Lately, again, the apartment has become a bit full of things. Jackets draped on chairs. Books on tables, books on the couch, books on chairs, books on the floor. Clean clothes taken from the wash and stored in the hamper, dirty clothes waiting next to the full hamper. Some clothes now worn, re-worn, well worn, musty. Skin, musky, thin film of grime. Tongue and teeth feeling like part of an orifice rather than a mouth. Cynthia finishes frying cackling sausage and just lightly sizzling eggs. Hot water strains from a large tank through a heap of grounds and into a percolator where steam presses onto murky clouds of old brews. The coffee finishes as the food does, Cynthia has had an amount of practice in this routine. Cynthia eats quickly in the hum of the refrigerator and odd traffic from the street below wandering in through the opened sliding door to the balcony. A smell of cigarettes drifts in this morning like many others. This ambience was average enough to constitute silence. Plate empty, mug refilled, Cynthia looks at the leftover smudges from breakfast on her plate. She is scrolling on her phone. She just reads a post about the concept of the five-minute rule. If a task only takes five minutes, do it now, the micro philosophy goes. Maybe five minutes starts now, maybe five minutes starts in five minutes, maybe five minutes starts tomorrow, maybe five minutes can be forgotten for the day. Cynthia takes another sip of her coffee. She decides to stand.
She stands.
When she goes to the sink, escorting her dish and her cutlery, she meets with the plates of yesterday’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the dinner before that. She has been cleaning as needed and now she feels the need to clean. She sets down the plate and takes off her new bracelet, a thin string with a small silver heart charm. She had debated for weeks on getting it, whether she was that type of person. Cynthia sets it to the side of the sink. She clears out the basin and sets everything on the counter. She scrubbs, and rinses, and stacks newly cleaned plates and pans like trudging dutifully through mud. Reapplying soap to the old broken down, extra squishy sponge, elbow grease and light sweat, the grime dissipates and all together leaves. There’s steam from the water, splashes from spoons shoot towards her stay-in-bed t-shirt, and the water scalds her hands, but just manageably, she tells herself.
When she stacks the last plate in the drying rack, she takes a breath. And turns around to the rest of the apartment. She decides to find another five minutes.
She picks up her clothes, folds them up. She clears off her bed, putting everything stacked on top back in their places, mostly, and makes her bed. She washes her face and brushes her teeth, both having been neglected at night because she only seemed to fully remember the need for the routine too late, when she was already in bed, about to sleep.
She also even has time to sweep this morning. She even decides to have time to mop when sweeping seems more preliminary than adequate.
She even does the bathroom: sink, toilet, shower.
She finishes. She finally decides she is finished for now. Cynthia does not yet process all she has accomplished. The apartment looks lived in again, rather than abandoned in and to the night. She still feels the need for more. She would shower, she told herself, then she would be finished. Then she could relax. She felt a little foggy now, but she knew she trusted if she finished everything, then the relaxing would be better. More efficient.
She just needs more coffee.
Cynthia goes back into the kitchen, to the percolator and pours the last of the coffee, forcing it all to fit in the mug, nearly overflowing. Cynthia thought then,self-reflexively, that she existed as if she were carrying around too many nearly too full mugs. Recent events have added carpeted, uneven steps underneath. She sets the percolator in the sink and sets the mug down just in front of the bracelet, too hard, and splashes some coffee around it and onto the counter. Cynthia washes the percolator. She plays with stacking it on the full rack, a jenga tower. She grabs a rag. She wipes the water around the sink that had splashed out during washing. She wipes in front of the mug. She lifts the mug swiftly and brushes underneath and a tink, skid, tink tink tink.
Cynthia sets the mug down. She lifts the mug. She looks. She sets the mug down. She looks. She looks at the sink, at the drain, at the garbage disposal. She puts a hand to her face.
She would have to call someone, how stupid she thinks, she’d have to call someone and have to deal with maintenance, how stupid she thinks, how fucking stupid can she be, she thinks, she can’t have someone come over now, not with everything, she can’t handle another person, she can’t handle anyone, anything, she needs to fix this, she has to fix this, she’s the only one who can fix this, she knows which switch not to hit, she needs to fix this or someone else will have to and then they’ll know she can’t do anything.
