The Pursuit of Sarah Alice

“What you wanna eat, Sarah Alice?” Gran said as I came into the kitchen from upstairs.

I was considerably tired; more so than usual. And I wasn’t very sure why because I got a decent amount of sleep the night before; ten hours. When I woke up, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I looked the way I felt. I was also a bit fatigued—everywhere more or less (but that was my fault more than anything else, so I didn’t pay that much attention).

Presently, I considered for exactly a second about telling her nothing at all, I don’t need anything to eat. It wasn’t very surprising. Instead, however, it ended up going something like: “Do we got any eggs?” (That wasn’t surprising, either.)

Now, as much as I hated eggs, I also knew just as much that that didn’t matter at this point. All that was really important was keeping up with the illusion and shitting on anyone’s suspicions, especially my grandmother’s, as I lived with her and saw her more than anyone else.

I rested against the counter and watched as Gran bent over, her hand gripping the door of the refrigerator. “Yeah—how many you want?”

I didn’t have to ask to know that they were large eggs. Gran always got large eggs. “Two’s fine.”

My stomach (as well as everything else more or less, but my stomach for the most part) felt like a tight web of knots, tightening the longer I stood up. So I’d just began to walk towards the living room as Gran spoke, “You sure that’s enough?” absentmindedly.

Huh. One thing I was sure of was that she just called me fucking fat. “Yeah. Yeah, it is,” I answered her, and despite the attitude I so very badly wanted to give her, there wasn’t any trace of bitch in my voice. Alright…

She was closing the fridge with her foot, egg carton in hand. (Nasty.) “Gran?”

“Hm?” she mumbled, cracking an egg open and letting the not-so-cute little liquid chicken fall into the bowl. Ninety-two calories. That ugly little stillborn chick was ninety-two calories, all on its own. How nastily poetic.

“Would you lemme borrow a couple dollars later?” Gran cracked another egg on the side of the bowl as I asked her this in a vaguely nice tone. Ninety-two calories more.

“What for?” she inquired as she stirred the two eggs together, threw in a dash of salt and pepper. God.

“Just wanted to go out and get some gum is all.”

(Because I’ve got vomit breath from not allowing my body to digest a single fucking thing.)

Didn’t say that, though.

“Sure—there some singles in my pocketbook,” she approved, nodding her head a little as she poured the eggs (that I would try my best not to eat later, mind you) into the pan.

I sighed to myself in relief. “Thanks, Gran.” She nodded in acknowledgement. As much as I didn’t want to get up, as my body was hurting, I decided to keep up with my false impression and (very slowly) walked to the fridge to pull out the carton of orange juice. I wondered what kind of flavor of gum I would get this time, which brand I would go for. Any fruity flavors were already down for the count by default; they didn’t do anything for my...breath problem. I remember listing the pros and cons in my head of Dentyne Ice Arctic Chill and Eclipse Polar Ice when I poured precisely six ounces—and sixty-seven and a half calories—of orange juice into a glass that I’d gotten out of the cupboard just moments before.

If there was one of my redeeming qualities (there weren’t very many to begin with) to be thankful for today, it was that I had always chosen to pay attention in math class, and I was quite good at eyeballing things as far as exact measurements went. If I was being honest, it really did come in handy, because you couldn’t necessarily wake up in the morning and openly measure beverages without being put into question.

Can you? No? (Didn’t fucking think so.)

I put the glass up to my mouth and wrapped my lips around it tightly, so as to give it the pretense that I was drinking. Honestly? I couldn’t stand orange juice. Any kind of orange juice. More like orange piss. It was sugary and overrated. I could get vitamin C from a multivitamin and not have to go into sugar shock, thanks.

Fast forward five minutes, and Gran and I were in the living room, her plate covered with turkey bacon, eggs and jelly toast in one hand, the remote control in the other as she kicked back in the recliner that she’d had ever since my (fuckingdumbslut) mother gave birth to me, and I was just sitting down—with my particularly small bowl of eggs and glass of less-than-satisfactory orange piss—on the sofa that was an ugly dark green. I didn’t mind the fact that it was ugly though. It was comforting.

And I couldn’t exactly tell you why, but everything about Gran’s house was comforting.

I glanced over at Gran as she pinned back her hair before flickering back and forth through the television channels. I loved her hair. It was long and bone straight, and she got it trimmed on a regular basis (sometimes she dragged got me to come along to get my hair touched up, too), so it hung all the way down her back, stopping just below her backside. It was silver, and she hated to wear it down in the summer time. Said it was too heavy and it made her break a sweat too quickly.

I thought it was stupid.

Her face was spitting image of my mother’s (what I remember of her, anyways). Or maybe my mother’s face was spitting image of hers. I didn’t know. A thing I was absolutely fucking sure of, though, was that my mother didn’t deserve to look like my grandmother. She would never deserve that.

