laney in orange

Alex Fauchex,

She told me so much about you in the short time I knew her, so I thought you were the only trust-worthy person I could write this letter to. I understand that it’s been years since high school and since I knew her, but I realized that there is nobody to tell my story to but you. You see, your lovely little sister has stolen a fragment of my subconscious for the past few years, absent as she may be. You don’t know who I am, but my name is Harvey Louis of New York/Iowa, I guess. I’ve written and rewritten this far too many times. I believe this is the best version, but Lord knows there is no perfect way to write about what happened, being that my life thereon out was so indescribably altered that I can never seem to put it into the correct words. Forgive me. As always, she refuses to be contained by a mere description of her. Any of the following is but a sketch of her being; she is far too vast to be distilled into paragraph form. But you must know that already.

I was sixteen when I left my midwestern world of rolling fields and rustbelt towns where all the shambles of houses looked the same. There had been a falling out between my mother and my uncle, my late father’s brother, with whom we lived with at the time. It went like this; mom called her sister and we drove from Iowa to New York state with all the belongings we could fit in the back of the car, only the important stuff, which included but not was limited to: my mother’s guitar, my late father’s record player, golf clubs, a few briefcases, vintage china plates from this flea market in the middle of nowhere (3 summers gone), a bottle of cologne, baby pictures of me (always just me), clothes, my late father’s records, some CDs, candles, my late grandfather’s cigars, a hat, and a house plant (teetering precariously on my knee). We didn’t even have time to bother with a U-Haul. The drive to New York was a blur of Velvet Underground CDs and golden open roads.

I still remembered Laney, though, even at 27, stumbling into a bar half drunk and having wandered around the city all afternoon looking for a rebound that entailed a quick fuck and no heart wrenching sadness. And then there was her; a sad, pale face framed by milky moonlight in the corner of the place. She was sitting placidly at a booth with her legs crossed and her red nails tapping a beer. I could tell she had been crying, because her eyes were puffed and her mascara had run. And my heart stopped. St. Augustine was my mother’s idea. Obviously. I’d never attended a Catholic school, nor had I attended a school where all the faces looked the same and the students dressed in suit and tie getups. Not even, in fact, was I religious; my aunt, however, was, and because my mother intended to secure our lodging at her home, I now was as well. I could have almost laughed at the guy staring back at me through the mirror on the Monday I was to start my first semester at St. Augustine. There he was, Harvey. Skinny, tall, average at best. At sixteen, I was insecure, too hard on myself, gangly, awkward, and ridden with acne on my chin and cheeks. I was a smart kid at that point; although hard to believe, I had a good head on my shoulders. I knew right from wrong. I could work hard to keep up with Bible study at St. Augustine, keep up with the rest of the God’s children catholic school kids. But I knew nothing of skin, nothing of the world and the way it worked, of city kids and street smarts. Maybe because I craved it, the rush of the unknown, as much as I did, it was that much easier to fall in love with her. Or maybe it was her; I fell in love with her because it would have been nearly impossible not to fall in love with Laney Fauchex.

As a general rule at the time, I didn’t fall in love. There had never been any reason to, and the girls I knew back in Iowa didn’t necessarily lend themselves to being someone I could fall in love with. I had began to view the phenomenon as a conscious decision; you pick a girl who’s pretty and sweet, you fall in love, you date, get married, die. Being that there was nobody I’d even think to pick, I decided that love wasn’t for me, and that girls were generally simple beings who obsessed more about their hair and other boys than I cared for. And that was okay. A boy named Drew was my first friend at St. Augustine. Drew was a romantic. I’d never met a guy like him. He introduced himself as my ‘buddy’ on the first day at St. Augustine; Drew, not Andrew. According to the school, he was supposed to show me the ropes of my schedule and walk me to class, et cetera. Instead, he taught me how to smoke pot in between classes and which teachers you could get away with slacking on homework with and which you could not. He had a dirty charismatic air about him, which served him well, because his grunge stood out against the pristinely clean campus and freshly pressed suits. He’d let his brown hair grow out to form soft curls around his ears, and it was sometimes messy, and he sometimes didn’t shave for a day longer than he should have. His demeanor was calm, and he gave off the impression that he constantly knew exactly what he was doing. I trusted him, which was why I went to the party with him when I did; even though he was a year older than me, and cooler than me, and I was in a new place with not even remotely a clue as to what I was doing. (I’m sure you know what party I’m talking about. If not, I’m sorry.) There was something about him that allowed me to feel comfortable with him. Maybe it was because I hadn’t many friends in Iowa, and the way he allowed me to assimilate into a friendship with him gave me a terrifying sense of no escape; because I liked being Drew’s friend, and if I didn’t go, maybe I wouldn’t be anymore. He was kind to me. He had more friends than I’d ever have. It was as if I was indebted to him.

She haunts me. For years after that night, I would see her; corner of my eye, foot of my bed, head on my chest, face hanging over me like a rosary, hair touching my cheeks. At a time in my life when everyone had deserted me, she became my only constant. Even when I had no idea where in the world she could be in actuality, her phantom would be beside me. My therapist tells me I am schizophrenic. I think my brain just knows what to do to ensure my survival. I only knew her for one night, a night which may have entirely been a mistake. But theres nothing I can do to fix that now, and I am forever requiring her image to pass me by to keep going. And I only knew her for a night. The simple fact that my life depended on hers for years after seeing her only proved to me that I was right about her. She is unlike anyone I had ever met.

