When Malia's boyfriend perceives her first conversation with Reese, their college's star soccer player, as flirting, her night ends in lies, denial, a nasty breakup, and a tight strain between her and the hot soccer star.
A hopeful romanticizer at h...
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Shit.
I just cut off my fingers.
Jolting the murderous scissors to the end of my comforter, I dangle myself off the bed and reach for my body parts. The tan, unevenly cut pieces of me lie scattered across my carpet. Some sit atop various textbooks, others graze the keyboard of my open laptop, and the rest nestle themselves in my unorganized mountains of construction paper and sticker sets.
"Damn it," I curse, stretching my arm.
Amidst the desperate reach for all five fingers, my light brown hair spills across my face. The soft, wavy strands partly obstruct my eyes, and the blaring rays of golden sunset light don't help either. The orange brilliance shoots through the cracks of my blinds, stinging my eyes with their bitter glare. Still, even slightly disoriented, I push through, using my cracks of vision to collect the fingers.
When I've gathered them all, I lurch upward and blink to regain my bearings. Only when my fire hazard of a dorm shifts into focus do I uncurl my left hand.
The small, glossy cuts of my photographed fingers sit in my palm. They rest below my actual fingers, and I can't help but notice the contrast of color. When the picture (the whole picture, not just my fingers) of me and my friends was taken, it was summer, we were at the lake, and I was tan. Now, over two months into my junior year of college, most of my days have been spent in lecture halls, paling my skin.
Although my skin might have paled, the memories from that day haven't.
Transferring the glossy photographed fingers to my pillow, I reach for my chunky scrapbook. Each outstretched side settles onto my crisscrossed legs like a puzzle piece, and I'm careful to keep it steady so the loose, untaped design doesn't spill. Bursts of dark blues, reds, and tans coat the two open pages, mirroring the color scheme of the sunny Arizona landscape. The stylistically cut construction paper weaves with stickers, photos, and sketches to gush that day trip into physical form. It's a viewable display to have and hold forever, even when the memory does pale with the inevitable passing of time.
Plain and simply stated, my scrapbooks are my experiences. The closest physical embodiment, that is. Obviously, the complexity of experiences is too great to capture. I can't scoop that from myself and splat it into a book like a dollop of paint. Still, I can recreate experiences using the transferable elements. The ones that can stick on pages. As if my life's note-worthy experiences are mind-numbingly good milkshakes, I slurp those babies dry of five things—the visuals, smells, sounds, tastes, and most importantly, the emotions.
Whatever captures the experience is what I pour into my books. Like metaphors of circuses to convey chaotic times crunches, techniques to create the illusion of wetness for rainy day memories, or bursts of vibrant colors, smiling pictures, fuzzy textures, and color-pencil sketches to show days of joy.
The day at the lake was the latter.
It wasn't a perfect day by any means. My gas station lunch was gross, I lost my AirPods, the scorching Arizona sun unleashed hoards of sweat, and since my boyfriend, Brandon, continued to socialize when it was time for us to leave, I nearly missed the window for an email I had to send. Still, splashing in the water around beautiful scenery was unbeatable, especially as summer wound down.
