Purpose

The Beginning of Afterwards

Mallory Steichen is sprawled out on her bed on a rainy Saturday afternoon. She spends lots of time like this, staring at the ceiling and imagining that it was the South American sky instead of rough plaster. She can pretend that her lamp is a palm tree, and that her bed is the hammock that she used to spend hours laying in, soaking up the sun. And she imagines that he is there with her.

But not just any he. Justin. Justin Bieber.

If she concentrates hard enough, she can remember his muscly arms against hers, and his beautiful voice speaking to her. His every word was a melody, every sentence a song.

He was a work of art. Was.

Was.

The word "was" is one of Mallory's least favorites, it forces the painfully blissful memories down her throat. Because those memories are over now, and they are just something that was. Every time she thinks about "was", she chokes on tears and her throat burns like her skin after she spent too much time outside in the hammock- the hammock that was.

But now is now, and the past is past, and Justin is not really here with her.

She knows that he is out there somewhere, but where? Where. Another painful word. She doesn't dare ask to go to one of his concerts, her parents and friends would just laugh, and besides, he would be too busy with his singing to notice her in the crowd, she thought bitterly. Bitter like the lemonade he tried to make her once- the lemonade that was.

She was on vacation with her parents in the Bahamas. They had been planning the trip for months.

"Will you check us in, Mallory?" her father said, as they entered the cool, air-conditioned hotel.

"Sure," Mallory had responded, with a monotone voice intended to show her parents how upset she was. She and her boyfriend had just broken up, and she was planning on having him come with them on the trip. What was the Bahamas without someone she loves to share it with?

The technicalities are fuzzy in Mallory's memory now, but she remembers being given a key and told her room number by a disheveled man behind the lobby desk. But it's not important how she got there, but it is important that she did get there, and there she was, a few minutes later, unknowingly standing alone outside of his bedroom.

Justin Bieber's bedroom.

From there on, after the split second she turned the doorknob and the music began to leak through the cracks, her life truly began. Only to have it be put on pause after a few short weeks.

But everything in between, the tiny snippet of life that Malloy felt, that is a story that could take ages to tell. And now you can hear it too, if you are patient enough. Patient, like Justin as he taught her to pluck at the strings of a guitar- the guitar that was.

The story of her life, her paradise, that almost was.