Saraland

Chapter One

I'm not a morning person. Sure, I get up early every day, bolting out of the comfort of my bed to spend the next few hours getting ready for the madness of the grind. But I don't relish it. At all. Especially on Mondays because weekends are way too short. Most definitely on Saturdays, because, well, working on any day following one of my Friday nights is a hard lesson about the dangers of hangovers.

This particular Saturday, I didn't wake up dry heaving into a ceramic dookie bowl with a pounding headache like I just spent the weekend in a mosh pit. I woke up with regret. Regret that I went to bed with my makeup on, because I could feel my mascara caked into my eyelids, scorching my eyeballs, blackening my embarrassingly crusty eye boogers.

My eyes opened reluctantly, and with a squint I tilted my head enough to look for the familiar bright light of my cellphone screen sitting on the nightstand, buzzing and screeching with that ridiculous ring tone I selected just to make sure I got up.

That isn't what woke me up, though. It was the alarm clock going off like a mad woman beside it, with a far more obnoxious sound. Probably as bad as a million homegirl fingernails scratching a high school chalk board. Really slowly.

Maybe not that bad, but regardless, I am most likely the last person on the planet with a digital alarm clock.

It was ten years ago during move in weekend, and my freshman dorm room was decked out with absolutely nothing. It was bare. Unlike most of everyone else arriving at NYU to move in with all of their IKEA and Target accessories, comforters and fluffy pillows, I moved in with my guitar and the same huge, overstuffed duffel bag I arrived to New York with. I had the same clothes in it that I had worn through my last three years of high school. They were all hand me downs from Auntie Beanie, who was arguably the most fashionable person in my family. By fashionable, I mean that she bought all of her clothes on clearance from Kohl's or JC Penney. Which means that everything that was passed down to me was a store brand, except for the brown leather cowboy boots she gave me that last Christmas before I left.

Armed with my debit card loaded with the financial aid refund of left over scholarship money, I took the bus crossing the Holland tunnel to Jersey to satisfy my overwhelming shopping urge at a real mall. I had to replace all those Auntie Beanie hand me downs that could no longer tame my country butt.

I had taken the PATH train from 9th Street Station through the tunnel to Newport Station and made the short walk to Newport Centre. It was less than three dollars for the trip, which was way cheaper than a taxi. The trip took less than half an hour.

After hitting Forever 21 and Hollister, I stopped at Claires before finding the alarm clock sitting on a clearance shelf at Sears. That uneventful trip took the whole day, not because I was a shopaholic. I was used to having hardly anything. It was because I was reluctant to go back through the tunnel.

Although I wasn't sitting on the train for long, it seemed like entire decades had passed because I was freaking out. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of tubes that go under water for people to travel through. I remember that Sylvester Stallone movie from the 90's. The fear is real. And totally ridiculous, which is why I never crossed the Hudson ever again after that. For about a year or so, anyway.

Some friends of mine invited me to this lavish party over in Guttenberg or Edgewater somewhere- I can't exactly remember which, but all I know is that I was like... no. Never again. And then I realized how awesome it felt to buy my own stuff for a change, so that overcame my fear and I caved. I spent like half a grand in one hour.

I regretted it when I got back to campus because I knew I would have to find a job that would let me work doubles on the weekend to pay that next credit card statement. And finals were coming up.