Sleep Magazine (Completed)

The Feeling: 2

From her place seated on the bed, Celia looked out past her bedroom door and into the hall, letting her eyes rest on the old peeling wallpaper, yellowed and glowing in the dim bathroom light.

Like all eighteen year old girls, she wanted a lot of things. Some things she had wanted since the moment she formed her first conscious thought and would continue to want until the completion of her life; other things she had only begun to want an hour ago, and might very well forget she had ever wanted at all when she woke up the next morning. 

Her journal—she realized as she stood to walk to her desk—was filled with the frivolous details of that second kind of wanting. 

She picked the book up off her desk and flipped through the thin pages of words and illustrations that she so often raked her eyes over repetitively, almost obsessively, consuming explicit imagery of crushes, concerts, travel, and success, until she had finally satiated herself into the halcyon state she required to put herself to sleep. 

Tracing her fingers over the slanted handwriting of her most recent entries, Celia closed the small book before she could begin to read the passages in earnest. She already knew what they said, as did Grace. 

She dropped the journal into her desk drawer and went to her bureau to find a clean pair of thick socks. Failing to find the specific pair she was envisioning, she headed to Ava's room, where she knew a colorful sea of clothing for any climate or occasion awaited her.

Her younger sister's room so contrasted with her own that merely stepping over its threshold felt to Celia like entering another body. Upon her entrance, she was immediately enveloped in a colorful glow from the standing lamps in the far corners of the room and the string lights that decorated the paneled ceiling above the bed. Faint music played from the cheap school-issued laptop in the middle of the rug beside the full length mirror. 

Ava was known to craft days-long playlists and never pause them, gifting herself the experience of walking into her room at any time of day or night to the melodies of her own personal soundtrack.

The bed appeared to be perfectly unmade; the plush comforter and quilts angled across the mattress in a way that looked more inviting than untidy. Even the stains on the sheets looked beautiful to Celia. A mix of blue and raspberry-toned splotches from alcoholic slushees swirled across the faint, worn out pattern of delicate bunches of daisies, complementing the powder-blue pillowcases that were streaked with traces of mascara and bright eyeshadows. 

Celia's eyes scanned over the old headboard, counting the narrow strips of nail polish painted across the top in sparkling rainbow patterns. Old paper soda cups and energy drinks overflowed from the wire trash can by the radiator, leaving colorful wrappers and cans splayed across the floor. The shiny aluminum reflected the light from the lava lamp on the desk nearby, the movement of its bright purple blobs barely visible behind the collection of half-empty liquor bottles surrounding it. 

Then there were the clothes strewn across the room; some were pushed together into makeshift piles, some were clean but wrinkled, some were dirty, and all composed of more colors and textures than Celia was willing to consume.

She stood by the door and took in the feeling of the room. She wondered, for a moment, if its aesthetic was premeditated; if Ava had intended the chaos of her space to evoke a feeling of curiosity or build visual interest in its guests. 

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Celia considered if, on the contrary, it were simply the natural result of Ava's psyche; her desire to decorate the walls with a cluttered placement of posters and collages, her impulse to paint a stripe of nail polish across the top of her headboard to test its opacity, or the way she crassly duct-taped a plastic bag full of colorful lip glosses onto the frame of her mirror, coercing the bystander to wonder which one she had chosen to wear that day.