For two months, Madison was a home. KP and I shared a room in a house with three other girls. One of them slept across the hall. The other two, Leah and Taylor, shared the attic. Leah was friendly. She asked questions. Ones like How was your day?—What’s the matter dude?—Any plans tonight? Taylor, however, struggled with looking people in the eye. They did everything together. Cook. Clean. Work. Finger. Sleep. Taylor only seemed to inhale whenever Leah exhaled. If you asked her a question, she either ignored you, or—completely entranced—answered directly to Leah. Her knees were a compass of obsession. I thought they were lesbians until Leah told me otherwise. “We’re both straight. We’re just best friends.” If you were quiet enough at night, you could hear them fucking through the walls. The girl across the hall told me that when Leah and Taylor weren’t showering together, the sound of religious podcasts traveled through the vents, laced with faint sobs. Apparently, a few months before I arrived, Leah asked for some space. In response, Taylor threw herself down the stairs. KP said it was fucked up, but none of our business really.
I was halfway through The Bell Jar. N95s were in vogue. Solar Power had just released. That summer, if you squinted at the sun long enough, in the seconds before going blind, you’d find a pair of oppressive eyes staring right back at you. Judging. Patient. Expectant. Cross-armed, like a husband whose been dragged to a play. Or a mother at the graduation of her least favorite daughter.
I was 19, and Madison was the closest to nature I’d ever been. It was a shocking adjustment. The first second of every morning, I woke up awaiting the familiar breeze of smoke, rats, and sea salt to run through me—I had never been so far from LA before. The air in Madison was clean. Trees fenced the town in its own little world, where wild hares scurried across the road and fireflies blinked life into the dense breath of night. There were no constant stream of car honks and choppers overhead, so it was easy to hear yourself think. Most foreign of all, perhaps, was the humidity. The town stood at the edge of Lake Michigan; and, after a lifetime of knowing heat to be dry, I often found myself taking in the strangeness of the freshwater shore—struggling to imagine what more curiosities might lie on the other side.
Most days I skated in circles. Up and down State Street. From the capitol building to the university’s radio station. It was necessary. If you stood in one place too long that summer, the heat would eat you alive.
The town was relatively empty. KP told me that most businesses were closed until fall semester brought the students back. Only a smattering of coffee shops and restaurants stayed open. Still, the streets were littered with enough bodies to make you feel seen. Heads turned when my skateboard clattered down the road. People still wore masks in public. Underneath them, I imagined mouths hung open panting like dogs.
It was a bit of a surprise when KP suggested that I stay with them in Madison. To 'familiarize myself with the midwest' before I started college in Chicago. We had known each other since high school but weren’t really close. Since starting college, KP had a newfound spiritualism to them. New hair. New pronouns. Everything about them seemed new. I often fantasized about the ways Chicago might change me too.
Even if it was one of those offhanded suggestions that expected no follow through, the convenience of the offer stuck me as impossible to turn down. By the end of the month, I packed my entire life into a suitcase and left LA eager for a head start at living.
KP and I made sure to charge our crystals every night before bed. Obsidian for stability. Rose quartz for love. Emerald for empathy. So on and so forth. I slept with a chunk of citrine in my palm. I had read online that it was connected to the sun. A fire crystal. One that brought passion and excitement. Sometimes I kept it in my mouth and prayed for some force to rush along and make me feel alive.
KP and I understood our bodies. We ate vegan, produce-based meals. Ones that crunched in your mouth from the vegetables. We drank green juice, unsweetened. We only wore bright colors. Yellow, orange, white. Bleached hair. Billowy fabric—parachutes during bike rides. Finger painting in the grass. Kayaks cutting through lily pads. Ice cubes in the jungle juice. Perpetual thirst. Incidental tans. Sweat. Sweat. Buckets of it. We were experts in the chemistry of ourselves. Quantifying the vitamins in sunlight and the endorphins in activity—we measured our doses. KP and I knew how to make ourselves happy.
Sometimes the sun rose and one of us muttered the forecast to the other like a morning bird.
“I feel like killing myself.”
“There a reason? Or is it just chemical?”
“Just chemical.”
“Ah.”
And with that, you’d sip your coffee, knowing there was nothing much to do.
Manifestation was the rage. Thanks to the masks, you could get away with forgetting to brush your teeth, or whispering to yourself in public. Oftentimes, between trips to parties, coffeeshops, new friends’ houses, and any other building with central A/C, I whispered to myself. Over and over.
“I am not sad.”
“I am not sad.”
“I am not sad.”
On weekdays, Anne—a friend I had made from the radio station—and I would go to the library. Each of us would pick out films from countries we barely knew, and binge them until we melted into the carpet like candle wax. There were ice-cream flavors I never heard of. Bugs I’d never seen. Prior to that summer, I’d never been hungover.
On weekends, I went to parties every night. Met people at every corner. The youth was palpable. Everyone was drunk, aspiring, and excited. I was awkward and insistent by nature, but any time I was afraid I reminded myself that I’d never see any of these people again. The chunk of citrine burned a hole in my pocket.
“Smiling induces serotonin” KP told me once during breakfast. Birds chirped as the kettle boiled.
“Really? Does it work?”
“It does. I force a smile under my mask every day.”
They produced a stiff, wax-like smile. Eyes scrunched from the tension.
“Oh wow.”
I lathered avocado on some toast and poured the boiling water into a mug of apple cider vinegar.
I smiled beneath my mask for the rest of that summer.
We were chemical. The pandemic was at an all time high and my face was always hidden. Everything was new, constantly redefining like wet clay in the beating sun. It was the happiest I’d ever been. Madison teetered on the edge of something I couldn’t understand. The whole world was right in front of me and I was ready to run it over with my high-beams on.
obsessed with your descriptions, like always <3
Beautiful