(Digressing.)

Eventually, Gran settled on Maury, as it was Sunday and there wasn’t jack shit on.

“You are not—the father!” was all I heard for the next five minutes as we ate (nah, I’m just shitting you; Gran was the only one that ate), laughing at the appropriate—and inappropriate—times. Stupid fucks who had nothing better to do in their spare time getting embarrassed by the test results (and themselves), rolling around on the floor in ignorant fits of shock and rage, and cussing out the audience.

Television didn’t get much better (or much worse) than that.

I couldn’t watch too much more. I was having too much fun. As Gran giggled and pointed at the TV screen like an undeveloped little school girl, I somehow snuck away, towards the garbage can in the laundry room. I had happily dumped those nastyass eggs and skipped towards the kitchen sink to pour the orange piss down the drain.

All I could recall thinking for the next several minutes after that was—success!

So much to the point where I willingly washed the dishes; I had felt so accomplished.

Drying my hands off on my tatty sweat pants, I power-walked (or something close to that, considering that my legs were still screaming) towards the television where Gran’s purse—and my flip flops—sat off to the side. Grabbing five one-dollar bills from the very bottom of her bag as I slid my flimsy shoe wear on my feet. I kissed Gran goodbye on the cheek before shoving the money in the cup of my bra and rushing out of the door.

A plus about living where I did was that there was a convenient store right down the road. Sadly, it had been raining on and off all throughout the night before, and the showers had still been carrying on through the morning. The air was damp and heavy, and it was thick in my throat. My flip flops stuck to the ground, sunk in and made suggestive squishy noises; they were that cheap shit that you bought out of the grocery store on sale (two-for-five) when you didn’t want to buy a decent pair of flip flops. There was a bit of a breeze, and my hair chose to be shitty and kept getting in my face, screwing with my vision and even getting into my mouth a bit.

Eventually, I just took a hair bow from my wrist and tied it into a sloppy bun, or something remotely close to it…

It only took a good ten minutes before I was standing in the middle of some aisle—I forgot which one, silly me—holding a pack of gum in each hand. Polar Ice in the left and Arctic Chill in the right, before finally just having a screw this moment, caving in and buying both.

My stomach rumbled as I walked out of the door, but the stupid jingle that the door made every time it was pushed and/or pulled was annoyingly loud enough to where I almost couldn’t hear it. It only did little though, because I could still feel it. The day before I’d only eaten sixteen calories worth of raw celery sticks, seven saltine crackers, and fifty ounces of water, only to have it burn my throat from when I vomited it out an hour later, tricking the mockery that was my body once more into thinking that it was full.

However, it wasn’t like the weekend before, in the restroom at McDonald’s, not as distinguished. I guessed the fact that I was in public had my ‘adrenaline pumping’. It was pretty scandalous, if I did say so myself.

I popped two pieces—one from each pack—of gum into my mouth, and somewhere from behind me, a horn honked. And I knew, I knew that they were honking at me, because 1. that honk lasted a good five seconds, and 2. there wasn’t anybody else on that damn street to begin with. Stupid.

My middle finger went up in the air of its own accord, and at that point I hadn’t really thought of the fact that the honker could very easily run me over and dispose of my body without even a second thought—if they were nutty like that, anyways.

“Essay!” (Hell.) “I knew that was you, bay!”

Jolie’s truck pulled up beside me as I came to a halt and put the gum in my pocket. “Sure enough?” I countered, smiling a little. I hoped she couldn’t tell that I didn’t mean it.

She shook her head rapidly, like she was trying to break her own neck; I nearly laughed. “I wanted to surprise you, though!” she whined, pouted somewhat.

I raised my eyebrows because I wanted her to think that I cared. “Surprise? And sorry ’bout, you know, givin’ you the bird—didn’t know it was you.”

Shrugging and grinning, she chimed, “Girl, it’s okay. But it ain’t nothin’ big—we was just gonna pick you up is all.”

Well, she said it was nothing big. “Oh, well that’s nice of you.”

And I smiled anyways because she meant well. (I think.) Something occurred to me—then, “We?”

She made an ‘O’ with her mouth, then leaned back. I was wondering why she brought Lucas with her, but that was before the person in the passenger seat came into focus. Wrong L. Whoops.

Stupid Link. “Mornin’, Sarah Alice.” Stupid.

“Look, that’s great, and I’d come with you and all,” (there was actually an ninety percent chance that I wouldn’t), “but Gran’s waitin’ on me.”

When she frowned at me, I tried to reason with her. “C’mon, now—I ain’t gonna do her like that—oh, fine,” I grumbled because that…face that she was making was starting to get on my nerves.

