introduction

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Mamrie sits in the parking lot of the 99¢ store in her car. The sky is approaching the sunset and the front lights of the store are faint and flickering lazily. She's smoking a cigarette, hand hanging loosely out of the driver window.

The leather seats are wearing and the entire interior reeks of cigarette smoke and passionate nights. It's a quiet night and this parking lot is nearly empty, pick-up trucks strewn all across.

She can hear and see some teenagers walking along the sidewalk among the stores, laughing and chatting and yelling. She wants to holler at them to shut up, honk her car horn and make a scene.

No, she thinks. who are you? Your mother?

It's not the noise that bothers her. The sight is just all too familiar. The kids remind her of her and Grace. They're happy and giggly. She wonders if one day one of those kids will be where she is now, smoking in a wrecked-up truck praying to god they can get that girl out of their head.

Probably not. No one's as wild as her. That's what Grace used to say.

She used to laugh at her and call her wild. She used to touch her arm and call her beautiful. She used to caress her hair between her fingers and call her amazing. She used to be there to call her all the things she wished she was.

Jesus, if only she could forget about her. But right now she's a sickening, lingering desire slowly expanding from the corner in the back of her mind. If someone makes you feel that good about yourself, they clutter up you're brain so much that when they're vanished there isn't much other than a gaping hole. She feels so hollow; so exposed and naked.

Grace left and now Mamrie is just an absolute mess of cigarette butts and unshed tears and insecurities.

She remembers the nights they'd prance along the same parking lot at 1 a.m., laughing uncontrollably until tears rolled down their rosy cheeks. To turn back time she'd kill a man.

The sun sets among the trees across the street. The lavender hue hangs over her head as she takes one last drag off her cigarette, tossed it out of her window and drives away.

lavender. (mace)Where stories live. Discover now