Pepper, Laces, and Bottlecaps

Pepper

I held true to the idea of a future. A sickly sweet feeling similar to how sweetened strawberry syrup made me feel. My head would spin with thoughts of love and peace. A place where I understood my urges of creativity and lack of talent. A place where I have stability and a real house. My past melting away, and I've dealt with the damage of my past. In the future, I dream I will have a tree house, a garden, a forest, a library, winding stairs, anything to make me feel better. A feeling of floating and fantasy are all that fill me when I think about it. My hair is always long. My nails painted, and I'm wearing a light dress. I can escape to my fantasy land. My escape from the dull reality I've become disenchanted with.

My current lodging is with a few acquaintances from school in a place called The Clubhouse. I was kicked out of my lifelong home for fighting with the current spouse of my father.  The water here runs grey, and the fridge is barely cold. At night the wind flows under the door, and through cracks in the yellowing walls. I got the mattress in the corner. The window is just above me, and although it is cold, I appreciated the breeze, for it brings with it the stars. I am lucky to live here. If I stay up late enough I can lay and stare at them all night. I'd allow the feeling of floating wash over me as I have many times before.

Beside me, I have squished my binder and a few textbooks between the mattress and the wall to cover some of the cracks. I lay back slowly to let each notch in my spine relax one by one. The mattress isn't very comfortable, but staring at the stars makes it feel far away. The draft coming into the room begins to smell like the night. Like dissipating gasoline, dust, and dew.

The room is quiet. It was as if no one else was even breathing. The stars draw me to somewhere else. Somewhere filled with green fields, adventure, and fantasy. The wind is welcomed and rain worshiped. The ground I walk being praised as though every person knows I am a goddess. A world of people not knowing the pain I'm capable of causing.  Not understanding why I would choose to sleep on the ground when castles and adventures are in my future. A place where I rule, where I can do no harm. My eyes begin to feel as though grains of sand are rubbing underneath my eyelids each time I blink. The task of opening my eyes becomes too tiring, and I allow myself to slip off into sleep.

The peace I find only in heavy sleep is interrupted by a couple of kicks to the edge of my mattress. My brain takes in the status of my body. My arms aching from the awkward sleeping position, and my breathing is as though I was still stuck sleeping. The girl who woke me up is a girl just one grade above me. Her nickname is Pepper, and I'm not really sure what her birth name is, or if I will ever know it. She brought me here, despite meeting me just a few weeks ago.

She was waiting by the door across the hallway the first time I saw her. My teacher was late, I was retaking a test, and she was ditching detention to smoke a cigarette, something I later found she did often. The same reason she was there in the first place. We exchanged a simple hey, a wave, and went on with our separate business. I didn't see her in the hallway again, and it wasn't until that night when my parents were already 3 hours late to get me, the buses were all locked away, and it had started to rain, that I saw her again.

She was standing under the same overhang outside the school. There was a lit cigarette in her mouth, and her leg was stuck out in the rain. The water poured over her leg and into her boots. She seemed almost lost in a trance, and I wasn't going to bother her out of it any time soon. She seemed to glow compared to the dulled rainy cement and brick around her. After a few minutes, she noticed me there. She called me over with a smile on her face. Her voice was smoother than I felt it should have been, seemingly undamaged by the smoke. "Hey there Laces, how's it hanging?"

In response, my voice was far less smooth, "I..." my voice is slightly lost, and I feel embarrassed, "I'm just waiting for my ride."  

She takes a few long steps until she is right beside me, "Must be a lousy ride if they're this late. You've been here for like two hours," as she takes a drag from her cigarette she pulls the pack from her pocket. She might have offered me one if I hadn't felt so uncomfortable and turned slightly away.

There was a lot of silence there. My brain was occupied with the embarrassment that she had been there watching me for that long. It took a while before I could find a way to continue the conversation.

 "Why did you call me Laces?" I asked staring at the ground, avoiding her gaze as much as possible, and playing with my fingers, something I almost couldn't control.

"Well," there was a pause where I could tell she was thinking, probably of how to word things, "I've just never seen you with the normal white or black laces in your shoes, and I've never seen your shoes tied for very long. Guess it was just sort of a natural thing for me to give you the nickname. My friends and I do it a lot," there was another pause and a few hits from her cigarette, "Mines Pepper. If you wanted to know."

She smiled, not wide, but it's comforting. Normally, I would have asked how someone got their nickname, but it seemed in that moment like it was a fitting name. Her hair was long and frizzy from the rain in the air. She was wearing a long forest green coat, and she had boots laced up to her knees, and an orange skirt which matched her hair by no means. Her t-shirt was all black with small holes in it, and the word "smashed" printed on it off center. Her presence made the whole situation feel more comfortable and uncomfortable simultaneously.

It was almost dark, and there weren't any more cars passing by the school. I had long stopped eagerly awaiting approaching headlights. Pepper stayed by me for another hour looking out for headlights that I long stopped noticing, until eventually, I could tell she was getting annoyed. She didn't say much the first time she took me to The Clubhouse, she just grabbed me by the arm and said, "I don't think anyone's coming."

I was easily convinced to go, not having anywhere else. I wasn't even sure anyone was coming anymore. The rain made walking to The Clubhouse much colder. We went through a broken fence by the fields, walked behind the school, and through the forest. The trails were covered up by Evergreens and bare Maple trees. We splashed through puddles, and past clearings covered in garbage, both of which gave me the floating fantasy feeling I had always wished for, but only ever dreamed of. It felt like the beginning of an adventure. Pepper didn't let go of my arm the entire way as though she was almost afraid I would run but instead chose to lock our arms together. I minded the touch but ignored it for the adventure. The trail was fairly long, we had walked almost an hour, but it was easy, and we were slow. She turned to smile at me a few times, and I stopped turning so much away from her. It was comfortable, and fun to be in the rainy woods.

At The Clubhouse she finally let go and knocks on the door. No one seemed to be inside, there was no noise, until Pepper yelled out, " Bottlecap, get out here you whore and let me in. It is pouring, and I've got a soaked girl with me."

Afterward, the door was unlocked and a couple of kids chuckled, greeting Pepper on her way in. I was scooted inside by two girls who looked very similar, and I was given a towel to dry off with. For the rest of the weekend, I stayed there, and I kept going back every time I was forgotten at the school, until now. Now I live here.

Today Pepper is helping me up, and in her hand is a glass of water and a bar of off-brand Xanax. I take it and mutter a groggy thank you. She heaves a backpack onto my mattress. It thuds, the mattress buckles a little at the impact, and I can tell it's heavy. She smiles at my still tired face, "Wake up. You have school today. I even made Billy save you the bathroom for a bit. Don't get used to it. We just want you to get used to us. Might want to take some things out of your bag. Grabbed you soap and all that."

Eventually, I do fully wake up and rush to the bathroom to change and groom myself as best I can. My hair is tangled, but it's the only thing I don't feel I have time for today. By the time I'm done Pepper is waiting for me, leaning on the wall outside the door. She seemed almost annoyed, thinking hard about something, but smiles the second her eyes meet mine. The seven other kids are all still groggily shuffling around our make-shift common room.

Pepper practically pulls me through the path, grabbing my hand and rushing me off. It's misting out, and her wavy red hair is getting matted to the back of her coat. We weren't too bad on time, but Pepper made sure I knew we didn't have time to mess around either.

Once we get to the school she says goodbye and just disappears into the crowd of people. There's an air of urgency about her today. I then slump away to my first class, only to find one of my relatively new acquaintances saving me a seat.