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Anne Boonchuy breaks two promises the second week into college.
The first one was no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, no to all the sorts of things that serves as a fast escapism and comes back to kick your health square on the ass when you’re thirty (and Anne knows she’s going to live until at least ninety-eight, but she tries not to think about that). She’d promised it to her parents, anyway—her firm mother and teary-eyed father waving her goodbye on the driveway, even when they know LA is only five hours away from where she is now. It’s five hours too far. And yet.
Anne spins the red plastic cup around in her hand with dull eyes, her hunched figure propped against the wall between the fridge and the kitchen counter. She isn’t even sure who this place belongs to, just that it’s too nice to belong to any normal freshman. She had let one of the girls she knew from her orientation group drag her along with the amount of excitement a chihuahua would have to this party—some sort of sorority, or a club, or an unofficial welcome celebration to all the new students arriving in the city—she isn’t really sure. She isn’t sure why she’s here, either; bored in her new, unfamiliar shoebox dorm, or trying to fulfill the dreams fifteen-year-old Anne would die for. Being invited to a cool kids’ party… hah . If she were here in front of her now, she’d tell her she isn’t missing out on much.
It was right when the music started to get too loud and the cheering started to rise to a crescendo that Anne decided that she’s had enough of the party animal college experience for a lifetime, thank you very much. She rose to her feet and shoulders her way through the sea of people towards the sliding door heading out to the backyard, where she could at least seem like she’s staying while she’s planning her escape through the back gate.
She wasn’t even aware of how humid and sweaty the whole room was before she stepped out to breathe in the fresh night air—a bit of salt, here and there, but somehow much fresher than the Los Angeles breeze. She inhales a few mouthfuls to calm the pounding in her chest down—she really isn’t built for that much socializing in one hour—and breathes it out again, and in, and hold, and out. Like she’s thirteen again, in that fuzzy couch of her therapist’s office that swallows her whole when she laid back against the headrest. Like she’s thirteen again, in the small space between the exit door and the fence on the school’s rooftop, bodies entangled, her nose against her shoulder, the scent of lavender in the—
“—go smoke this out for a bit, I’ll see you out front—”
The sliding door slammed against its lock. The heels of a pair of heavy boots stopped dead in its tracks. And then: a hitched breath.
“Anne?”
Anne frowns, opens her eyes, and has them immediately assaulted with the sight of bright blonde hair with crimson clinging off its curled tips.
Her mouth is dry. “Sash?”
This is where Anne breaks her second promise.
It doesn’t take a while for Sasha to fully recognize her back—there wasn’t a lot different about her, anyway. Same old unruly curls barely past the shoulders, same old lopsided smile that she’s awkwardly offering in place of a grimace. She didn’t expect—she means, it’s just— yes , they went to the same high school, same classes, here and there, but it’s not like—like she’d know, if Sasha even got into the same university, or if at all—it’s not like she’d expected to find herself suddenly alone with her again, after again three years of radio silence—
“Anne! Wow, I—”
“You—”
“—I didn’t—oh, sorry—”
“No, you were g—”
Silence.
She’s imagined this, of course; far more than she should have, on the late nights in early high school where The Break-Up lingered over her like a dry, aching wound. How it feels to have her breath get caught in her throat whenever she catches a glimpse of that choppy blonde hair in the hallway, a rush of pain flooding her throat, a fish strangled on a hook.
But just when Anne thought it was never going to go away, she made new friends. She joined clubs she was genuinely excited to be a part of. She’d built a terrarium in her room, and adopted three frogs from a wildlife rehab center just out of town. She volunteered at the local aquarium on Sundays. And then, suddenly, seeing Sasha put up posters of her band around doesn’t feel so devastating anymore. The stinging pain got smaller, and smaller, until it was nothing at all.
Well. Almost.
“Uh…” a breathy laugh. Sasha leaning against the wall, subtly trying to hide her cigarette against her side like she used to do when they were fifteen, when Anne used to care so much. When it would hurt so good to care so much. “So. Didn’t expect to see you… here.”
Anne raised an eyebrow, a slight smile tugging on her mouth. “Here?”
“I meant the party. I knew you got accepted here, too. Saw it on your insta, the post looking for roommates.” Sasha shrugs. “Environmental science, right?”
“Yeah…” she nods. “You, uh—what about you?”
Sasha smirks. “Guess.”
Anne shook her head, realizing with shame how her mind came out empty on it. She didn’t know Sasha, not anymore. Haven’t for a very long time. When she saw her pass by in the hallway, or out loitering with her friends, she’d always thought Sasha would drive out the first highway out of the city for good once high school ends. That she’d travel all fifty states in her beat-up corolla, play odd gigs in sketchy basement bars, live out the free life Anne thought she’d always wanted.
(There was no use digging for what she remembered of the Sasha she once knew. That Sasha only wanted to die.)
“Really? It takes you that long?”
“I—I don’t know,” Anne shook her head, a bit panicked, until she realized that Sasha was laughing, so easily laughing. She didn’t remember her ever laughing this much. “I just thought that you’d—you’d just, you know, not want to be chained down for another four years in some city, studying for exams again…”
Sasha tilts her head and raises an eyebrow in question. “Yeah? What’d you think I’d be doing?”
Anne gives her a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t know. Playing in your band, I guess? Your bass, and everything. You seem to be doing… really great at that.”
