to make me realize.



I patted my back pocket, check-and-double-check, to make sure my ticket was still there.

Breathing deeply, I sucked in the scent of wet concrete, intensified by urban heat phenomena, lights flooding the pavement and illuminating pockets of water which quivered and scattered beneath the feet of the crowd. I was here in the moment and ready for therapy. Nine Inch Nails style.

Tonight, it didn't matter to me where he went at night.

"I don't like who you are drunk.
I don't like who you are high.
I don't like who you are with other people."

Reznor lifted his arms as I ground my heel in time with the growling in my chest, and I lost all abandon.
Something inside me was maddened by the sight of his shadow, black against white noise, and scrambled to get closer, scratching and clawing and picking. My own voice startled me as it escaped, powerful and shrill, adrenaline the puppeteer's strings fastened to the backs of my hands. Inside, a fire roared to life, flickering to Reznor's breathy mantra. He curled his fingers enticingly, encouraging me to listen. To repeat. To believe.  

I just made you up to hurt myself.
I just made you up to hurt myself.
I just made you up to hurt myself.

"And it worked," I cried, fierce with the complete stranger to my left, now an extension of my frustration, my isolation, "yes it did!"

There is no fucking you. There is only me.

Through the fog of focus I saw God had erected a teleprompter stretching the length of the stage, which flickered to life. Scrambling to the bass, the collective heartbeat and march of the pigs. In the static I saw familiar shapes. A broad chin. A widow's peak.
Blazing black eyes and he was right in front of me. Peering up at me with intense curiosity - what makes me tick? He knows without blinking. He licks his lips, his teeth, drags his tongue over the mic. I'm on fire, burning brighter than ever.

He grinned and narrowed his eyes, Reznor's face manifesting all of my darkest desires.
He whispered.

Just a little reminder...
It didn't turn out the way you wanted it, did it? 

I wrapped my arms around my stomach, nauseated and broken as the words drilled into me. He dragged my insides out into the open, skinning me alive in front of thousands as tears splashed down my face.

It didn't turn out quite the way that you wanted it!

I hugged myself tightly and doubled over, scream rising in my throat as I tore in two.
This wasn't a concert. This was exorcism.
It must have been Reznor's plan all along, verbally beat us until we fought back, enraged that he could get under our skin!

"Nobody talks to me like that.
 Nobody.

 We're over." 

When I stood upright again, the light had changed. The masses surrounding me shone gold. We were warriors now.

Survivalists.

Filing out of the arena like masses to Mecca, we the thousands set out on pilgrimage.



The way out is through.

He pulled the door shut behind him, choking the flourescent light of the lounge and sealing me away.

Click.

I sat still, cross-legged, waiting for his footsteps to fade, silent and drifting along with In Absentia. The blacklight positioned behind the fishtank cast menacing shadows over the wall as my betta spread his billowing fins. The steady flow of water from the current altered the light, painting the wall in waves. Gusts of icy wind fluttered through the window, itchy spindly fingers reaching into every corner, my bare arms, up beneath the nape of my neck.

So long spinning this web to be suitable, attractive.

Open your eyes now;
Hear me out before I lose my mind.

I cradled the phone to my ear, sweeping my bangs over my eyes to hide the truth from no one in particular.
"Hey you."
Another's voice coaxed a grin to the surface, the kind of grin you might imagine a spider wears, if a spider could grin.
Lying in wait, suspended in the archway; inviting trouble.
Knowing the destruction it'd be capable of if it put up a fight.
Picking her battles and prioritizing.
She's hungry. Dead weight won't satisfy.
"Did you wanna come over?" 

I've been waiting for hours...
Let the salt flow, feel my coil unwind.

Of course, the most difficult part, as any spider will tell you, is cleaning up afterwards.
Mending the broken rungs, the decimated threads. Removing the evidence.
Patching up the hole where needs and reason collide.

Gravity eyelids come down.
Here's a will that'll glow in the dark.

