Prompt:
Write something inspired by a lyric. I chose "I know that it's exciting running through the night, but every perfect summer's eating me alive" from Liability by Lorde. content warnings for gore and emetophobia
It’s the summer of 2011 and I’m a senior in high school. When he meets me, I’m wearing a ruffled short-sleeved blouse with enormous, golden faux buttons down the front. They tend to catch the sunlight and redirect it into the eyes of the people I bike past. He’s blinded by a button and I’m distracted thinking about a Franz Kafka diary entry. I crash directly into Tom. For a moment we’re a tangled mess and when we unwind ourselves, we realize the little white basket has snapped off the front of my bike. He has tools in his garage and offers to fix it. He’s nice and he’s quiet and he doesn’t mind when I blabber on about how the fact that we can still see light from long-dead stars is actually so poetic. He fixes my bike and wants to see me again, but my parents don’t like that he’s older and try to forbid me from seeing him. I sneak out every night I can. Most nights we go to a jazz bar that Tom is a regular at. The first time we come in everyone greets him, someone asks him what he thinks about a New Yorker op-ed.
He says it was “witty but ultimately vapid”.
The people at the table look to me for an opinion, but like they don’t expect much of me.
"I don’t trust anything written by someone born after 1920.”
That surprises them and Tom has this starry look when I meet his eyes.
Somehow, I’m the only person dancing. The music is electrifying. I hop around in front of the stage and clap louder than anyone else. The musicians let me bum cigarettes in the back alley when Tom and I sit and talk with them after the bar closes.
He and I talk about everything. How top 40 pop music is killing real music. How sad it is that most people are too distracted by the minutia of “life” to really live. How we’re the only people that understand each other. Tom kisses me under a meteor shower and tells me I’m the most exciting girl he’s ever known. He says it softly and with such gravity that it makes something inside me bubble up happily.
In winter, he moves back in with his fiancée. She’s mature. She doesn’t stay out all night at bars like I do. She wants a future.
A few weeks later, I’m painting in the backyard when I get a sudden pain below my ribs. Doubled over in the snow, my parents rushing to call an ambulance, I wonder if my heart has really, truly broken in half.
I’m half disappointed when I find out it hasn’t. My spleen is ruptured and needs immediate removal. It happened suddenly enough that it broke one of my ribs. If I move in the wrong way, I swear I can feel the two fragments of bone grinding against each other, lubricated by the blood seeping out of an organ I didn’t even know did anything. Tests keep coming back negative. The doctors can’t figure out what’s going on, so they keep me in the hospital for months.
That’s when Gus finds me. He has cancer and was also meant to be starting college. We bond over how stupid it is that our parents think that any time someone coughs on us we’ll die instantly. They want to keep us in a plastic bubble forever, but we want to experience the world. Gus dreams aloud about going to the wonders of the world. He describes what climbing Machu Pichu would be like and it’s almost like we’re there together. We both close our eyes and pretend we’re at the top of the ancient citadel. Mountains surround us on all sides and clouds resting gently in the valleys between. We kiss with our eyes still closed, standing in a hospital room, hooked to IVs but imagining we’re free.
It's summer and finally, Gus’ cancer goes into remission and the doctors give up on discovering what happened to me. To celebrate, we decide to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon. We stop at every tourist trap we find along the way. I do goofy poses in front of somber monuments. When we get to the Canyon it isn’t quite as magical as the Machu Pichu that Gus described. But the glass bridge jutting out into the open air lets us feel like we’re flying. Everyone is solemn so I shout “penis” as loud as I can into the nothingness in front of us. A flock of birds takes off and Gus laughs hysterically while tour groups made up of old ladies glare at both of us, but mostly me.
We camp at the bottom of the canyon, but I refuse to sleep in a tent, I want the stars to keep watch over us. The desert heat freezes at night, so we lay in a sleeping bag pressed against each other. Gus says I’m the most exciting girl he’s ever known.
When we get back home it’s almost fall, and Gus gets a letter of acceptance to a far-away college I’ve never heard of. He says a long-distance relationship would just stifle both of us and I kiss him goodbye as his dad’s car is rolling out of the driveway.
I’m studying in the library’s quiet room. Taking so much time off from school has made me feel slower than everyone else and I can’t afford to fail any classes. I don’t even really feel the pain at first, or I do but I manage to ignore it until the last possible moment. I sprint to the bathroom and puke into the toilet. In the bowl is dark, almost black, blood with bits of tissue bobbing up to the surface then sinking down again. I don’t bother going to the campus health center. I can feel the cavity in my chest where my right lung used to be. Sometimes I have dreams of a lung-shaped candle melting in my hands. Something tells me I should be trying to blow out the little flame, but I never try to.
I’m one of two people to land the most coveted summer internship of my program. The other intern is Paul. He’s acerbic and competitive and tells me he thinks I’m too bubbly to be smart. Our morning walks to the office meet halfway and we stop at the same café for breakfast and coffee. We work late most days, doing the busy work that our supervisors can’t be bothered with. I photocopy my bare ass and finally, finally Paul smiles at me. We have sex in the bathroom during our lunch breaks sometimes. As he comes, he says I’m the most exciting girl he’s ever known. It sounds tinny in my ear, like he’s speaking at me through a wall.
When the internship ends, I realize I never gave Paul my phone number, or maybe he never asked. I look for him when the semester starts but I don’t think he wants to be found.
The pain finally starts after I’ve already been expecting it for months. It happens suddenly but not aggressively enough to break anything. I’m sitting in a dark, cozy booth snapping in response to a line my friend has spoken into a crackling mic. I smile to myself, thinking the liquid on my cheek means she’s moved me to tears. Then it starts to hurt. The liquid is jelly, running viscous and salty from my left eye. I excuse myself and in the mirror of the dimly lit bathroom, I see a gaping hole in my face. The red of the blood from split capillaries mixes with the blue of my iris to stain my cheek a softly shimmering purple. It’s hypnotic how the liquid catches the light when I turn my head and I spend what feels like hours gently swaying in front of the mirror, too pleased to wash my face.