ok. so i am listening to set your goals right now. and i am having a really, really hard time connecting the fact that these sounds and voices were produced by dudes that i just fucking hung out with in real life.
lastnight:
- the usual. lots of eyecontact with joe/dan, sang with matt/jordan. amazing. danced my face off. smiles from joe that basically say "fuck yeah!" before the show even starts.
- FUCKING KIMBO!
- jumping on stage during mutiny and singing my face off with a bunch of bros
- @ the end... saying hi to jordan
me: did you see me last night?"
him: .. OH MY GOD, YEAH!
and the look on his face when he realized that i had been there 2 nights in a row was fucking astounding and so, so rewarding. chatted with him for another minute about how he felt sick & was gonna rest up. & that i'd see him tomorrow.
- "dan! see you tomorrow!" :)
- & saying hi to matt...
tonight:
- being so choked up during the fallen & our ethos that i can barely sing. never been fucking happier in my life. realizing that no one who could have been with me could have made it better.
- singalongs with all bandmembers. mic in face so many times. and fucking rocking the shit out of everyone. jesus i love this band.
- i will never be able to listen to "dead men tell no tales" again unless it runs right fucking into "mutiny."
- "so, who was there last night?" yooooo! "just you, huh?" "you're a trooper" "this song goes out to you!" LOOK CLOSER. mic in face mic in face mic in face.
- end of show - asking jordan to hangout, introductions, saying he'd be around... him trying to ignore everyone else to talk to me
- post show beer, chatting with matt, "you graduated college... something i never did!"
- talking to dan... big hugs first off, flooding in midwest, countryloving roommates, "i mean, my name's adrienne..." "i know that! from what you tweeted to me!" HOLY SHIT. BIG HUGS, BIG AWESOME.
- jordan stopping his buddies so he could give me a hug & say hi, "i have an interview to do, idk how long it'll be, but the rest of the guys will be wandering around..." LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. me being overly flattering and admitting it and him nodding and laughing. a;lsdkgjs;dlgjsa;dlkjg
- hanging out outside for fucking ever. talking to sexy eric from smartbomb, saying hey to everyone on the tour, comeback kid leadsinger introducing himself & inviting me to the bar...
- talking to joe, glasses, providence, girlfriend, "more like a sibling relationship," hugging him & matt goodbye...
- OH. AND HOW ABOUT THE TIME THAT I WAS WALKING HOME FROM THE BAR AND THE FUCKING VAN WAS IN MY PARKING LOT. AND MK WAS LIKE, STOP IT ADRIENNE. IT'S NOT THEM. AND IT FUCKING WASSSSSSSS!!!!!! said hi to matt, junior, TM, etc. holyyyyyy shittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.
i love my life.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
i left a lot of blood in california on our first trip out west...
and i thought, if no one's in my corner since everyone left,
i'd better make it worth it
it's amazing how now matter how many outlets i have online for my thoughts & ideas, i still need to retreat to the most private ones to talk about the shit that hits me the most profoundly.
i cried when i left the set your goals show tonight, out of sheer happiness. i had the wonder years on and i don't even remember which song it was, one of the good ones, maybe melrose diner or bar bands? and i had just struggled to put my arms through my jacket at a red light that turned green way too quickly, and i literally wrapped my arms around the steering wheel... while driving... and let the tears fall out of my eyes. i couldn't even sing, i was so paralyzed with joy and amazement and the high from the evening.
i'm beginning to realize that the only thing real in my life anymore, are THE moments.
i'd better make it worth it
it's amazing how now matter how many outlets i have online for my thoughts & ideas, i still need to retreat to the most private ones to talk about the shit that hits me the most profoundly.
i cried when i left the set your goals show tonight, out of sheer happiness. i had the wonder years on and i don't even remember which song it was, one of the good ones, maybe melrose diner or bar bands? and i had just struggled to put my arms through my jacket at a red light that turned green way too quickly, and i literally wrapped my arms around the steering wheel... while driving... and let the tears fall out of my eyes. i couldn't even sing, i was so paralyzed with joy and amazement and the high from the evening.
i'm beginning to realize that the only thing real in my life anymore, are THE moments.
Monday, December 7, 2009
"the cause, the kid, the course, the charm & the curse"
"CJ! You were at that show, right? When Joey passed out in front of the drum kit after sound check, and then we all broke into that gym next door with the climbing wall?"
He turned and leaned back onto the bar, elbows resting behind him, a smirk on his face. "Yeah, man," he said. "Joey was out for the count that night. We tried kicking him, pouring beer on him. He was like hospitalization drunk."
Hayley's veins were flushed with vodka and now they spit adrenaline too as she listened. CJ's voice was sonorous and articulate, his tone untouched by the New York drawl that thickened the tongues of his friends. His face was expressive when moving and like stone at rest; Hayley was nothing short of captivated. She leaned forward over her crossed legs. "So what happened then?"
CJ glanced past Trent and Brandon, noting her as the source of the question, and shrugged nonchalantly. "Nothing really," he said. "Someone threw his drunk ass into a bedroom and I think Riley filled in on drums that night."
"Yeah, and he sucked," Brandon added.
"Eh, whatever. We were all pretty shithammered...I doubt Joey would have been any better at that point." CJ turned around and tapped the counter; like clockwork Kerry set a dark beer down in front of him.
Hayley mind raced as she tried to think of something, anything interesting to add to his story, to laugh about it or jump off into an anecdote of her own, to keep CJ near and in the conversation, but a long pause stretched between everyone as they sipped the tail ends of their drinks. She felt her opportunity start to slip away with a frantic stab, and without thinking, blurted out "So, where'd your girlfriend go?"
As soon as the words passed her teeth she blushed with embarrassment, inwardly chastising herself for asking such a forward question. But CJ just looked back to where he had been sitting earlier, unfazed. "Who, Tara?" he said. "I think she went to go meet the dude she's dating." He took a hit on his drink. "None of the cute girls ever stick around this joint."
"Fuck that. At least Hayley's still hanging out," Brandon said, punching her lightly on the arm.
"Yeah, but is she single? That's the important question." CJ spoke as if she wasn't even in the room, and Hayley set her lips in a straight line.
"Yeah, I'm single," she declared, raising her hand. She was still cross-legged on the bar stool; she felt like a third grader during show and tell with a huge crush on the cutest boy in class.
"Nice," Trent exclaimed. "We got ourselves a single girl who isn't a size 14 in this bar. This never happens."
Everyone laughed and CJ ordered a round of shots for the four of them, toasting to "all the single broads who unfortunately find their way in here." Hayley drank more easily than earlier, and assessed that her intoxication was a lot higher than it should be. CJ swallowed hard and when he looked up, he caught Hayley gazing at him. He offered a small smile, hardly more heartfelt than the smirk he wore earlier, but Hayley's return smile was gaping and bright, overly reciprocated. CJ turned away.
"Do you guys even know each other?" Trent interrupted the moment, and Hayley shook herself free from her brief trance. "I mean, I sort of met him the other night," she offered, looking up at Trent's questioning face.
CJ looked confused. "You did?"
Her stomach curled tightly, humiliated. She was playing it all wrong, she wasn't playing it cool at all and she knew it. Here she was, finally talking to the boy she had been unable to unstick from her head for the last 72 hours and she couldn't for the life of her pretend to be disinterested. She combed a hand through her camp-caked hair and hated that she looked disheveled and couldn't even feign indifference but fuck it; she propelled forward. "Yeah...I was here the other night and you were, um, working...the guy I was with told me he knew you. Jay," she sputtered. "Jay told me who you were."
CJ put his hand out in a "hold on" motion. "Wait a second," he said. "You're with Jay??"
The guys all looked at each other for a beat and then burst out laughing, while Hayley, exasperated and stammering, tried to reclaim her statement. "No, no!" she cried. "No, I just met him the other night. Through Beth...my cousin Beth. She knows him."
They kept laughing, and Hayley, sensing the absurdity, finally joined the mirth. Her face still burned with embarrassment but she tried to laugh through it, tried to ignore the dirt under her fingernails and the stubble on her legs.
Just then, Kerry announced last call, and Hayley realized it was far past camp's night-out curfew, and her new friends groaned with disappointment as she said she had to get going. She hugged them all goodbye with promises to come back soon, but as she was delivering the farewells, she noticed CJ slip out the back door, silent as a ghost. Her heart sunk deeply as Kerry wished her a safe drive home.
But as she walked out the front door towards her car, she caught a glimpse of gray smoke unfurling from an alley aside the building. She followed it and found CJ, leaning against the brick wall, dragging smoke into his lungs from a fresh cigarette.
Hayley didn't smoke, but she also didn't know how to approach him in any other way that didn't appear drunk and stupid, so she walked delicately into the alley and asked him to bum a cigarette. Without so much as glancing at her, CJ pulled out a pack of non-mentholated Camels and a pink lighter from his pocket; she gingerly removed a cigarette and lit it by her own hand. The two stood there in silence for a few minutes, and Hayley swallowed a cough as she puffed away, hoping it wasn't obvious that she wasn't a regular smoker, hoping for some brilliant and inspiring conversation piece to come to mind.
But CJ spoke first. "So, you were here the other night?"
Hayley practically spit smoke. "Yeah," she said. "On Sunday."
He inhaled from his cigarette and kicked at the ground. "I thought you looked sorta familiar."
A smile spread on Hayley's lips at his recognition, and she looked down at the ground to try and conceal it. She watched him swing his foot back and forth, but couldn't identify anything he was kicking at except pavement. She took another unfamiliar drag into her lungs before responding. "Yeah, you checked my ID and then you told me being from Pittsburgh sucked. And then you gave me a beer."