How does a spider sleep where she slaughters?
I couldn't tell you. I haven't mastered that yet.

As the cheerless towns pass my window

I can see a washed-out moon through the fog

 

I propped my feet up on the seat across from mine. The Dutch are notorious cheapskates; it showed in the upholstery on these train seats, sticking to my skin and skewing my hair, damp with sweat. I pressed my forehead to the cool glass window for relief from the humid night air, and watched the countryside roll on by, white windmills harvesting the energy of the universe gleaming in the moonlight.

 

I felt the electricity, the victory bubble up inside of me, agitated by the thump thump thump of the train tracks, intensifying with every railroad tie…

 

I had made it.

 

I was of legal age.

I was in one piece.

I was awake and alive.

And goddamnit, I was living.

 

I was in The Netherlands! I was on a grand adventure spanning two entire continents, of love and self-discovery! Three thousand miles away I had a mother worried sick, God love her, that I was doing alright for myself across the sea.

 

When I crawled into bed at night, I could sleep with my back to the door.

No more night terrors. No more DXM. Beautiful, lush, lucid dreams of the future at college.

 

College! I had a space in a dorm at the college of my dreams, nestled all cozy on Mount Anthony, and shit, I only had a week to prepare when I got back to America, but for the first time in my life, I was so busy!

 

And man, was I busy! Two jobs that I loved to death. One on my feet, making people smile, another cosied up in a chair, making businesses work, both surrounded by amazing and inspiring co-workers. Forgiving bosses who thought my clumsiness was endearing. A place to burn off years of pent-up energy and communication.

 

“Wat?”

I jumped. “Wat?”

He looked perplexed and amused. “Your smile. You ‘ad a smile on your face. Waarom?”

I giggled and looked at my reflection in the window of the train car. I was getting used to my looks for the first time in my life, getting comfortable in my skin and appreciating my appearance. “I was thinking.”

“Oh. On what? Are you wanting to tell me?” 

I nodded and removed my feet from the seat, placing them flat on the floor, and turning to face him.  

 

“Okay, so, a long time ago, in the ninth grade - that’s year nine for you? Right? I used to sing in a group, a chorus, and I made friends with this girl…”

 

Then a voice inside my head breaks the analogue…

And says;

 

Follow me down to the valley below – you know,

The moonlight is bleeding from out of your soul.

 

 

“…and I have no idea why she believed in me, but she did, and she had the coolest mom, and we grew really tight…”

 

I survived against the will of my twisted folk

 

“...and I wasn’t getting along with my mom at the time, and even though I did some really shitty things to this girl when we fought, she still forgave me – like over and over again – and she let me move in with her when things got real bad.”

 

“Jao. You’ve told me about her before.”

 

“Yeah, and I was just thinking about that, I guess.” I looked out the window again. “It was traveling by train that made me think of her. I went on all kinds of trips with her, like shopping in Burlington – this really cool city – and North Carolina! And there was parasailing, and all these things I’ve never done before – I did them all with her.”

 

“Wow.”

 

He was kind enough to remain silent for a while, allowing me time to collect my thoughts, seashells at the mercy of the tide, all of these water curses inside of me stirred up at once.

 

Bubbles swelled and scattered as everything came rushing back to me.

 

…Holding my stomach, racked with laughter, for the first time in what seemed like forever, doubled over in the wireframe chairs of a Burlington Bistro filling my lungs with sharp fall breeze.

 

…Cheetos, chocolate milk and Fetus Drug.

 

…That terrifying moment in April laying on my back in the bathtub, water long having gone tepid and beading on my naked body, staring at the ceiling with wide eyes. Feeling relief and fright at finally understanding the meaning of love.

 

…Walking the Proctor railroad in late spring.

 

…Finding fluffy tendrils of a pink bedspread in my hair after long naps together.

 

(Golden summers just holding you)

 

…Obsession, coveting and loss consuming me. Driving me to destroy out of fear.

