The Culture of Hooking Up

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

"So, what do you think?" my sister asks as she waves her head around. Although it's hard to see on the screen of my phone, the round ceiling lights in the kitchen over her head peek out between the thick strands of her hair as she swings it around, illuminating the dark purple tint coating the usually dark chocolate strands. 

     "I think you're a copycat." I stick out my tongue, but that only makes her freeze and flash me with the dark brown eyes she inherited from our dad paired with the deadpanned gaze she inherited from our mom.

     "You did pink." Her tongue juts out as she halfheartedly mimics me. "And I look better." Her laugh is all her own, but I can't help but laugh along with her because in a way I agree. While I rocked my pink hair faze a couple years ago, she embodies purple with every fiber of her being. But I've always wondered if my sister's love for purple was more on the nurture side of the nature verses nurture debate.

     "I think it looks really good," I add even though that only makes her start flipping her hair around in front of the camera again.

     "Is that Laney?" I hear my mom ask before she squishes her face into the screen, but the smile she initially was going to greet me with is quick to transform into disgust. "Ew, when are you going to throw that piece of crap out?"

     "Leave her alone," I gasp.

     My sister laughs but I keep my face painted with horror as I grip the front of my Kelly Clarkson concert t-shirt that may or may not be just a little too faded to call vintage. It was my first concert. She was the one that even took me, and yet at least once a year she tells me to throw the shirt away. At least when she catches me wearing it.

     "Weirdo." My mom shakes her head before shouting, "love you!" as she walks away.

     The camera shakes as my sister continues to chuckle before she flops down on the couch with a sigh. "So, whatcha' doing?"

     "Procrastinating," I admit as I push my laptop a little further away on the kitchen table and lean my phone against the keyboard. "How about you?"

     She shrugs.

     "How's Alessia?" I ask only because Violet may be a named after a color, but her and Alessia are two peas in a pod.

     "I don't know." She sighs before mimicking the disgust that was on my mom's face just seconds before. "She's with Mike-ul."

     "Cut her some slack." I laugh, but her eyes narrow again, so I continue, "didn't you tell her that all boys have cooties?"

     "I tried, man, I tried." She cracks a smile, a smile everyone claims is identical to mine, even though we are already fairly opposite even without purple or pink hair. She inherited the pasty white skin, dark chocolate hair and eyes, from our dad, while I inherited the warmer Italian tones, chocolate brown hair and eyes with olive skin, from our mom.

     "Hey, I have an idea." I keep up my joking tone. "Want to write my paper?"

     "Ha ha, no!" my sister ends the Facetime but we both continue sharing our laughter and goodbyes over text before I'm left with silence and the evil cursor blinking back at me on the blank page of my word document.

     The walls, the cabinets, the counter tops, and even the flat rectangular ceiling lights in the kitchen are all just as white and blank as my laptop screen. The two other girls Taryne and I share the quad with are on the lacrosse team, so they leave at six in the morning and don't come back until nine at night. That's why Taryne is the only one who gets bothered by my juicing, but she's at a BSU meeting.

     I position my hands over the keys and will myself to type something. I type my name. I delete my name. I re-type my name. I delete my name. And then I harshly bang my fingers against the keyboard, creating gibberish to represent the incompetent mush that is currently my brain.           

     I curl my legs up and begin chewing on my thumbnail the same way a child resorts to sucking their thumb before putting my legs back down, straightening back up, and returning to my secondary sources for some inspiration. My phone lights up on the table beside my laptop as if to mimic the momentarily light bulb that went off in my brain, and I know I should keep following that light bulb, but my fingers reach for my phone anyway.

     Hey, any chance you want to come over?

     My teeth find my thumbnail again as my mind whirls with temptation. I find myself yearning for the dark grey walls of Jack's apartment and the lack of annoying, blinking flat lights as well as the toe curling warmth opposed to the tip of the nose chill that always leaks in through the thin dorm walls. The warmth of his thigh and his arm pressed next to mine on the bus. Nothing had even happened, but everything that was about to happen was foreshadowed in the mess that I already made with his hair. I ruined it before it even began, and maybe no one else sitting around us even noticed, or maybe they did, for some reason I almost felt like they did, and I didn't even care, rather, that only fueled the fire already growing in my veins, and Jack was in no rush to put out the flames. He just stared back at me with those hooded eyes as I leaned back against the wall. All he had to do was close the distance between us, take just one step, and when he did it was slow as if gravity was all distorted, and we were on the moon. His pointer finger traced along the skin of my jaw before pressing into the back of my ear. His thumb circled around my cheek a few times before pressing under my chin, and he used both fingers to gently tilt my head up. Even though he was only a breath away, he seemed to be thinking a lot at a time when there's usually no thinking at all.

     My eyes focus back on my phone screen as I type back my reply.

     F*ck yes