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…la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la…
“LA LA LA, I can’t fucking hear you, Samey!” Amy stuck her palms against her ears like a petulant brat. At 19 years old, she still threw tantrums like she was a spoiled 5 year old. “Hurry up and switch shoes with me. These heels are killing me!” She kicked at Sammy’s shins with her strappy, white sandals.
“Okay okay,” Sammy sighed and rolled her eyes. It was embarrassing enough dealing with Amy’s toddler tendencies at home. She could only imagine what it looked like to anyone who saw this grown adult right here in public screaming and screeching and swinging and kicking her feet out of the passenger seat of the car, hands covering her ears and eyes scrunched closed.
Amy had been mostly silent for the 15 minute car ride to Geoff’s party, with only the hum of the vehicle accented by the tapping of her nails against her phone. No music either. “You actually like this emo shit?” she spat as soon as Sammy turned on the car and music started playing. And the only songs on the radio were the same overplayed hits from 5 years ago.
Sammy couldn’t even count on the wind to drown out Amy’s presence because when she rolled down the window, Amy went on about her hair being messed up and that she was freezing. It wasn’t her problem that Amy decided to wear a low cut tank top and miniskirt on this chilly October night. However, Amy made it her problem by being so vocal and dramatic.
So here she was giving up another bit of comfort to appease the twin who always got her way. Sammy laced on Amy’s complicated and uncomfortable heels as she watched her disappear into the house without her. She could just make out Amy talking to herself about how Sammy’s scuffed sneakers didn’t match her outfit. Not a single gram of gratitude.
baby, baby, have you seen Amy tonight? is she in the bathroom, is she smoking up outside?
A small group of people passing around a blunt were huddled near the door, and Sammy prayed that Amy wasn’t one of them. Their parents would be livid if either of them was caught smoking. Knowing Amy, she’d force her to switch clothes with her, so Sammy would be the one smelling of smoke. She could picture it now: Amy, red eyed and desperate, yanking her into the bathroom and demanding that they switch clothes. Sammy would pull up Amy’s miniskirt and then tug it back down because Amy picked all her skirts to be a little too sexy.
Amy always said that smoking was gross though, and she wouldn’t be caught dead doing it. She was the type to cough obnoxiously loud if someone was smoking near her. However, she also used to say that getting blackout drunk wasn’t cute, but the last time Sammy was dragged out to a party, she was the one dragging Amy back home.
Sammy didn’t even have the option of drinking. As usual, she would have to drive them both home, unless Amy left with some friends - not that she ever told her in advance. Why Amy bothered forcing Sammy to go to these parties with her instead of going with her friends was beyond comprehension. Wouldn’t they both be happier?
Maybe Amy’s “friends” weren’t really friends, and they only tolerated her because she was more pleasant to be around when she was drunk. Most of the drunk girls at these parties were the sweetest, kindest people who were all too willing to listen to each other’s problems and spill their guts, but Amy? Amy was a bitch at any blood alcohol content.
oh, baby, baby, does she take a piece of lime for the drink that imma buy her? do you know just what she likes?
Sammy poured herself a cup of Sprite and claimed a barstool in the corner of the basement. She hoped she was radiating “do not approach” energy in her all black outfit and sulky posture. Being socially invisible and ignored most of her life, it was second nature to blend into the background, completely off the radar.
Sadly the “do not bother me” signals she emitted weren’t strong enough, or they were simply ignored by some dumbass walking towards her. She cast her eyes down and inched closer to the wall. Peeking through her hair, she watched as he grabbed a drink and sat down next to her. He was far away enough that they could mind their own business but also close enough to initiate conversation. Sammy pushed down the budding feeling of hope that she’d make a friend with a sip of her drink.
They could be miserable, single, sober souls indulging in their mutual hatred of socialization and drowning their shared sorrows with Sprite, but the sound of the stranger’s voice brought her back to reality.
“Hey, I’m Dave. So what’s your major?”