It began on a Thursday afternoon, in which Drew and I were sitting in the back of the parking lot behind the school. New York was in the middle of was cooling into fall, and the trees were on the threshold of orange and red. It wasn’t warm enough for us to cuff up our pressed pants and shirt sleeves and strip off our stiff uniform jackets anymore. Drew’s collar was unbuttoned, revealing the glint of a gold chain around his neck, tucked tight next to his collar bones. His arms were skinny, and he was smaller than me at the time. An act of rebellion resonated in the way he wore black Dr. Martens instead of dress shoes to school. Of course, we’d lit one up and were passing a joint between the two of us. The asphalt was cold.

“You ever go to frees in Iowa?” Asked Drew, taking a drag. He never coughed, just winced sometimes if the smoke got in his eyes. We were listening to Beach Fossils from Drew’s beaten up phone. The grime of our upstate New York town followed us everywhere. If you’re not already aware, the place was a shithole. It was the kind of town that was dirty as a result of Catholic school kids gone angry, because none of us wanted to be here anymore. Teenage rebellion was not at all foreign to me; as hilariously false as it may seem, my friends in Iowa and I smoked rather than attending class more often than we should have. But this place was different. There was a cheap sadness in the quiet destruction of the cross atop our school, worn away day by day by the wind or rain or whatever. Now it was all peeling white paint and utterly undivine. It was the kind of town that was dotted with Walmarts from the 1990s and flickering-light gas stations. My aunts house smelled like mothballs and I slept on a pullout couch for almost the entirety of my sophomore year. The place would normally be suffocating, but I was too preoccupied with my new life with Drew to even care. He probably felt the claustrophobic strangulation. I, on the other hand, could not yet.

“No,” I replied as he passed the joint back to me. “My friends aren’t party people.”

“Well I’m having one this weekend,” Drew replied, his snake eyes watching me take a drag and billow smoke from my lips. He licked his. “My dad’s out so we might as well.”

“How many people?” I could tell Drew wanted the joint, so I obliged and passed it back. He took it between his pointer and thumb.

“Like, ten maybe,” Drew thought.

“Who?”

“Aaron and his girlfriend, Sara, Wendy, fuckin’ uh, what’s her name, Abby, Laney, John, Ruben, Peter…I forget the rest but they’re cool kids dude, you should show up.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and stared up at the grey sky. It was all grey from horizon line to horizon line, as if somebody had spilled a tin of chrome paint in a dome over my head. My lungs felt fried and solid, as if I couldn’t ever find enough air in the world to breathe. For a moment, the cold pavement under my palms was nonexistent, and I no longer belonged in this parking lot, next to Drew, behind St. Augustine’s, in a shit town in upstate New York. I can’t say that if I could go back to this moment, I would change the answer I gave next. Maybe somehow the following events were planned out in a blueprint somewhere above me, somewhere behind the monochrome sky. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. I can’t be sure. I can never be sure. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

“Cool.” Drew checked his phone. Cracks were spiderwebbing across the screen. “Hey, it’s lunch. We should go in.” We stubbed out the joint and deposited it in the opaque baggie that Drew used for his weed, and we tumbled through the heavy metal back door and back into the empty hallways, which were stark white with linoleum silence just before everyone else left class to file into the lunchroom. For a moment, as the two of us stood by the leaky water fountain waiting for our friends to leave the English class we were ditching, I felt stark naked and alone. It was too quiet. White noise enveloped me for a moment, and then, I fell into the open arms of the student body as the hallways flooded with kids leaving class. And then I was one of them. One with the crowd, just a head bobbing along in between lockers and under florescent lights filled with the corpses of June bugs and gnats. I was One of Them. I was Part of the Mass. I was The New Kid with Acne. When I was alone with Drew in the hallway, I was Stoned and Scared. When I’m alone in my room, I’m Quiet and Placid. When I’m with my mom, I’m Harv, The Good Son. When I’m at church, I’m a Child of the Lord. When I’m alone in public, I’m Inconspicuous. When I’m about to go to sleep, I’m a Ghost in My Sheets. When I was with my friends from Iowa, I was the Funny One. You see? With anybody, I was always someone different. Some separate version of myself, somebody not completely and entirely me because I felt there was no room for all of me, no space to fit all my odd jokes and laughs and thoughts. I was constantly molding my body to what I believed others wanted to see of me. But when I was with Laney, I was Harvey. Just Harvey. There was spare space for all of me in her mind, spare space for all of her in my heart; empty shelves there waited for her to place her special things, put a bottle of her laugh over here, a book about her secrets there, her family tree as a poster on the wall. I wanted that. I wanted to know all this and more. I guess God had other plans.

I found Drew’s house was quiet and unremarkable when I arrived that weekend. Like many of our houses, his was a two story square white place with an overgrown front yard and weeds in the cracked pavement. The surrounding grass was long dead, and browning ivy vines, cooked by the two months ago’s summer sun, crawled along the fake shutters. Only the downstairs windows were illuminated, but the shades were drawn, painting the glass an orange hue. I approached the house, forcing myself to deal with the notion that this would be the first time Drew and I were seeing each other in casual clothes. I donned a pair of jeans, a navy jacket with green flannel lining that was much too big for me, and a Beach Fossils t-shirt, hoping he’d appreciate it. I could feel the soft, creamy bass of a song vibrating through the door as I rang the doorbell. No answer. I waited, then saw out of the corner of my eye that a note had been scrawled upon a piece of paper and stuck to the nearest window on the first floor; doorbell fucked, knock. I did as I was told. Eventually, the door was answered. Drew peeked his golden eyes out of the house.

