Stolen Aphrodite | Community | Annie Edison
Stolen Aphrodite
~1,400 words
Annie Edison
Things that do and do not happen to Annie Edison after graduation.
After she graduates from Greendale Community College, Annie Edison does not enroll in a Healthcare Administration master’s degree program. She does not begin working in a nursing home, making friends with the patients. She does not spend her lunch breaks talking with Mrs. Thompson and holding back tears as she listens to her describe her sixty year marriage to Mr. Thompson.
She does not move out of apartment 303 and into a small but clean studio in a nice part of town, away from dildo shops and alleys with drug addicts. She does not pick her curtains out of a store instead of a dumpster. She does not spend her evenings watching Jeopardy! alone, shouting answers to the television with no one to compete against. She’s not lonely.
She doesn’t date guys the nurses at work set her up with. She doesn’t get ready in front of the mirror, meticulously brushing her hair and shrugging on a clean cardigan and fastening pearls around her neck. They don’t take her to nice restaurants where she smiles and laughs politely over expensive salads. They don’t sit side-by-side at the 8:30 showing of the new romantic comedy and her dates don’t reach over to hold her hand halfway through. They don’t drop her off at her apartment with polite, hesitant kisses. She doesn’t shrug off their calls and texts until they get the point. She doesn’t feel empty when she goes to bed by herself.
She doesn’t see the study group once a month when they gather in Shirley’s kitchen for lunch. She doesn’t watch as they grow further and further apart as they get wrapped up in their own lives. She doesn’t miss knocking on her bedroom wall when she wakes up from a nightmare and feeling reassured when Troy and Abed knock back.
She doesn’t get a phone call from Jeff one day asking if she’ll go as his date to one of his firm’s parties. And she doesn’t agonize over what to wear and call Britta to come over and help her get ready. She doesn’t show up on Jeff Winger’s arm and feel like a million dollars. That feeling doesn’t last for five minutes until she doesn’t realize that she’s only supposed to be there for show. She doesn’t stand awkward and uncomfortable as Jeff’s lawyer friends tell disgusting jokes and ignore her existence.
She doesn’t go out with him again.
She doesn’t find herself dating Jeff Winger, something she hasn’t wanted for the last four years. She doesn’t start spending her Friday nights at his apartment and she doesn’t text him on her lunch breaks. She doesn’t stay up late wondering if she’s his girlfriend.
She doesn’t go to her classes on Monday and Wednesday nights and struggle to stay awake. And after only six months at the nursing home, she doesn’t get promoted to a position with more paperwork and less human interaction. She doesn’t get straight As in grad school, a real school, and she doesn’t graduate with a master’s degree and a boyfriend who wants to get married, who proposes during her graduation celebration dinner.
Jeff isn’t a difficult partner to deal with. He doesn’t have mood swings and quirks and Annie doesn’t have to call Shirley or Britta for help when she finds herself at wit’s end. She doesn’t swap romcoms for violent thrillers and Sunday morning pancakes for egg-white omelets. She doesn’t cancel vacations to places with beaches when big cases come up. She doesn’t skip out on movie nights with Troy and Abed and Britta because Jeff doesn’t want to go.
And eventually, Annie Edison doesn’t find herself twenty-six years old and married and pregnant with a job she hates feeling like her life is over before it even had a chance to begin.
---
It turns out it’s too late for Annie to change her major and still graduate on time, so when she receives her bachelor’s in hospital administration she just shrugs and hangs it up on the wall with Troy’s and Abed’s diplomas, the three of them side-by-side on the wall in the living room. She bypasses the hospital job listings and instead works any odd job she can find: she makes tuna salad at Shirley’s sandwiches, she walks her neighbors’ dogs, she babysits. Pierce-who wants to help but knows better than to flat-out offer Annie money-pays her to clean out the attic of his mansion. She brings Troy and Abed along with her and soon the attic becomes the basement and the garage and half of the rooms in the east wing. They split the money three ways and cons Pierce into paying for the pizza they eat during breaks as well.
Troy fixes air conditioners and Abed works at the falafel shop and when they all have a day off the three of them go to the public pool and the local water park and Annie buys a pink bikini and flushes when she garners admiring looks. They have cannonball contests and Troy wins every time.
On Sundays the group barbeques in Shirley’s back yard and Annie chases Ben through the sprinkler. She eats garden burgers in solidarity with Britta, who gives her a small smile when Andre takes count. She always volunteers to wash the dishes and Britta raises an eyebrow until Troy and Abed and Jeff and Pierce play rock, paper, scissors to see who has to dry. And whoever loses stands at the sink with Annie and they watch out the window in silence as their friends sit in the backyard, the sun starting to set overhead and the three boys running around.
