BEING ANITA

Quiet Lips

𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐠: 𝐍𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲'𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞, 𝐛𝐲 𝐀𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐥 𝐋𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞.

I had long thrown my phone from the bridge. With that, my heart sank together, and I was a carcass hopping on a bus and heading nowhere. Nameless, with no sense of existence or pride. I was down for anything. Wherever life guided me, I would accept, as long as it safeguarded me from everything I had ever lived so far. I wanted to soon obliterate the melodies he had inflicted in my brain. I wanted to hear my own music, even if that consisted of plain quietude. The bus crossed many roads and I hopped off in a random gas station, yearning to meet a stranger that would wipe Asher from my skull. I wouldn't mind being raped again. Or beaten. Or stabbed. If I didn't exist, there was no sense in protecting my body. I was an alley where everyone could enter and race through it.

Realizing I was being mentally contradicting, I strode on, checking the items at the convenience store, wishing I had had the decency to carry more cash with me. But that money wasn't mine. I didn't deserve that cash. It was time to work for my own self. With no diploma, no uniform, no actual salary. Just seasonal tips and a roof to sleep under.

I sat in front of the ketchup bottle, starving. The reflection on the table showed a disheveled girl with blurred eyes. My eyeliner and mascara had left their trails. I wiped it off my eyes and watched as the minor dark glitter cried on my knuckles. A few eyelashes had deliberately left me, as well.

"What can I get for you?" a chick smashing a giant gum asked me. She smelled like coffee. As soon as she noticed my face, she blinked and put the little notebook on the back of her waist. "Are you okay?"

I don't remember what I told her, or in what sequence. My voice worked as a third party, an element detached from my body but working on my behalf just because it was still convenient. But I distinctively recall when my neck lost strength and she had to hold me. I heard her calling for somebody. This somebody was a girl too. I was taken to the back of the cafeteria. A smell of bubble gum. Mint and strawberry. A music from the eighties, trashy rock, and Madonna. The waitress's name was Amanda, and the other girl was Claire. I accepted their cigarette and their bottle of beer. We took turns and each one revealed a certain kind of boyfriend that either dumped them or done their wrong. The idea was to comfort me, but I was just so devastated at the prospect that most males didn't deserve the opposite faction. Maybe dad had also done his 'little blunders'. I think I cried in Amanda's chest like a kid. She was warm yet with a skittish air. She wanted me to quickly get a grip. "C'mon, it's just boy. They ain't no big thing, girly. What's your name?"

My name was whatever they wanted to call me.

"You look like Alice," Claire said. "Let's get you some nook you can stay. We live upstairs."

I frowned. How could anybody live in a gas station?

They took me to a small building beside the gas station. A bit surreal to my taste, and if that was a trap, if those girls were lesbian perverts, I wouldn't mind either. I entered their minuscule apartment and looked around. "This is cozy."

"She's cute," Claire whispered to Amanda.

I actually didn't agree. I wasn't cute. I was a renegaded slut.

They offered me an extra mattress and some clothes. They were so baggy. Those girls had splendid curves. Probably because of their black genes. I felt like an albino stick. And Amanda commented that the next day they'd enjoy the sunlight with me. I didn't understand why they were being so nice. Was it just because I was 'cute'? Maybe. Society was made of appearances, not content, which in my case was very reduced. So yeah, maybe I was indeed cute. Claire turned the shower on for me because my hands simply couldn't open the damn tap.