“Hey, man.” He said, then opened the door just enough to allow me inside. He quickly shut the door behind me, as if the gathering was a secret that could easily be spilled if exposed to enough cold outside air, as if the party would ooze out into the street if he wasn’t careful. Music filled my ears, but not in an abrasive way. It was clear that the source of the song was coming from somebody’s shitty speakers, so the volume was only just loud enough. It encased me, gently neutered me into the “party” environment that was Drew’s living room.

It was exactly as I had pictured it. There was a floral-printed brown couch pushed up against one wall, another beige corduroy one facing it. A beat up flatscreen was mounted on a shelving unit, which was bare besides it. The carpet was likely once vibrant and beautiful, but had been worn down from years of treading socked feet. A piano was wedged into a corner, tucked away and used as a coffee table for the red solo cups that littered it. The room smelled vaguely of old sweat and wet dog, and something sweet because somebody was hitting their vape in the back of the room. I noticed that what I had assumed were curtains over the windows were actually bedsheets that had been draped over bare curtain rods. As a finishing touch, there was a dying plant sitting next to the TV.

An array of characters were scattered across the room in front of me. Two boys on the floral couch, sipping from cups. A girl and a boy laying on each other on the carpet. A few kids hanging around in the back, sharing hits from the vape. Two girls next to each other on the couch. Each and every one of them looked nonchalant and calm, conversing and smiling quietly. The energy was that of an adult dinner party, but the look was far from it. Nearly every single person in the room was wearing jeans. My stomach churned. Something about the smell of the house and the laughter and the music made me want to throw up.

Suddenly, I became uncomfortably aware of the fact that Drew and I were standing shoulder to shoulder, observing his living room in a similar manner of study. I looked over at him. He seemed so cool, with the pink and yellow light accentuating his profile. Today, he wore a long sleeved black and white striped shirt under a thin, unbuttoned black over shirt, and dark wash jeans. Without his school uniform, Drew looked darker, with more lines to his jaw and nose, and added a shadow to his eyes. He looked over at me, and I realized I had been staring.

“You’re nervous,” he said. I shook my head.

“No, just tired.” I ran a hand over my forehead. Perspiration prickled just slightly around my hairline. “I’ve been kinda out of it lately.”

“Well, go have fun, dude.” He patted my shoulder in an unintentionally patronizing way that made me cringe. “Go, like, hit a Juul or something.” The two of us looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“What, do I look braindead?” I demanded through the laughter. “Do I look fucking retarded?” The laughter subsided, and the two of us forced our eyes on the group of kids in the back, who were huddled around their precious vape.

“God, vaping is for gays, man.” Drew chuckled. “Hey, you should go talk to Abby over there.” He pointed to one of the girls on the couch. One had her back turned to me, a girl with stark white hair cut to her shoulders, and that was all I could see of her. Abby, to whom Drew was pointing, glanced up from her conversation to smile at us. She was pretty, her hair long and flowing just past the middle of her chest, and the color of strawberry milk. “She’d probably fuck you.”

“Come on, dude.” I rolled my eyes.

“I’m serious!” Drew gave me a finalizing push. “Go have fun.” He said again. Fuck it, I thought, and took the steps in their direction.

I could tell that Abby was trying hard not to look up at me. She had a cute face, which appeared elf-like up close. Her eyes were wide and innocent, a dark chestnut brown. Her round cheeks and a defined chin brought her face to a heart shape, orbiting around a tiny, upturned nose covered in freckles. Her hair was soft and cascading, the sides pinned up so that only a few pieces in the front fell down to frame her face. Sure, Abby was pretty. She wore a baby blue dress with a square collar and buttons down the front that clashed against the abrasive cotton-candy hue of her curled locks. When she looked up at me, she smiled through bare lips.

“Hey,” I said, as the girl next to her got up to use the bathroom, I presumed. “I’m Harvey.”

“Hey.” She smiled wider, dimple-less cheeks tightening. “I’m Abby.”

“Could I…” I glanced at the now empty space next to her.

“Sure, yeah.” She gestured for me to sit down.

“Abby,” it said, harsh and cold. The two of us looked up, eyes raising to the figure standing before us. Admittedly, our position was precarious. Abby was nearly underneath me, our cheeks touching as our faces trained to the left. I only saw the girl standing before us for a short moment, but could see that she had been crying with makeup-framed eyes. Her bleach white hair indicated to me that I had replaced her on this couch just fifteen minutes ago.

“God…Lane…” Abby began. Before she could finish her statement, the girl had turned heel and ran upstairs. I felt Abby’s body tense. “Fuck,” she whispered, then removed herself from under me with not another word, smoothed her dress, and followed her. I felt naked, exposed. Maybe it was the lifted smell of the room, or the high from kissing Abby, or the confusion about what had just occurred, but I felt as if my brain was filled with Elmer’s glue. My thoughts were gooey and slow as exhaustion took over me and I simply sat there on the couch, staring at the intricate design on the carpet. It was a beautiful shade of dusted blue snaked with faded yellow lines and dots. Though threadbare, it captured my attention for a long moment, detaching me from reality.

Eventually, my senses came back to me. I could feel the couch vividly underneath me, the patterns of its almost corduroy fabric rough against my palms. Suddenly overcome by a need to leave the room, I stood. Almost as if they were directing me, my feet carried me up the stairs that I’d seen Abby run up. It was the only place I could think to go. Surprisingly, I wasn’t chasing Abby to continue where we left off, nor was I drawn to the two girls by the pull of curiosity; I simply required a distraction from the lonely environment of the party. I ascended the stair and entered the narrow upstairs hallway.

