postcards from isla (on hold until 2024)

03 - bassline

TODAY, LOS ANGELES is a bubble of sweltering heat, but all of her cherished memories are tucked underneath wintertime.

Growing up, Isla had visited the book store every Saturday. Lily's Books was tucked between an organic grocery market and a sketchy pizza joint, a safe haven of warm ink, crinkled pages, black coffee. It was a five minute walk from their townhouse on 89th Street and Broadway—right near the center of New York City on the Upper West Side.

The snow storms were always her favorite. Isla and Haru tried to catch snowflakes in their palms and cup their fingers just so, hoping that the crystal stars would last forever. Their mother bought hot cocoa while she carried her brown leather purse, heels clicking on the icy sidewalks and black hair stylishly thrown over one shoulder. Kasumi Kobayashi despised lazy mornings, but was willing to spoil her daughters if it meant they'd all get some exposure outdoors. Isla's father accompanied them occasionally when the hospital didn't schedule him for a surgery, but most weekends it was just the three of them together. My girls, he would say in Japanese when she was seven, still small enough to cling onto his blue scrubs, nose scrunching at the smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. If you ask mommy nicely, I'm sure she'll buy you all the books you want.

With Haru being only a year younger, they were raised practically as twins: there's still a picture on the dresser of two girls clad in matching denim overalls, identical pink hair ribbons weaved into their braids. When the snow came and the autumn leaves disintegrated for the ground to swallow up, Isla waited in anticipation for their Saturdays. Even now, she can smell the croissants her mother always purchased, the smell of her floral perfume and how that blended in with the depth of second-hand novels. They spent the day at Lily's, tucked carefully into a back corner where there was a worn-out purple couch and a scratched coffee table. All Isla needed was the jazz music crooning in the background stereo speakers and a stack of books piled high next to her, where it would eventually shorten down to nothing as she re-shelved the ones she eventually finished.

It was the kind of place where Isla funneled her entire being into. There are still pieces of her stuck on the walls, like the tears she shed when she got rejected from Brown University because she completely bombed her interview. Or maybe all of the mechanical pencils she lost are still there, tucked within the couch cushions and underneath the bookshelves when she went to browse.

Or maybe—just maybe—there's still that letter she wrote at twenty-one and tucked into a copy of Pride and Prejudice after she had her first breakup and felt too much she didn't know what to do with it. There was still so much love concentrated on her tongue, held in the palms of her hands when she reached out in the middle of the night and found she didn't like the empty space beside her. So much love as she wrote song after song and then tucked them into old journals she'd filled before.

Isla thinks about all of these things as the kettle whistles and her hojicha is nearly ready. It's a Tuesday: three days after she had called Soren.

Soren. Soren, the boy who can't seem to leave her alone even after all of these years.

Isla is working from home today while Haru puts hours in at her internship. It's been a lazy morning, filled with reheated leftovers and soft sweatpants dragging along the hardwood floor. She's been going back and forth with Pink Slip's manager: a curt, polite man named James Clear who's been working with them since the beginning of their contract. The rapid correspondence is a constant reminder that soon enough, she'll be hands-on in the studio helping them record their vocals, only separated from the drummer by a thin panel of sound-proof glass. She hates how her stomach drops at the thought.

It's only when the kettle nearly blares that she startles, picks up her favorite mug, and thinks about the night they first met while reconciling that with how disastrous their coffee chat will go tomorrow.