She giggled. “What, you saw my shows or something?”
Anne swallowed thickly. I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to. “Once.”
She gasps, indignantly. “Only once ?”
It hurt too much. “Yeah. I just, I guess I realized concerts aren’t my thing, after that.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “It was barely a concert. Just bored teenagers flocking around.”
“Yeah, well,” Anne shrugs. “They seem to really like you a lot. You—you play good.” Remember when we used to play together? I’d always needed you for the grand solo. I could never move through the chords as good as you.
“Remember when we used to play together? In your garage, that one summer?”
Anne felt a hot needle strike her throat. “What?”
“Sasha and The Sharps?” she asks, laughing away again—so freely, like talking about it all doesn’t weigh her down, like talking about what happened doesn’t fill her chest with so much despair that all she wanted to do was lock herself in the room, unwashed sheets still bearing their scent, the haunting of their carved initials on her bedpost—and cry, and cry, and cry. “Don’t tell me you forgot us that easily!”
“I never forgot you,” Anne says, her voice coming out dry and strained. It almost sounded like an accusation—one that she has never, ever been guilty of. One that she never would be. “I never could.”
She watches as Sasha’s smile falters at that, a little, the divot on the corner of her mouth wavering before she sucks her lower lip and laughs, again, falling short in a half-hearted outburst. It was… sad. Anne remembered it being the sweetest sound in the world.
“Hah. You say that like you tried.”
Anne looks away.
Well, only slightly, anyway. Like a shy cat, head tilted sideways, leaning against the concrete with her hands pressed against her back. Like the teenage girl in that Los Angeles nightmare suburbia she’s leaving behind forever. Like if she held her hands out in the open, Sasha would take it. She might want Sasha to take it. She might want it more than anything in the world.
Anne doesn’t have the courage to look at her again, but she could hear the flick-flick-flick of her lighter, the scent of smoke and char. There is always some small miracle to Sasha’s act of self-destruction. How whenever she smokes, none of its remains ever manages to touch Anne. How whenever she bleeds, the blood that wells up is always wiped dry before Anne could manage to even fetch the alcohol swab she always keeps in the back of her schoolbag. How whenever she kisses her with drunken fervor after a particularly bad night, she tastes and smells just as wonderful as she does in the mornings where she loved her. It didn’t make much sense, but she guesses that’s just how it is when you’re fucked up and young and loved someone like the entire sun.
“Do you remember when we used to be friends?”
Sasha smiles, softly, fiddling with the thin cigarette between her fingers. The glow of its ash dying little deaths and cascading down, down, down. “Course I do.”
(Eventually, you’d burn out.)
Anne wants to pull her hands from its hiding spot, behind the small of her back, and leave it out there in the open for Sasha to take. But it was pathetic. Sasha might not even take it. She might not even care, or remember how it used to be, how it felt to have the valley between your fingers be filled and whole, the flesh of your palms like a puzzle. And then it was—it snapped, just like that, all those years Anne built trying to get past her, past the both of them—crumbled away gone in the sight of Sasha’s little miracles, her choppy hair she’d always insisted on cutting herself, the scar lines around mouth when she moves to take another drag.
And it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair how she’d—she just existed in front of her face and tore it all down. Just like that. All those years of her trying to swim back up to the surface of all this grief with water drowning her lungs—she just existed, in front of her face, and suddenly Anne was fifteen again; swallowing her begging and pleading in her throat so hard her rib cages felt like it was collapsing upon itself.
“You know,” Sasha murmurs, exhaling a breath before she turns her head to look at her, and the smoke drifts far, far away from where Anne stood petrified, those little fucking miracles—”I’m happy to see you.”
The white-hot lump in her throat thickens and burns and threatens to climb up her mouth, and Anne wishes she’d let it. For once, she wanted to beg; she couldn’t do it, couldn't bear to all over again—but she knew she did it once, and it still didn’t save Marcy. It didn’t save the both of them, either.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Sasha smiles at that. “I’ll see you around?”
Anne swallowed thickly and nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to open her mouth anymore.
When Sasha disappears around the corner of the block, Anne pulls both of her hands from behind her back to muffle the bitten-down sobs that explodes, all hot and wet and angry, salt tears and spit and snot smeared on her sleeve. She presses her empty palms against her eyes and rubs it so hard she sees stars, opens her mouth to swallow up all the grief she couldn’t see the surface of. She thought she’d started swimming up then, when Sasha held both of her hands in hers after the funeral—and then again, when she turned away from that glimpse of blonde hair in the hallway and walked on—but here, now, she isn’t sure if she knew where it ends and she begins.
But that’s alright.
The sobs, eventually, receded into little hiccups. The regret remaining, the what ifs, the hollow aching they left her with. And yes, Anne is going to spend another three years filling it in with sand and gravel and every other nothings. Yes, some nights she’ll lay on her twin-size bed all hot and miserable, wishing she’d pleaded, begged, let it linger just for a little while longer. Yes, she will always remember Sasha for all the sweetness she’d been, all her little miracles, and longs to reach for empty air.
But it’s alright.
(The sobs receded into stifled hiccups again, now. She wipes her eyes, her nose, her mouth, rubs the little dip in her throat where it borders on her chest a little knead or two.
And then, she leaves.)
It’s alright.