The floors were covered in wall to wall brown shag carpeting. In the low light, that was about all I could see. Not a single light appeared to be on in the entire hall. There was a closed door to my left, and another one left ajar a few feet in front of me. Soft orange luminescence radiated from within. As I crept towards it, like a bug drawn to a florescent light, Abby suddenly emerged. She appeared distraught, and pushed past me without even looking at my face. I watched her turn and head back downstairs in a hurried manner. Rather than following her, I followed the orange into the room at the end of the hall.

I had no way of knowing it, but I was on the threshold of a pivot point in my life. As I laid my hand cautiously on the doorhandle and pushed, I allowed the light to flood the hallway. I observed that the shag carpet continued past the hallway, and I followed it with my eyes into the dimly lit room.

I realized this must have been Drew’s room as soon as I saw the floor; it was positively covered in dirty laundry, mainly his dress shirts and pants and a few pairs of boxers. A desk, littered with papers and school textbooks, bordered one wall, while a bed bordered the other. The shades were drawn over the two windows, and one was left somewhat open so that a sliver of November air funneled into the room and played with the fabric of the curtains. A yellow lava lamp with red lava bubbling inside it served as the only light source, bathing Drew’s twin sized bed in buttery color. The bed itself donned baby blue plaid sheets, which were strewn every which way. And on the bed sat a girl.

She looked, as I remember her, to be the most angelic thing I had ever seen. Her white hair was thick and straight and cut just below her shoulders. The locks turned somewhat inwards towards the end, which framed her face nicely, and side swept bangs hid part of her forehead. The girl’s skin was beautifully pale and clear, and was painted in a psychedelic manner by ever-changing colors emitted from the lava lamp, red then yellow then pink then radiantly orange, and back again. Wide eyes brimming with dried tears were lined with the tiniest of black eyeliner, which had run quite a bit and collected under her bottom lashes. Her eyebrows were dark and thin, and arched to a peak, and though somewhat smudged, her lips were the most beautiful shade of scarlet. A cream silk blouse, which was somewhat see-through and was complete with buttons all down the front and flowing sleeves that cinched at her wrists, fell off of her slim shoulders and exposed the top of her white lace bra. The shirt was tucked into a pair of baby blue jeans that hugged her hips and flared at her ankles. On her feet, she wore a pair of dainty white shoes with a square heel. Her jewelry was all in gold; a chain bracelet on her wrist, another on her ankle, three rings on her slender fingers, a skinny pendant in the shape of a heart in between her thin collarbones, and dangling earrings on her ears that glinted and twinkled.

“Oh,” Laney whispered when she saw me, as if only to herself, and in an exhausted manner she pulled her blouse back up to her shoulder, covering her bra again. “Sorry, I can leave if you need this room or something.”

“No, its okay.” I whispered back.

“Oh, okay.” I began to back out of the room when Laney spoke again. “Did you just hook up with Abby?” She asked me. I re-entered, shutting the door a bit more than it was before.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I said. I couldn’t help but stare at her as she began to cry.

“Great.” Laney sniffled, then wiped her nose. “Yeah, excellent. I fucking love parties.” Her voice was dripping in sarcasm and broken as tears streamed down her porcelain cheek. She looked like a china doll, with her hands folded on her lap as she sat on the edge of the bed, her head bowed. Laney’s hair was falling in front of her face. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I shut the door completely.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, paralyzed in my place.

“What do you care?” What did I care?

“I don’t. This thing is just boring.” That was a lie. I cared because I was inexplicably drawn to this girl, but she laughed regardless.

“Yeah?” She smiled sadly. “You’d rather talk to some hysterical girl than be making out with Abby or something?”

I pretended to think it over. “I guess so. There’s nothing too interesting about down there anyway.”

Laney laughed again, then heaved a breath and broke out sobbing. Rivers of tears dripped onto thighs, over which her face we bent. Her shoulders shook violently and she brought her thin fingered hands to her face, wiping vigorously under her eyes. “Oh, God.” She said quietly. Unsure of what to do, I stood dumbly by the door for a long moment until I crossed the floor to cautiously knelt by her side.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Laney took her hands from her cheeks and looked at me, doe eyed and depressing. Her snow white hair was hanging in front of her face in strands, and her bangs were wet at the tips.

“Doesn’t matter.” She whispered. I came to sit cross legged by her feet, looking up at her.

“I’m Harvey.” I told her.

“Laney.” She looked away from me and out the window with a look of utter exhaustion and disgust on her face, which I gathered was detached and unrelated to our conversation. “Harvey what?”

“Harvey Louis.” I said quietly. “Laney what?”

“Laney Fauchex. You’re the new kid?”

I cringed. “Yeah.”

“From Iowa.” She smiled lightly.

“How’d you know?”

“Drew told me,” Laney said, her voice high in her nose. “You two are like best friends, right?”

“I guess.” I said. There was a silence.

“I just got broken up with,” she said very quietly, as if only to herself.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Guys fucking suck.”

“Guys fucking suck.” I echoed in reassurance, which made her laugh.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” she began.

“No, it’s fine, I agree with you,” I told her, “Most of us are assholes. I mean who even would break up with you, anyway?”

“Trust me, there’s many reasons why he broke up with me.” Laney sighed. There was a pause.

“Hey, let’s just talk about some other shit,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to keep thinking about that.”

“Okay.” Her reply was meek and tired.

“How’d your hair get that color?” I motioned to her locks. “It can’t be natural, right? It’s like, perfect white.”

“Yeah, it’s dyed.” She ran a hand over it.

“Did it hurt?”

“Dying it?”

“Yeah.”

Laney burst out laughing. “No! Why would it hurt?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never dyed my hair before!” I grinned as her laughs grew and then subsided into a slight smile and a longer silence.

