Late Night 15-minute Vignettes
Dec 13, 12:08am
Sweater Weather
She'd borrowed the sweater in October, on a chilly evening when they'd decided on a walk around the park. They were leaving from his apartment and she had not brought anything warmer than the long sleeved shirt she'd been wearing. He'd rummaged through his things and brought up a heather gray cable knit pullover that drowned her small figure. But she'd been grateful for the warmth it provided.
In the weeks following the breakup, she wore it incessantly around the house and sometimes to a trip to the convenience store. Once, to a restaurant they'd often frequented. She wore it most nights going to sleep, relishing the smell of him still caught in the fabric. The comfort it brought. She used to cry into her pillow aching for his presence beside her again, his arm flung careless around her torso. The solid physicality of his body beside hers in bed.
She'd seen him a half a dozen times since then. Once, they'd gone for dinner at the restaurant they'd like to frequent. She'd tried to keep the conversation light, not dwelling on the wreckage of their romance. But the strain of it had left her close to tears after. All she'd wanted wanted to do throughout the whole meal was ask what she could have done differently, what she could do to change.
A silly notion. He'd told her he liked her just the way she was. It was simply not enough.
All a matter of compatibility, she supposed. Something hardwired into each person.
She curled up at the window seat with a cup of cocoa between her hands. Outside the first snow of the season was beginning to fall. The view seemed something else completely: the fire of autumn extinguished into the dull gray of winter. She burrowed further into his sweater, turtling her face into its collar and inhaling that familiar masculine scent. Barely discernible now, but still there regardless, underneath the perfume of her soaps and lotions.
Beside her, her phone pinged with a new text message. She glanced at her best friend's name and pulled up the attached picture. Him with his arm around another girl, grinning wide at the camera. Some fundraiser event. A casual acquaintance. But she'd suspected that would change soon enough. The message read, "Ran into E and O. Thought you should know from me instead of someone else..." She closed the screen and set the phone aside.
The next morning she dug through her bed, looking for the sweater where she'd discarded it the night before, but found nothing. Horror struck her and she ran down the hall to where a basket of clothes sat, freshly laundered. Among them was the sweater, shrank to half its size and smelling of chemicalized spring rain. She thought it was an apt metaphor for something, but she couldn't say what.
...
Dec 13, 12:41am
Deuces
There are some things in life that you should be able to take for granted--the sun in the sky, the ground beneath your feet, your parents being your actual parents. I guess the revelation hit me particularly hard because all my life I've been told how much I look just like my mother, and all my life I'd wished, secretly, that I was somebody else's daughter--a lost princess of sorts--and that someday, my real parents would come and rescue me from the hellhole that is Boone County.
I pedal my bike hard up the hill, liking the burning sensation in the back of my legs. It feels like a vindication of sorts. Or maybe a penance. It's hard to tell. I can't say that I'm angry. Maybe annoyed. Irritated.
The revelation of my adopted status felt like a betrayal, but not in the emotional sense so much as in the... Well, I'm not sure how to describe it, really. I'm not angry. Only annoyed.
At the top of the hill I skid to a stop as Amber Wallace marches across the street without yielding to traffic, her ponytail bouncing, baton twirling. She shoots me a dirty look but doesn't pause, flinging the baton expertly into the air and catching it between her spirited fingers.
Fat bitch.
She hates me because I blocked her nomination to the Majorettes last year. Of course she took it as some personal vendetta, but that's what happens in small towns like ours, where every little hurt and resentment turns into an all-out, never-ending feud. She can kiss my ass though, because no matter how great she is with the baton, she still looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy squeezed into a leotard. I did everyone a favor not letting her into the squad.
Down the hill I kick my legs out to the side and let gravity do its thing, guiding the bike down to Leeman's Park. At the merry-go-round, a bunch of stoners are passing a joint while twirling around lazily. One of them--Matt--catches my eye and nods, but I ignore the greeting. Just because you let a guy fuck you in the back of his pickup truck after school doesn't mean you have to acknowledge his existence.
I drop the bike onto the grass and grab my backpack from the handlebars. I march resolutely past the playground to where the trees thicken and duck under a low-hanging branch. The dirt trail is narrow--about two feet across--but it's clear enough to follow in the late afternoon sun. It leads me to Leeman's Pond, and there, on the shore, I dump the contents of the backpack.
All the shit things I've been holding on to. Journals for every year since entering middle school. Stories of the glamorous life I'd be leading once I got out of this pit stop. One by one I fling them into the water.
