Around the time of the first snowfall two winters past, I lost myself. The gravitational push and pull of the everlasting tilt-a-whirl sucked me up like a vacuum and held me captive, refusing to allow me off my seat. Perhaps the curious nature of experiencing the inexperienced reeled me in, and the exhilaration of living in the danger zone. But this feeling, this occurrence demolished me all the same. Day by day its venomous blade carved out my insides like a Jack O’Lantern in October and left me a lifeless pulp of nothing. Yet I craved its cruel, blissful numbness. After all, they say you pick your own poison.
Stale, musty air entangled itself with the few empty spaces in between swaying, sweaty bodies like a congested gym sauna. I could tell each room was once built with a purpose: a small, rectangular room for a bathroom, a larger, open space in the center of the apartment building for a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a living room. Except no cabinets lined the walls where a kitchen should’ve been and no couch sat where a living room was meant. Unfinished sheetrock decorated with colorful, graffitied male body parts and vulgar phrases made up the walls in each room. The ceiling, yet to be plastered over, consisted only of a wooden structure from which a few strobe lights and spinning neon disco balls dangled. Beneath my borrowed high heeled shoes, the dizzy, wooden floorboards adorned with red cups and glass from broken bottles quivered with each step I took.
I believed I was standing, except I could not feel my feet, and something about the way my head pounded told me I was hovering upside-down. Peering through the blur of lights and fuzzy, bobbing figures I realized that my friend, nowhere in sight, could be anywhere. Where was Brooklyn? Swallowing hard, my saliva got caught up in my throat like a metal slide on a hot summer day. Taking a sip from the cup in my hand, I scrunched my face as my tastebuds were met with something that resembled liquid toothpaste mixed with a dash of chemicals. The lemon sucking contests my sister and I held when we were kids did not prepare me for the burning acidity of vodka.
My frenzied eyes scanned the room for Brooklyn, but each way I turned my surroundings mushed together, reminding me of the spinning teacups at amusement parks. How long ago had it been since I’d last seen Brooklyn? A few minutes? An hour? I was pretty sure I’d lost her not long after we had arrived. I remembered the hefty guys guarding the door whose immense arms made up the majority of their bodies. Brooklyn had stepped in front of me when we approached them and, tapping the scariest of the two on his shoulder with a delicate, luring touch, chorused an enticing “Hey boys.”
“Let ‘em in,” the scary one had said, “I know this girl. They’re cool.”
My thoughts were drowned out by the thundering pounding resonating from the speakers. Testing out the theory that I was standing on my head, I made an effort to take a step forward. My legs couldn’t carry my own weight and I staggered into the wall. Okay, okay. You’re okay. Just unwind for a minute. Falling to my knees, I rested my head and closed my eyes. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t so instead I focused on my breathing. Remembering the exercises my therapist taught me, I counted the seconds of each inhale and every exhale. Inhale two three, exhale two three, inhale two three, exhale two three…
Hours before, we had exited the highway where tall buildings of dirtied stone and faded brick had begun to sprout from the littered ground. The unpaved road beneath us made it hard to keep the steady hand necessary for applying mascara. Yardless apartment buildings with shedding paint were caged in by rusting, black fences. Flickering street lights lined up along the sidewalk.
“I thought you said this party was in the town over.”
“Did I say that? Oops, I meant a few cities over. My bad!” Brooklyn asserted stupidly.
A growing pain in my stomach fluttered through my entire body, making my limbs go weak and my head feel unsteady. It reminded me of the nervousness I used to feel before my childhood dance recitals. Except it wasn’t the same feeling at all. This pain felt more matured, more vigorous.
“Brooklyn, where are we,” I demanded.
Beside the car, a group of girls and boys sat on a cement wall in a hovering cloud of smoke, howling like wild animals on a full-mooned night; the boys with their frayed jeans just below their waist and the girls with their hair in bright arrays of pinks and blue-greens. Brooklyn’s eyes remained locked on the road ahead but a slight smirk curled mischievously upon her cheeks. Ignoring me, she reached for the volume knob and turned it all the way to the right, drowning my worries so deeply that I could no longer hear their cries.
Sitting back in my seat, I picked at a scrape on my knee where red ooze had begun to flow from the battle wound I received by climbing out the back window of Brooklyn’s bedroom. My mom’s voice sprang into my head from the argument we’d had earlier. “I am not smothering you. I just care about you and your safety!”
“Well, stop caring so damn much,” I’d snapped back.
I wondered if she’d had the urge to check up on me, to ask about how my night was going and which movie I’d decided to see and about whether or not I’d ordered my favorite extra-buttery movie theater popcorn.
I had wanted to go home and never turn back until something, someone, something changed everything.
“Put this on your tongue,” a jittery boy with vast, wide eyes had told me, “You’ll be like me soon, I promise.”
