I know, I know. I’m a day late (and more than a few dollars short, after the celebrating that went on this past weekend). But I’m here and have for you something both exciting and embarrassing:

My story from Creative Non-Fiction.

The story that brought me to meet Kid.

The story that moved Kid so much that he was compelled by some unknown emotional force to ask me to write for The Digital Scene.

The story that led to Halloween 2008, when we… well, never mind.

Bottom line, this story led to a lot of interesting, embarrassing, awkward, hysterical, and insert-your-adjective-here. It’s kind of the story that got me started. So here it is. I like to think that I’ve grown as a writer and that my pieces don’t sound nearly as juvenile and sophomoric as this, so don’t be too hasty to judge. Actually, do judge. In fact, send us your story – the story that got you started… that way we can judge you too and we’ll all be even and feel  better about ourselves. Ahh.

[Author's note: being that I was not yet acquainted with Kid and lacked his literary wisdom and ingenuity (oooh I bet he's loving this...), I came up empty for a title]

If she was a color in the 64-count deluxe Crayola Crayon box, she would be Cornflower blue. A Paul Newman blue. That kind of sky blue that is so unreal, it makes you think you’re looking through a pair of tinted sunglasses. Blue. She looks blue and feels blue.

In her bottom desk drawer, hidden under the old history notebooks and math folders and long forgotten college applications was her version of a Bucket List. At the top of the paper, in her careful cursive, was printed in blue ink “To Do Before I Die.” The rest of the page was empty.

—–

If she was another color in the 64-count deluxe Crayola Crayon box, she would be Unmellow yellow. A sunshiney yellow. The kind of yellow that is almost obnoxious in its bright fluorescent hue. Yellow. She looks yellow and feels yellow.

Her long straight hair used to be yellow, that unmellow yellow. Yellow hair that didn’t stay yellow for long. She’s fueled by a fear of remaining the same, of staying one way for too long, and the manic need for change was what pulsed through her veins as she tried to become someone else under a coat of Easy Dark Brown # 4,  haphazardly drowning the blonde and coloring in a new picture of herself.

—-

If she was yet another color in the 64-count deluxe Crayola Crayon box, she would be Wild Strawberry pink. A pretty pink. The kind of pink that reminds you of a lipstick stained mouth. Pink. She looks pink and feels pink.

Ironically, she’s allergic to strawberries. But it’s not like she can escape them, what with the strawberry birthmark staining her back in a pink blossom. It is something to be loathed and loved and forgotten and reminded of. It will always be there, but like other parts of her person, she can sometimes manage to forget it’s there, marring her skin.

—–

On a blue day, she might lie in bed for hours, letting the alarm beep itself hoarse. She may lie there with her eyes closed, losing all train of thought and simply falling into a trance of a daydream. The hours roll by slowly behind her drawn curtains, outside of her warm covers. An entire day might pass before she is able to get up. She can’t really explain why she can’t get up, she just sometimes can’t.

On a yellow day, she may throw herself into madness. She’s reckless and dangerous and sad. She runs herself ragged on these yellow days; she can’t stop thinking and can’t stop doing. Impossible to keep up with – the ups and downs and emotional surge. But it’s how she has always been and what’s always been part of her. She doesn’t really know why it happens, and she doesn’t seem to know how to stop it.

On a pink day, she could wake up still drunk from the night before, running on nothing but Smirnoff and Marlboro’s. Pink days are the days when she tries to live the day before… a Bill Murray Groundhog Day kind of complex. She is still living the night before, still tasting the liquor and breathing the smoke. Coming down from her high, she falls hard and hits the ground in a mess of vomit, tears, and shameful regret. She doesn’t know how she gets through those days, but somehow in her intoxicated haze, she manages to forget about how much it will hurt to fall and wake up on the ground.

—–

That blue day, that was the worst. She’s celebrating life with a bottle of dark burnt-yellow rum and vanilla vodka. She’s letting the fear drown under 70 proof, waiting for him to grab her hand a drag her back to the dorm room with the window that won’t quite close and the carpet that her toes sink into when she tiptoes out of the room after it’s over. When they’re there, they hit the alcohol harder, and she watches herself walk away from the bottle and over to the desk covered with biology homework and empty liquor bottles. She picks up his license, sticking out her tongue in concentration as she traces the card across the porcelain plate resting precariously on the edge of the college-issued desk. She takes an audible breath, dropping the license on the floor, leans over, and elegantly snorts a line.

—–

She wakes up the next morning still drunk and high. She sits up in bed, pulling the sheets over her nakedness, putting her head in her hands. She’s seen the bottle and the empty porcelain plate. She cries, and her cheeks turn pink.