“Why’d he break up with you?” I asked cautiously, understanding that this was dangerous territory. In hindsight I shouldn’t have said anything, but I couldn’t help myself. I was too curious.

“It’s complicated.” Laney sighed. “I thought he was hooking up with someone else. Which he probably was….but I guess I got too jealous for him and I was getting annoying or something.”

“That’s shitty of him,” I said. “He should stick by you.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “I needed that. Sometimes I just feel like everyones against me.”

“Like you’re always wrong?”

“Yeah, like I’m always wrong,” Laney’s glassy eyes sparkled. “Like I’m always crazy or something.”

“I know the feeling.” I leaned back onto my palms. “Like the whole world is against you.”

“It’s so fucking frustrating.” She danced her fingers lightly on her lips. “The only person who I can even talk to is Alex. My brother. It’s like everyone else is crazy.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s in college now. Twenty-three. He’s like the only sane person in my family…the only sane person in my life…” Laney stared out of the window and out to the dimly-lit street outside. “You have any siblings?”

“No,” I replied. “Only child.”

“Why’d you move?”

“My mom and I were living with my uncle, my dads brother, for a few years but I think they got into some shit with money and we had to move out.” I ran a hand through my hair, desperate to look attractive. “Now we’re with my aunt cause she’s the only person that would take us in.”

“That must suck.” Laney whistled. “Having to uproot yourself and everything.”

“Wasn’t too bad.” I said, looking at her shoes and her thin ankles. “Not like I had a girlfriend or anything back there…” I paused. “Sorry, I keep bringing up…dating and shit.”

“No, it’s cool.” She shrugged. “You like it here?”

“No.” I said curtly. “No, it fucking sucks.”

“It fucking sucks, dude.” Laney repeated. “God, everyone is so fine about it. I feel like nobody sees how much it sucks but me.”

“You think so?” I said. “Drew seems to hate it too.”

“Yeah, Drew.” She nodded. “He…he gets it. Everyone else, I just think they don’t care enough to hate it. They just go about their little lives, they float through life or something and they don’t even see what the fuck else is out there.” She ran a hand through her hair, which pushed it up and away from her forehead. She looked so beautiful I could feel a warmth grow in my stomach. I wanted to kiss her. “You ever been to the city?”

“Never.”

“God, it’s so crazy.” Laney whispered, starry eyed. She wasn’t even looking at me. “I went once, you know? Cause my dad was on a business trip? I was like fourteen, and I went up the Empire State Building at night…it was fucking crowded but I pushed my way to the windows and saw the whole city…it was so beautiful, the windows lit up all orange and…you know, they kinda looked like stars?” She paused. “Sometimes when I’m driving at night, I like to look into the windows of peoples’ houses and see what they’re doing…usually it’s nothing interesting like they’re just eating dinner at the table or something, but like…once or twice you’ll see someone in a room on their bed or at their desk or something and they’re just…in their element, you know? It’s like you’re looking right into their lives like it’s a…museum or something. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

“No, no,” I whispered, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” And I really did. Nobody had talked to me the way she did, nobody ever in my life. She talked to me as if she’d known me all her life…as if I were an empty notebook ready for her to write her thoughts in, and that’s exactly what I did. And I as her willing notebook accepted her thoughts, and basked in them, and loved them. I wanted more, so much more.

“You do?”

“Yeah, it’s like when you’re looking at the stars.” I scratched my head. “You kinda realize your…insignificance or whatever.” I immediately knew this was outrageously cliche, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Yeah, kinda.” She hugged her knees. “You like open houses?”

“Love them.”

“You love them, right!?” Laney exclaimed, laying back on the bed and spreading her arms on either side of her like a pair of pale angel’s wings. “They’re so fun. Wait, why do you like them?”

“I’ve been to, like, two,” I said, “but I always felt like I was an adult looking for houses or I’m like, wandering through my own house if I concentrate enough.”

“Exactly.” She breathed. “Alex and I go to them as much as we can so we can pretend we’re anywhere but here.”

“We should go to one.”

“Yes. And to the city.”

“How about an open house in the city?” I suggested. I could hear her grin.

“Even better.” She said.

I stood, leaning over her with my hands in my pockets. She was flat on Drew’s comforter with her arms out and her hair in pinwheels around her head. She looked so thin, so fragile, as if she was made of toothpicks. I was scared that her thin wrists would crack if I touched them. Her puffed lips were parted as she stared at me and I stared back at her. Cautiously, I laid on the bed next to her, far enough away so that any implications of anything more were invisible. She moved her right arm out of the way so that it wouldn’t touch my back as I lowered my body down. We stared at the ceiling, with cracks in the paint.

“You ever been in love?” Laney whispered.

“No. Have you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I looked at her, but she refused to look at me. The low light carved out the profile of her straight nose and soft brow bones.

“Never mind.” She sighed.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” She paused. “Well, I don’t know. I just could never tell if I was or not.”

“Maybe that means you weren’t.” I suggested.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“Oh, God, I have so many.” Laney grinned. “I’m kind of a movie nerd.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Well…” She thought. “The Royal Tennenbaums is just amazing.”

“I love it.” I told her. I didn't know what that was.

“You do? We’re so similar, that’s so weird.” Laney passed the back of her hand under her nose. “I love that scene where Margo is getting off the bus and sees Richie. I thought she was so cool when I first saw it. That fur coat is…it’s really dope. I cut my hair to look like her’s a few years back.”

“That’s really cool of you.” I told her. “I really love that one…God, what’s it called…about these kids who deal cocaine.”

“Sounds PG,” Laney remarked.