She clapped her hands quickly before opening her door and hopping out. Damn it, I’d have to sit in the middle. After sliding in beside Link and buckling the seatbelt over my (pudgy) stomach, Jolie jumped into the driver’s seat. It showed how excited she was; she literally jumped in…

“Could you call Gran and let her know that I’m with you?” I leaned over and asked Jolie quietly. Her grin was satisfied as she whipped out her phone, one hand on the steering wheel and the other pressing at the keypad as gave her the number. While she was explaining to Gran how she picked me up off the side of the road like some handcuffed hooker, I glanced over at Link. His head was resting against the windows and his eyes were closed. His eyebrows were furrowed, and he looked annoyed in a childlike way.

Almost as though he could sense my stare, his eyes cracked open a tad. “’Sup.” His voice was rough, like he’d just woken up. (I thought about it for a moment and concluded that he probably had.)

I pushed the right side of my mouth up in a half-assed attempt at being polite, then, “Hey.”

He sat up straight, his eyes opened all the way at this point as he looked down at me. The expression on his face was considerably hard. “Is you okay?” I inquired, but it was ironic because, even though it was a remotely courteous thing to ask, my voice was just as hard as his eyes, rude even.

He scoffed. (Jerk.)



Twenty-five minutes later, and Jolie was pulling into her damp driveway. The ride over was so uncomfortable, God. I promptly ignored Link, just like he promptly ignored me, only he did it with his eyes closed, that bastard. I had to ask Jolie an ass of questions to fill the silence. Because, indeed, it was just that awkward.

Jolie was out of the truck a good second and a half after she had cut the ignition, and, though at a slower pace, I followed suit, my flip flops squishing as it was smushed up against the concrete by my feet. While I closed the car door, Jolie called out to Link just as he was jumping out from the passenger side. She called out to him, “You stayin’?”

He slammed the door, rounded the truck to stand in front of Jolie, and shrugged, a grocery bag that I had just noticed in one of his hands. “Dunno.”

She cocked her hip, her face unimpressed. “It’s a yes or no question, ugly.”

He smirked at her as I took in his yellow basketball shorts and navy blue sweatshirt. As a color, I didn’t like yellow, but I…didn’t mind it on him. “Is there gonna be cookies?”

And she shrugged, breathed, “Eventually.”

He looked at me for a moment and saw me looking at him. His mouth twitched. “Then sure. I’mma be back.” He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. And then he was jogging, jogging, jogging down Jolie’s driveway, then eventually, jogging down the street.

I turned back towards Jolie; she rolled her eyes in his direction. “He lives down the street.”

Okay? “Okay?”

“He asked me to take him to the store, and we was only fifteen minutes away from you, so I was like to him, I said, ‘fuck it, I’m finna pick up Essay,’” she says unnecessarily (because I wasn’t listening) as we jogged up her driveway.

The inside of her house was dry; I shivered at the slight change in temperature as Jolie screwed around with all the lights. I was perfectly fine with the place being dark (as my soul), but this was her house, and it wasn’t my place to say.

She flicked on a light or two as she walked towards the kitchen. I followed, only to find her biting into a Granny Smith apple, some of the juice dribbling down her chin. “You hungry?”

“Nah, I already ate,” I lied quietly.

Since I very much wished that Jolie would drop it because it was none of her Goddamn business, she, of course, had to press on with the worst question anyone could ever ask me: “What’d you eat?”

And I lied again with: “Eggs.” Straight to her face, no shame.

She bit into that stupid, irregularly shaped apple again, smiled. “C’mon, now—you know that ain’t enough.”

Translation: You’re too big to have just eggs to eat.

I could only shrug because I was focusing on trying to hold it all together. “Let’s go watch TV or somethin’.”

SpongeBob SquarePants was the only decent thing on. Don’t get me wrong; I liked SpongeBob and all, but the fact that it was the only good show on was a bit pathetic. All the same, though, Jolie chomp-chomped on her apple noisily, I guffawed as SpongeBob pranced around, Squidward repeatedly blew his lid (he’d always been my favorite character), and Patrick talked as if he had no brain.

This, however, didn’t last anywhere near long enough because Link came through the front door behind us without so much as a knock, like he owned the Goddamn place.

“Where my cookies at?” the dumbass’ voice boomed before he shut the door. Jumping up and over the couch from behind, he landed right in between Jolie and me. She shoved him roughly as she told them that there really was a such thing as knocking, and his elbow collided (and when I say collided, I mean fucking collided) with my thigh. Reflexively, I yelped, he immediately moved away, and both Jolie and Link looked back towards me in some sort of concern.

He lifted the right side of his mouth up slightly, so slightly that at first I thought his mouth might’ve been twitching (or something weird like that), and raised his eyebrows. “Sorry.”

(Yeah, me, too, buddy.) I smiled back and made sure to half-ass it as Jolie simultaneously huffed, “Look, I bought the ingredients—least you could do is make the fuckin’ cookies,” in an annoyed voice.