Dreams are for people who can hold on to their delusions.
Sweater Weather
She'd borrowed the sweater in October, on a chilly evening when they'd decided on a walk around the park. They were leaving from his apartment and she had not brought anything warmer than the long sleeved shirt she'd been wearing. He'd rummaged through his things and brought up a heather gray cable knit pullover that drowned her small figure. But she'd been grateful for the warmth it provided.
In the weeks following the breakup, she wore it incessantly around the house and sometimes to a trip to the convenience store. Once, to a restaurant they'd often frequented. She wore it most nights going to sleep, relishing the smell of him still caught in the fabric. The comfort it brought. She used to cry into her pillow aching for his presence beside her again, his arm flung careless around her torso. The solid physicality of his body beside hers in bed.
She'd seen him a half a dozen times since then. Once, they'd gone for dinner at the restaurant they'd like to frequent. She'd tried to keep the conversation light, not dwelling on the wreckage of their romance. But the strain of it had left her close to tears after. All she'd wanted wanted to do throughout the whole meal was ask what she could have done differently, what she could do to change.
A silly notion. He'd told her he liked her just the way she was. It was simply not enough.
All a matter of compatibility, she supposed. Something hardwired into each person.
She curled up at the window seat with a cup of cocoa between her hands. Outside the first snow of the season was beginning to fall. The view seemed something else completely: the fire of autumn extinguished into the dull gray of winter. She burrowed further into his sweater, turtling her face into its collar and inhaling that familiar masculine scent. Barely discernible now, but still there regardless, underneath the perfume of her soaps and lotions.
Beside her, her phone pinged with a new text message. She glanced at her best friend's name and pulled up the attached picture. Him with his arm around another girl, grinning wide at the camera. Some fundraiser event. A casual acquaintance. But she'd suspected that would change soon enough. The message read, "Ran into E and O. Thought you should know from me instead of someone else..." She closed the screen and set the phone aside.
The next morning she dug through her bed, looking for the sweater where she'd discarded it the night before, but found nothing. Horror struck her and she ran down the hall to where a basket of clothes sat, freshly laundered. Among them was the sweater, shrank to half its size and smelling of chemicalized spring rain. She thought it was an apt metaphor for something, but she couldn't say what.
...
Dec 13, 12:41am
Deuces
There are some things in life that you should be able to take for granted--the sun in the sky, the ground beneath your feet, your parents being your actual parents. I guess the revelation hit me particularly hard because all my life I've been told how much I look just like my mother, and all my life I'd wished, secretly, that I was somebody else's daughter--a lost princess of sorts--and that someday, my real parents would come and rescue me from the hellhole that is Boone County.
I pedal my bike hard up the hill, liking the burning sensation in the back of my legs. It feels like a vindication of sorts. Or maybe a penance. It's hard to tell. I can't say that I'm angry. Maybe annoyed. Irritated.
The revelation of my adopted status felt like a betrayal, but not in the emotional sense so much as in the... Well, I'm not sure how to describe it, really. I'm not angry. Only annoyed.
At the top of the hill I skid to a stop as Amber Wallace marches across the street without yielding to traffic, her ponytail bouncing, baton twirling. She shoots me a dirty look but doesn't pause, flinging the baton expertly into the air and catching it between her spirited fingers.
Fat bitch.
She hates me because I blocked her nomination to the Majorettes last year. Of course she took it as some personal vendetta, but that's what happens in small towns like ours, where every little hurt and resentment turns into an all-out, never-ending feud. She can kiss my ass though, because no matter how great she is with the baton, she still looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy squeezed into a leotard. I did everyone a favor not letting her into the squad.
Down the hill I kick my legs out to the side and let gravity do its thing, guiding the bike down to Leeman's Park. At the merry-go-round, a bunch of stoners are passing a joint while twirling around lazily. One of them--Matt--catches my eye and nods, but I ignore the greeting. Just because you let a guy fuck you in the back of his pickup truck after school doesn't mean you have to acknowledge his existence.
I drop the bike onto the grass and grab my backpack from the handlebars. I march resolutely past the playground to where the trees thicken and duck under a low-hanging branch. The dirt trail is narrow--about two feet across--but it's clear enough to follow in the late afternoon sun. It leads me to Leeman's Pond, and there, on the shore, I dump the contents of the backpack.
All the shit things I've been holding on to. Journals for every year since entering middle school. Stories of the glamorous life I'd be leading once I got out of this pit stop. One by one I fling them into the water.
Dreams are for people who can hold on to their delusions.