 

And still…

 

In the depths of my world, the silence broke, and said…

 

“My David, don’t you worry;

This cold world is not for you.

So rest your head upon me…

 

          I have strength to carry you.”

 

Still, they’d let me borrow their warmth.

 

Frightened animals scratch and bite and hoard.

They behave inexplicably.

And that’s what I was. Rabid and confused.

 

So they let me go.

 

I turned to practicing my left-hand Suzuki method in the absence of stability. 

And eventually, I figured out where I had gone wrong all of this time, what gave her mother that calm and collected demeanor, what they tried in vain to teach me and I just couldn’t grasp.

 

I struggled to float. I sank because it was easy. I fought to keep my head above water.

But I never thought to be like water!

 

Be like water and go with it. Take it in and love it because it’s part of you.

 

“And that’s how I got where I am right now.”

He smiled. “Goed. If I could speak with them – I would thank them for getting you ‘ere. Met meich.”

“Yeah,” I said eventually. “Me too.”

 

I’ll find the words someday.

As the train ground to a halt, I gathered my belongings, felt my muscles work, my capability flex.

I leapt from the compartment and hit the ground skipping. Found my balance. Swung my bag and all its weight to face the streets of Maastricht. To face the road ahead.

 

Come to us, Lazarus.

It’s time for you to go.

Three Seed resonated through my empty shell, writhing in response to outside stimuli.

Blacklights are purple, not black, I thought vaguely, taking note of the aura sparkling through his split ends, faceless in the dark, rustling warm and moving rhythmic.

This revolution maybe
Proves who you work for lately

I rested my head and relaxed, blank eyes safe to study the topography of the ceiling with his face buried in my neck.
Considering my next meal. My fish might be hungry. Why blacklights are called blacklights, if they're not black.
And briefly, I wondered where he goes at night.

Who do you work for, baby? 
And does it work for you lately? 

Suddenly it was over - "That was really good" - and he crawled back to my side, panting.
I hadn't noticed.

When the night is over and the walls start burning

"Look at the blacklight."
He looked. "Yeah?" 
"What do you think's up with it?" 
He made an unintelligible noise and tucked an arm behind his head.

The fire starts to matter and the room starts churning

He turned to look into me. "Was it okay?" 
The irony threw me into hysterics on the inside, how everything in this moment was so incredibly not okay, that I smiled, eyes brimming with mist, and nodded.
"Yeah," I choked out, and it must have been unconvincing because his eyes narrowed, putting me on the attack.

That's when it turned on me --

"Is there someone else?" The words ran a little fierce and forceful, so much that it startled him; I felt him jump a little beside me.

His expression softened and became stoic simultaneously. No longer threatening, but blank, coaxing me to continue.

"I mean, how do I know -- you get up so early, you're gone all night, I don't know where you go." 

He nodded.

"You could be fucking with me and I wouldn't even know it." 

"You're right; I could be," he said.  He propped himself up on one arm to face me on his side. I looked up at him and suddenly felt exhausted, wanting to crawl beneath the blankets and cry until it left me for another night. "You'll just have to trust me." 

Maybe in a Lifetime movie, this would have some sort of significance, some sort of epiphany for the jaded woman who melts into his arms.
Not here, and not for me.

"Ah," I said finally. "Alright." 

Restless and unconvinced, I eased back into my head, leaving my shell to generate body heat for the needy.

When bobby pins held angel wings.

Legs tucked comfortably underneath me on the bed, I laced my fingers tightly around my bottle of Gatorade and peered over the rim.

This was now, this was an Andrew sprawled on his back, chin resting on his chest, eyes closed and lost in thought, or thought of nothing. His knit beanie held a mess of black hair in place, his feet flat and his legs spread in man fashion, arms folded over his stomach, and I thought, how beautifully typical.

