life @ 23, chapter 4: 21, part 1
Jun. 23rd, 2008 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wellownedbkuplife @ 23
Chapter 4: 21, Part I
Sophie grinned at the latest letter from Daniel, regaling her with random snippets of life back in England. She feels bad that she has to blow him off again, has to reschedule her visit. But there's so much happening in her life that she isn't prepared to do anything but experience it all first hand.
21 is this jumble of maybe and not really that Sophie wasn't prepared to deal with. She'd imagined anything else--freedom the first thought always on her mind. Twenty-one used to look like the ultimate in ages. 21 meant, if nothing else, drinking, staying out late and less rules. Not this year of maybe and not really.
21 is a year of maybe getting back on top of her schooling. 20 was a haze of just hanging out. 21 is maybe being able to start on the end product. Of maybe getting good grades and maybe getting her scholarship money back and maybe being able to get it together. Maybe.
21 is not really being sure of anything. Of not really being able to save up the money to buy a car. Or visit old friends. Or to buy the expensive electronics that she thought were pretty necessary to life (a digital camera, an iPod, laptop). 21 is not really having any of those things. 21 is not really feeling like Sophie’s accomplished anything because 21 is, truth be told, not really that much different than 20. Or 19, for that matter.
21 is maybe finding someone to love, but not really caring or pursuing it because if there’s one definite in 21, it’s that he’s anything but good for her and no one should believe otherwise. 21 is maybe trying to be healthier, but not really getting a handle on it. Twenty-one is having 2 perfect jobs fall into her lap, one that maybe will happen when she least wants it, and one that never really called her back. Guess she wasn’t really what they were looking for in the first place.
But the maybes and the not reallys aren’t really holding Sophie back. It’s not a year of definites like she planned (definitely losing weight, definitely getting out of the house, definitely working towards graduation), but she’s managing as best she can, under the circumstances. It's just another thing she's learned.
Like, she doesn’t know when she learned, but So has stopped asking Elana deep questions. Sometime over their lives, they’ve drifted in to shallow friends instead of sisters. They’ve drifted into this… façade of sisterhood, hugging like they can’t manage without each other, but not meaning it beyond the moment. Sophie loves Elana dearly, she knows, but it’s no longer with that sweet feeling that she used to have.
She sees it first in the lighter in her sister's purse. And she knows that neither of them smoke, especially since that day on the bus stop when Ela nearly got caught. The city's too little and their parents know too many people for them to have any sense of freedom to act out. But So sees a lighter in her sister's bag. And it doesn't set well.
The day Ela walks out, no one knows what to think. It comes from left field, and Sophie watches dumbstruck as the screen door swings shut behind the girl she used to know. Stories surface in among friends and acquaintances.
Ela was smoking with some guy downtown.
Is Ela pregnant? Saw her coming from Planned Parenthood the other day.
When did you all get a new car? You--? Ela was driving it the other day.
They say she was molested. That no one believed he was capable.
She said that she had been having sex for 3 years before they caught her.
Sophie tunes them all out by driving to the other side of the city to hang out with her cousin Celestina. The other side of the city where people really don't know her or don't talk to her. Just family and the occasional friend of a friend, someone who hasn't heard a thing and gives So the chance to keep it simple.
Sophie visits Celestina and lies on her back on the bed, eyes watching the ceiling like it holds answers. She calls the girl Tina and Celeste and Ceelie and makes peanut butter cookies when she spends over an hour at the house. Celeste sits at the computer and keeps it all inane, talking music and trips and comparing taste in celebrities. They must be family, they decide. They disagree over Vin Diesel, but agree on Johnny Depp.
On the other side of the city, she can feel that restlessness in her bones, that itchy wanderlust that made her leave back with Aunt Kel's funeral. She tells Celeste so, after yet another Saturday laid out on a too-small twin bed with the tv blaring and peanut butter cookies in the oven. They've got an abandoned game of Speed between them, and Celeste looks at her like all she's been doing is waiting for the invitation.
"I've got a pen pal in Scotland," she says, pulling up browser after browser with flight costs. "She's been dying to have me over and said my whole family could come."
"You sure?" So asks and sits up, taking notice for the first time all day.
Celeste makes a non-committal noise and smiles. "Sure. Where're we flying from?"
And, just like that, she feels a weight lift from her shoulders and she relaxes back on the bed. It's only a moment before she's sending him a text message with an abundance of glee at their plans.
Sophie thinks she's turning into the kind of girl that she never wanted to be. She pitied them: the ones who lived to find a man to set them in a lifestyle to which they have yet to become accustomed. She laughed at the nesting instinct, their need to find someone to cuddle with before the end of spring. She laughed until she felt it herself.
