𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭

𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 | 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭

The lights were off. Your mother's car isn't parked up the driveway, so some shred of hope still lingers in your chest. After digging the house keys from inside the plastic, potted plant, you enter the house- still as a tomb. The muggy summer heat managed to sink into every room, the air stagnant and like a block of cement. It's hard to breathe for a while, almost suffocating, as the humidity drags itself over every inch of you- like plastic wrap over meat, a few holes poked to breath from. Your hand fumbles around in the dark- every single window is closed and shuttered down: you couldn't afford AC- trying to find the switch. You flick it up, waiting for the lights to shudder on with a jolt.

Nothing comes.

Suddenly colder, you purse your lips, taking in a breath. It's fine. It's fine. You had gotten a good paycheck today, you just had to log in, deposit it and pay the power company. Fine. It's all good.

You set your stuff down, your backpack bulky with the number of textbooks you had forcefed it, the edges jutting out and about to rip the fabric. Another plastic bag held leftovers- by now, you had gotten very familiar with styrofoam, most dinners coming from a motley of leftovers from the restaurant. You held a box of mashed potatoes, some toast, cheese and a random soup. Frankly, the only time you actually spent at home was to eat dinner and sleep. You went around the whole house, opening up the blinds and lighting up a quaint lavender candle. The sun was low in the horizon, teasing as it seemed to dip, golden light creating a glassy, golden veneer over the entire room.

The couch looked particularly inviting today, facing the beach. Your home was in a more isolated part of town, where most of the locals lived. It was on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It amused you: how small the waves looked from here, like some sort of fancy sink instead of the interminable ocean. You slouched into the worn metal of the seat, palm pressed up against your cheek as you watched the waves crash onto the beach over and over again. It's a beat, a rhythm that you can always predict. And with that, you groaned. Can't do with messing up your daily home routine either.

First, it's always the dishes. You breeze by the kitchen without a second glance. Then the bedrooms. The beds are made. You pick up a stray wrapper, stuffing it in your pocket as you make your way to the broom closet. Your mother keeps most of her meds there, along with some other tonics and creams the two of you have stocked up on. It's your job to check on them and get refills whenever needed. CVS is your second home, your backside quite well adjusted to the tough leather and black rods of the benches near their waiting counter. Jen always teases you for it, but you think the smell of rubbing alcohol is quite nice. It evokes the memory of a pleasant sting, the soft cleaning of a wound on your knee and brightly colored band-aids- a time where scrapes were fixed with a good kiss and bruises were only skin-deep.

The door creaks open- usually, you just oil the hinges with some canola oil but there's only a few drops left in the big old plastic can so you've decided to deal with it, pulling out your phone and flipping the flashlight feature on. Your eyes scoured the darkness of the cabinet, tilting your phone and trying to dig out the bottles of pills. Only two were empty, thank god. You rifled through a few more papers, finding the specific prescriptions and then placing them in your other pocket. Guess you're going to return to CVS after all.

You extracted your bike from the garage, weaving through a maze of boxes, spiderwebs strung on the ceiling like silken decorations. The bike is a rickety old thing with rust seeping across the metal like a rash. You brushed as much as you could off, wiping the flaky residue off on your pants like old blood. The ride was around 15 minutes, your legs peddling until they turned to jelly, your feet slipping off of the pedals. A shopping complex loomed in the distance, all tiled roofs and dull red brick. A few people scuttle around like ants on the pavement, holding their brown crinkly plastic bags, usually tugging around small children or speaking angrily into the phone. Other teenagers ride around in groups, their skates rattling against loose pebbles and the cracks in the pavement. Ah, good old suburbia, with its blistering heat and nuclear families. It was a shopping plaza for the decades, plastered around every two miles, warped images like a film reel stuck on the same loop.