“The Preppie Connection,” I laughed. “Yeah, it’s like that…but it’s not, you know? It’s so much more.”

“What’s it about?”

“So it’s this kid that goes to a rich private school,” I explained, “and he is kinda dopey and stupid. He’s really over that rich kid shit, but he ends up falling for this girl and starts dealing Columbian coke to her and her friends to get in with her…and like it becomes this drug ring…and he’s so in over his head because he’s in love with her…” I trailed off, trying not to look at her because she was looking at me.

x“…And?”

“Well, he—do you want me to spoil the ending? Is that cool?”

“Sure, whatever. I hate surprises.”

“He gets busted by the police. And like…” I rubbed my eyes, “he gets life or something, everyone else gets off clean because they’re rich…and…oh! Yeah, I think the girl starts falling for him and they go to Columbia to pick up some coke, but her boyfriend finds out and calls the cops on them. Which busts everyone but he doesn’t care because he’s just so fucking jealous. And like I’m pretty sure someone tells him he’s never going to be like those kids…and then he only ever realizes that no matter how hard he tries he can never be one of them and get her when he sees that everyone left him behind to rot in jail while they all had their rich daddies pay for expensive lawyers…I mean I’m not sure if he actually got life…probably not, now that I think about it. But they still left him to the dogs.”

“Not really a happy ending.”

“No. But real life isn’t.”

“But that’s not real life.”

“It’s a true story.”

“Oh,” Laney said. “Well, I believe in a tastefully realistic movie anyway.”

“No happy ever after?”

“No.” She sighed. “I hate those stupid bullshit movies where everyone ends up living in a white picket fence McMansion at the end.”

“McMansion?”

“Yeah, you know, those stupid huge mansions that are all modern and…cheap and ugly.”

“Not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Never mind.” Laney smiled. “Are you` gay?”

“What?” I laughed. “No. Why?"

“Had to ask,” she told me. “Cause either you’re gay and nice or you want to fuck me.”

“I don’t want to fuck you.” I insisted.

“Thanks,” Laney sneered sarcastically.

“No, I didn’t mean…” My hands clammed up. “You know what I mean…I’m sorry I didn’t mean to come off like…”

She burst out laughing. “I’m joking, dude. Jesus.”

“Oh, fuck.” I grinned. “Sorry.”

“It’s…cool.” She raised her hands towards the ceiling and suspended them there, wrists with bones protruding this way and that. Her skin was clean and dotted with freckles. On the stretch of flesh where her thumb met her palm, a tattoo winked at me.

“Is that real?” I raised my hand towards her’s and touched it with my pointer finger.

“Oh, yeah.” Laney dropped her arms and brought her hand close enough to see. The two of us examined the tattoo, which was smaller than a dime, just a few centimeters long. “It’s an airplane.”

“Why an airplane?” I asked. I allowed my thumb to raise tentatively and touch the little thing as if it were alive.

“Didn’t I say? My brother is at school to be a pilot,” She told me. I pretended to not notice how my fingers were curling around hers, quietly and softly, our skin barely touching. “And since…since I’ve never been out of the country, he said he’d take me somewhere when he’s out of school and so am I…South Of France or London or somewhere like that. Europe. You ever been out of the country?”

“Never,” I replied. “Well, once actually. My family drove to Mexico before my dad died. I don’t remember much. I was really little.”

Laney was quiet for a moment. “Your dad’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

“What from?”

“Heart attack,” I said.

“Oh.” Laney was quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I was like ten so it doesn’t even matter anymore.”

“What’d he do?”

“Huh?”

“What’d he do,” she asked again. “His career.”

“Oh,” I said. “He was an actor.”

“Oh, really?” Laney propped herself up on her elbows as if she was excited, then laid back down suddenly. “Movies?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry. I’m really bad with empathy and being nice about bad things that happen to people.”

“You don’t have to say anything about it,” I said frankly. “Everyone always tries to cover their ass and make sure they get all the little details, you get me?”

“No.”

“Like when I talk about him…everyone just tiptoes around the subject like I’ll break the second they say the wrong thing. And then when they say something that could possibly set me off or something, it’s like the end of the world.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s not…” I closed my eyes for a moment. “It’s not you. You didn’t do anything. You’re actually…better than them, cause you said you don’t do empathy. I appreciate that, you know.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause. “Hey,” I began. “You know what’s kind of weird?”

“What?”

“When they replace actors who die in the middle of shooting,” I said, “it’s like such a cryptic and weird thing. They kill off the character or they replace the actor or something…there’s just something about it that’s so scary. When he died, I remember looking at Wikipedia and reading the list of all the actors that died in the middle of shooting, and you’d usually never know…that they were dead. It feels like some weird conspiracy theory, there’s something creepy about it, you know?”

“I never thought about that.” Laney paused. “Did you drive here?”

“No. Walked.”

“Can you drive?”

“Yeah, I used to drive my uncle’s car.”

“You wanna drive me home? I had a bit of alcahol and I don't want to risk it." I looked at her, and Laney turned her head to look back. Our faces were inches apart, which was so far. I could see every detail of her warm skin. I could see a freckle next to her nose.

“Sure.” I said.

We fled the scene, tumbling down the stairs and out the front door without looking around at the depressing living room, or at the kids huddled in a corner wafting smoke, or Abby, Drew, any of them. Laney’s car was a wh beat up Mercedes with cracked sand-colored leather seats. “You want me to drive?” I stood by the open door of the drivers side.

“You’re sure you know how to drive?” She peered over at me. I realized by the time we had walked out to the car that she was nearly taller than me in her heels. Her slender body had a way of moving that was almost as if she floated inches above the ground.