Winter hasn't felt this cold before, she's sure. Fifteen degrees never felt like the Arctic Tundra. But even the heat of a fireplace makes her think of a summer in England where it was never warm. A fireplace and a hoodie and Daniel.
She shivers again, feeling a draft across her skin, like she's not layered beneath insulating covers. She tucks in more and hopes she'll get to sleep in the next two hours so she can make it to work on time. She hates that she works nights because it means she's nearly on his schedule, though she's sure he gets far more sleep than she does. It's another little piece of him she thinks about, and wishes she didn't.
She sighs and calls the night a lost cause. It's late, she's exhausted and she wants to be asleep in his arms, where she could be warm and safe. He'd be sure to talk to her in the coming afternoon, but it's little consolation so early in the morning.
She sighs again and turns over, praying for daylight to come quickly.
She thinks about him at night, when the hum of her computer's driving her crazy and every light is determined to shine in her eyes. It's then that she wishes the time difference between them was either less or more, so she could talk to him.
She wishes it was midnight there too and he can't sleep either until he hears her voice. Or she wishes it was morning and he wakes up to the sound of her asking how he slept and if she made his morning sweeter by calling him. She wishes anything that means him talking to her again: anything from an email to an IM, a letter to a phone call.
So thinks of him and how they always end up on the same topics whenever they talk. She imagines that he really cares about her opinion and follows it because she said so. She can't know if that's true, but that doesn't deflate her hope one whit. She waits for a letter, an email, a tidbit of his present so that she's a part of it. Of him.
She doesn't believe he thinks of her as much as she thinks of him. Not when text messages go unanswered and instant messages are left with only silence on the other end. It's possible there's something more about... whatever this is. She still doesn't know what to call this non-relationship. But there's definitely something there.
When they finally get to talk, unsaid and undone and understood.
She thinks of him, occasionally. And she cannot go to sleep while she's thinking of him. There's so much she wants to tell him; hopes and fears and dreams that she wants to share with him and him alone. She thinks of how to tell him everything that matters. Her mind races and she's left with nothing but a long, sleepless night and empty wishes.
But she's sure he's thinking of her too, some nights. He'll say a little something, throw her a bone here and there. Tell her that he can’t wait for her to come and visit because he’s got so much planned. And that's enough to let her rest some ‘til morning light.
Chapter 4: 21, Part I
Sophie grinned at the latest letter from Daniel, regaling her with random snippets of life back in England. She feels bad that she has to blow him off again, has to reschedule her visit. But there's so much happening in her life that she isn't prepared to do anything but experience it all first hand.
21 is this jumble of maybe and not really that Sophie wasn't prepared to deal with. She'd imagined anything else--freedom the first thought always on her mind. Twenty-one used to look like the ultimate in ages. 21 meant, if nothing else, drinking, staying out late and less rules. Not this year of maybe and not really.
21 is a year of maybe getting back on top of her schooling. 20 was a haze of just hanging out. 21 is maybe being able to start on the end product. Of maybe getting good grades and maybe getting her scholarship money back and maybe being able to get it together. Maybe.
21 is not really being sure of anything. Of not really being able to save up the money to buy a car. Or visit old friends. Or to buy the expensive electronics that she thought were pretty necessary to life (a digital camera, an iPod, laptop). 21 is not really having any of those things. 21 is not really feeling like Sophie’s accomplished anything because 21 is, truth be told, not really that much different than 20. Or 19, for that matter.
21 is maybe finding someone to love, but not really caring or pursuing it because if there’s one definite in 21, it’s that he’s anything but good for her and no one should believe otherwise. 21 is maybe trying to be healthier, but not really getting a handle on it. Twenty-one is having 2 perfect jobs fall into her lap, one that maybe will happen when she least wants it, and one that never really called her back. Guess she wasn’t really what they were looking for in the first place.
But the maybes and the not reallys aren’t really holding Sophie back. It’s not a year of definites like she planned (definitely losing weight, definitely getting out of the house, definitely working towards graduation), but she’s managing as best she can, under the circumstances. It's just another thing she's learned.
Like, she doesn’t know when she learned, but So has stopped asking Elana deep questions. Sometime over their lives, they’ve drifted in to shallow friends instead of sisters. They’ve drifted into this… façade of sisterhood, hugging like they can’t manage without each other, but not meaning it beyond the moment. Sophie loves Elana dearly, she knows, but it’s no longer with that sweet feeling that she used to have.
