Sleep Magazine (Completed)

The Scandal: 1

Grace had barely slept the past three nights. She stood under the shower stream with her tired head hanging down, looking at her feet. She was home for the long weekend and between the busyness of her trip, had not yet found time to sit down and fix her chipped red toenail polish. This annoyed her greatly, even though the bitter cold of fall—drafting into the bathroom through the gaps in the window frames and between the weathered clapboards—guaranteed she would not be showing off her bare feet in public for the next seven months at minimum. 

The steam from the shower wrestled with the icy draft until it filled the small bathroom with a wet and tepid haze. It floated upward in invisible ribbons of warmth to swirl around Grace's torso before it settled, in an abrupt halt of its ascension, at the edges of the low ceiling where it pooled together for a moment and then separated to roll down the wall as single drops. Grace took a deep breath and lifted her head, rolling it in circles atop her long neck as she tried to stretch out the knots in her shoulders. She felt the goosebumps on her arms flatten as she exhaled, relieved to be enveloped by warmth for the first time since her shower the previous morning. 

She spun around and lifted her numb hands up to the shower head to immerse them in the hot water and became anxious when they did not immediately begin to gain feeling. Slowly, however, over the next minute or so, Grace's fingers began to tingle. She tapped her fingertips together firmly and squeezed them into her palms. These motions she repeated again and again whilst she alternated between tightly shutting her eyes closed and opening them wide to glare worriedly at her fingers; this compulsion lasted several minutes until the tingling subsided and Grace was certain that her blood was indeed flowing through them. 

She grabbed an attractive looking bottle of shampoo off the shelf and popped the top open to smell it, recognizing its floral scent from the head of her younger sister, Ava. As she massaged the shampoo into her hair, Grace wondered how Ava could afford such an expensive brand. Pondering whether or not her sister might have stolen the bottle, her thoughts quickly returned to her circulation when she noticed that her thumbs were still quite numb against her scalp, and she quickly turned and lifted them up under the shower head.

After Grace finished in the shower, she dried off, swiftly patting the moisture off of her limbs as to not prolong their exposure to the sharp cold of the returning draft. She held up the towel, splotched with stains, to eye its frayed edges and assess its age; the dark pigment of boxed hair dye was faded yet prominent still against the beige fabric. Grace turned the material in her hand to inspect it closely until she found a section near the edge between the border and the hem, where, in the dim light of the bathroom, she could just barely make out small patches of the deep burgundy color she used many years ago. 

Cherry. Warm, vibrant, Cherry. Burnt CDs, skipping class, Cherry. Inside jokes, stomach pains, Cherry. Talking without thinking and wearing someone else's jacket. Denim on pavement on a dark night. Wide awake without trying. A color that lived somewhere between a double dare and a sick car ride home at 7 A.M.; the catalyst for a name she was known by long ago and had not realized, until this moment, she had been longing to hear again. Je te ramène chez toi, Cerise?

Grace balled up the towel with both hands and swiped it across the mirror in zig zag motions, revealing her naked reflection amidst the steam, then threw it down onto the tile floor near the waste bin. She avoided looking at her hair when she glanced back up at the mirror, cautiously meeting her own gaze. As she studied the sliver of color around her pupils, a large section of wallpaper behind her head—wet with condensation and peeling backward off of the sheetrock—caught her eye, and she spun around quickly to smooth the paper down flat against the wall. It stayed flat for a moment, then slowly but steadily began curling backwards again before her eyes.