Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #46

When Lacy came back, I was unbearably grateful. Truth be told, I think I was only alone in our apartment for a few hours, but time is a messy business when you're alone. It stretches on far too long, and you begin only seeing this impossibly long future filled with nothing. And darkness. And nothing.

So, that kind of depressing. When Lacy sweeps in (smelling of Christmas. Pine and cinnamon and Lacy), I hug her, burrowing my head in her shoulder. She doesn't even have time to drop her things; she just hugs me too, her fingertips pressing hard into my ribs.

"Me too," she says, with no preamble.

I laugh, and it's quiet, but real. Which is the first time since stealing hot chocolate from Ty which was the first time since who knows how long.

Lacy pecks my cheek. "Plan," she says, "is this—"

"Let's hear it."

She scowls. "I was going to tell you, before you interrupted. We're having our own Christmas because this place is too stuffy and— well, never mind. I'd invite Sam and Jay, but apparently we're not on speaking terms." Her eyes glitter, and I smile. She's certainly talking with them, but her pretending like she's not for my sake makes my grin uncontrollable.

"Hey, it's not funny. We're deeply wounded by," she flaps her hand vaguely, "Whatever. Sam belching or something."

"Our Christmas?"

"Right," she says, jumping back on track. "I'm thinking Chinese and unpacking my shit. Then you're going to tell me about your cute brother, and I'll tell you about classic Loveless family drama."

I roll my eyes. "Tyler isn't—"

"M., forgive me, but you are too close to the situation."

She tosses you her black duffle (Lacy has a pseudo-war against pink. "I like it, but why is that the only color I'm allowed to like? Huh, designers?"), and instructs you on its contents, before switching on her stereo. It's tinny bubblegum pop, which she loves unabashedly. (Sam had whined about it when we were pre-gaming one night last year, but Lacy only turned up the volume. "Who cares if it's shitty? I love it.") Lacy twirls toward me, shimmying her hips and grasping my hands.

My eyes land on her chipped nail polish, and I watch my hands in hers hands, instead of keeping any sort if rhythm, instead of looking at her. A bark of laughter causes me to glance up, and then I smile, copying Lacy's exaggeratedly silly moves. And we're dancing. Not the sexy-drunk-I-want-to-impress-you kind of dancing. The silly kind. The goofy kind.

Lacy throws her head back, screeching the wrong words, and I join in. (We leap onto my bed, a graceless arc. Sproinging in a way that would've earned me a lecture as a kid. Hair flying, until we have to spit it out because it's flown into our open mouths.)

The music takes on a life of its own, snaking around us and wrapping us together. (Like a silk scarf, fluttering off Lacy's shoulders and flowing up my fingertips. Or a feather boa, goofy and wonderful.)

But later, when the music fades and Lacy's things are (finally) put away and the leftover Chinese is tucked in the fridge, the mania is gone. I curl under my comforter, and I dredge up the past again. Or maybe it dredges me up.

Those things that Lacy and Tyler and my parents can't keep away. The shadows that slip into the chinks in my soul. The night swallows me whole.

It's the little things it pulls out of me that are the hardest. Because there are things that I can say in the day that are cruel in the night. Things that I can accept in sunlight.

I won't see her smile again. She won't whisper to me at night under the glow of plastic stars. We won't drink coffee together while staying up too late for midterms.

Clair is dead.

I can say those things. I won't see her smile or hear her whisper or drink coffee with her. Okay.

I can say those things, over and over again, until the words are just sounds meshed together but meaningless. (Say it. Dead dead dead dead. It doesn't mean anything after a while.)

But at night, the abstraction of those words leaves, and my mind roams freely. And the memories close in, preying on my carefully constructed walls. And I don't think about her, I see her. I see her smile and hear her laugh her voice calling me and feel her shoulder against mine and it won't happen again. It's not words in my head anymore, it's her.

And the better I feel is fleeting, and the shadows lengthen. And here I am.

So I'll dance if music is played and Lacy grabs my hand, but that isn't where my heart is. I can't even lie about it; I'm okay okay okay okay gets as meaningless as dead dead dead dead.