CJ began to chuckle and scuffed his foot again, this time on the brick of the building wall. "Oh yeah," he said. "Now I remember you. The look on your face..." He laughed again.
Despite feeling like she should be offended, Hayley giggled in response. That disagreeable feeling was merely peering over her shoulder, and she was more focused on CJ's presence in front of her. "I can't believe you didn't remember me," she said. "I mean, how many Pennsylvania residents do you get to insult in any given night?" She leaned back against the brick wall, facing him.
"Hey now," he retorted. "I said you looked familiar, I'm pretty sure that means that I remembered you." He flicked his cigarette butt away. It flashed through the air like a dying meteor. "And besides, no one I've ever met from Pittsburgh has actually been worth remembering." He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Oh wow, more insults!" Hayley said. "I guess that means I'm not worth remembering then, huh?"
"Well, now you're in New York, right?" CJ said. "I guess that means I can give you a chance. He smiled broadly, but not at Hayley.
She tried to scoff, but it faltered as she watched the smile crack his stone face. Mesmerized, she absentmindedly smushed her cigarette butt under her shoe. Another long pause stretched between them, but before it could become uncomfortable, Hayley said "So, what's your beef with Pittsburgh, anyway?"
CJ shrugged. "It's a shitty place. All industrial garbage and old buildings..." he pulled out the pack of cigarettes again and offered it out to Hayley; she accepted and he lit it for her this time before striking up a smoke of his own. "I feel like the sun has never shown in that place," he continued. "I've never had a good time there. There's nothing to do."
"Nothing to do?" Hayley said, surprised. "You must not be hanging out in the right parts of the city, then."
"Ahhh, I don't know," he said dubiously. "I've been there a bunch of times over the years and never really had a good time."
"Really.." she said, combing her hair over her shoulder. "Do you know what parts of the city you were in?"
"Hmmmm..." CJ rolled his eyes upward. "The last time I was there we played a venue at some old school that they converted into this terrible performance space in the 80s or something."
"The Championship?" Hayley asked. "Okay, yeah, I can understand hating on Pittsburgh if that's what you saw of it. That place is disgusting."
"Yeah, it was pretty vile," he said. "But the other places in that city weren't much better." He kicked at the pavement again.
"Where else have you played?"
He paused, groaning slightly as he thought. "I can't really remember them all right now. I played there more with my old band than this one, and all that happened like four or five years ago." He finished his cigarette and flicked it out of the alley, toward the parking lot.
"Well, next time you're there I'll have to take you to the good places," Hayley asserted. "I promise you it'll be a good time."
CJ scoffed. "Good time? In Pittsburgh? I'm not sure if that's possible."
Hayley reddened. She was losing him, and she could tell. "How about an okay time?" she proposed. "Would you be open to that?"
He kicked at the pavement again, and Hayley wondered how his shoes held up with all the unnecessary scuffing he was doing to them. "Alright," he said. "I'll let you try and show me an okay time." He smiled at his own difficulty and began to walk out of the alley.
"Wait!" she cried after him, and he turned his head over his shoulder. She trotted to his position. "How can I show you an okay time in Pittsburgh when we haven't even been formally introduced to each other?"
"It's Hayley, right?" He turned to face her. "That's what the guys inside said."
When he said her name out loud her stomach pressed against her throat and her hands trembled. He looked her dead in the eye, waiting for her to confirm or deny him, and she couldn't tell what color his eyes were in the half-lit alley but she wanted so badly to see that slow, solid smile on his stone face. She nodded. "Yeah, that's right." She wrung her hands together and twisted them in front of her. "And you're CJ, yeah?"
"Yeah, that's what I go by around here," he answered. "But I am a dude who goes by many nicknames."
"Oh yeah?" Hayley asked. "Like what?"
He pushed his arms behind his back, moving them left to right, stretching his shoulders and yawning. "Well, the best part about nicknames is that you don't pick them out yourself," he said. "These bar kids call me CJ, the band calls me Crackerjack, my guitar tech calls me Hounddog..."
"What do they call you at home?"
That question froze him; he stood still with his arms clasped behind his back. "I don't really have a home," he admitted. "I mean, yeah, I grew up here, but I'm on the road a lot, if not with my band then I'm teching for another." He shrugged and looked up at the sky. "This is the first summer I haven't been on tour in a long time."
The moment of vulnerability passed as abruptly as it arose, and he was back to scuffing his feet, kicking invisible wads of gum around in the gravel. Hayley took a step forward. She was close enough to touch him and considered reaching out to put a hand on his arm, but decided against it. "Is it okay if I call you Corey?" she asked timidly.
She stood transfixed, watching as the smile she desired cut through his statue expression, and she was elated to see it even though he still wasn't smiling at her. "Yeah, sure, I guess if you want," he said. "Doesn't really make a difference to me either way."
She nodded. "Okay then," she said. "Then I'll see you around, Corey." She walked past him towards the parking lot, brushing his shoulder as she passed.
"Have a good night, Hayley."
He turned and leaned back onto the bar, elbows resting behind him, a smirk on his face. "Yeah, man," he said. "Joey was out for the count that night. We tried kicking him, pouring beer on him. He was like hospitalization drunk."
Hayley's veins were flushed with vodka and now they spit adrenaline too as she listened. CJ's voice was sonorous and articulate, his tone untouched by the New York drawl that thickened the tongues of his friends. His face was expressive when moving and like stone at rest; Hayley was nothing short of captivated. She leaned forward over her crossed legs. "So what happened then?"
CJ glanced past Trent and Brandon, noting her as the source of the question, and shrugged nonchalantly. "Nothing really," he said. "Someone threw his drunk ass into a bedroom and I think Riley filled in on drums that night."
"Yeah, and he sucked," Brandon added.
"Eh, whatever. We were all pretty shithammered...I doubt Joey would have been any better at that point." CJ turned around and tapped the counter; like clockwork Kerry set a dark beer down in front of him.
Hayley mind raced as she tried to think of something, anything interesting to add to his story, to laugh about it or jump off into an anecdote of her own, to keep CJ near and in the conversation, but a long pause stretched between everyone as they sipped the tail ends of their drinks. She felt her opportunity start to slip away with a frantic stab, and without thinking, blurted out "So, where'd your girlfriend go?"
As soon as the words passed her teeth she blushed with embarrassment, inwardly chastising herself for asking such a forward question. But CJ just looked back to where he had been sitting earlier, unfazed. "Who, Tara?" he said. "I think she went to go meet the dude she's dating." He took a hit on his drink. "None of the cute girls ever stick around this joint."
"Fuck that. At least Hayley's still hanging out," Brandon said, punching her lightly on the arm.
"Yeah, but is she single? That's the important question." CJ spoke as if she wasn't even in the room, and Hayley set her lips in a straight line.
"Yeah, I'm single," she declared, raising her hand. She was still cross-legged on the bar stool; she felt like a third grader during show and tell with a huge crush on the cutest boy in class.
"Nice," Trent exclaimed. "We got ourselves a single girl who isn't a size 14 in this bar. This never happens."
Everyone laughed and CJ ordered a round of shots for the four of them, toasting to "all the single broads who unfortunately find their way in here." Hayley drank more easily than earlier, and assessed that her intoxication was a lot higher than it should be. CJ swallowed hard and when he looked up, he caught Hayley gazing at him. He offered a small smile, hardly more heartfelt than the smirk he wore earlier, but Hayley's return smile was gaping and bright, overly reciprocated. CJ turned away.
"Do you guys even know each other?" Trent interrupted the moment, and Hayley shook herself free from her brief trance. "I mean, I sort of met him the other night," she offered, looking up at Trent's questioning face.
CJ looked confused. "You did?"
Her stomach curled tightly, humiliated. She was playing it all wrong, she wasn't playing it cool at all and she knew it. Here she was, finally talking to the boy she had been unable to unstick from her head for the last 72 hours and she couldn't for the life of her pretend to be disinterested. She combed a hand through her camp-caked hair and hated that she looked disheveled and couldn't even feign indifference but fuck it; she propelled forward. "Yeah...I was here the other night and you were, um, working...the guy I was with told me he knew you. Jay," she sputtered. "Jay told me who you were."
CJ put his hand out in a "hold on" motion. "Wait a second," he said. "You're with Jay??"
The guys all looked at each other for a beat and then burst out laughing, while Hayley, exasperated and stammering, tried to reclaim her statement. "No, no!" she cried. "No, I just met him the other night. Through Beth...my cousin Beth. She knows him."
They kept laughing, and Hayley, sensing the absurdity, finally joined the mirth. Her face still burned with embarrassment but she tried to laugh through it, tried to ignore the dirt under her fingernails and the stubble on her legs.
Just then, Kerry announced last call, and Hayley realized it was far past camp's night-out curfew, and her new friends groaned with disappointment as she said she had to get going. She hugged them all goodbye with promises to come back soon, but as she was delivering the farewells, she noticed CJ slip out the back door, silent as a ghost. Her heart sunk deeply as Kerry wished her a safe drive home.
But as she walked out the front door towards her car, she caught a glimpse of gray smoke unfurling from an alley aside the building. She followed it and found CJ, leaning against the brick wall, dragging smoke into his lungs from a fresh cigarette.
Hayley didn't smoke, but she also didn't know how to approach him in any other way that didn't appear drunk and stupid, so she walked delicately into the alley and asked him to bum a cigarette. Without so much as glancing at her, CJ pulled out a pack of non-mentholated Camels and a pink lighter from his pocket; she gingerly removed a cigarette and lit it by her own hand. The two stood there in silence for a few minutes, and Hayley swallowed a cough as she puffed away, hoping it wasn't obvious that she wasn't a regular smoker, hoping for some brilliant and inspiring conversation piece to come to mind.
But CJ spoke first. "So, you were here the other night?"
