The Pursuit of Sarah Alice

please read author's note.

One thing you should know about me was that I didn’t really like people. I mean, sure, I had ‘friends,’ but they were seen by me as nothing more than a formality. Just a couple of girls that I kept around to prevent Gran from growing suspicious (they were also convenient to have around during the school year—they kept good company during lunch, as well as class, and came in handy when I wanted to bullshit my way through a test). However, none of them were I particularly close to. They were too annoying for that; I could only tolerate people for so long.

Another thing you should know about me was that I made myself throw up, but that’s not really important at the moment.

“Essay!” my cousin, Jolie, shouted, annoying the fuck out of me in the process. My name was Sarah Alice, but she insisted that my name was too much of a ‘mouthful’ and chose to call me by my initials, S.A. Essay. I didn’t know. She was stupid.

“What?” I shouted back. She was at my house, snooping through my room like a little punk across the hall. We were supposed to be going to the pool—somehow, dear Jolie had talked yours truly into getting out a bit during the summer, considering that I chose not to hang out with my ‘friends’ in my free time. Honestly, I just wanted her to shut her Goddamn mouth—girl had tenacity.

She didn’t answer me—for what reason, I didn’t know. But I didn’t care either, so there was no pushing of the subject.

I was adjusting the straps of my bikini. If I’m being honest, the thing was ugly as hell—a two-piece with maroon and white horizontal stripes. The color set off my hair—an ugly combination of dark blonde and light brown. None of it was very becoming.

Suddenly, Jolie came strolling in the bathroom (the door of which had been closed, and she hadn’t bothered to knock) like it was her fucking house (instead of mine). She stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink while adjusting the straps of her navy blue two-piece. Silently, she held her tits in her hands and eyed them—she was somewhere between a large A and a small B, one of her bigger ‘insecurities.’

And then she smiled at me through the mirror, her lips separating to show the Fifty Cent gap in between her two front teeth. She absolutely hated it, but I thought it looked nice…sort of.

“You ’bout ready to go?” she asked with an accent that was just like mine (and everyone else’s around here where we lived—our words running together, thick and rapid). Her hands were on her hips—they were quite wide if you asked me, which looked nice on her. What she didn’t have up top, she made up for downstairs. (And it was something that I knew—firsthand—I couldn’t pull off.)

I nodded and said nothing, and she was more than happy to take me by the hand and tow me out of my house. The heifer was lucky that I already had my gum—Eclipse Polar Ice—in my shorts pocket or else I would’ve forgotten it. And people like me did not need to forget their gum.



I felt very out of place. This motherfucking pool was unrealistically crowded.

However, Jolie more than likely didn’t see it as a problem, as she was persistent enough to find us a spot. While I was in the bathroom changing, she’d managed to gather two towels, an unopened bag of the Late Night Cheeseburger Doritos—her ‘fave’—sun tan lotion (for her), sunscreen (for me), and several magazines, from Vogue, to Cosmopolitan, to People, and everything else in between.

She was tanning while I was reading one of her many magazines—something about The Lone Ranger only getting one star because the plot was so wack—when I realized how thirsty I was. “Say, Jolie, you got some change I can borrow for a drink?”

“Mm-hm,” she mumbled absent-mindedly. She rummaged through her bag as she flipped on her stomach—she’d declared that flipping sides every five minutes more or less was to help keep the tan even (shit, whatever that meant)—before pulling out two dollars.

“Bring me back one, too. Hey, and don’t forget the change!” I heard her call as I scuffed over to the concession stand.

“Two cans of Pepsi, please,” I said—I honestly would’ve gotten water, but I heard Jolie’s annoying ass voice in my head (“Essay, who the hell drinks water while they at the pool?”) and thought better of it—while looking down at my bikini top as I adjusted the straps that tied over the nape of my long ass pencil of a neck. A hand that had slightly yellowed from the sun slid over the wood countertop two dark blue cans that were already beginning to sweat with condensation under the UV rays.

And I saw his face.

I won’t lie. He most certainly wasn’t ugly. Both his eyes and hair were brown—different colors, though. His hair was the same color as coffee beans, his eyes only a shade or two lighter. Then there were the orangeish-brown freckles, sprinkled across his nose and a little bit of his cheeks. Even though I was considered tall, he still had a good two or three inches on me, putting him a little over six feet with some type of muscle going on in his arms. I could tell he was working on his stomach, too. And…nipple piercings. Both of them, actually. (Well.) He smiled then, and I watched as his mouth moved without any sound.

He was speaking to me.

“Beg your pardon?”

He smiled again, looking down at his feet and then back up at me with lazy eyes. “It’s seventy-five cents for each, so a dollar-fitty, please.”

I blinked, breathed in the chlorine. I felt a little stupid, too. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure enough,” I mumbled (but it was more like sho’ ’nuff), sliding him the two dollars, grabbing the cans and scurrying off back to Jolie without so much as Goddamn ‘thank you.’ I handed her one of the sodas absentmindedly, sitting on the towel that had somehow warmed from the sun over the short time I was absent, tucking my legs underneath one another, criss-cross-apple-sauced.

Since I really didn’t want to open the Pepsi in my hand—I regretted not getting water—I sat there quietly, contemplating whether I should jump in the pool before Jolie had the chance to say anyth—

“Essay, sweetheart, where my change at?” Shit, too late.

At first I thought I’d heard her wrong, but I knew not when I was suddenly very aware of where her change was. In the tanned hands of the dark-haired, freckle-faced boy.

Honestly? I didn’t give a shit that I’d forgotten, but I couldn’t let Jolie know that. And so I put on a show, putting a hand to my forehead, an audible pop that stung slightly following afterwards. “Oh. Oh, man. I’m so…I’m sorry. I—I forgot to get it from…” I sighed, pretending to be weary and slightly annoyed with the fact of how severely I was ‘stumbling’ over my own tongue.

Her slightly apprehensive facial expression suddenly distorted, morphing into an indifferent smugness that I couldn't really grasp. Had she caught on?

“So I see you met Link.”

First of all, fuck her. How dare she think a boy had anything to do with me forgetting two motherfucking quarters? (Even though that’s kind of what it was.)

I gazed back at him, only to find him handing a bag of Cheetos to a girl in a flamingo-pink two piece. From the way she was leaning towards him with a hand running through her unnaturally raven hair and her hip sticking out at an uncomfortable angle, she was attempting to flirt. (And I supposed that I didn’t blame her.) “Uh…I guess.”

She sighed, flipping sides once again so that she was now flat on her back and craning her neck to gaze up at me. “You know what? I ain’t even mad. The first time I saw him, I forgot my change, too.”

“Good to know I got your mercy,” I spat before I could regret it, my words merging together out of irritation.

I guessed she didn’t take me seriously because she laughed, nudging me with her foot as she turned back to her superficial magazine. “Prude.”

Since I couldn’t be bothered to fire back, I turned back one more time to look at him. He had his back to me, running his hand through his hair before tugging on it a little. A boy with pinkish skin and wiry hair (and a stomach that most certainly did not look like Link’s) came into view, telling him something that, evidently, he found funny. I, being the stupid ass that I was, was listening just hard enough to hear his laugh. It was that kind that sounded like it came directly from the pit of his stomach over the ruckus of the pool.

(And though I’d never admit this) sometimes if I’m lucky enough to catch it with my ears strained and my eyes clamped shut, I can still hear it.

(And to this day, it still lifts my heavy heart.)