This was a Hannah on her side, cradling the phone to her shoulder, looking more like an otter than ever, lean and long and engaging, shiny brown curls framing her face while she pulled her knees closer to her chest for comfort, her eyes faraway and beside the voice on the other end, and I thought, how fantastic and right.

This was a me, wiggling my toes in delight, feeling fireworks and waves and something indescribable and familiar. I prodded Andrew's side with my foot.

"Hm?" He jumped a little, opening one eye and bringing his palm to his forehead in surprise, skewing his beanie.

"I feel something."

He blinked.

"I mean, I feel like I've watched a show like this, or, that I've been here before, like I know what this -- what we feel like, all of us as friends, or we here. But I've never had this, and never seen this." 

He was silent for a minute before turning to face me, both eyes on mine with the tiniest hint of a smile glimmering in them.

"Maybe it's 'cause you belong here." 

I thought in reverse, about picking sustenance from a styro-foam container, discounted 'cause we're good kids who smile and don't hurry much of anywhere, about how the air is eerily still on Lower Campus 'cause the buildings take the bitter wind for you, about individuality and laughter, and a grin overtook me. 

Ever since that shining gem of an evening under Psilocybe cubensis,

When I found there was so much more to communicae than lungs, when my insight became God, and the universe was suddenly so very, very friendly...

I've been admiring the handiwork of the universe, how the smallest stitches brought me the biggest joys.

How a day trip with Upward Bound that was better than doing nothing, brought me to a dinner where I was told by a complete stranger that it's perfectly okay to have no idea what you want to do with your life, and how I had never heard anything truer.

How I threw out my UAT acceptance packet without a second thought and arrived here a year later, with my mother present, leaving Rutland behind in all its decrepit glory,  and my ghosts to put pennies on the tracks behind the plaza with Devon and arriving new and clean and  malleable.

Someday I'll go back and clean up what I left behind.

But right now --

"This is where you're supposed to be, I think." 

Man wakes up as animal; hallucinates a fire.

I stood in front of the mirror, palms flat on the countertop, and searched anxiously for a spark somewhere in my eyes that meant I was awake, and alive, and here.

Nothing.

I shook a few more sleep aids from the bottle and watched them tumble out into my hand, pale-blue and unassuming, small and smooth and gentle...

When I was younger, I read one of those children's horror books in which the protagonist woke up in a different life every time he fell asleep.
I wondered briefly if my subconscious crosses its fingers when I burrow down in the blankets and waits with baited breath for waking.

Oh, the silence you keep;
but I just wanna sleep.

Take no more than 2 tablets within 24 hours.

Close to two years later, I stood on tiptoe, gripping the countertop tightly and stared myself down, shaking, sobbing, weak and insignificant. Alone.
I used to relish that dull ache in my kidneys. Hoping that a few extra here or there might take me someday while I slept. Shut me down, out of date and archaic.
Like a useless old PC that hangs when things become complicated. Good for nothing.

I threw them back.
I'm not alone.


Man wakes up as a gun...
and doesn't get the joke.

It was as though the grand animator had decided at the last minute before screening that today was not suited for rain, rubbing away the droplets and leaving quivering puddles to echo the flat, heavy grey of the sky.

I wore sandals like I always do; the dew thick on the grass made walking in them difficult, slipping every step. My clothes felt like I had become a different person entirely overnight; nothing fit right anywhere. The damp leached into the fibers of my sweatshirt and clung to me as I struggled to stay upright, pattering up the hill.

There’d be no apple picking today if I carried myself like this.




On top of the hill, up several flights of stairs, nestled in a far-off corner of the mansion surrounded by bookshelves is a family of furniture – two prim and proper sofas in a standoff, two elegant armchairs. I watched placidly as water dripped from the stone archway, beading on the delicate spiderwebs as I tucked my feet beneath me and pulled myself closer to his warmth. I leaned in just a little, enough to suggest hello, I’m here for you, and closed my eyes, feeling very small indeed.

