Sin City

2; C-sections and elderly smokers

I guess, from the time I was a bright red C-section baby with a deep cut line around my throat from the formerly wrapped umbilicle cord, things have always gone deeply wrong for me. 

From cancelled plans to spilled buckets of paint, the mishaps have always piled on hard, and I was known as that girl with braces, thick frames, freckles and a whole boatload of bad luck and misfortune. 

No puddle ever went un-stepped in, and I had a baby gate on the stairs until the ripe age of 15 because my parents didn't want to take any chances of a spinal cord injury, that's how painstakingly clumsy I was, and still am. Accident prone, doctors said, she'll grow out of it. But my legs are coated in bruises, always a bandaid on one finger or another. And it didn't help, the teasing, the lighthearted fun, the school assured it was, it was just fun. It was not fun for me. It was not fun for the pebbles I kicked underneath my feet. It was something of a bully. 

Yet I learned to articulate my vengence, my fear, angst, each feeling pin-pricked into the depths of my soul, into my dance. Each time someone wronged me, I perfected a split, or learned how to bend my neck back to my spine. Bent my leg a weird way. Gave myself a good amount of hypermobility and cracked knuckles. It was my passion, I ruined the hardwood in the dining room with scratches and chips, I came down so hard, it hurt, but It did not prevent the piroutte that came afterwards. I danced so the foor could feel my feelings for me. 

The freshly-dyed bright red blur of Chantelle's hair comes barrelling towards me, icey blue eyes  cooling down the warm tones in mine, unnecessarily large briefcase in her left hand and her phone in the other, one knee-high fallen down to the tip of her high-top, earrings dangling almost at her shoulders. She was wearing every necklace she owned and then some, a velvet red dress and thigh-high boots. Chantelle overdressed. She slept in her mascara. She pushed her feelings down with her hands like overflowing trash and moved on with her day. Chantelle, Chanty, she preferred Chantly, was my best friend in the whole world. Which was different from Nadia, who THOUGHT she was my best friend in the whole world, but was not. Chanty was. 

She stumbles over a pothole and comes flying towards me, not an uncommon sight with Chanty. As I catch her, my hands in her underarms, I think about how we became friends in the first place, or rather, how we didn't. 

Chanty and me were born friends. 

No really, our mothers shared a hospital room, our screams mixed in the sterile white air, and the only way they could get us to calm down was to put us in a bassinet together. That's how we became those two cats at the shelter that you can't separate because they are trauma bonded, the two kids who the substitute teacher has no choice but to let sit beside each other, those two employees where you know if you fire one, the other one quits. We're conjoined twins in an emotional sense. One brain, one heart. Two dreams. Four feet.

We are a package deal, and that's why it's unnerving that the package is being violently torn open and I am catapulting into the bustling city life while Chantelle says rooted in the burbs, good ol' Elko. She was planning on opening her own 'hippie cafe', Chanty's Sugarhigh. She also wanted to sell her little knick-knacks she made on Etsy. Dreamcatchers, bracelets, rings, crystal necklaces. All her little Chanty signatures. 

She steadys herself, handing me a sopping wet paper with freyed edges and smudged ink, the bus schedule. "Sorry.." She panted. "I set my alarm as my favorite song and I forgot it was my alarm.."

Chantelle has really good ideas. Amazing ideas, even. Ideas grow in her head like a bountiful garden, equisite, unique, beautiful. Exotic. She could sell her ideas for thousands of dollars. She's the kind of interesting specimen a newspaper company would elect as the head of publishing, get her behind a plum and a dollop of ink and let her mind run wild, or the one that would be chosen as leader in a team of low-lifes in a cheap sit-com who need to 'take down the big guy'. 

Yet, Chantelle's executions are no where near the level of her ideas. She comes up with a solid plan, spends days plotting it out, perfecting every detail and getting her ducks in a row to put it into action, fleeting sleep and for-going breakfast, okay, she's on her way to do it and become a household name, and then she trips over her own two feet, puts her foot in her mouth, boom, everyone's mad at her, the world is ending and my new pants are tear-stained as she cries on my lap, fresh set of acrylics digging into my thighs. 

