207

I found a short story that I wrote for my creative writing class my sophomore year in high school. I re-read it for the first time since I wrote it and turned it in, and it definitely brought a few tears to my eyes. I have come so far from the naive and scared little girl I was, but I am glad I have put so much faith in the universe around me, because in fact, as I predicted - the journey has been epic, and I hope it continues to be filled with surprises. I feel so infinitely blessed.




The first time Cat walked through that musty low-income apartment hallway to number 207 she knew she’d be coming back again, and again. Even the chipping paint of the once white walls, that now seemed to be a slight shade of yellow, seemed more exciting than the varsity football game the rest of her so called “friends” were at. They would be drinking their cheap vodka out of water bottles, praying to not get expelled from school, while she drank her just-as-cheap vodka out of a red plastic cup wishing the night would never end.

She felt safe in that crowded little apartment not even a mile from her own home. It sort of excited her to think what her parents would do if they found out that their fourteen-year-old daughter wasn’t sleeping safely at her best friend’s house, like she told them earlier, but at an apartment owned by four guys over the age of eighteen. Not to mention how would they react to see her playing beer pong with the skill of a college frat boy? Or to see her flirting with guys who should see her as nothing more than “jail bait?” And that’s why her parents thought she was sleeping at Allison’s house for the night, and not her eighteen-year old friend Greg’s newly rented apartment.

At some point in the night, after being greeted with an anonymous “Heyyyy!” from the already budding group, she found herself the center of everyone’s attention. The mixture of liquor and heavy beats from the live DJ broadcasting on the radio always seemed to summon her hips to some sort of modern tribal ritual. Even if there wasn’t music playing Cat would have still kept her hips moving to some deep rhythm inside her soul. A few random bodies slid up to her and swayed with the habitual movement of her dance, always making sure her free hand had a filled drink in it. She knew the power her still slim hips had over those older boys’ straying minds but it didn’t really matter to her. She had one guy in mind, and he was the only one whose straying mind she cared to seduce.

Mark made the pit of her stomach turn over, and under, and inside out. He was in a band and didn’t even start becoming attractive until after the fourth or fifth shot. In this case, his looks weren’t her concern, it was his skills that kept him on her mind. She always felt like she was the one in control, that she was the one using him to get what she wanted, or at least he let her believe that. In her mind “a girl has needs too,” and he definitely knew how to get the job done. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was nothing more than in-the-moment drunken hook-ups. They seldom even talked outside of their intoxicated lip locked moments.

As much as she told herself she didn’t care about him, it still bothered her when the music stopped and she saw that scenester girl, with her stupid black studded belt and pink Converses, sitting on his lap in the corner of the room like she was something special. She was holding Mark’s drink and whispering something into his ear, and he had a smile on his face that she’d never seen before. The music was still playing, but she couldn’t really hear it anymore as she walked from the center of the room and sat down squeezing her way between two unfamiliar bodies on the couch. She could feel the color quickly fading from her face. She tipped her head back and let the last swig of cherry vodka slide slowly down the back of her throat, numbing the anxiety on its way down.

“Cat, what’s wrong?” screamed her best friend, and “homeowner,” Greg from mid-conversation across the room.

“Oh nothing! I’m just a little nauseous. I need some fresh air, that’s all,” she said trying to cover up her look of disappointment in the girl on Mark’s lap, that she was positive he had picked up on.

She pushed her way through the obnoxious unknown array of bodies, which seemed to have flooded into the apartment uninvited, to the sliding glass door of the balcony. As she stepped outside she caught a glimpse of her disheveled reflection in the glass door and concluded why it wasn’t her sitting on Mark’s lap. She looked like hell! As she stood on the frozen porch, watching the winter blow, with only the glass door separating her from the party, the cold seemed to sober some inner riot inside of her. Cat lit the palmed cigarette she bummed on her way out and balanced herself on a single chair. She sat beside the fake Christmas tree, which awkwardly sat outside over a month after this year’s snowless holiday, and questioned what she was even doing here.

She looked down through the cracks of the four-by-fours of the two-story balcony to the first floor patio below her. Her view was distorted through the small cracks, but she could still tell a small child must live there. The sprawled collection of brightly colored plastic toys seemed to be forcing her to recollect a childhood of riding with training wheels, shiny pink ribbons and a basket for her “big girl makeup” through the neighborhood while chasing boys with Barbie dolls and threatening to apply lipstick to their faces if they put snakes in her sandbox again. Cat tried to remember the last time her parents doted over her like they did during those years of pigtails and sent-home tests with the letter “A” written brilliantly across the top. Her short-term memory couldn’t seem to recall the last time her parents said anything along the lines of “Good job,” let alone suggest that they were proud of her.

She ashed her cigarette over the ledge of the balcony and leaned a little too far forward on the chair, losing her balance just enough to remind her of the amount of alcohol she had consumed in the past five hours. The ash floated two stories down turning a brilliant orange to a pale yellow until it burned lifeless into the darkness of the quiet winter night. As Cat went to take another calming drag of nicotine, she noticed not only that her hands were now cold, but they were wet. Minuscule molecules of water had formed into what would become the first snowfall of the season. Closing her eyes she not so secretly wished for a morning worthy of the title “Winter Wonderland,” and all the excitement it brought during those same years of pigtails and sent-home tests ornamented with that prized “A.” What did that “A” stand for anyways? Amazing? Astonishing? Astounding? Admirable? Advanced? What did it matter now as she sat isolated from her friends, who didn’t even seem to notice her prolonged absence, nothing seemed to matter now besides the cold wet dampness accumulating on her hands.

Cat closed her eyes because she didn’t need to look at what was happening at her fingertips anymore, the sensation was becoming even more vivid and stimulating. It was like her skin was falling off like clothing. The small droplets of water were accumulating into snowflakes and melting leisurely in her palms. Her pores seemed to be drinking the water and transferring a wave of alertness through her intoxicated limbs. Cat opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, like her five-year-old self would do, until her tongue felt stiffened by the below-zero temperature. The wind was whispering forgotten memories through her hair as the snow melted the comfort of years long forgotten like awkward moments through her dampened clothing. A distant voice breezily echoed, “Cat, we know,” over and over as her hair got tangled with the force of the blizzard wind. All she wanted were the answers and the security she heard in that distant voice that grew closer with confidence in each passing second.

She stood up on her chair, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. It seemed nearly feet away from the balcony, as if the wind was breathing passionate answers on billows of currents towards her perched figure. It continued to grow closer and closer, “Cat we can tell you,” and so did her desire to reach out and grab the voice, to shake from it what answers she could. Putting all of her weight on her left foot, she strategically placed her right foot on the balcony’s railing while steadying herself with her hands. Making sure she was stable enough, she lifted her left foot from the chair and placed it softly on the railing, pairing it with her right. Slowing lifting herself from a stooped position she deliberately stood up, raising her arms to the snow-weeping sky with a growing smile of satisfaction spreading across her once apathetic face.

Now this was the experience she had come for, this freedom. She was on the edge of finding answers to so many questions that kept her awake night after night. She forgot about the booze, the “friends,” Mark, her disappointment, and everything in that dingy apartment behind her. Cat stood on the balcony looking up into the night sky and imagined what life would be like months from now, a year from now, ten years from now. “Cat, have faith in me,” and Cat reached out to the voice that was nearly two feet from the balcony railing, and fell into the swirl of the season’s first snow not caring where it took her but trusting it would be epic.