Hayley practically spit smoke. "Yeah," she said. "On Sunday."
He inhaled from his cigarette and kicked at the ground. "I thought you looked sorta familiar."
A smile spread on Hayley's lips at his recognition, and she looked down at the ground to try and conceal it. She watched him swing his foot back and forth, but couldn't identify anything he was kicking at except pavement. She took another unfamiliar drag into her lungs before responding. "Yeah, you checked my ID and then you told me being from Pittsburgh sucked. And then you gave me a beer."
CJ began to chuckle and scuffed his foot again, this time on the brick of the building wall. "Oh yeah," he said. "Now I remember you. The look on your face..." He laughed again.
Despite feeling like she should be offended, Hayley giggled in response. That disagreeable feeling was merely peering over her shoulder, and she was more focused on CJ's presence in front of her. "I can't believe you didn't remember me," she said. "I mean, how many Pennsylvania residents do you get to insult in any given night?" She leaned back against the brick wall, facing him.
"Hey now," he retorted. "I said you looked familiar, I'm pretty sure that means that I remembered you." He flicked his cigarette butt away. It flashed through the air like a dying meteor. "And besides, no one I've ever met from Pittsburgh has actually been worth remembering." He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Oh wow, more insults!" Hayley said. "I guess that means I'm not worth remembering then, huh?"
"Well, now you're in New York, right?" CJ said. "I guess that means I can give you a chance. He smiled broadly, but not at Hayley.
She tried to scoff, but it faltered as she watched the smile crack his stone face. Mesmerized, she absentmindedly smushed her cigarette butt under her shoe. Another long pause stretched between them, but before it could become uncomfortable, Hayley said "So, what's your beef with Pittsburgh, anyway?"
CJ shrugged. "It's a shitty place. All industrial garbage and old buildings..." he pulled out the pack of cigarettes again and offered it out to Hayley; she accepted and he lit it for her this time before striking up a smoke of his own. "I feel like the sun has never shown in that place," he continued. "I've never had a good time there. There's nothing to do."
"Nothing to do?" Hayley said, surprised. "You must not be hanging out in the right parts of the city, then."
"Ahhh, I don't know," he said dubiously. "I've been there a bunch of times over the years and never really had a good time."
"Really.." she said, combing her hair over her shoulder. "Do you know what parts of the city you were in?"
"Hmmmm..." CJ rolled his eyes upward. "The last time I was there we played a venue at some old school that they converted into this terrible performance space in the 80s or something."
"The Championship?" Hayley asked. "Okay, yeah, I can understand hating on Pittsburgh if that's what you saw of it. That place is disgusting."
"Yeah, it was pretty vile," he said. "But the other places in that city weren't much better." He kicked at the pavement again.
"Where else have you played?"
He paused, groaning slightly as he thought. "I can't really remember them all right now. I played there more with my old band than this one, and all that happened like four or five years ago." He finished his cigarette and flicked it out of the alley, toward the parking lot.
"Well, next time you're there I'll have to take you to the good places," Hayley asserted. "I promise you it'll be a good time."
CJ scoffed. "Good time? In Pittsburgh? I'm not sure if that's possible."
Hayley reddened. She was losing him, and she could tell. "How about an okay time?" she proposed. "Would you be open to that?"
He kicked at the pavement again, and Hayley wondered how his shoes held up with all the unnecessary scuffing he was doing to them. "Alright," he said. "I'll let you try and show me an okay time." He smiled at his own difficulty and began to walk out of the alley.
"Wait!" she cried after him, and he turned his head over his shoulder. She trotted to his position. "How can I show you an okay time in Pittsburgh when we haven't even been formally introduced to each other?"
"It's Hayley, right?" He turned to face her. "That's what the guys inside said."
When he said her name out loud her stomach pressed against her throat and her hands trembled. He looked her dead in the eye, waiting for her to confirm or deny him, and she couldn't tell what color his eyes were in the half-lit alley but she wanted so badly to see that slow, solid smile on his stone face. She nodded. "Yeah, that's right." She wrung her hands together and twisted them in front of her. "And you're CJ, yeah?"
"Yeah, that's what I go by around here," he answered. "But I am a dude who goes by many nicknames."
"Oh yeah?" Hayley asked. "Like what?"
He pushed his arms behind his back, moving them left to right, stretching his shoulders and yawning. "Well, the best part about nicknames is that you don't pick them out yourself," he said. "These bar kids call me CJ, the band calls me Crackerjack, my guitar tech calls me Hounddog..."
"What do they call you at home?"
That question froze him; he stood still with his arms clasped behind his back. "I don't really have a home," he admitted. "I mean, yeah, I grew up here, but I'm on the road a lot, if not with my band then I'm teching for another." He shrugged and looked up at the sky. "This is the first summer I haven't been on tour in a long time."
The moment of vulnerability passed as abruptly as it arose, and he was back to scuffing his feet, kicking invisible wads of gum around in the gravel. Hayley took a step forward. She was close enough to touch him and considered reaching out to put a hand on his arm, but decided against it. "Is it okay if I call you Corey?" she asked timidly.
She stood transfixed, watching as the smile she desired cut through his statue expression, and she was elated to see it even though he still wasn't smiling at her. "Yeah, sure, I guess if you want," he said. "Doesn't really make a difference to me either way."
She nodded. "Okay then," she said. "Then I'll see you around, Corey." She walked past him towards the parking lot, brushing his shoulder as she passed.
"Have a good night, Hayley."
Monday, November 30, 2009
degausser - something completely different
The first thing you need to remember is that what does not kill you only makes you stronger. The second thing you need to remember is that death comes for everything, and that it may or may not reflect how strong you were, are, or could be.
When on Saturday mornings your daughter Gabrielle bursts into your garage-turned-office, shooting across the room like a lightning bolt being chased by the hounds of hell, she will scramble into your lap to minimize the space between the two of you, and through her muffled chokings you can make out one phrase: “ants in my bed.” It’s difficult not to laugh when you think of all the times your own mother commented on your youthful behavior as being akin to having ants in your pants, but you desperately want to make sure Gabrielle knows you’re on her side, so you softly stroke her hair and level your voice. It’s hard to sound soothing; your vocal chords are harsh after years of barking at Dennis and his insipid, stupid dogs, but you try anyway. She quivers in your arms, the creepy-crawlies have taken over her body, and you decide it’s time for you to take action against the insect soldiers that have infested your house. They have frightened your daughter, and she is the only happy remains of an otherwise unhappy family.
Step one: Kill the queen. This is the offensive mode. You can’t find the queen. You don’t know how to begin to look for the queen. Frustration bubbles in your throat. You can hear Dennis sneer in your head, see the face he always made when he came up with a solution before you did – the arched left eyebrow, the slight wrinkle of the nose. “Maybe some sort of tracking device, like on Star Trek,” he’d say with a sarcastic laugh. “You know, identify the source of power and control, and destroy it.” Those old television episodes with the grainy color and one dimensional sound, they always stuck in your head despite your aversion to the kitschy science fiction genre and now you can’t get them out; but you sat through it anyway, for him, didn’t you?
Shake it off. There’s no such thing as a tracking device. This knowledge is useless due to its lack of existence. Move onto step two.
Step two: Kill the scouts, the ants that fly solo, found trooping in and out and under and over any given surface in your kitchen, your bathrooms, your daughter’s bedroom, the corners where the dogs used to sleep. But remember that what does not kill the nest only makes it stronger. You consider eliminating the nest by killing one ant at a time. After killing seventeen of them individually over the course of a week, you realize you cannot kill the nest by killing one ant at a time. Move onto step three.
Step three: Mercilessly clean your house. This is where you move into defensive mode. Clorox, Lysol, bleach, Windex; brooms, mops, rags, vacuums, and sweaty palms. Get those crumbs out of the corner, scrub the cherry soda off the counter that Dennis was drinking the day before he said he was leaving. The sticky patch was from when you slapped him across the face and his glass wavered, splashing his drink. Wipe away all vestiges of the sweet and the oily, because that’s what the ants are drawn to, attracted to - that’s what they smell through the pain and despair that hovers over those old stains. Gabrielle tries to help but only smears the old messes into bigger, thinner remnants of the original; you are able to forgive her because she is four, still has trouble getting more than half her food into her mouth and not onto her smock, and asks every day when Daddy’s coming back.
You are cleaning obsessively. You take the vacuum to the kitchen pantry and pitilessly suck up any ant you can find scurrying behind cereal boxes and soup cans, pulling crumbs and dust and ants with frantic legs into the black tube. You welcome the gratification from eradicating the dust on the baseboards, from pulverizing clumps of dried chocolate pudding on the end tables in the living room. That pudding, it takes nearly an hour of soaking the residue in 409 and pressure scrubbing with the scratchy side of a sponge til it disappears. Dennis was such a sloppy housemate. Why in the world did you let it sit there for so long, becoming crusty, hardening, forming into a physical part of the table top? Why didn’t you care earlier to clean it? What kept you blinded from the muck?
You find the pudding cup underneath a couch cushion.
The house is clean. The ants are still there. Dennis has been gone for three weeks.