And then, soon after that, the entire planet Earth floored on it’s brakes and began orbiting around me as if I had the remote control to its magnetic poles. The high-speed, tornado-like wind of Earth on its axis blew around me in a whirl of color, and shapes, and patterns. Slow, and then fast, and then slow again. This world became a kaleidoscope and I never, ever wanted to leave.
Stale, musty air entangled itself with the few empty spaces in between swaying, sweaty bodies like a congested gym sauna. I could tell each room was once built with a purpose: a small, rectangular room for a bathroom, a larger, open space in the center of the apartment building for a kitchen, three bedrooms, and a living room. Except no cabinets lined the walls where a kitchen should’ve been and no couch sat where a living room was meant. Unfinished sheetrock decorated with colorful, graffitied male body parts and vulgar phrases made up the walls in each room. The ceiling, yet to be plastered over, consisted only of a wooden structure from which a few strobe lights and spinning neon disco balls dangled. Beneath my borrowed high heeled shoes, the dizzy, wooden floorboards adorned with red cups and glass from broken bottles quivered with each step I took.
I believed I was standing, except I could not feel my feet, and something about the way my head pounded told me I was hovering upside-down. Peering through the blur of lights and fuzzy, bobbing figures I realized that my friend, nowhere in sight, could be anywhere. Where was Brooklyn? Swallowing hard, my saliva got caught up in my throat like a metal slide on a hot summer day. Taking a sip from the cup in my hand, I scrunched my face as my tastebuds were met with something that resembled liquid toothpaste mixed with a dash of chemicals. The lemon sucking contests my sister and I held when we were kids did not prepare me for the burning acidity of vodka.
My frenzied eyes scanned the room for Brooklyn, but each way I turned my surroundings mushed together, reminding me of the spinning teacups at amusement parks. How long ago had it been since I’d last seen Brooklyn? A few minutes? An hour? I was pretty sure I’d lost her not long after we had arrived. I remembered the hefty guys guarding the door whose immense arms made up the majority of their bodies. Brooklyn had stepped in front of me when we approached them and, tapping the scariest of the two on his shoulder with a delicate, luring touch, chorused an enticing “Hey boys.”
“Let ‘em in,” the scary one had said, “I know this girl. They’re cool.”
My thoughts were drowned out by the thundering pounding resonating from the speakers. Testing out the theory that I was standing on my head, I made an effort to take a step forward. My legs couldn’t carry my own weight and I staggered into the wall. Okay, okay. You’re okay. Just unwind for a minute. Falling to my knees, I rested my head and closed my eyes. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t so instead I focused on my breathing. Remembering the exercises my therapist taught me, I counted the seconds of each inhale and every exhale. Inhale two three, exhale two three, inhale two three, exhale two three…
Hours before, we had exited the highway where tall buildings of dirtied stone and faded brick had begun to sprout from the littered ground. The unpaved road beneath us made it hard to keep the steady hand necessary for applying mascara. Yardless apartment buildings with shedding paint were caged in by rusting, black fences. Flickering street lights lined up along the sidewalk.
“I thought you said this party was in the town over.”
“Did I say that? Oops, I meant a few cities over. My bad!” Brooklyn asserted stupidly.
A growing pain in my stomach fluttered through my entire body, making my limbs go weak and my head feel unsteady. It reminded me of the nervousness I used to feel before my childhood dance recitals. Except it wasn’t the same feeling at all. This pain felt more matured, more vigorous.
“Brooklyn, where are we,” I demanded.
Beside the car, a group of girls and boys sat on a cement wall in a hovering cloud of smoke, howling like wild animals on a full-mooned night; the boys with their frayed jeans just below their waist and the girls with their hair in bright arrays of pinks and blue-greens. Brooklyn’s eyes remained locked on the road ahead but a slight smirk curled mischievously upon her cheeks. Ignoring me, she reached for the volume knob and turned it all the way to the right, drowning my worries so deeply that I could no longer hear their cries.
Sitting back in my seat, I picked at a scrape on my knee where red ooze had begun to flow from the battle wound I received by climbing out the back window of Brooklyn’s bedroom. My mom’s voice sprang into my head from the argument we’d had earlier. “I am not smothering you. I just care about you and your safety!”
“Well, stop caring so damn much,” I’d snapped back.
I wondered if she’d had the urge to check up on me, to ask about how my night was going and which movie I’d decided to see and about whether or not I’d ordered my favorite extra-buttery movie theater popcorn.
I had wanted to go home and never turn back until something, someone, something changed everything.
“Put this on your tongue,” a jittery boy with vast, wide eyes had told me, “You’ll be like me soon, I promise.”
And then, soon after that, the entire planet Earth floored on it’s brakes and began orbiting around me as if I had the remote control to its magnetic poles. The high-speed, tornado-like wind of Earth on its axis blew around me in a whirl of color, and shapes, and patterns. Slow, and then fast, and then slow again. This world became a kaleidoscope and I never, ever wanted to leave.