What’s your major? Ugh, could this guy be any more predictable? Not that Sammy hated what she was studying, psychology, but please, any other topic. Nonetheless, a boring guy was better than a slimy, horny guy trying to talk to her, so she let the small talk continue. But it was excruciating. By the time they’d burned through the usual topics of school, where they were from, and who they knew at the party, Sammy had finished her entire cup, and she felt like a bobblehead, having nodded along disinterestedly to the guy - what was his name again? - when he was talking. Sammy should have long since given up on trying to find her people at the parties Amy went to.
The guy apparently sensed that Sammy was not engaged in the conversation, and he awkwardly excused himself. “Uhh, nice talking to you,” Dave raised his cup slightly and gave her a courtesy white person smile, lips tightly pressed closed. He said goodbye like the way Sammy signed off “warm regards” on the emails she sent to her professors.
“You too,” she automatically replied, ducking her head back down.
When he left, it was like the box fan blowing around the monotony of Sammy’s social life by stirring the same hot air had just switched off and left her in the still, stale 40 degree heat.
The guy was probably lying and actually hated Sammy. He seemed eager to leave, but fuck, so did she. As if she was putting much effort into the conversation anyways. It was easier that way though, pushing people away before they could come too close and realize that she wasn’t that interesting. How could she even try to connect with people when they weren’t going to end up liking her?
Trying was pointless. Being here was pointless. Sammy caught herself thinking about how living was pointless too.
While she had no intention of actually hurting herself, she indulged in the idea of disappearing to another country and never coming back or slipping into a coma for an indefinite amount of time. It wasn't as ideal as never existing at all, but there was no one to miss her anyways.
Some days the wishful thinking was about Amy being the one to slip into a coma. But if it were Amy in a coma, then people would care, people would make Sammy care, and her life would be even more entwined with Amy’s. Their parents would probably force her to stay by her bedside, and Sammy would cry her tears of spite that Amy could still have such an influence on her life even when unconscious.
If only Sammy had absorbed her twin in the womb. But still, if that were true, it would be the type of fun fact about herself she’d tell the class on her first day of school. The most interesting thing about her will always be her relation to Amy, even if she didn’t exist.
tell me, have you seen her? cause i’m so, oh, i can't get her off of my brain
Everything circled back to Amy.
Maybe it was the nature of being a twin, never feeling whole, never feeling like a real person, always being compared.
In any group, she always felt like she didn’t need to be there, that if she left nobody would care. The third wheel of a bicycle, the 19th wheel of an 18-wheeler, the second wheel of a unicycle. Unnecessary and unwanted: “Sparemy,” as Amy sometimes called her.
Amy knew her better than anyone else and knew her insecurities inside and out; she created them after all. “I made you,” Amy would seethe when Sammy went against her. “Don’t forget it.”
How could she forget when she was conditioned to think that way, to always put Amy above herself? How could she unlearn the learned helplessness of being in Amy’s shadow?
The closest thing to freedom she felt was when she came out to her family back in high school. It was an evening at dinner when Amy was out with friends. Sammy had rehearsed this conversation a million times in her head, each time a more anxious iteration of the last. When she finally said it out loud, barely above a whisper, her heart stopped. She was ready to die and let “lesbian” be her final word, only she was resuscitated by her mother reaching across the table for her hand, “Oh, Sammy!”
It was relieving that her parents didn’t care that she was attracted to girls. After that night, they treated her as if nothing had happened. But they treated her as if nothing had happened.
After the initial shower of “I love you no matter what” and “We still love you just the same,” her parents seemed to shy away from the implications of being a lesbian. Whereas they asked about every one of Amy’s boyfriends, never once did they ask about Sammy having a girlfriend. There was a pretty clear message: You can be gay, but we don’t want to see you being gay.
Weirdly, Amy never made fun of her for being a lesbian. It seemed like the type of thing that was prime ammunition for torment. No homophobic slurs or acting as if being gay was a disease she could catch. Amy seemed…accepting, not exactly supportive, but she was tolerant.
