Remember Me?

Because I am a hack, and I haven't posted in a month, I'm now relying on university-sophomore-me to make up for my lack.  I wrote this piece as my first assignment for a creative writing course.  Enjoy the emo.

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“Let’s play.”

They were two simple words, repeated so often that they lost meaning to you, and yet meant the world to me. How many times did I hear you say them in that coquettish giggle of yours? You batted your honey-speckled green eyes and flirted with my dependency on you just like you flirted with your harem of pre-pubescent boys. There were days that I hemmed and hawed. There were times that I spent saying to myself, “No more,” yet it only took a flash of your perfect, pearly teeth to suck me into your game.

So we would dash from the house, though you were always a mile ahead. I scampered like a rat on a wheel, constantly falling behind you. How I envied your long, pale, slender legs, seemingly carved from marble and modeled after Artemis’ and shown off by those scandalously short soccer shorts. As if they did not reveal enough of your wiry thighs, you rolled the top over and over until a hairline of your starved belly peeked from beneath your shirt. Your hair, wild and mousy and kept up by a multitude of shining ribbons, bounced against your neck as we raced through the neighborhood and the overgrowth of uncared for backyards. Adventure was your element. Mischief was your medium. You reveled in your mother’s scolding and took every chance to disobey. The more she restricted, the greater risks you took. All you wanted was the limelight, however depravedly it took to achieve it.

But I generalize, and you were anything but consistent.

When it was fashionable to wear as much glitter as possible, you smeared yourself with enough sparkle to create a mirror out of your face. I remember the smell that wafted from your boudoir, that thick putrid odor that certainly warranted a warning label. Your cheeks glistened with a Barbie-plastic sheen. The other girls snickered at my bare face, and I feared that I was unworthy of your attention. You, who had gathered the affections of all genders alike, seemed a siren. To my everlasting relief, after school, you knocked on my door and still said to me, “Let’s go play.”

I soon wondered in awe when you carelessly tossed aside bottles of product that you had pined over only a summer ago. Fake was the new fad. You slicked down your bouncing brown locks with globs of gel until your hair crunched like dry noodles, and even then your curls were not straight enough to be chic. So, I bought you that straightening iron that fried your hair into brittle sheets that smelled faintly of burnt oil. We played in your powder room, and I watched you dye your skin that frightening carrot shade. Behind closed doors, I could not help but snicker at the column of orange Dalmatian dots that decorated your arms. I did my best to follow, but my hair was already pin-straight, and my skin a tint of yellow. Yet, you ignored my failures and still called me on the phone and asked me to play. Dolled up in the finest of the season, you dragged me to basement concerts and ground your bony, fat-starved hips to the beat of the hearts of teenage boys. Sweat smeared the black, raccoon-like face paint from your eyes, but you were too busy flirting with another catch of the week, as you dropped as many “likes” and cacophonous giggles as possible. I watched from a dank corner as you melded into the amoeba of flesh that was the frenzied mosh pit.

In short, I was quite scared.

I did my best to meld into that society. I can see perfectly now the girls who I forced myself to smile for, only because they were your kindred spirits, your mirrors. Time and again, they greeted me so cordially, only to turn coldly from me when you were not at my side. How you all batted your eyelashes, thick, long and black as spider’s legs, and pleaded ignorance through wet, shimmering pink lips that pouted in perfect seductive splendor. Was it time to stop playing yet? Had we finally seen the wall that split our lives? You transformed so flawlessly, while I tripped over the cracks and signs that said that black was pink. Still, we refused to relinquish our past. You took my hand so often to bring me into your world (or perhaps to drag yourself from it), but the intent was half-hearted, and we lost our way so easily. We clung and scrapped at the days of our childhood for the last scraps of friendship.

One more time, you made that last feeble attempt to hold out your hand to me and ask me to play, but I could not grasp your hand, so oily and slippery from lust and expensive scented lotions, and I had already lost your game so long ago.