Annie’s mom calls her in August, the first time she’s heard from her since freshman year. She berates her daughter for having a college degree and not doing anything with it, for living with two boys she’s not romantically involved with, for not having a real job. Annie hangs up and cries and Troy and Abed take her out for ice cream with extra sprinkles and as she licks the drips off her cone she forgets about the whole thing.
For Shirley’s birthday Annie and Britta chip in for a spa trip and the three of them spend the weekend getting facials and massages and laying in the sun by the pool. Britta complains about the amount of money people spend on pampering themselves instead of helping those in need, but those complaints are half-hearted and disappear after her first massage and Annie exchanges a knowing smile with Shirley.
When September comes, Annie mopes a little bit: this has been her favorite summer and it’s starting to sink in that there will be no Greendale, no school, and there’s nothing on her horizon. Air conditioners get turned off and taken out of windows and the falafel shop slows down as the
foot traffic does. Abed picks up his camera and looks at it thoughtfully.
“Let’s make a road trip movie.”
They pool their money and Annie puts her planning hat back on, prints maps and weighs the pros and cons of east versus west, north versus south. Troy packs nonperishable snacks and Abed makes a list of non-negotiable pit stops. They kiss their friends goodbye and pile in the car and drive west.
They stop in Hollywood, of course, and Abed takes meticulous footage of each and every star on the Walk of Fame. Annie and Troy whine until he agrees to leave and they drive to Disneyland and ride Space Mountain over and over until Annie and Abed throw up into a garbage can and Troy gags at the sound. It only takes a few minutes for them to start laughing about it and they run to the line for the Matterhorn.
After California they go north,they chase the cold and fall sets in. Abed films things and they email video messages back home to their friends. They take turns driving and suddenly it’s November and they’re only a few days from home but Troy doesn’t take the exit for Colorado and they keep going east instead.
Sometimes when they’re huddled in cheap motel rooms Annie thinks about all the things not waiting for her back home. She wonders what she’s going to eventually do with her life and the possibilities all seem too great to process. So she squeezes between Troy and Abed as they sit on the bed and watch a bad movie.
“People who go on road trips are usually running from something. What are you running from?” Abed asks as he films her loading the car one morning.
She smiles into the camera. “I think I’m running to it, whatever it is.”
~1,400 words
Annie Edison
Things that do and do not happen to Annie Edison after graduation.
After she graduates from Greendale Community College, Annie Edison does not enroll in a Healthcare Administration master’s degree program. She does not begin working in a nursing home, making friends with the patients. She does not spend her lunch breaks talking with Mrs. Thompson and holding back tears as she listens to her describe her sixty year marriage to Mr. Thompson.
She does not move out of apartment 303 and into a small but clean studio in a nice part of town, away from dildo shops and alleys with drug addicts. She does not pick her curtains out of a store instead of a dumpster. She does not spend her evenings watching Jeopardy! alone, shouting answers to the television with no one to compete against. She’s not lonely.
She doesn’t date guys the nurses at work set her up with. She doesn’t get ready in front of the mirror, meticulously brushing her hair and shrugging on a clean cardigan and fastening pearls around her neck. They don’t take her to nice restaurants where she smiles and laughs politely over expensive salads. They don’t sit side-by-side at the 8:30 showing of the new romantic comedy and her dates don’t reach over to hold her hand halfway through. They don’t drop her off at her apartment with polite, hesitant kisses. She doesn’t shrug off their calls and texts until they get the point. She doesn’t feel empty when she goes to bed by herself.
She doesn’t see the study group once a month when they gather in Shirley’s kitchen for lunch. She doesn’t watch as they grow further and further apart as they get wrapped up in their own lives. She doesn’t miss knocking on her bedroom wall when she wakes up from a nightmare and feeling reassured when Troy and Abed knock back.
She doesn’t get a phone call from Jeff one day asking if she’ll go as his date to one of his firm’s parties. And she doesn’t agonize over what to wear and call Britta to come over and help her get ready. She doesn’t show up on Jeff Winger’s arm and feel like a million dollars. That feeling doesn’t last for five minutes until she doesn’t realize that she’s only supposed to be there for show. She doesn’t stand awkward and uncomfortable as Jeff’s lawyer friends tell disgusting jokes and ignore her existence.
She doesn’t go out with him again.
She doesn’t find herself dating Jeff Winger, something she hasn’t wanted for the last four years. She doesn’t start spending her Friday nights at his apartment and she doesn’t text him on her lunch breaks. She doesn’t stay up late wondering if she’s his girlfriend.