“Yeah.” I muttered. “It got kinda cold.” Outside, it was drizzling, creating a thin veil of silver between the two of us as I peered at her across the top of the car. I could smell the cool wetness on the air, and the pavement glittering in the light rain. She unlocked the car.

“Get in,” said Laney, and I did. The inside of her car smelled like stale Redbull, and I saw an empty can of it discarded in the cupholder.

“You live close?”

“Yeah, Valentine street.”

“Oh, I know where that is.” I said as she handed me the keys and started the engine. I realized, as I pulled away from the curb, not without a jolt or two of the car, that I wasn’t as good at driving as I remembered.

We didn’t talk for the first few moments of the drive. The headlights of the car illuminated the path in front of us, the tree-and-quaint-house-lined street spread out ahead of us as far as the thin yellow fingers of light could reach. Then, she said:

“Your favorite word?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have a favorite word?”

“Oh, no.” I said dumbly. “No, I don’t know. Do you?” Laney’s ankles were intertwined and resting lazily on the dashboard.

“Maybe,” she said quietly. The only noise in the thin silence that followed was the humming of the engine and the buzz of rubber wheels kissing the asphalt, and perhaps the static crackle of the rain hitting the roof of the car. I had to turn on the windshield wipers. “I was thinking maybe etherial.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It’s like….something too delicate and beautiful for the world,” she explained. “Like, maybe…a flower.”

You’re like that, I wanted to say. You’re that word.

“I’ve never heard that…word.” I told her. “I like it a lot. You wouldn’t mind if I stole it as my favorite word?”

She laughed. “No. We can share.”

“Good.” We were quiet. “Favorite song?”

“Can’t decide…What about you?”

“Me neither,” I said. “Maybe something from my childhood. Like We’re Going To Be Friends by the White Stripes or something.”

“Ohh, I love that song,” Laney exclaimed brightly. “Oh! You know what song I really love? God, I forget what it’s called….it’s something French…oh it’s…it’s Clair De Lune by….I forget who it’s by. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No, sorry.” I wish I had. If I had I would have understood what she said next, but I could never fully understand it no matter how much I thought I could at the time until I listened to the song six months later.

“If I ever feel hopeless I listen to that song,” she explained. “I’m gonna ramble but…it makes me think about how beautiful the world is and shit. God, that sounds so cheesy…I mean that it just makes me appreciate beauty when I don’t normally notice it, you know? It makes me wanna sit in the sun or something.”

“I wish I could listen to it,” I said in an almost whisper. “It sounds really…really nice.”

“Listen to it when you get home,” Laney said, then reached onto the dashboard and grabbed my phone, which was lying there. “And when you do, text me what you think. What’s your passcode?”

“It’s just 1 five times.”

“That’s a really secure password,” she laughed, and I could see her out of the corner of my eye put her number into my phone, which made me go all giddy in the pit of my stomach. “But yeah…I’m glad you get it. Not a lot of my friends do.”

“I don’t have any friends, really,” I told her, “So neither do mine, I guess.”

“You don’t have friends from back home?”

“I do, but they don’t really care enough to call or anything,” I said, “I don’t really mind. I like being alone…” I trailed off, realizing the half truth in that statement, “but I get lonely a lot, you know?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Laney exclaimed. “Do you do that thing where you like being alone and don’t really like other people that much and not hang out or go outside but at the same time feel just so lonely and alone?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I said, and I did, because I did the same thing. My mother always told me that I needed to get out more, and somewhere deep in my heart I wanted to, but I never brought myself to do it as much and because of this I felt lonelier day by day. “We’re so similar.”

“I feel like you’re the first person to really get me,” Laney said quickly. “Like, I have Alex. He’s great. He’s been my best friend since we were kids but…my parents never got me. My friends never got me. Now Alex is gone to school. I don’t know I’ve just…been so lonely without him I tell him every fucking thing…but you remind me of him. You’re comfortable. Sorry, this is so weird.”

“No, no it’s not. I feel the same way.” I glanced over at her as we turned onto Valentine Street. The passing street lights overhead fireworks in her eyes. She undid me, and I slammed the gas; not because I wanted to be at her house faster, but because I wanted to show her that I could go 50 on a 30 mph speed limit road. “I think…” I said quietly, “I think I’m…”

“What?”

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” I whispered. The words surprised me, as if they were spoken by a boy somewhere far inside my heart, perhaps nestled between my ribs, or imbedded deep in the marrow of my bones, who decided to emerge and confess what had quickly become my biggest secret. At the end of the road, two headlights twinkled at us from an approaching vehicle.

“What do you mean?”

“What I just said.” There was a silence so deep and yet so light, a silence that rested on the tip of my tongue and felt as if I was hanging off the edge of a cliff, ready to fall at any moment.

A dainty hand fell atop my thigh, and as if I were watching a scene from a movie, Laney’s lips were there, on mine, and they were warm and wonderful and nothing like the other girl’s, I couldn’t even remember her name, and my hands left the steering wheel and the sound of ringing in my ears was too loud to hear the truck’s horn until she screamed Harvey! and I slammed the breaks but far too late and by then there was no sound louder than the screaming and two hunks of metal crashing into each other at 50 miles per hour on a 30 miles per hour street.

There is no way to describe the next moments except to call them the most terrifying and horrible moments of my life.

The airbag hit my face like a slap as I flew forwards. Laney’s screaming ceased as soon as the impact hit. My breath pushed out of my lungs and I immediately wondered if I was dying, dead, or in some in between where I could see nothing but red. Was that the color of blood rushing to my head, over my eyes, or what it felt like to descend to hell?

