Sticky floors, gilded with spilled Budlight. Crushed aluminum cans and plastic red cups, littering stained wood. Sloshing golden brown liquids, swirling to their brims and catapulting through the air as the blurry red and silver containers are thrown up with waving hands.
Okay now ladiesssss Yeaaaaaahhhh If you know you bad Yeaaaaaahhhh If you a top notch bitch Wooooooo Lemme hear you holla Wooooooo
“Sorry, what did you say?” I turn back to catch the movement of his mouth, the audio drained out from the blaring music. He leans over, his collar brushing the top of my bare shoulder, his whisper tickling my ear and neck. His fingers press gently against my lower back, guiding me forward. As we make our way down the hall, the thumping of heels against the wooden ground fades out with the rest of Travis Porter’s degrading lyrics.
He pulls my hair loose, and it brushes my shoulder blades as it falls down. Soft whispers, lonely buttons, rumpled denim, recycled oxygen, crinkled polyester, heavy carbon dioxide. My eyes flicker open in a desperate attempt to mentally Kodak the moment. With each breath, I add a picture to my internal scrapbook: the glimmer of incoherent karaoke, the warmth of his chest against my palms, the jabbing of the desk against my hipbone, the faint murmur of a crowded intersection eight stories below, the curvature of my spine, the quickening of my pulse, his dimples.
Each detail is crammed into the pages of my secret memory book. It is the book that comforts me when I have trouble falling asleep or when I stare out the window during a long train ride. Sometimes, I like to stare at the pictures and other times, I try stringing them together to form short movies. The sound of a fizzing Coke bottle splashing against a table transports me into the DSL, and I begin to hear the chorus of laughter reverberating through the basement. The
isolation of one laugh track throws me back to the courtyard outside Masters Hall, where I stood recording the results of an utterly ridiculous physics lab. We were calculating the speed of different balls dropped from the third story of the building, and we must have spent more time almost shattering windows and doubled over in hysterics than writing down any of the “important” details. The sound of the tennis ball smacking the pavement places me on the courts of my first (and only) tennis camp the summer before sixth grade. Scorching sun seeps into my skin and blisters my shoulder blades, and the terrifying thud of the lime green bullet echoes in my mind, how it slapped the hot concrete a split second after it grazed my cheek.
The sound of my shrieking shoves me onto cracked pavement, and I can feel myself falling from the bright pink seat of my first bicycle. Desperately, my hands claw at the glittering violet and magenta streamers swinging from the handlebars, but instead of a miracle catch, I collide with the ground. Soon, small fingers inspect the fresh blood, and I begin crying more at the slow journey of dark crimson dribbling down my shin than the actual pain of ripped skin.
The heaving groans fling me under the floral comforter of my bed, and I can taste the salty water at the corners of my lips as I suffocate the crumpled rejection letter in my fist. My head begins aching in response to my erratic intake of oxygen and the muffled wailing escaping from my drenched pillow. Slowly, I sit up and take ten deep breaths as I stare at the collage of pictures that decorate my wall. Cracking a smile at Sophie and Susie mid-dance move, my eyes shift to an edited picture of the infamous Soviet leader with the caption, I’ll Quit Stalin, Wanna Go to Prom? Choking on a burst of laughter and lingering tears, I recall standing in the girls’ bathroom with the mirror covered in history puns inviting me to the spring formal. I reach down to send an “I miss you” text, and am suddenly overcome with the scent of Obsession by Calvin Klein as I re-read my most recent text thread.
The toxic penetration of Calvin Klein diffuses into my bloodstream as I think back to quasi-regretful Friday nights. Wild giggles erupt as I flip the page in my mental memory book. I can feel the cracked sidewalk beneath my 3 1⁄2 inch pink pumps and the cold brick against my arm as I throw myself at the wall for balance. It scrapes my skin, and I turn to find its invisible scar. I can still see the blurred Christmas lights of the intersection mingling with mustard taxi cabs and I can feel the wind infiltrate my underwear as my dress balloons next to the homeless veteran.