Her reaction was more subtle; she went on dates with guys more often, like she was emphasizing her straightness. However, she never brought them home, though surely it wasn’t out of courtesy to Sammy. If anything, she avoided the topic altogether, which was perfectly fine with her. Talking about crushes and dating with Amy ? No thanks.
She’d been sitting in the same spot for almost two hours. Being miserable was so time consuming. Sammy poured herself another non alcoholic drink, sipping on it as she stared into space.
Sammy suddenly felt a presence come up behind her. A guy leaned against the bar, much too close for comfort, blocking her off from the rest of the room. “You caught my eye earlier, but now that I see your face up close, you’re not as pretty as I thought,” the guy offered an obviously practiced charismatic smirk that bordered on constipated grimace. “Can I get you a drink?”
i just wanna go to the party she gon go, can somebody take me home?
Sammy grimaced back at him, grabbing her drink and staring squarely at it to avoid looking at him. What was once a cozy and secluded corner now felt claustrophobic. “I gotta go.” She stumbled climbing off the barstool, forgetting that the heels of her shoes were hooked around the legs of the chair.
After years of emotional abuse and manipulation from Amy, negging was easy to spot, but that didn’t make the insults sting any less.
She felt a familiar pressure in her head and a prick of tears in the corner of her eyes as she scanned the room for another place to sit. Or maybe she’d have a better time at this party locked in the safety of the sanctum sanctorum of a bathroom.
She considered her options: the couch, the bathroom upstairs, or one of the rooms down the hallway. The couch was closest but also in the middle of all this social activity. It was prime retail space for any of the partygoers and made her open and vulnerable to any desperate man wanting to hit on her and invade her personal space. The bathroom upstairs was ideal if not for the fact that Sammy had trouble walking on even flat ground in Amy’s heels. The hallway was a gamble; she’d have to squeeze past people to see what rooms were even down there, and there wasn’t a guarantee that any of those rooms wouldn’t be occupied or locked or something.
She decided the hallway was at least worth taking a look at, but first a pit stop on the couch to rest her feet.
Taking a few wobbly steps towards the couch, she tripped and landed ungracefully on the armrest. Sammy winced and the hum of voices and laughter around her suddenly got louder.
ha ha he he ha ha ho
They were laughing at her, surely. Sammy didn’t dare look up lest she be confronted with the stares of everyone in the room. Her face heated up and again she felt that she could cry at the slightest movement.
Slowly, she stabilized herself against the couch, leaning against it like it was what she meant to do all along. Sammy took a few deep breaths and shifted so that she was sitting on the armrest. That looked more natural than the awkward leaning position she was just in, right?
Still feeling self conscious, she crossed her legs, right on top of left, but then decided to cross her ankles instead. By this time, she hoped no one was looking at her anymore. The deafening thrum of voices and laughter had died down to a manageable volume, though she still didn’t dare to look up. Sammy was frozen in that same position wondering how long it would take for her to muster up the courage to look for the bathroom.
Wait, no. She didn’t feel like hiding out in the bathroom waiting for Amy anymore. First there was the guy trying to get her a drink — and probably drug it — and then tripping onto the couch; it was too much at once. The idea of spending hours sitting on a toilet lid felt so pathetic and isolating — like those movies about high school when the loser main character with no friends has to sit in a toilet stall to eat lunch. However mad Amy was at her for leaving early wouldn’t compare to the humiliation and anxiety of staying at this party.
“Fuck, where is Amy?” She muttered.
“Amy? I think she went somewhere with Jasmine,” Lindsay giggled from her spot on Tyler’s lap on the nearby loveseat. “I love your shoes by the way!”
Sammy whipped her head around and blinked blankly. Jasmine. With Jasmine.
Disoriented and temporarily forgetting her previous plan to just leave, to Sammy, suddenly the enclosed isolation of the bathroom felt like some safe space or a storm shelter. She asked Lindsay, “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Last room on the left,” she smiled and took a drink of her grape soda.
love me, hate me, say what you want about me
With Jasmine. Sammy stood up shakily and set one foot in front of the other.