Thinking hard. Something about Andrew’s presence is very conducive to thinking.
And he always seems to know. He caught my gaze.
“You did the right thing.”
I studied his face for a long time.

A woman – an old woman with grey hair but a bright, youthful face, clothes piling in folds around her ankles and hanging loosely on her frame which any freshman fighting that first fifteen would envy – emerged from behind her newspaper. No doubt she had heard us attempting to work out a solution to my living-quarters crisis. I sighed softly.

She folded her paper, tucked it under her arm, and rose to her feet, beaming. “Well, one good thing about this awful weather.”

Startled, we both looked up at her with intrigue.

“Makes the colors seem brighter,” she said with a smile, gesturing towards the turning leaves that burned just outside the courtyard.

“I never thought of it that way before,” I said quietly, looking out at the foliage and really, truly seeing it for the first time this season.

And she was off. I followed her down the hall with my gaze, awestruck, mouth agape. Unable to move. Lost in thought. Nervous laughter bubbled up inside of me and tumbled out accompanied by sudden, splashing tears.

Andrew exhaled sharply with disbelief, grinning. “Right place, right time?”

I nodded. He laughed.

“I love this place.”

....and what a surprise
to look in those eyes
and find suddenly he is Jack the Ripper.


I fought waking. The brandy had sapped all the moisture from my body, causing my muscles to seize and ache and cry. My head was splitting open at the seams. I tunneled down into the blankets and cupped my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut tightly.  

"I'm never drinking again," I said to no one.

"KRISTIE! KRISTIE! YOU'RE AWAKE!" cried a shrill voice that caused my heart to catapult into my throat.

There was no hiding now. The five-year old dug at the blankets to unearth my face and pulled my hands from my ears, grinning broadly. 

I yawned. "No Malachi. I'm gonna sleep a little while longer. I have a long drive back to school." 

His lip quivered momentarily, then his face brightened. "Okay! I'll sing for you!" He straightened up and cleared his throat. 

"Emmy wished on a dragon scale....n'that's what started Dragon Tales..." he wailed at the top of his lungs, face turning red from the exertion, shifting his weight from one thigh to the other as he sat indian-style (that's what we used to call it when I was his age, I wonder if that's politically correct anymore?) in front of me. I relaxed and struggled to tune him out, beginning to drift off.

After some time I felt him fall down onto his back beside me, lyrics becoming less and less coherent until they stopped completely. I peeled back the blanket to peer down at him. 

Tousled hair in his face, clenched fist to his mouth, he slept in a fetal position pressed close to me, tiny snores emanating from his mouth. There's so much that kids know that they unlearn as they get older. This one in particular asks an awful lot of questions. I told him never to stop doing that.

I was almost asleep again when a siamese cat stalked his way up the length of my body and nestled between me and Malachi. His eyelids fluttered open briefly and looked up at me with an air of seriousness.

"That's Zepplin," he said, nodding, "and he loves us." 

He rested his head against Zepplin's stomach, burying his little fingers in his fur. I put an arm around Malachi and Zepplin and forgot my splitting headache, the rift that keeps me thinking while I pray for the fog to envelope Southern Vermont College and swallow the rest of the world, erasing everything that was before and freezing us in time, young and naive and never going back.

There are minutes for sleeping.
But we didn't have minutes to spare.

Up on that long stretch between the mansion and the dorms the sun twinkled through the coral fog, cold damp air rushing my tired lungs as we put one foot in front of the other, rhythmic and steady.

"These boots are made for walkin'," chirped Ashley, her steps deliberate and certain, wincing a little as she made contact with the scarred concrete, "and that's just what they'll do...somethin' somethin', an'..." She giggled between harsh breaths as we struggled against gravity.

"-One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you," I chimed in, panting and laughing, and I could've cared less whether or not anyone was apple picking because I can do this on my own now. I'm strong and well enough to do this. 

I'm a mountain climber now.