Step four: Barricade your house. This is when the defense becomes both literal and dangerous. The barricade is deadly for the living creatures. The cornmeal you leave in corners expands inside the ant, destroying its insides (you can’t decide whether or not ants have real internal organs or if they are more like robots) and leaving a shell of black exoskeleton. You can’t help but think that those black dots were once propelled by something, some life force or energy and now you are snuffing it away for the sake of Gabrielle’s sanity; you feel like God and you can’t decide if that’s a helping or hurting matter. But the cornmeal stays, and the ants keep coming. You ask Gabrielle to take care in her steps, to not scatter the powder substance from its lying-in-wait, and the next step is to affix traps of peanut butter laced with borax. The ants like the oily and sweet, and the peanut butter is both. You have always been disgusted by peanut butter, by its gummy texture and as a child you never were able to flush the image of quilted peanuts jutting up and out of a slimy yellow stick of butter. It clung to your tongue, the roof of your mouth, the backs of your teeth, and when you chewed it you felt like it was just strung from upper lip to bottom lip with each labored movement of your jaw, like spider webs. The only reason that there is peanut butter in the pantry is because Dennis made s’mores for him and Gabrielle for her birthday and insisted that a peanut butter spread would make them a million times better. That was the beginning of May, almost five weeks ago, and the jar is half empty.
Mix the peanut butter with borax to kill the ants. The borax draws all the moisture from their robot bodies and soon enough there’s more dead husks of soldiers getting swept up by the broom. For a while the problem seems resolved and you revel in your victory, deciding playing God was good in this instance, because now you can worry about the more important things like if this divorce is actually real, and how much the child support payments will end up totaling, and if everything that he had said to you was just a lie until he left – but wait, here is another morning, this time a Sunday, where Gabrielle tugs on your pajama pant leg at the kitchen table with a look of despair sunk into her eyes and says “I saw another one in the bathroom this morning, Mama.”
Step five: Time to get ruthless. You vow to find the nest. A voice inward questions the necessity of this venture. You don’t listen. Instead, you visualize what will happen when you find it. A small column of vertical sand, like a mini volcano, spitting black ants endlessly, and you’ll step above it like an ominous cloud of the Lord, and you’ll splash a pot of sizzling, boiling water onto it; the heat will be like a reverse volcano, going in instead of spewing out, the ants will fry, and you’ll feel sort of like God when he “took care of” Sodom and Gomorrah, but you’ll do it without blinking but an eyelash for the wicked.
And you used to be so nice.
It’s three o’clock on Monday afternoon when he calls for the first time in four weeks. Hey, he says. Um, hi, is your tentative response. He wants to know if there’s an extra bag of dog food down in the basement. Let me check, you say, even though you know full well that you threw it out during Step three. You jostle the phone receiver in your hand a little, wondering if he’ll believe the muffled noises to be her walking downstairs, moving things around. Mostly you want to jostle the phone in half, your fingers are clenched so hard. Ease up, ease up, you think. Keep quiet. Keep cool.
When your knuckles regain some feeling you put the speaker to your ear. No, no dog food, Dennis. Sorry.
He asks about Gabrielle, and it sort of feels like the time you accidently leaned onto the hot stovetop burner, except this time it’s in your chest and not on your forearm.
“Well, she asks about you every day. And I can’t really give her an answer, and it sucks, Dennis, it really does, that I can’t give her an answer. What is going on? Are you coming back? Are you going? Are you gone for good?” You choke while saying these words. You hate that you are choking.
He says he doesn’t know. He says he needs to think.
Think fast, you want to say. You don’t. Instead you say “Well, Gabrielle would really like to see you.”
Silence.
“Really, Dennis. You should come by and see her.”
Okay, he says. How does Thursday afternoon sound?
The way Thursday sounds is awful, you have grocery shopping to do and you’re supposed to take Gabrielle to lunch with your sister and her new baby, and the carpet cleaners are scheduled to come that afternoon to continue Step three, because the ants are still there, but instead of all these things you say “Thursday sounds fine. Let me know what time you are planning on stopping by.”
Okay, he says. He pauses. “How are you, Brianne?”
You reply, “I guess I’m okay.” But what you are really thinking is, you have a stovetop burn in your chest, peanut butter stuck to your tongue and you just found some dog hair kicked up in a corner, like tumbleweeds in a desert. You are anything but okay.
Dennis can sense this. “Are you sure?” he says.
Sure, you reply. I’m killing ants.
“Oh, are the ants bad this year?” You can hear his left eyebrow elevating. “You know what you should try, peanut butter and borax. That’s what my mom always used to do in the summers when the ants got bad.”
Thanks, you say. But I’m going to try and find the nest.
When on Saturday mornings your daughter Gabrielle bursts into your garage-turned-office, shooting across the room like a lightning bolt being chased by the hounds of hell, she will scramble into your lap to minimize the space between the two of you, and through her muffled chokings you can make out one phrase: “ants in my bed.” It’s difficult not to laugh when you think of all the times your own mother commented on your youthful behavior as being akin to having ants in your pants, but you desperately want to make sure Gabrielle knows you’re on her side, so you softly stroke her hair and level your voice. It’s hard to sound soothing; your vocal chords are harsh after years of barking at Dennis and his insipid, stupid dogs, but you try anyway. She quivers in your arms, the creepy-crawlies have taken over her body, and you decide it’s time for you to take action against the insect soldiers that have infested your house. They have frightened your daughter, and she is the only happy remains of an otherwise unhappy family.
Step one: Kill the queen. This is the offensive mode. You can’t find the queen. You don’t know how to begin to look for the queen. Frustration bubbles in your throat. You can hear Dennis sneer in your head, see the face he always made when he came up with a solution before you did – the arched left eyebrow, the slight wrinkle of the nose. “Maybe some sort of tracking device, like on Star Trek,” he’d say with a sarcastic laugh. “You know, identify the source of power and control, and destroy it.” Those old television episodes with the grainy color and one dimensional sound, they always stuck in your head despite your aversion to the kitschy science fiction genre and now you can’t get them out; but you sat through it anyway, for him, didn’t you?
Shake it off. There’s no such thing as a tracking device. This knowledge is useless due to its lack of existence. Move onto step two.
Step two: Kill the scouts, the ants that fly solo, found trooping in and out and under and over any given surface in your kitchen, your bathrooms, your daughter’s bedroom, the corners where the dogs used to sleep. But remember that what does not kill the nest only makes it stronger. You consider eliminating the nest by killing one ant at a time. After killing seventeen of them individually over the course of a week, you realize you cannot kill the nest by killing one ant at a time. Move onto step three.
Step three: Mercilessly clean your house. This is where you move into defensive mode. Clorox, Lysol, bleach, Windex; brooms, mops, rags, vacuums, and sweaty palms. Get those crumbs out of the corner, scrub the cherry soda off the counter that Dennis was drinking the day before he said he was leaving. The sticky patch was from when you slapped him across the face and his glass wavered, splashing his drink. Wipe away all vestiges of the sweet and the oily, because that’s what the ants are drawn to, attracted to - that’s what they smell through the pain and despair that hovers over those old stains. Gabrielle tries to help but only smears the old messes into bigger, thinner remnants of the original; you are able to forgive her because she is four, still has trouble getting more than half her food into her mouth and not onto her smock, and asks every day when Daddy’s coming back.
You are cleaning obsessively. You take the vacuum to the kitchen pantry and pitilessly suck up any ant you can find scurrying behind cereal boxes and soup cans, pulling crumbs and dust and ants with frantic legs into the black tube. You welcome the gratification from eradicating the dust on the baseboards, from pulverizing clumps of dried chocolate pudding on the end tables in the living room. That pudding, it takes nearly an hour of soaking the residue in 409 and pressure scrubbing with the scratchy side of a sponge til it disappears. Dennis was such a sloppy housemate. Why in the world did you let it sit there for so long, becoming crusty, hardening, forming into a physical part of the table top? Why didn’t you care earlier to clean it? What kept you blinded from the muck?
You find the pudding cup underneath a couch cushion.
The house is clean. The ants are still there. Dennis has been gone for three weeks.
Step four: Barricade your house. This is when the defense becomes both literal and dangerous. The barricade is deadly for the living creatures. The cornmeal you leave in corners expands inside the ant, destroying its insides (you can’t decide whether or not ants have real internal organs or if they are more like robots) and leaving a shell of black exoskeleton. You can’t help but think that those black dots were once propelled by something, some life force or energy and now you are snuffing it away for the sake of Gabrielle’s sanity; you feel like God and you can’t decide if that’s a helping or hurting matter. But the cornmeal stays, and the ants keep coming. You ask Gabrielle to take care in her steps, to not scatter the powder substance from its lying-in-wait, and the next step is to affix traps of peanut butter laced with borax. The ants like the oily and sweet, and the peanut butter is both. You have always been disgusted by peanut butter, by its gummy texture and as a child you never were able to flush the image of quilted peanuts jutting up and out of a slimy yellow stick of butter. It clung to your tongue, the roof of your mouth, the backs of your teeth, and when you chewed it you felt like it was just strung from upper lip to bottom lip with each labored movement of your jaw, like spider webs. The only reason that there is peanut butter in the pantry is because Dennis made s’mores for him and Gabrielle for her birthday and insisted that a peanut butter spread would make them a million times better. That was the beginning of May, almost five weeks ago, and the jar is half empty.
Mix the peanut butter with borax to kill the ants. The borax draws all the moisture from their robot bodies and soon enough there’s more dead husks of soldiers getting swept up by the broom. For a while the problem seems resolved and you revel in your victory, deciding playing God was good in this instance, because now you can worry about the more important things like if this divorce is actually real, and how much the child support payments will end up totaling, and if everything that he had said to you was just a lie until he left – but wait, here is another morning, this time a Sunday, where Gabrielle tugs on your pajama pant leg at the kitchen table with a look of despair sunk into her eyes and says “I saw another one in the bathroom this morning, Mama.”
Step five: Time to get ruthless. You vow to find the nest. A voice inward questions the necessity of this venture. You don’t listen. Instead, you visualize what will happen when you find it. A small column of vertical sand, like a mini volcano, spitting black ants endlessly, and you’ll step above it like an ominous cloud of the Lord, and you’ll splash a pot of sizzling, boiling water onto it; the heat will be like a reverse volcano, going in instead of spewing out, the ants will fry, and you’ll feel sort of like God when he “took care of” Sodom and Gomorrah, but you’ll do it without blinking but an eyelash for the wicked.
