Her Name is Sorrel

VII

7

The word ‘shocked’ would be an understatement. I was completely floored - totally and utterly flabbergasted. Her house was everything I expected it to look like. The conformed, adobe house - as normal and average on the outside - was completely weird and different on the inside.

Bob Marley posters and plastic beads adorned the walls and doorways of the living room right next to Georgia O’Keefe’s and Picasso. A bong in the corner, an ash tray on the coffee table. The rotting, wooden piano gingerly sat on the dark panel flooring that had miscellaneous scratches and dents. Old rainbow Christmas lights were casually strung around the stairway while knitted tapestries of phrases like “Make love, not war” and “Peace out” were littered on every bare surface of the walls surrounding a set of four saggy red beanbags.

Is this what hell looks like? 

I gaped, walking through the foreign space like an alien.

People were right. The Solby’s were goddamn hippies. Traveled through the space-time continuum and transformed the house into a 70‘s freak show. What the fuck?

“Don’t mind the mess,” Sorrel dismissed hesitantly as she unexpectedly grabbed my hand ushered us up the Christmas lit staircase so quickly, I almost fell flat on my face. “We’ll study in my room.”

Nodding, I followed her up the winding staircase to a long hallway splattered with multicolored paint.

Red. Orange. Blue. Orange. Purple. Orange. Yellow. Orange.

Damn, there was A LOT of orange.

“One summer, my parents planned to paint this entire hallway orange,” she explained, “I guess their short attention span faltered when the drug craving became too strong. It’s unfinished. Like 99% of the other things in this household.”

I opened my dry mouth to say something but she cut me off, pushing open a dark, wooden door which I assumed led to her bedroom.

“No shoes, socks only,” she snapped, shocking me.

Slipping off my Vans, I braced myself for anti-war posters, floral headbands, and tie dye bed sheets.

I was greeted by a matching set of furniture from Ikea - all the same shade of creamy white. Her room was literally all white.

White walls, white furniture, white sheets. The only color in her room was a collage of Polaroids covering the back wall behind her white bed.

“You’re-” I struggled to find the right words, “Quite the minimalist?”

She shrugged, “Surprised?”

Maybe I should be honest.

“Well yeah,” I admitted, “I expected something more-”

“Liberal? Hippie? Boho? Did you expect a joint on my bedside table and pictures of me in dreads?”

I winced from her harsh tone, “No, I’m just-”

“I’m not like them,” she snapped, “I’m nothing like my parents. They can smoke and drink and protest against the Iraq War all they want - I’m focusing on school - not regenerating a damn hippie commune.”

I was floored. Sorrel Solby just said “damn.” The girl who never cursed just...

“I’m so sick of people judging me with these preconceived notions they have cause of stories they hear,” she shrieked, angrily throwing her soccer bag onto the wooden floor, “Goddamn, I’m a human being too! I have feelings!”

“Sorrel-”

“I know what people say about me,” she muttered, “How my parents are insane. Yes, they’re addicts; I’m not.”

She sat down in a huff on the edge of her bed and tangled her hands into her messy bun, exploding with extraneous strands of hair that covered her face.

“Sorrel-”

“Like seriously, why can’t people not associate me from my lineage? I’m not a hippie. I’m not an addict. My sister left us because she couldn’t stand this life style-”

Her chest suddenly racked up a small sob and she quickly choked on incoherent words.

“I can’t leave them though, my parents,” she whispered, “I’m all they have left. Addicts or not.”

“Sorre-”

“Do you know why I work so hard in school?” Her bitter brown eyes met mine and I walked over to her, kneeling and resting a hand on her shaking knee.

“Why?”

“Because I want to prove to all of the assholes in this world wrong.”