She sees it first in the lighter in her sister's purse. And she knows that neither of them smoke, especially since that day on the bus stop when Ela nearly got caught. The city's too little and their parents know too many people for them to have any sense of freedom to act out. But So sees a lighter in her sister's bag. And it doesn't set well.
The day Ela walks out, no one knows what to think. It comes from left field, and Sophie watches dumbstruck as the screen door swings shut behind the girl she used to know. Stories surface in among friends and acquaintances.
Ela was smoking with some guy downtown.
Is Ela pregnant? Saw her coming from Planned Parenthood the other day.
When did you all get a new car? You--? Ela was driving it the other day.
They say she was molested. That no one believed he was capable.
She said that she had been having sex for 3 years before they caught her.
Sophie tunes them all out by driving to the other side of the city to hang out with her cousin Celestina. The other side of the city where people really don't know her or don't talk to her. Just family and the occasional friend of a friend, someone who hasn't heard a thing and gives So the chance to keep it simple.
Sophie visits Celestina and lies on her back on the bed, eyes watching the ceiling like it holds answers. She calls the girl Tina and Celeste and Ceelie and makes peanut butter cookies when she spends over an hour at the house. Celeste sits at the computer and keeps it all inane, talking music and trips and comparing taste in celebrities. They must be family, they decide. They disagree over Vin Diesel, but agree on Johnny Depp.
On the other side of the city, she can feel that restlessness in her bones, that itchy wanderlust that made her leave back with Aunt Kel's funeral. She tells Celeste so, after yet another Saturday laid out on a too-small twin bed with the tv blaring and peanut butter cookies in the oven. They've got an abandoned game of Speed between them, and Celeste looks at her like all she's been doing is waiting for the invitation.
"I've got a pen pal in Scotland," she says, pulling up browser after browser with flight costs. "She's been dying to have me over and said my whole family could come."
"You sure?" So asks and sits up, taking notice for the first time all day.
Celeste makes a non-committal noise and smiles. "Sure. Where're we flying from?"
And, just like that, she feels a weight lift from her shoulders and she relaxes back on the bed. It's only a moment before she's sending him a text message with an abundance of glee at their plans.
Sophie thinks she's turning into the kind of girl that she never wanted to be. She pitied them: the ones who lived to find a man to set them in a lifestyle to which they have yet to become accustomed. She laughed at the nesting instinct, their need to find someone to cuddle with before the end of spring. She laughed until she felt it herself.
Winter hasn't felt this cold before, she's sure. Fifteen degrees never felt like the Arctic Tundra. But even the heat of a fireplace makes her think of a summer in England where it was never warm. A fireplace and a hoodie and Daniel.
She shivers again, feeling a draft across her skin, like she's not layered beneath insulating covers. She tucks in more and hopes she'll get to sleep in the next two hours so she can make it to work on time. She hates that she works nights because it means she's nearly on his schedule, though she's sure he gets far more sleep than she does. It's another little piece of him she thinks about, and wishes she didn't.
She sighs and calls the night a lost cause. It's late, she's exhausted and she wants to be asleep in his arms, where she could be warm and safe. He'd be sure to talk to her in the coming afternoon, but it's little consolation so early in the morning.
She sighs again and turns over, praying for daylight to come quickly.
She thinks about him at night, when the hum of her computer's driving her crazy and every light is determined to shine in her eyes. It's then that she wishes the time difference between them was either less or more, so she could talk to him.
She wishes it was midnight there too and he can't sleep either until he hears her voice. Or she wishes it was morning and he wakes up to the sound of her asking how he slept and if she made his morning sweeter by calling him. She wishes anything that means him talking to her again: anything from an email to an IM, a letter to a phone call.
So thinks of him and how they always end up on the same topics whenever they talk. She imagines that he really cares about her opinion and follows it because she said so. She can't know if that's true, but that doesn't deflate her hope one whit. She waits for a letter, an email, a tidbit of his present so that she's a part of it. Of him.
She doesn't believe he thinks of her as much as she thinks of him. Not when text messages go unanswered and instant messages are left with only silence on the other end. It's possible there's something more about... whatever this is. She still doesn't know what to call this non-relationship. But there's definitely something there.
When they finally get to talk, unsaid and undone and understood.
She thinks of him, occasionally. And she cannot go to sleep while she's thinking of him. There's so much she wants to tell him; hopes and fears and dreams that she wants to share with him and him alone. She thinks of how to tell him everything that matters. Her mind races and she's left with nothing but a long, sleepless night and empty wishes.
But she's sure he's thinking of her too, some nights. He'll say a little something, throw her a bone here and there. Tell her that he can’t wait for her to come and visit because he’s got so much planned. And that's enough to let her rest some ‘til morning light.
