Scattered

“Bet Spencer,

I went to go buy some cherries because I’ve just been craving them since about 3 o’clock this morning. I bet if I didn’t have a uterus, I wouldn’t be craving them at all since I usually hate cherries, but you know… I can’t deny my female tendencies. Don’t wait up for me!

Candie.”

Shaking my head in amusement, I crumpled the yellow sticky note I’d found on the refrigerator and tossed it in the trashcan. Sighing, I glanced feebly at the clock on the stove. The green digits glowed 6:49.

A groan rumbled in the back of my throat. “I shouldn’t be awake right now,” I whined.

I’d been tossing and turning in my bed all morning. Once Candie finally allowed me to fall asleep at 1:30, I had been so eager to finally curl up into a tiny ball beneath my sheets and fall into a deep slumber. My bed was warm, soft and welcoming, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep.

Candie was out like a light not ten minutes after she bid me good night and I made a rather unpleasant discovery: Candie snored. I was shocked I hadn’t known it before, but once I got to thinking about it, I realized I usually fell asleep before she did and was never given the opportunity to find out.

The both of us were night owls. We loved the atmosphere of the evening and repelled the morning sun as if it could physically burn us. Notoriously, however, Candie could stay up much later than I could. She just had so much energy that emitted from every pore in her body and it only fed to her adrenaline.

I, on the other hand, didn’t posses the same kind of vigor that Candie did. I suppose you could say my energy was like a sugar rush: at the time, I’m wide awake and nearly bouncing off the walls with unrelenting excitement, but once all of that wears off, the pure exhaustion hits me like a ton of bricks and it’s not long until I’m fast asleep like a baby.

So, in a way, I could just blame Candie for my sleepless night. That’s what I planned to tell her if she ever asked, but I knew that it was only a front to what – or should I say who – was really interrupting my siesta.

Shaking myself free of those thoughts, I made my way around the kitchen to make some coffee. Those thoughts could plague my mind like parasites all they wanted at night, but during the day, I refused to let them surpass and overtake my sanity. Whenever the sun was shining, it was my time and all feelings towards the frontman of Green Day be damned.

While the coffee prepared, I headed towards the bedroom to pick out something to wear for the day. Thankfully, Candie and I were off work so I didn’t feel obligated to take a shower right away or make myself presentable. I rummaged through my miniscule closet for something halfway decent to wear in case I needed to make a quick run to the store or mailbox. As I groped around the articles of clothing dangling from the hangers, I realized I was looking for one shirt in particular. But by the time I reached the end of the last of the shirts I owned, I came up empty-handed.

Scowling, I looked around the room as if it might jump out at me. I only had a pair of jeans, a tank top and my pajamas on the floor so it obviously wasn’t there. Come to think of it, I hadn’t worn it in a pretty long time. Placing my hands on my hips, my eyes continued scrutinizing the room before me to get an idea of where it could be. I was fairly sure it wasn’t in Candie’s room since we weren’t the type of friends who shared clothing and as far as I knew, she had no reason to take it.

My eyes eventually landed on my bed. Of course, I rolled my eyes. Whenever you lose something in your room, where does it somehow always end up? I dropped to my knees and stuck my arm underneath the bed. I grazed as much of the ground as I could grasp, only coming across pens or notebooks I either had no use for or no longer had any spare pages. I crawled on all fours around to the other side, noticing that most of the things I shoved under there were now within reach. I managed to pull a few shirts out that were lodged behind a large box. Most of them I couldn’t even remember owning which meant they probably didn’t even fit anymore. One of them was my old employee shirt when I worked at the café.

But sadly, I didn’t see the shirt I was looking for in my newfound pile of clothes. I glanced under the bed again, unable to see much because it was so dark but I found that the box I mentioned before was really obscuring my view. I stuck my hand inside the makeshift handle of the cardboard box and yanked it out. It was actually kind of heavy.

The box had no lid and most of the contents on top were nearly falling out. I immediately recognized them as possessions from Rodeo. It’d been years since I laid eyes on anything inside. Dust had been collecting on the items, proving just how long they’d been under there. I suppose I must’ve stuck it under there as soon as I moved in, probably not expecting to look through it for a very long time.

The first thing I picked up was my invitation to Pinole Valley High School Class of 1990’s graduation. I brushed all the dust off, smiling slightly at my name printed in script across the front. The date had been set for May 26th, 1990, thirteen days after I left. I only had four days of high school remaining. To that very day I still regretted not finishing high school. I realized with a heavy heart that I missed the opportunity to walk across the stage, shake the Principal’s hand and have my diploma handed to me. There are moments where I think back to high school and wonder how different my life would be if I stayed in California, or at least stayed until after graduation. Where would I be now? Would I have come to Florida, met Candie, became a bartender? Would I have gone to college? I realized with a sigh that if I had gone to college, I would’ve been starting my senior year in two months.

Sitting the invitation aside, I returned my gaze to the contents inside. Everything was actually organized into sections and I’d picked up the invitation from the academic pile I made. My transcripts from Hercules High School were folded neatly along with some notes I passed in class with friends that I couldn’t give up. It never really struck me as to why I brought my transcripts with me. Maybe I thought that I would go back to high school one day, or at least sign up for classes so I could get the rest of my credits and earn my GED. Another pang of guilt ran through me… I never even bothered trying to go back to school. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind once I entered Florida’s territory.

I’d had a plan. I didn’t leave on spur of the moment; I actually had a plan for when I reached Florida. By this point, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to do or accomplish, but I knew that nothing ended up following through. Even though I’d prepared myself, once I got off that bus and touched Florida soil I was going by instinct and wherever time managed to take me.