And you used to be so nice.
It’s three o’clock on Monday afternoon when he calls for the first time in four weeks. Hey, he says. Um, hi, is your tentative response. He wants to know if there’s an extra bag of dog food down in the basement. Let me check, you say, even though you know full well that you threw it out during Step three. You jostle the phone receiver in your hand a little, wondering if he’ll believe the muffled noises to be her walking downstairs, moving things around. Mostly you want to jostle the phone in half, your fingers are clenched so hard. Ease up, ease up, you think. Keep quiet. Keep cool.
When your knuckles regain some feeling you put the speaker to your ear. No, no dog food, Dennis. Sorry.
He asks about Gabrielle, and it sort of feels like the time you accidently leaned onto the hot stovetop burner, except this time it’s in your chest and not on your forearm.
“Well, she asks about you every day. And I can’t really give her an answer, and it sucks, Dennis, it really does, that I can’t give her an answer. What is going on? Are you coming back? Are you going? Are you gone for good?” You choke while saying these words. You hate that you are choking.
He says he doesn’t know. He says he needs to think.
Think fast, you want to say. You don’t. Instead you say “Well, Gabrielle would really like to see you.”
Silence.
“Really, Dennis. You should come by and see her.”
Okay, he says. How does Thursday afternoon sound?
The way Thursday sounds is awful, you have grocery shopping to do and you’re supposed to take Gabrielle to lunch with your sister and her new baby, and the carpet cleaners are scheduled to come that afternoon to continue Step three, because the ants are still there, but instead of all these things you say “Thursday sounds fine. Let me know what time you are planning on stopping by.”
Okay, he says. He pauses. “How are you, Brianne?”
You reply, “I guess I’m okay.” But what you are really thinking is, you have a stovetop burn in your chest, peanut butter stuck to your tongue and you just found some dog hair kicked up in a corner, like tumbleweeds in a desert. You are anything but okay.
Dennis can sense this. “Are you sure?” he says.
Sure, you reply. I’m killing ants.
“Oh, are the ants bad this year?” You can hear his left eyebrow elevating. “You know what you should try, peanut butter and borax. That’s what my mom always used to do in the summers when the ants got bad.”
Thanks, you say. But I’m going to try and find the nest.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
"all the world is mad."
That night, she thought idly about him as she heard the quiet snorts of her sleeping campers in the dark. Those idle thoughts carried over into unconsciousness, and she dreamed of him. The setting was murky, nondescript; CJ was playing real music on his tiny red guitar keychain while a graduation ceremony went on behind him. He had just asked her what type of cigarettes she had when her alarm went off, and she felt wakefulness drip into her brain, down her spine, into her limbs. She propped herself up on her elbows, yawned a crater, and thought - I DON'T smoke, Dream CJ.
---------------------------------------------
As they left the dining hall that morning, Hayley watched with amusement as a trio of newly pubescent boys swaggered deliberately in the path of some of her own female campers; the girls smiled back and whispered amongst each other as they walked past, sly as ships in the night. Hayley smiled to herself and kept pace a few feet behind with a few other counselors, participating minimally in a discussion about that night's evening event, an amateur dance contest, generically dubbed "MTV Night." Hayley's campers, ages 12 and 13, had already selected some synthesized, packaged top forty tune that couldn't be distinguished from the other radio drivel, and they had already begun work on elaborate choreography the night before. She had tried to manage the planning so to minimize arguments, like counselor training had taught her to do, but found that three of her campers were already avid dancers and had taken the reins of the project with gusto. Hayley was happy to step aside and let them lead the charge. Back in the cabin, she didn't even have to suggest that they practice their routine before one of the girls had the CD player queued and ready to launch. The girls all fell into line while Hayley stood at the doorway to the back porch, arms crossed and fascinated by the enthusiasm they exhibited.
All but one. Shea, a softspoken but not entirely shy girl, hung to the outskirts of the group, going through the motions of the routine but clearly not giving it half the effort as the others. Her kicks weren't as high, her claps weren't as ferocious, and the smile on her face was forced, strained. She looked like she was baring her teeth for a dentist cleaning, not preparing for one of the most anticipated events of the camp session. Hayley cocked an eyebrow at Shea, who looked back at her hopelessly and dropped her arms at her sides.
"Shea!" barked Tina, the ringleader of the dancers. "What are you doing?"
Hayley stepped in. "No, Tina, it's fine," she said. "I just need to talk to Shea outside for a minute, that's all."
Tina stood with her hands on her hips and a huffy expression on her face as Shea darted out the back door. Hayley followed her, and the two stood out by the railing, overlooking the treeline, taking solace from the synthesized music.
"So, Shea, what's up?" Hayley inquired. "Don't like the dance?"
The girl shook her head. "No, it's not the dance. It's just..." She looked up at Hayley and shrugged. "The song just really kind of sucks."
Hayley smiled widely, then burst out laughing. "Oh, Shea," she said brightly, sinking down to sit with her back to the cabin wall. Shea copied her move, and Hayley slung her arm around the girls shoulders. "Between you and me, that song totally sucks."
The two laughed together for a moment and looked out at the thick forest view that sat beyond the porch. Shea looked contemplative and questioning, but Hayley waited patiently while the girl decided what she wanted to say. She finally turned to Hayley and said, "You like rock music, don't you?"
Hayley nodded. "Mostly, yeah."
"Like...like Mom and Dad rock music, or like...rock rock music?" Shea gave her head a little headbang to emphasize her point.
Hayley laughed again, delighted by Shea's presence. "Well, some Mom and Dad rock is okay, but yeah, almost everything I listen to is rock rock," she replied with a similar headbang.
Shea nodded wisely. "I can tell. My sister and brother like that stuff a lot. You remind me of them. They go to concerts all the time. I wish I got to go with them."
"Well, how come you don't?"
Shea shrugged. "My mom doesn't want me to, and I don't think they do either. But sometimes when they're not home, I sneak into their rooms and steal CDs. I return them pretty soon, so they don't notice. And I try to take a different one each time. But I really like them, a lot."
Hayley asked Shea to name some bands and Shea began to rattle off a number of underground punk bands on the tips of her fingers as casually as she'd recall the alphabet. They ranged from melodic to hardcore, from progressive to flat-out rebellious, and Hayley didn't even attempt to mask her surprise. Asking Shea to hold on for a minute, she ran into the cabin, retrieved a binder from underneath her bunk, and brought it out to the back porch, sliding into a cross legged position next to Shea. She opened the book across both their laps, and inside were pages upon pages of ticket stubs, pressed beneath laminated plastic with every pocket-induced fold and wrinkle preserved perfectly. Shea ran her fingers over the stubs, wide-eyed, and Hayley told her stories every time her finger lingered on a particular show-stub. Here was the time she sneaked backstage by grabbing the back alley door before it shut and locked, diving over a staircase railing to avoid being spotted by the bouncer guarding the exit. Oh, that show? That was the time her car battery died while parked downtown and the drummer from that particular band brought the tour van over to give her a jump. And this show? She was front and center for that show, and got pulled onstage to dance for the encore by the keyboardist who had been smiling at her the entire night. Shea asked if she knew any bands personally and Hayley almost said yes, with CJ in mind, but no, she didn't really know him yet, did she? So instead she shrugged, said sort of but not really, and kept telling stories, but now she told them with CJ looking over her shoulder, listening intently, nodding in agreement and smiling with approval. As the two flipped through the pages, Shea's admiration grew noticeably childlike, marvelling at the huge ticket stub collection Hayley had managed to amass. Her reactions to Hayley's stories were met with wider eyes and breathless "wows," and Hayley fed off her captive audience. She told her tales with growing fervor and enthusiasm, fondly reliving the memories of her younger, rebellious days while imagining CJ's impressed face with every name-drop and run-in she could recount. When the binder had no more pages to boast, Shea shut the book and Hayley leaned back on the wall, feeling a strange, weary exhilaration. Shea looked over and said "I hope I'll have stories like that to tell someday."
"I hope you do too, kid," Hayley replied. "You know, you don't have to do the MTV night thing if you don't want to." She glanced over toward the younger girl with squinty eyes and the shade of a smile. "I'll just tell the others that your ankle is bugging you or something."
Shea tilted her head, pursed her lips, uncurled her legs from the Indian style and said "Yeah... that'd be good."
---------------------------------------------
As they left the dining hall that morning, Hayley watched with amusement as a trio of newly pubescent boys swaggered deliberately in the path of some of her own female campers; the girls smiled back and whispered amongst each other as they walked past, sly as ships in the night. Hayley smiled to herself and kept pace a few feet behind with a few other counselors, participating minimally in a discussion about that night's evening event, an amateur dance contest, generically dubbed "MTV Night." Hayley's campers, ages 12 and 13, had already selected some synthesized, packaged top forty tune that couldn't be distinguished from the other radio drivel, and they had already begun work on elaborate choreography the night before. She had tried to manage the planning so to minimize arguments, like counselor training had taught her to do, but found that three of her campers were already avid dancers and had taken the reins of the project with gusto. Hayley was happy to step aside and let them lead the charge. Back in the cabin, she didn't even have to suggest that they practice their routine before one of the girls had the CD player queued and ready to launch. The girls all fell into line while Hayley stood at the doorway to the back porch, arms crossed and fascinated by the enthusiasm they exhibited.
All but one. Shea, a softspoken but not entirely shy girl, hung to the outskirts of the group, going through the motions of the routine but clearly not giving it half the effort as the others. Her kicks weren't as high, her claps weren't as ferocious, and the smile on her face was forced, strained. She looked like she was baring her teeth for a dentist cleaning, not preparing for one of the most anticipated events of the camp session. Hayley cocked an eyebrow at Shea, who looked back at her hopelessly and dropped her arms at her sides.