She doesn’t go to her classes on Monday and Wednesday nights and struggle to stay awake. And after only six months at the nursing home, she doesn’t get promoted to a position with more paperwork and less human interaction. She doesn’t get straight As in grad school, a real school, and she doesn’t graduate with a master’s degree and a boyfriend who wants to get married, who proposes during her graduation celebration dinner.
Jeff isn’t a difficult partner to deal with. He doesn’t have mood swings and quirks and Annie doesn’t have to call Shirley or Britta for help when she finds herself at wit’s end. She doesn’t swap romcoms for violent thrillers and Sunday morning pancakes for egg-white omelets. She doesn’t cancel vacations to places with beaches when big cases come up. She doesn’t skip out on movie nights with Troy and Abed and Britta because Jeff doesn’t want to go.
And eventually, Annie Edison doesn’t find herself twenty-six years old and married and pregnant with a job she hates feeling like her life is over before it even had a chance to begin.
---
It turns out it’s too late for Annie to change her major and still graduate on time, so when she receives her bachelor’s in hospital administration she just shrugs and hangs it up on the wall with Troy’s and Abed’s diplomas, the three of them side-by-side on the wall in the living room. She bypasses the hospital job listings and instead works any odd job she can find: she makes tuna salad at Shirley’s sandwiches, she walks her neighbors’ dogs, she babysits. Pierce-who wants to help but knows better than to flat-out offer Annie money-pays her to clean out the attic of his mansion. She brings Troy and Abed along with her and soon the attic becomes the basement and the garage and half of the rooms in the east wing. They split the money three ways and cons Pierce into paying for the pizza they eat during breaks as well.
Troy fixes air conditioners and Abed works at the falafel shop and when they all have a day off the three of them go to the public pool and the local water park and Annie buys a pink bikini and flushes when she garners admiring looks. They have cannonball contests and Troy wins every time.
On Sundays the group barbeques in Shirley’s back yard and Annie chases Ben through the sprinkler. She eats garden burgers in solidarity with Britta, who gives her a small smile when Andre takes count. She always volunteers to wash the dishes and Britta raises an eyebrow until Troy and Abed and Jeff and Pierce play rock, paper, scissors to see who has to dry. And whoever loses stands at the sink with Annie and they watch out the window in silence as their friends sit in the backyard, the sun starting to set overhead and the three boys running around.
Annie’s mom calls her in August, the first time she’s heard from her since freshman year. She berates her daughter for having a college degree and not doing anything with it, for living with two boys she’s not romantically involved with, for not having a real job. Annie hangs up and cries and Troy and Abed take her out for ice cream with extra sprinkles and as she licks the drips off her cone she forgets about the whole thing.
For Shirley’s birthday Annie and Britta chip in for a spa trip and the three of them spend the weekend getting facials and massages and laying in the sun by the pool. Britta complains about the amount of money people spend on pampering themselves instead of helping those in need, but those complaints are half-hearted and disappear after her first massage and Annie exchanges a knowing smile with Shirley.
When September comes, Annie mopes a little bit: this has been her favorite summer and it’s starting to sink in that there will be no Greendale, no school, and there’s nothing on her horizon. Air conditioners get turned off and taken out of windows and the falafel shop slows down as the
foot traffic does. Abed picks up his camera and looks at it thoughtfully.
“Let’s make a road trip movie.”
They pool their money and Annie puts her planning hat back on, prints maps and weighs the pros and cons of east versus west, north versus south. Troy packs nonperishable snacks and Abed makes a list of non-negotiable pit stops. They kiss their friends goodbye and pile in the car and drive west.
They stop in Hollywood, of course, and Abed takes meticulous footage of each and every star on the Walk of Fame. Annie and Troy whine until he agrees to leave and they drive to Disneyland and ride Space Mountain over and over until Annie and Abed throw up into a garbage can and Troy gags at the sound. It only takes a few minutes for them to start laughing about it and they run to the line for the Matterhorn.
After California they go north,they chase the cold and fall sets in. Abed films things and they email video messages back home to their friends. They take turns driving and suddenly it’s November and they’re only a few days from home but Troy doesn’t take the exit for Colorado and they keep going east instead.
Sometimes when they’re huddled in cheap motel rooms Annie thinks about all the things not waiting for her back home. She wonders what she’s going to eventually do with her life and the possibilities all seem too great to process. So she squeezes between Troy and Abed as they sit on the bed and watch a bad movie.
“People who go on road trips are usually running from something. What are you running from?” Abed asks as he films her loading the car one morning.
She smiles into the camera. “I think I’m running to it, whatever it is.”