The night had fallen, the moon shown down on us. 11:00. It was the only time I could get on a bus without anyone knowing I had gotten on a bus. 

"You ready to do this?" Her eyes meet mine, crystal blue. Watery, trying to fight back the sadness of the end to be happy about the beggining, even though I am going into this with nothing but a glass-half-full and she knows it. I adjusted my bracelets. Among them, an amythist with a plaque 'ebbie, my love' on it. Highschool boyfriend, stereotypical story, you know the deal. He went to college, I infact did not, even though I wanted to go to Juliard. I was a good dancer, I am a good dancer, but somehow, my path led me, naive 19-year-old me, to the front doors of a strip club in hopes of money and attention. Well, 22-year-old me was going to do something about that.

I nod, digging my black combat boots into the rain-drop covered cement that lay below them. It was time to go, Elko. I won't miss you. 

We started the walk to the bus station. Me and Ezekiel hadn't exchanged a word, and I was fatigued from dealing with the movers all night. One of them stubbed his toe and it apparently prevented him from lifting for the rest of the night, so I had to take it up on myself to pick up a dresser, and my back is paying the price. 'It's bleeding, I can't lift If it's bleeding' he'd said. What a wimp. 

I opened my phone as we made our way down the deserted street, passing gas stations and convienence stores. It was odd, the streets of your hometown when you're about to leave it. You notice all the little things you noticed a long time ago but didn't notice again until now. The little kids that were out at all hours playing behind Dollar General. The lady who's always out knitting on her poarch. The empty house of your old elderly neighbor who passed away. You got that vase from her estate sale. 

My phone was still jam-packed with notifications, angry, disdained or worried. Half of the messages were are-you-sures, and the other half was Lillith. 

Tonight was Friday night, which means I was absent from Sunday rehearsal. And the entire workweek following. Lillith doesn't take tardiness lightly, nevermind full-fledged ditching without warning. Obsceneties followed by emojis were piling up in the message thread, and I knew if I didn't flee the city soon, she'd be running after me on foot, toddler on her hip and a beer bottle in her other hand. One thing about Lillith was that her threats were never empty. Maybe even a little bit overfilled. 

We reached the auning, and with it came the tiny little bench Infront of the half-lit sign that just said 'bu', the S hanging off. Chantelle sat down on the rain-covered bench, the shower having morphed her straightened hair into her natural curls. She curled her knees to her chest, hugging them. I looked at her, and I looked at her again. 

We looked out into the road. Cars drive by and splash passersby with water. I tightly held my suitcase, knuckles white. 

"Your suitcase isn't going to roll away on it's own, you know." She nudges me. 

I roll my eyes and lean my head on her shoulder.  "Nah, with my luck, it just might." 

"Does Nadia know?"

Nadia didn't know until I accidently sent her a screenshot of the plan meant to be sent to Chantelle. She called me a grand total of 90 times until I answered, effectively filling my voicemail box with 30-second audio files of her screaming different swear words into her phone. One was just 60-seconds of screaming. 

I wasn't going to tell her, but in a way, it was relief when she found out. Her eyes, her eyes that you couldn't lie to. 

"Yeah.." I inhale deeply, my breaths shakey. The time had finally come to let my inner child touch the stars, feel their glitterly dust on her index fingers and sore through the sky, the endless void of possibilities. Reach her dreams. Sure, she had to step on the head of an attractive social media prodigy to get there, but he'll rebound with some Hollywood star he runs into on a shoot and be hunky-dory. I was sure of it. Or about sure, almost. He meant nothing, It told myself, he was a ladder. He was nothing more. He was nothing. 

"When's the date?"

"What date?"

"You promised him a date, that's how you even weaseled into this bargain deal in the first place, you get to fulfill your dreams and he gets summa that." She poked my arm, sticking her tongue out and mocking french kissing. Did I mention Chantelle actually isn't in first grade?