"Shea!" barked Tina, the ringleader of the dancers. "What are you doing?"
Hayley stepped in. "No, Tina, it's fine," she said. "I just need to talk to Shea outside for a minute, that's all."
Tina stood with her hands on her hips and a huffy expression on her face as Shea darted out the back door. Hayley followed her, and the two stood out by the railing, overlooking the treeline, taking solace from the synthesized music.
"So, Shea, what's up?" Hayley inquired. "Don't like the dance?"
The girl shook her head. "No, it's not the dance. It's just..." She looked up at Hayley and shrugged. "The song just really kind of sucks."
Hayley smiled widely, then burst out laughing. "Oh, Shea," she said brightly, sinking down to sit with her back to the cabin wall. Shea copied her move, and Hayley slung her arm around the girls shoulders. "Between you and me, that song totally sucks."
The two laughed together for a moment and looked out at the thick forest view that sat beyond the porch. Shea looked contemplative and questioning, but Hayley waited patiently while the girl decided what she wanted to say. She finally turned to Hayley and said, "You like rock music, don't you?"
Hayley nodded. "Mostly, yeah."
"Like...like Mom and Dad rock music, or like...rock rock music?" Shea gave her head a little headbang to emphasize her point.
Hayley laughed again, delighted by Shea's presence. "Well, some Mom and Dad rock is okay, but yeah, almost everything I listen to is rock rock," she replied with a similar headbang.
Shea nodded wisely. "I can tell. My sister and brother like that stuff a lot. You remind me of them. They go to concerts all the time. I wish I got to go with them."
"Well, how come you don't?"
Shea shrugged. "My mom doesn't want me to, and I don't think they do either. But sometimes when they're not home, I sneak into their rooms and steal CDs. I return them pretty soon, so they don't notice. And I try to take a different one each time. But I really like them, a lot."
Hayley asked Shea to name some bands and Shea began to rattle off a number of underground punk bands on the tips of her fingers as casually as she'd recall the alphabet. They ranged from melodic to hardcore, from progressive to flat-out rebellious, and Hayley didn't even attempt to mask her surprise. Asking Shea to hold on for a minute, she ran into the cabin, retrieved a binder from underneath her bunk, and brought it out to the back porch, sliding into a cross legged position next to Shea. She opened the book across both their laps, and inside were pages upon pages of ticket stubs, pressed beneath laminated plastic with every pocket-induced fold and wrinkle preserved perfectly. Shea ran her fingers over the stubs, wide-eyed, and Hayley told her stories every time her finger lingered on a particular show-stub. Here was the time she sneaked backstage by grabbing the back alley door before it shut and locked, diving over a staircase railing to avoid being spotted by the bouncer guarding the exit. Oh, that show? That was the time her car battery died while parked downtown and the drummer from that particular band brought the tour van over to give her a jump. And this show? She was front and center for that show, and got pulled onstage to dance for the encore by the keyboardist who had been smiling at her the entire night. Shea asked if she knew any bands personally and Hayley almost said yes, with CJ in mind, but no, she didn't really know him yet, did she? So instead she shrugged, said sort of but not really, and kept telling stories, but now she told them with CJ looking over her shoulder, listening intently, nodding in agreement and smiling with approval. As the two flipped through the pages, Shea's admiration grew noticeably childlike, marvelling at the huge ticket stub collection Hayley had managed to amass. Her reactions to Hayley's stories were met with wider eyes and breathless "wows," and Hayley fed off her captive audience. She told her tales with growing fervor and enthusiasm, fondly reliving the memories of her younger, rebellious days while imagining CJ's impressed face with every name-drop and run-in she could recount. When the binder had no more pages to boast, Shea shut the book and Hayley leaned back on the wall, feeling a strange, weary exhilaration. Shea looked over and said "I hope I'll have stories like that to tell someday."
"I hope you do too, kid," Hayley replied. "You know, you don't have to do the MTV night thing if you don't want to." She glanced over toward the younger girl with squinty eyes and the shade of a smile. "I'll just tell the others that your ankle is bugging you or something."
Shea tilted her head, pursed her lips, uncurled her legs from the Indian style and said "Yeah... that'd be good."
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
"what kind of role model are you?"
Hayley went back that night, alone. She retrieved her car from the parking lot as soon as she signed out for the evening and drove the single mile down route 94, turning left into the now-familiar parking lot lit by orange and green fluorescents. As she pulled in, she spotted the car that must have belonged to Corey - a white Taurus station wagon that Daniel had mentioned the night before. She panicked. Should she be bold and park next to him? Would that be too foward a move, in the event they would bond that night and end up walking out to their cars together? She didn't want to park all the way across the lot, in case they were engaged in conversation during this hypothetical walk; if she parked far away, the conversation would be disrupted as soon as she began moving toward her car. The tidal wave of a decision hung tall, but crashed when she decided to park three spaces out from him, to give their farewell walks similar trajectories but to protect her from saying something stupid like, "Well, look at that, we parked next to each other, golly!" She knew she'd never actually say something like "golly" out loud, but the Corey from her hypothetical fantasy had looked at her in disgust when she hypothetically commented on adjacent parking with far too much enthusiasm. Placated, she beeped her car lock and clipped her keys to her belt loop, walking gracefully toe-to-heel across the uneven cement.
It was the third night in a row she'd been in the bar, but without the familiar comfort of Beth at her side, the ease she had experienced previously was significantly diminished. Her first glance around reported that Corey was stationed at a small circular table by the wall, facing the back door and holding a fan of playing cards. Seated across from him was a girl with a mess of black and blonde hair gathered into a short, stick-straight ponytail. The girl's face boasted a monroe piercing and wide blue eyes lined with mascara-commercial lashes, and after she laid down her own fan of cards on the table, she stood up to fetch more drinks, straightening out a vintage soccer t-shirt over skinny jeans. Hayley winced at her own outfit, jeans and a flannel, both wrinkled and hastily thrown together; she had few items in her camp wardrobe that were flattering or even clean at this point, and she felt grimy as she looked at the indie-rock fairy commanding Corey's company.
Regardless, she dubiously took a seat in the same spot from the night before and ordered a drink from the female bartender whom she did not recognize. She hunkered over the draft beer, both hands on the glass, and began to feel stupid. She kept stealing glances back towards Corey, who still held down his fort with the girl, and Hayley's resolute began fading fast. Why am I here? she wondered. What in the world was I thinking, that I'd show up and he'd magically be alone and approachable and willing to talk to me? She rubbed at her nose, which, in the real world, had a silver stud in it, but the camp director had made her remove it upon signing her hiring papers. Now there was only a small bump where the jewelry used to be.
She finished the beer and, with a lingering glance at Corey, decided it was time to leave. As she was gathering up her purse, shaking her head in defeat, a guy with a bulky frame and dark brown eyes sat down next to her and smiled. "Hey," he said. "You're Beth's friend, right?"
Hayley froze, half-standing, half-sitting on the bar stool. Sure, she had been to this bar three times in as many nights, but she had always assumed her presence was invisible, or at best negligible next to her naturally chatty cousin. Her surprise at being recognized shined through in her awkward stance, hovering over the stool, and the guy laughed. "I thought you were. I'm Brandon. I go to school with Beth."
She was still slightly unnerved at the fact that she was fully visible, but Brandon's eyes were kind and welcoming, so she stuck her hand out for an introduction with a tentative smile. "I'm Hayley. Beth's cousin, actually."
They clasped hands, and Hayley hoped hers wasn't too clammy. Brandon nodded toward her empty glass. "You need another drink?"
"Oh no, that's fine," she said, waving her hands. "I was actually just about to get going..."
"Oh," Brandon said, taken aback. "Are you sure? I thought I saw you just get here."
Hayley ducked her head, sheepish. "I did," she admitted. "I...I don't know. I had the ngith off, and was hoping to maybe run into somebody I knew..." Her eyes darted over Brandon's shoulder, to Corey, who was laughing as he smacked his female companion in the forehead with his cards. "I don't know," she repeated, with an embarrassed laugh in her throat. "I feel pretty dumb here by myself."
Brandon waved his hand dismissively. "Are you serious? We all come here by ourselves, ah, pretty much every night. Beth, too. She usually shows up alone." He spoke assuredly, and Hayley couldn't help but smile as some of the ease from the previous nights flooded back to soothe her. Brandon smiled back. His face was open. "I was just about to buy a round for the guys," he said. "Do you want to do a shot?"
He led her to the other corner of the bar, where three other dudes waited, laughing with effortless male camaraderie. She stood slightly off to the side, not wanting to intrude on their circle, while Brandon ordered five shots of something called monkey juice; the guys groaned in response and the girl tending bar threw her head back in laughter. She retrieved a stainless steel bottle molded to the shape of a fat monkey sitting Buddha style and poured an amber color liquor into a row of shot glasses, not bothering to tip the bottle upright as she moved from glass to glass. Brandon thanked her, put what looked like a fifty dollar bill onto the counter, and passed the shots out. Hayley held hers gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, reluctant to ask what the drink was, and the other guys formed a circle with her and Brandon, armed and ready for the clink-and-drink. "Your call, Brandon," one of them said, eyeballing Hayley with uncertainty.
Brandon shallowly rolled the shot glass in his hand, pondering. He lifted up the drink, tilting it towards Hayley, and said "Here's to...ummm..." His face colored with embarrassment as he struggled to find her name, and the guy who spoke before let out of a scoff.
"Hayley," she said. She even threw in a generous smile, to placate Brandon's snickering companions. "It's Hayley."