Months of pining all down the drain, countless nights of falling asleep to made up scenarios and conversations of asking Jasmine to be her girlfriend and her saying yes, always “yes!”, a confident and enthusiastic acceptance, as if Jasmine had been waiting to be asked her entire life. Just like Sammy has been yearning her entire life for someone to want her.
Jasmine gave her hope, the way she wasn’t afraid to talk over Amy to allow Sammy to say what she wanted. Maybe Jasmine was “just being nice” when she did that, but it seemed like she went out of her way to give Sammy the extra bit of attention.
She couldn’t forget the way Jasmine’s dark eyes twinkled and bore into her like she was the only girl that ever mattered.
but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy
Yet she didn’t matter to Jasmine, not like Amy mattered to Jasmine.
Sammy trudged onward, running her hand against the wall for support as her sight became an overwhelming blur and the sound of her heartbeat amplified. That bathroom at the end of the hall was the light at the end of her tunnel: safe, cold, and final. For the two rooms on the left, the lights were on and the doors ajar.
She neared the first room, looking in as she passed.
love me, hate me, but can't you see what I see?
Jasmine was smiling and leaning over Amy, who was sitting on the edge of the bed blushing and looking nervous.
No. No fucking way.
Amy tilted her head up to face Jasmine directly. The taller girl placed her hands on either side of her sister, right near her thighs.
No.
Sammy tore her eyes away before she could witness the inevitable kiss.
Amy gets the fucking girl, and Sammy gets fucked over. There was nothing, no one that Sammy could have to herself. She was stupid, so naïve to think Jasmine actually liked her , that she tried to include her in conversations and cut Amy off because she wanted to truly get to know Sammy. It was Amy, it was always Amy.
She turned on her heel, probably spraining her ankle in the process, and bolted. She shoved past people and knocked a bottle to the ground, the satisfying shatter of glass and the grainy crunch of the shards a sort of cathartic destruction. Sammy stomped up the stairs, hard, because the pain felt real, and it was something to focus on aside from the heaving, heavy, pang in her chest.
Fuck this. Fuck me. She was leaving without Amy, not like her twin even needed her to drive her home because she would probably go home with Jasmine and then they would- Fuck her. Amy would get what she deserved and try to walk home drunk and get lost and collapse on the side of the road. She could die from hypothermia in her stupid miniskirt for all she cared.
all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy
Everyone was out to get her. It was like Amy was an evil mastermind conspiring with everyone around her to ruin her life. Somehow she roped Jasmine in, working on the long con to get Sammy to think she had a chance then suddenly snapping her heart in half.
Amy wasn’t even gay!
Yet another part of her identity exploited, trivialized, co-opted by Amy. She yanked on the seat belt and let out a silent scream when the seat belt didn't budge. Even the universe couldn’t let Sammy have this moment to herself. With nails digging into her palm, she pulled again, excruciatingly slow.
All she wanted was to go, go away, away from here.
She was a rain cloud saturated with tears. The harsh wind slapping across her face drew a steady stream from her eyes, and her hair stuck to the wet streaks running down her cheeks. Sammy gripped the steering wheel harder as the streetlights became a blur.
For a moment it was almost romantic, riding on the open road alone at midnight, weightless and free, unbounded and infinite.
But Sammy was back to feeling heavy like a sopping sponge soaking and wallowing in an infinite supply of tears.
She was tethered to the ball and chain that was her sister, and she knew she only had so far of a radius to escape to. She could only drive so far before she ran out of gas — actually half the distance because eventually she’d have to drive back home. When the next day arrived, she would be yanked back abruptly, cruelly reminded that she was bound to a shitty reality.
…la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
The taunting voice of her sister rang loudly in her head like emergency sirens in a thunderstorm. She couldn’t even have a fucking mental breakdown without Amy’s interference.
la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la…
She drove and drove — stop lights be damned — until the peace and terror of a sudden bright white light and deafening honk of a car horn finally drowned out Amy’s taunting.