I glanced at everything else. There was a section of old photographs and a section with smaller boxes that, once I picked them up, realized it was all of my jewelry since I never had the money to buy myself a jewelry box. I wasn’t one for wearing jewelry anymore, but I grinned upon opening the first tiny box that revealed all of the rings I used to wear in high school. I even had my class ring from Hercules, the blue stone glistening in the light with the small silver lettering of Hercules High School encircling it.

I opened the other small box to find necklaces. I didn’t own many necklaces to begin with, so there were only two. The first one was an antique my mother had gotten from her grandmother. She gave it to me when I was five because I always stole it from her jewelry box and asked if I could have it. Somehow, even at a young age, I always managed to keep it safe. It had a gold chain with a floral shell cameo pin pendant. It must’ve been about forty years old.

The other one… I froze. A part of me had even forgotten about it. I picked up the black necklace, regarding it with an unreadable expression. It had a small guitar pick hanging from the center. My fingers glided across the smooth surface as I tried to recall the last time I wore it. I lifted my arms and placed the necklace around my neck, unable to resist the urge to wear it again. My gaze lingered on the pick for a few seconds longer before I picked up the photos.

A lot of them were when I was little. My mother was still alive in most of them and I was smiling the biggest smile in each of them. There were a few from when we first moved to California and I reminisced on the time spent in Hercules with Haley. We lost contact after I left, but neither of us tried to rekindle the close friendship we once had.

Then I came across one that unintentionally—or maybe on purpose, I don’t know—caused my eyes to water with unshed tears. It was a worn polaroid of me sitting in Billie Joe’s lap, my face lying in the crook of his neck. He was smiling widely with his arms wrapped around me as we sat facing a bright Christmas tree. If I squinted, I could faintly see Carly and Mike eyeing their presents hungrily in the background. The colors in the picture were faded and there were a few scratches along the surface. I turned the polaroid over and saw my messy scrawl that read Christmas day 1989. If I closed my eyes, I could still see the flash from Ollie’s camera and smell the freshly baked sugar cookies.

My nose burned, alerting me that my tear ducts had a mind of their own and that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to cry. I sniffed and cleared my throat, placing all of the pictures back into their place. This was exactly why I put the box away… to hide all of the unwanted emotions and memories with it.

I stood from my spot on the floor, leaving the discarded, slightly dusty shirts in my wake as I went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

I never ended up finding the shirt I wanted to wear.


Candie returned with her cherries at around 7:15. I still wasn’t dressed for the day and I hadn’t managed to fall back to sleep. Instead, she found me curled up on the couch with a coffee cup in one hand while my other grasped absentmindedly at the guitar pick.

“Hey,” she called, sitting some brown paper bags filled to the brim with grocery items on the counter. “I got a little carried away at the Dairy Mart. By the time I got there, I wasn’t even in the mood for cherries anymore so instead I bought…” she fished something out of one of the bags. “Some Nestlé Quik,” she held up the small box of powdered chocolate. “Some milk for the Nestlé Quik,” she also held that up. “Some guacamole, this really cool ring thing from a gumball machine that turns purple when it’s cold and blue when it’s not… uh, some caramel for our apples ‘cause they’re boring by themselves…”

I stopped listening after that. I watched the blank, black screen of the TV in front of me, zoning out. Part of me really wanted to try and sleep some more, but another part of me – the subconscious part – was dealing with my cluttered mind and reminded me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep without clearing my head first.

It was hard to ignore my sore eyes that were probably red from lack of sleep. It hurt to blink because I’d rubbed them raw and they were beginning to burn. I also felt a headache forming, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the tiredness or not.

I just had too much on my mind.

By the time I broke free from my reverie, Candie had already emptied out all of the bags and was walking about the kitchen making herself a caramel apple… with the guacamole. I made a face as I watched her, glad to see that she didn’t actually put the guacamole on the apple with the caramel. But after she took a bite of the apple, she’d take a spoonful of guacamole.

I shivered at the idea of how that would taste and went back to my coffee.

The only sound in the room was Candie munching her… treat and me sipping my coffee. Every now and then my eyelids would slowly begin to fall, but I would thrust them back open before I spilled my drink all over me.

I gave Candie a look when she began to chew with her mouth open and she met my gaze with furrowed eyebrows. “You okay?” she asked after swallowing. I nodded vaguely, cradling the warm mug on my lap in between my hands. I shivered slightly and got up, placing my coffee on the table next to the couch before trailing over to the thermostat, trying to warm the suite up.

Candie watched me with half-interest, still chomping delightfully on her morning snack. It was when I turned to face her that she raised an eyebrow. She gestured with her spoon towards my upper body.

“Since when do you wear necklaces?” she asked, dipping the aforementioned spoon back into the green, chunky dip. For a second her question startled me, as I’d momentarily forgotten I was wearing it. My hand reached absently to support the guitar pick again.

I shrugged nonchalantly, stealing a bite of her caramel apple. “I just felt like wearing it.”

“Where’s it from? I don’t remember seeing it before.” She began cutting up another apple.

I shook my head, though she didn’t see it. “I’ve had it for a long time, just haven’t worn it.”

Candie made a hm sound as she continued her work. After she had it cut into eight pieces consecutively, she placed them on a plate before drenching them in caramel. She grinned happily before shoving some into her mouth, followed by a spoonful of guacamole.

I shook my head, unable to watch the monstrosity that is Candie’s appetite before retrieving my mug and heading back into my bedroom, aiming for at least another three hours of sleep.