"Aha!" Brandon nodded. "Right. Okay. Here's to the look Hayley will have on her face in about ten seconds."
Before she had time to question anything, the boys all whooped in unison, smacked their glasses against hers, and downed their drinks. Hayley followed suit, but the liquid burned her tongue with bitterness and her throat clutched in response, unwilling to let the harsh liquor into her body. It took everything she had not to spit it out, and she coughed wildly as the inferno of a drink dripped down past her throat, burning it on its angry path. The other dudes had similar reactions and gripped one another by the shoulders, letting out loud sighs of exclamation and relief. "Oh, Jesus!" one exclaimed. "Kerry, what the fuck was in that?"
The girl behind the bar consulted a paper behind the register. "Ohhh shit guys, this was good," she said. "White tequila, Jose tequila, two hits of Jack, orange Stoli, a splash of Jager, and some Beefeater gin to top it all off. Nice," she said, flinging the list aside and shaking her head. "You guys are fucking out of your minds."
Hayley's eyes widened. "What the fuck?" She choked a little again, out of reflex. The inferno was still incinerating her esophagus.
Brandon laughed, a little strained himself because of the mismatched concoction. "Yeah..." he began. "Whenever there's not enough of whatever in a bottle to finish someone's drink off, they just pour it into the monkey flask and serve out really cheap shots of it."
Her mouth dropped open in surprise, but then dissolved into laughter. "So," she said, "you decide to serve it to unsuspecting newcomers, like myself. Who just happened to come alone tonight."
"Yeah, that's kind of the idea," said the guy who spoke earlier, chiming in. "Especially to girls who show up alone. You know, get them drunk, promise them shit, take advantage of them in the backseat of my car..."
"Just another night around here," Brandon finished, laughing. "Hayley, have you had the pleasure of being assaulted by my friend Trent yet?"
She shook her head, bemused by their banter. "I can't say I have." She held out her hand, and he shook it firmly with a grin. "Well, you might expect to later," he cackled with a wink.
"Yeah, like I said, nightly occurrence around here," Brandon offered. "My night just isn't complete without a firm cock squeeze from Trent D."
The guys laughed, and Hayley couldn't help but join. Brandon gestured to the bar. "You guys want something to drink?"
Trent shook his head. "Dude, you just got the last round."
"It's not a problem. What do you want, Heineken? Yeah? Hay, what about you?"
Hayley paused, noting duly the shortened version of her name. "Beer's fine...whatever's on special, I guess."
It was the third night in a row she'd been in the bar, but without the familiar comfort of Beth at her side, the ease she had experienced previously was significantly diminished. Her first glance around reported that Corey was stationed at a small circular table by the wall, facing the back door and holding a fan of playing cards. Seated across from him was a girl with a mess of black and blonde hair gathered into a short, stick-straight ponytail. The girl's face boasted a monroe piercing and wide blue eyes lined with mascara-commercial lashes, and after she laid down her own fan of cards on the table, she stood up to fetch more drinks, straightening out a vintage soccer t-shirt over skinny jeans. Hayley winced at her own outfit, jeans and a flannel, both wrinkled and hastily thrown together; she had few items in her camp wardrobe that were flattering or even clean at this point, and she felt grimy as she looked at the indie-rock fairy commanding Corey's company.
Regardless, she dubiously took a seat in the same spot from the night before and ordered a drink from the female bartender whom she did not recognize. She hunkered over the draft beer, both hands on the glass, and began to feel stupid. She kept stealing glances back towards Corey, who still held down his fort with the girl, and Hayley's resolute began fading fast. Why am I here? she wondered. What in the world was I thinking, that I'd show up and he'd magically be alone and approachable and willing to talk to me? She rubbed at her nose, which, in the real world, had a silver stud in it, but the camp director had made her remove it upon signing her hiring papers. Now there was only a small bump where the jewelry used to be.
She finished the beer and, with a lingering glance at Corey, decided it was time to leave. As she was gathering up her purse, shaking her head in defeat, a guy with a bulky frame and dark brown eyes sat down next to her and smiled. "Hey," he said. "You're Beth's friend, right?"
Hayley froze, half-standing, half-sitting on the bar stool. Sure, she had been to this bar three times in as many nights, but she had always assumed her presence was invisible, or at best negligible next to her naturally chatty cousin. Her surprise at being recognized shined through in her awkward stance, hovering over the stool, and the guy laughed. "I thought you were. I'm Brandon. I go to school with Beth."
She was still slightly unnerved at the fact that she was fully visible, but Brandon's eyes were kind and welcoming, so she stuck her hand out for an introduction with a tentative smile. "I'm Hayley. Beth's cousin, actually."
They clasped hands, and Hayley hoped hers wasn't too clammy. Brandon nodded toward her empty glass. "You need another drink?"
"Oh no, that's fine," she said, waving her hands. "I was actually just about to get going..."
"Oh," Brandon said, taken aback. "Are you sure? I thought I saw you just get here."
Hayley ducked her head, sheepish. "I did," she admitted. "I...I don't know. I had the ngith off, and was hoping to maybe run into somebody I knew..." Her eyes darted over Brandon's shoulder, to Corey, who was laughing as he smacked his female companion in the forehead with his cards. "I don't know," she repeated, with an embarrassed laugh in her throat. "I feel pretty dumb here by myself."
Brandon waved his hand dismissively. "Are you serious? We all come here by ourselves, ah, pretty much every night. Beth, too. She usually shows up alone." He spoke assuredly, and Hayley couldn't help but smile as some of the ease from the previous nights flooded back to soothe her. Brandon smiled back. His face was open. "I was just about to buy a round for the guys," he said. "Do you want to do a shot?"
He led her to the other corner of the bar, where three other dudes waited, laughing with effortless male camaraderie. She stood slightly off to the side, not wanting to intrude on their circle, while Brandon ordered five shots of something called monkey juice; the guys groaned in response and the girl tending bar threw her head back in laughter. She retrieved a stainless steel bottle molded to the shape of a fat monkey sitting Buddha style and poured an amber color liquor into a row of shot glasses, not bothering to tip the bottle upright as she moved from glass to glass. Brandon thanked her, put what looked like a fifty dollar bill onto the counter, and passed the shots out. Hayley held hers gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, reluctant to ask what the drink was, and the other guys formed a circle with her and Brandon, armed and ready for the clink-and-drink. "Your call, Brandon," one of them said, eyeballing Hayley with uncertainty.
Brandon shallowly rolled the shot glass in his hand, pondering. He lifted up the drink, tilting it towards Hayley, and said "Here's to...ummm..." His face colored with embarrassment as he struggled to find her name, and the guy who spoke before let out of a scoff.
"Hayley," she said. She even threw in a generous smile, to placate Brandon's snickering companions. "It's Hayley."
"Aha!" Brandon nodded. "Right. Okay. Here's to the look Hayley will have on her face in about ten seconds."
Before she had time to question anything, the boys all whooped in unison, smacked their glasses against hers, and downed their drinks. Hayley followed suit, but the liquid burned her tongue with bitterness and her throat clutched in response, unwilling to let the harsh liquor into her body. It took everything she had not to spit it out, and she coughed wildly as the inferno of a drink dripped down past her throat, burning it on its angry path. The other dudes had similar reactions and gripped one another by the shoulders, letting out loud sighs of exclamation and relief. "Oh, Jesus!" one exclaimed. "Kerry, what the fuck was in that?"
The girl behind the bar consulted a paper behind the register. "Ohhh shit guys, this was good," she said. "White tequila, Jose tequila, two hits of Jack, orange Stoli, a splash of Jager, and some Beefeater gin to top it all off. Nice," she said, flinging the list aside and shaking her head. "You guys are fucking out of your minds."
Hayley's eyes widened. "What the fuck?" She choked a little again, out of reflex. The inferno was still incinerating her esophagus.
Brandon laughed, a little strained himself because of the mismatched concoction. "Yeah..." he began. "Whenever there's not enough of whatever in a bottle to finish someone's drink off, they just pour it into the monkey flask and serve out really cheap shots of it."
Her mouth dropped open in surprise, but then dissolved into laughter. "So," she said, "you decide to serve it to unsuspecting newcomers, like myself. Who just happened to come alone tonight."
"Yeah, that's kind of the idea," said the guy who spoke earlier, chiming in. "Especially to girls who show up alone. You know, get them drunk, promise them shit, take advantage of them in the backseat of my car..."
"Just another night around here," Brandon finished, laughing. "Hayley, have you had the pleasure of being assaulted by my friend Trent yet?"
She shook her head, bemused by their banter. "I can't say I have." She held out her hand, and he shook it firmly with a grin. "Well, you might expect to later," he cackled with a wink.
"Yeah, like I said, nightly occurrence around here," Brandon offered. "My night just isn't complete without a firm cock squeeze from Trent D."
The guys laughed, and Hayley couldn't help but join. Brandon gestured to the bar. "You guys want something to drink?"
Trent shook his head. "Dude, you just got the last round."
"It's not a problem. What do you want, Heineken? Yeah? Hay, what about you?"
Hayley paused, noting duly the shortened version of her name. "Beer's fine...whatever's on special, I guess."
Sunday, November 1, 2009
"save your heart for someone worth dying for"
After MTV night, the summer took on a much different routine. Hayley began her day by checking the staff's nights-off schedule and plotting how she would bribe or coincide or persuade one of her fellow counselors to cover her night duty. She suffered countless exasperated sighs directed her way from Leah, who clearly disapproved but never reported her when Hayley poured herself into their shared counselor's quarters at 2, 3, sometimes 4AM. The summer wore on and the days became torturous for Hayley to endure; she kept her head in the bar down the street and people started to notice that it wasn't at camp, where it was being paid to be. She'd show up to activities late and dismiss the kids early, never conducting her leadership role with the enthusiasm she had exhibited earlier in the summer. She spent every free second secretly checking her phone, kept in her possession illegally, hoping for a text from Beth confirming or denying evening plans. Whenever she was able, she took cover behind a boulder or pine tree, her inhalations staggered and anxious, and stared at Corey's number in her phone, wondering if she'd ever have the right opportunity to use it.
