The old screen scrapes as you push it upwards in the window frame. Without the plastic, perforated barrier between you and the outside, it all seems so much more vibrant now.
The plant life is doing fine. Weeds sprout up through the ugly gravel of the home across the street, and the old man's yard beside it looks like a tangled jungle. The indigo house has two cars parked in the driveway tonight. You saw a petite young woman climb out of her Mazda earlier, and you can hear delighted moaning coming from the house's upstairs-window across the narrow roadway.
But that's unimportant.
Your back throbs in the position you've contorted yourself in to write all this, but you ignore it and continue working. Maybe, if you disregard the searing pain, you'll actually write something worthwhile for once.
It's midsummer. Horribly hot and humid, but your ceiling fan and the occasional night breeze keep you cool enough. Yellow lamplight turns emerald leaves an old, sickly shade of brown, and planes fly loudly overhead in the darkness. You think of jumping out this two-story window and running away — not forever, like you used to want to. Just for the night.
But what would you do?
Maybe you'd go to all of your old friends' houses, one by one. Maybe you'd sit on the sidewalk in front of each one for a time, trying to remember why they left you. Or why you'd left them, more likely. When you were done, maybe you'd go to your old crush's house. Not creepily or anything, just to see if they'd gotten home. From where, you don't know... but afterward you'd go to the little convenience store downtown. You'd buy a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, maybe make eye contact with the guy behind you in line. Fuck him in the back of his truck.
You'd use the money he gives you to go and buy some more cigarettes, and you'd fuck more guys. Maybe it'd become your nightly ritual. Maybe you'd even have repeat customers, who you'd have to give a fake name. Maybe you'd just fuck and fuck and fuck until you're dry, until the sun comes up every morning, until you're just hollow — and then, maybe, you'd feel wholly alive.
But maybe instead of all that — the friend's houses and cigarettes and sex — you'd just get mowed down by the Mac truck you'd step in front of on the out-of-town highway. Maybe you'd get rushed to the hospital by people you'd never know and get brought back from the brink of death. You'd get hugged by your parents then, who got there just as you woke up. They'd be so glad you survived that they'd forget to ask what the fuck you were doing near the highway at one in the morning in the first place. You'd thank whatever God there is for that, because you don't think you could answer them honestly.
Of course, you could do none of that instead. You could stay in this window, writing deep into the night. They'd find you in the morning, slumped over your notepad, drooling onto the paper. They'd try to get you up — once, twice, three times. Even though you'd woken up on their first try, you'd feign sleep for just a few more minutes of that amazing dream you were having...
But they'd be insistent, and when you'd finally open your eyes, blinking the blinding light of the morning sun away, they'd laugh. They'd tell you that you have things to do today — places to go, people to talk to. You'd groan. They'd tell you to hurry up. You'd get hastily dressed, not bothering to match your clothes.
And then you'd forget all about the night that you were going to jump out of your window. The night you were going to make new friends on the streets, hug the idea of old ones goodbye, create new memories, smoke for the first time behind that abandoned house on Third Street, alone. The night you were going to laugh, and cry, and pause and laugh again.
Or maybe you wouldn't forget.
Maybe you'd remember that night, because you wrote it down.