Please, I didn’t mean to. She meant more to me than anyone can ever know. It’s inexplicable. I’d never met anybody like her.

After a few moments I had gathered my bearings and realized I was still sitting in Laney’s wrecked car, staring at the BMW logo on the smashed hood in front of me. It lay lazily on it’s side, knocked from it’s perch at the front of the car. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. She didn’t make a sound.

“Hey, what the fuck!” I heard a voice yell. A disheveled looking man in a blue tee shirt stumbled out of the truck and into the rain. “What the fuck!” He kept screaming this, staring at our two cars entangled in vines of demolished metal and thin streams of smoke. “What the fuck.” He approached the window. “Is everyone okay? Oh…god.” He was staring at Laney. He just kept staring. “What did you do.” He whispered. I could tell without looking that the old car’s airbag on the passenger’s side hadn’t deployed. She was laying folded over herself, her blonde hair over her eyes and frozen across her face in a violently peaceful still frame. She didn’t move. I didn’t let myself look at her completely, just glances out of the corner of my eyes. “You’ve got to call the cops. I’ll call the cops. I’ll do it. Holy shit. Oh my god,” the truck driver said. I wanted to punch him across the face, shut him up. All his talking made me feel like vomiting.

There’s been an accident…yeah, I was in it. On Valentine Street. Yeah. I don’t fucking…I don’t know. Just get over here quick. Please. She’s not…she’s not breathing. I don’t think. I can’t tell.

She’s not breathing. I needed to be out of that car. I tried the door. It wouldn’t fucking open, and I pushed and pushed. The window had shattered, and rain was drizzling into the car and over the hair on my arms and skin. I opened my mouth and what I thought would be a scream was replaced by vomit, which dribbled down my chin and over the deflated air bag and over my lap, and the smell made me need to do it again so I did. When I held up my hands to wipe it from my face I realized that they were shaking uncontrollably, and that the rest of my body was shaking as well. My ears filled with static noise, ringing so loud I wouldn’t have noticed that the police and ambulances had arrived were it not for their flashing lights; blue, red, white, blue, red, white, blue, red, white, purple. My ribs began to throb.

They pried open the doors and pulled her out. This would be the only time I’d finally let myself look at her that night. She looked so small in the arms of the paramedic that pulled her out and placed her on a stretcher; so unnatural. Her face was torn and bloodied, her cheeks smashed and fleshy. I could barely watch as they arranged her hands in a somewhat more natural position while laying her on the stretcher. She didn’t look beautiful. She didn’t even look like the girl I had met earlier that night at all. She was missing a shoe, and her underwear was showing from under her bloodied dress.

“Let me see her!” I screamed as they wheeled her away from me. I leapt across the two front seats and out the passenger’s seat door towards her, but two officers grabbed my arms. “Let me see her! She’s not dead! She’s not dead!” I killed her. I killed her.

I spent two weeks in the hospital treating two broken ribs and a fractured arm. My mom came on and off to visit me, tearful and loving, but I couldn’t bring myself to say a word to her, nor to my aunt when she tagged along. Nobody told me anything about Laney for the first day, or the second day. They didn’t want to upset me. I spent my time in the hospital eating chocolate pudding from a plastic spoon gingerly tilted towards my lips, chewing on card-board sandwiches and Annie’s mac and cheese, and thinking about her. About her face as she was spread out like a life-size china doll onto the stretcher, about her voice, her kiss, what she had said to me, what I’d said to her. I didn’t speak to anybody who came in to speak to me, so I never asked if she was alright. I didn’t want to know. They didn’t want to tell me. I watched telanovellas and CNN on the wall-mounted TV, and cried a couple times, and pissed in the bedpan because I was too lazy to go to the actual bathroom. I lived like a zombie.

On the third day, I awoke at around noon to find Drew sitting in the chair that my mother had left at the foot of my bed. His head was bowed towards his phone, scrolling through some article and listening to music through a pair of busted up earbuds. He looked up at me when he saw that I had shifted, and I could see that his eyes were deeply sunken and red. He looked like shit, worst than usual, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“Hey, Haarvey.” He said. I instantly began to cry when I saw him. What the fuck happened. “It’s okay, Harvey. Nobody, like, blames you.” He placed a hand on my leg over the blankets, then awkwardly rose and put his arms around me in an embrace. He smelled like shit, but his skin was warm against mine and the single act of kindless made me cry harder. I’d never been hugged by a male friend of mine. It was something that went unspoken; a handshake always sufficed as a greeting, never an embrace this deep and strong. My hands clawed at his sweater and I cried out in choking sobs. I sounded like an animal, yelping as if something was hurting me. My ribs hurt, my arms hurt, but nothing hurt more than what I knew was the truth.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I croaked. I felt Drew’s breath break and a sob emerge from his lips as well. He held me tighter.

“Yeah,” he whispered, “yeah.”

“I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yes it is.”

“You didn’t mean to do it.”

“But I did it.”

I never forgave myself.

I’m so sorry I killed your sister. She was the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and not just her physical beauty. She was a masterpiece, and I solemnly realize every day how nobody can come close to the greatness distilled upon that girl.

I don’t even have your address, so it’s not like you’ll ever read this. Nor would I even give this to you, because I think a letter like this would do more harm than good. But I remembered you last week, Alex, and the things she said about you, and I realized that maybe the reason why I see her wherever I go is because I haven’t set her free yet. I’ve never told anyone the whole story, and not even if you piece every drunk mentioning of her life together would you get the whole story. So here it is. The truth. Not hazed by Catholic school rumors, nor maternal anger or my aunt’s disdain. I hope this will release her. I hope writing this will set her free.

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