Her new obsession rang no warning bells for herself, as she felt her daydreams about Corey were realistic and grounded in possibility; often times in her cloudy synapses they were drinking beers together and shooting pool in the quiet hours after the bar closed; or somtimes they were walking into the back door of a concert hall after a three-hour roadtrip out-of-state to see a band that Corey's band toured with last summer. She never fantasized about marriage or old age or even what it would be like to be his girlfriend and having to cope with his constant absence and temptation due to his touring gigs. Instead, she pictured him sitting next to her on the sidelines of the camp's basketball court, helping her referee a roller hockey scrimmage between the two oldest male cabins. She had discovered from her new friendships with the bar regulars that Corey loved hockey, specifically ice hockey. Evan and Trent told her stories about how they all got together once or twice a week whenever the boys were home from tour to play, and according to them, Corey was one of the sloppiest players of all their friends. But, Trent had said with reverence, despite being sloppy and skinny, he could take the hardest hits out of any of the other guys. "He's a beast," Trent had said. "And whenever his team wins, they get drunk and he taunts everyone for being pussies in this douchebag French accent he does. It's pretty fucking hilarious."
Hayley wished it was Corey whom she was refereeing in hockey. When she took her campers on hikes around the lake, she wished that some situation would arise in which he'd come ambling past them on the trail and decide to tag along. Everything she did, she imagined what it would be like if he was there too. After one particular week where she managed to spend four straight nights at the bar, during a cabin henna tattooing session, Shea asked her what henna she'd like, and Hayley wound up with a red bass guitar on her left ankle. She was consumed.
The routine continued and Haley found herself more and more hungover for the wake-up calls in the morning. Leah gradually assumed all responsibility for the cabin; she began to treat Hayley like one of the other eleven-year old girls, but Hayley was too fatigued and distracted to get angry about it. Her thoughts were too often dedicated to anaylyzing Corey's every facial movement and voice inflection from the evening before, considering if it might mean he was thinking about her. She spent meals sketching his face on napkins, wondeirng if the customary goodbye he had given her had lasted longer than usual or if she had just selfishly and unconsciously held on to him for a beat more than normal. When her campers asked who she was drawing, she'd just smile knowingly and say "Oh, just some boy I know. . ." Once, laden with suspicion, Leah had questioned her further about that very face that was cropping up on napkins at almost every meal, smudged with ink. "Does he have something to do with the fact that you're gone every night?" she demanded of Hayley, pulling her privately away one morning.
Hayley had shrugged and angled away from Leah, indignant. "You wouldn't understand," was all she could offer.
Leah had stood, hands on her hips, mouth straight as a ruler, and her hair pulled back in a harsh bun. "You know I could turn you in in a heartbeat," she had said authoritatively. "I don't know why I haven't yet. I don't know why anyone hasn't yet. You've taken so much of the other staff's nights off and not returned the favor once."
Leah had looked like such a mother that day; the tigther her hair was pulled, the more her voice took on a disappointed-not-mad tone. Hayley had covered her face with her hands and sighed loudly. "Okay," she said, voice muffled by the flesh barrier surrounding it. "I'll stop getting everyone to cover my night shifts for me."
That was the first night Hayley snuck out of the cabin.
---------------------------------------------------
Corey ran his hand over the CD inserts taped to the wall. "Are these in chronological order?" he asked.
Hayley flopped back onto her bed. The alcohol in her blood forced her limbs stationary, and she moaned slightly. "Yeah," her mouth mumbled. "Just by the year."
He laughed as he read off some of the album titles. "Where You Want To Be ? You actually paid for that one?"
"Twice. My first copy got ruined at the beach. Scratched up by sand."
"That album was garrrrrbageee, Hayley." He was slurring a little.
She lifted her head in protest, eyes closed, face full of expression. "It. Was. Not. You are just a hater, Corey Jackson."
He gave her a dubious look, wasted on her eyelids, but exaggerated with intoxication. "That band died when John Nolan left, my darling, and youuuuu know it."
Hayley could feel his snickering through his voice, and she shook her head. "No sir. You are wrong." Picking herself up, she pulled the insert off the wall and flipped it open with a flourish. Her vision was double, but she didn't need her eyes; she knew the lyrics she wanted to recite by heart. She had memorized them a long time ago. "this glass house is burning down, you light the match & I'll stick around, I'll give you everything you want and wish the worst of what I was..."
Corey sank down next to her on the bed, resting on his knees. He snatched the insert out of her hands and dangled it right above her head. "Tonight won't make a difference..." he sang, flinging the pages aside and falling back next to her.
Hayley smacked his arm. "You sure know the song well enough for saying that album was garrrrrbageeee," she drawled, drawing out the last word to mimic his snobby tone from earlier.
Her new obsession rang no warning bells for herself, as she felt her daydreams about Corey were realistic and grounded in possibility; often times in her cloudy synapses they were drinking beers together and shooting pool in the quiet hours after the bar closed; or somtimes they were walking into the back door of a concert hall after a three-hour roadtrip out-of-state to see a band that Corey's band toured with last summer. She never fantasized about marriage or old age or even what it would be like to be his girlfriend and having to cope with his constant absence and temptation due to his touring gigs. Instead, she pictured him sitting next to her on the sidelines of the camp's basketball court, helping her referee a roller hockey scrimmage between the two oldest male cabins. She had discovered from her new friendships with the bar regulars that Corey loved hockey, specifically ice hockey. Evan and Trent told her stories about how they all got together once or twice a week whenever the boys were home from tour to play, and according to them, Corey was one of the sloppiest players of all their friends. But, Trent had said with reverence, despite being sloppy and skinny, he could take the hardest hits out of any of the other guys. "He's a beast," Trent had said. "And whenever his team wins, they get drunk and he taunts everyone for being pussies in this douchebag French accent he does. It's pretty fucking hilarious."
Hayley wished it was Corey whom she was refereeing in hockey. When she took her campers on hikes around the lake, she wished that some situation would arise in which he'd come ambling past them on the trail and decide to tag along. Everything she did, she imagined what it would be like if he was there too. After one particular week where she managed to spend four straight nights at the bar, during a cabin henna tattooing session, Shea asked her what henna she'd like, and Hayley wound up with a red bass guitar on her left ankle. She was consumed.
The routine continued and Haley found herself more and more hungover for the wake-up calls in the morning. Leah gradually assumed all responsibility for the cabin; she began to treat Hayley like one of the other eleven-year old girls, but Hayley was too fatigued and distracted to get angry about it. Her thoughts were too often dedicated to anaylyzing Corey's every facial movement and voice inflection from the evening before, considering if it might mean he was thinking about her. She spent meals sketching his face on napkins, wondeirng if the customary goodbye he had given her had lasted longer than usual or if she had just selfishly and unconsciously held on to him for a beat more than normal. When her campers asked who she was drawing, she'd just smile knowingly and say "Oh, just some boy I know. . ." Once, laden with suspicion, Leah had questioned her further about that very face that was cropping up on napkins at almost every meal, smudged with ink. "Does he have something to do with the fact that you're gone every night?" she demanded of Hayley, pulling her privately away one morning.
Hayley had shrugged and angled away from Leah, indignant. "You wouldn't understand," was all she could offer.
Leah had stood, hands on her hips, mouth straight as a ruler, and her hair pulled back in a harsh bun. "You know I could turn you in in a heartbeat," she had said authoritatively. "I don't know why I haven't yet. I don't know why anyone hasn't yet. You've taken so much of the other staff's nights off and not returned the favor once."
Leah had looked like such a mother that day; the tigther her hair was pulled, the more her voice took on a disappointed-not-mad tone. Hayley had covered her face with her hands and sighed loudly. "Okay," she said, voice muffled by the flesh barrier surrounding it. "I'll stop getting everyone to cover my night shifts for me."
That was the first night Hayley snuck out of the cabin.
---------------------------------------------------
Corey ran his hand over the CD inserts taped to the wall. "Are these in chronological order?" he asked.
Hayley flopped back onto her bed. The alcohol in her blood forced her limbs stationary, and she moaned slightly. "Yeah," her mouth mumbled. "Just by the year."
He laughed as he read off some of the album titles. "Where You Want To Be ? You actually paid for that one?"
"Twice. My first copy got ruined at the beach. Scratched up by sand."
"That album was garrrrrbageee, Hayley." He was slurring a little.
She lifted her head in protest, eyes closed, face full of expression. "It. Was. Not. You are just a hater, Corey Jackson."
He gave her a dubious look, wasted on her eyelids, but exaggerated with intoxication. "That band died when John Nolan left, my darling, and youuuuu know it."
Hayley could feel his snickering through his voice, and she shook her head. "No sir. You are wrong." Picking herself up, she pulled the insert off the wall and flipped it open with a flourish. Her vision was double, but she didn't need her eyes; she knew the lyrics she wanted to recite by heart. She had memorized them a long time ago. "this glass house is burning down, you light the match & I'll stick around, I'll give you everything you want and wish the worst of what I was..."
Corey sank down next to her on the bed, resting on his knees. He snatched the insert out of her hands and dangled it right above her head. "Tonight won't make a difference..." he sang, flinging the pages aside and falling back next to her.
Hayley smacked his arm. "You sure know the song well enough for saying that album was garrrrrbageeee," she drawled, drawing out the last word to mimic his snobby tone from earlier.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