He breathed heavily in her face, the expression on his own irritated, before he pushed himself up and off the couch, shoved the hoodie off of his head as he slumped towards the light in the kitchen.

“Take off your shoes!” Jolie shrieked from beside me. I tried very hard not to recoil.

After seven seconds and some fumbling sounds, Link’s Air Jordans were slicing though the air from the kitchen—they soared right past me, missed Jolie by an inch or two. I watched as they went back and forth in unnecessarily loud voices. My God, did I want to leave.

“Missed!” she informed him in a densely triumphant voice.

“Well, shit—what a shame!”

This was one of the very few times where I (briefly) admired Jolie, as she was remotely quick on her feet. “If you gonna get smart, you can leave.” And from the kitchen: nothing. The loser must’ve really wanted those cookies.

It was silent for probably a good five minutes, give or take a second or two. I glanced at Jolie; her lips were pursed, and she was trying to look thoughtful as the terribly loud mixer reverberated through the house like a vacuum cleaner that sucked up something too big. Then, “C’mon, let’s go mess with him.”

When she saw the confusion on my face, she elaborated as she put her arms around my shoulders. “He’s really fun to piss off. I dunno why—so don’t ask.” She just sassed me for no reason because I wouldn’t have asked her stupidass anyways.

I followed Jolie back into the kitchen and watched as she became even more immature. She rounded the corner towards Link, whom was concentrating abnormally hard on making the small scoops of batter on the pan the same size. I chose to hop up on the counter because I wasn’t sure of what else to do. I didn’t like Link (stupid, nipple-pierced fuck), but I wasn’t going to help her.

Jolie came up behind him; she was so silent that I felt myself become impressed. She was close, two inches between them as he continued to scoop unbaked cookies. And her voice echoed, literally echoed, “FLOCKA!”

Now, even I flinched, despite the fact that I saw it coming. Link, though? Sheesh. He jumped, getting batter all over the place. The wall, the stove, the cabinets, Jolie.

And when he turned around to face her—and the batter that was strewn throughout various places in her hair and all over her face—he looked like he was ready to (though I couldn’t really see him doing so) choke the shit out of her. Then, he laughed. Outright guffawed, from the pit of his stomach, into her face. His own was all scrunched up and the skin bunched together around his eyes. He pointed his scooper at her, threw his head back as his laughter took up all the space in the room.

Jolie, a bit wide-eyed at first, eventually came to, even laughing with him as she wiped the batter away from her face with the back of her hand. “Alright—I had that comin’.”

And I wasn’t really able to stop myself from…smiling (because they were idiots).

They were being entertaining (but they were still idiots).



Jolie’s shower water was running from upstairs as Link put the tray of unbaked batter into the oven. I stayed where I was on the counter and watched him as he wiped his mess away from the countertop, then the wall, then the cabinets. He paused for a moment, looked back at me.

“You wanna help me some?”

Nice try. “Not really,” I told him flatly.

Jolie started humming from upstairs (fuck) the same time he raised his eyebrows at me (fuck). I raised my own to mock him.

“Why you being such a li’l shit, huh?” Ouch. I guessed.

“Why don’t you just kiss my ass, huh?”

“I asked you first, Sarah Alice.”

It was strange to hear him say my name (he didn’t say it often), but I didn’t miss a beat. “And I asked you second, so what’s your point?”

He stilled for a moment, lips pursed so the skin around his chin made little depressions. And his eyebrows rose while the left side of his mouth twitched a little. If facial expressions could speak, I guessed that his would say maybe this isn’t so bad. I didn’t know. Weird son of a bitch.

“You know, I think that you kinda awesome.”

Let me emphasize; weird son of a bitch.

I cocked my head to the side because somewhere inside of myself I wanted him to continue, and he did. He breathed and scratched his head and looked down for a moment, as if he were rethinking what he’d just said. “Alright, not really.” He was looking at me again at this point, “You sarcastic, sarcastic as fuck, and you a real bitch,”—where the hell was he going with this again?—“but you don’t take no shit, neither. You cool.”

Thanks. “Alright?”

He sighed and blinked, then threw the roll of paper towels at me that I (barely) caught. I stared at it for a moment before looking back up again, only to see that Link had already turned around, beginning to wipe at a spot on the counter he’d somehow missed.

I thought about his words for several moments (even though there was nothing to think about). Somewhere along the way, Jolie came rushing down the stairs, hair wet and towel in hand; I hadn’t even heard her turn off the water. Tearing a piece off the roll, I quietly hopped off of the counter and scuffed towards where he stood, slowly wiping at the wall and simultaneously watching him as discreetly as I could as he threw away his paper towel. He took a pot holder off the counter and pulled the pan of cookies out quietly.

Whatever. I didn’t care. He was still a weird son of a bitch.