Cynthia uses her phone in her left hand as a flashlight, and with her right, she reaches down into the garbage disposal, going slow, and feels a sort of dome. She slowly sends her fingers down to the bottom, lightly grazing the blades, and swirling her hand around, then back to touching the blades. She presses two fingers onto the base of the blades and rotating them on their gears, until a tink. Cynthis takes out her hand, shines a light and catches a glimmer. She reaches back in. Cynthia feels the charm, struggles to pinch it in the tight space, then lifts it up and out. She rinses the metal. She dries it. And she puts it back on. Cynthia sits at the table for a time.
She looks at the time. It’d been a couple hours since the start of the spree. She gets up to shower. She turns the water on, heat high, beginning to steam the room. She tries to change without looking at herself in the mirror. She knows she was doing this. She sets the bracelet near the sink. She checks to see a stopper. She gets in the shower where she barely feels the water and the soap and the scrubbing taking the grime off. She is lost to the thought of the potential sound of grinding gears on flesh and the rest of her life different. Her hand hurts from being rammed into the small drain.
She returns to the water and suds still on her right arm. The shower never stays at a constant temperature. Cynthia would not touch them and they would change. Sometimes she tried to course correct, but then she had to course correct that course correction. Normally she’d settle on lukewarm and the water pressure low or the water pressure just a bit more hard and the water lightly basting her skin. She changes it today to be warm and color her skin pink.
Cynthia gets out and dries off. The steam has captured the mirror. She takes a moment. She wipes the steam away. She looks at her reflection. She feels unclean. She shaves.
After she sees in the mirror the circle of acne forming on her face. Up over her nose, down around her cheeks, and under her chin. She applies some cream. That bottle is nearing empty.
She dries her hair. It has been growing out okay. She dresses in some of her new clothes, although they were still conservative, and her chest sometimes felt empty.
She stores the bracelet in a box, in her desk, in her side of the room. Her roommate’s side had been empty since the start. The main thing left was some small belongings and a made bed. Cynthia sometimes goes in her other roommates room to just stand in the doorway. They had also left early. They had cleaned before they left. Cytnhia rarely leaves their door open. It smells stale and looks orderly.
It was around time for a late lunch. She checks the fridge. Nearly empty and she is so tired. She looks on delivery apps and sees prices and then bears her old, oversized coat that concealed her shirt and her waist, puts her shoes on, and grabs her grocery bags and her backpack. She sets the security system on the door, undoes the chain on the door, the deadbolt, and the lock and leaves.
She puts her hands in her pocket.
She turns around, unlocks the door, turns off the security system, and grabs her pocketknife. She sets it in her coat pocket. She leaves again.
She puts her earbuds in and puts her mask on.
She leaves out her hallways, down the elevator three floors, and out the front door. The apartment complex mainly houses students. It has mostly been deserted.
Outside, It is cold and sunny. This fresh season never seems to have not sprung. It is about a twenty-five-minute walk to the grocery store. Cynthia sees a few cars; she was far away from the few other people out. She grips her knife in her pocket the entire walk there.
When she gets to the store and walks from the gray outdoors into the fluorescent glow of the store, she takes her empty knife hand out of her pocket. Something about civility, she thinks to herself, at least now, after the first month or so.
Her apartment is basically always low in food because she can only buy what she can carry, not trusting the rideshares already. At times she has overestimated and came back to the apartment with sweat on her face, under her arms, on her back, and pants clinging to her and the whole way silently chanting prayers for the plastic bags to not tear. She considers today against when she’d like to come back again. It’s still spiking in the city. She regrets showering beforehand.
She tries to stick to basics. Minimal fresh produce. Some frozen food. Pasta. Canned goods, but then those get heavy quickly. The fresh stuff is lighter, but it takes up space and lasts less time. Sometimes she tries to stretch a bell pepper into lasting three or four meals. She sometimes goes to bed hungry. She thinks she’s losing weight. She tells herself she’ll just fit in her new clothes better this way. The thought brushes the back of her brain with a feather made of heat.
She sees a couple middle aged people at the register. One man’s cart has two cases of beer, three bottles of wine, and a pack of chicken breasts.
She pays and uses her rewards card that knocks the price down about a quarter of the total. The rewards card was given to her for free.
Cynthia feels okay being in the store but congregating at the checkouts makes her shoulders pinched together. Even eavesdropping was not decorating the air but reminds her of other’s presence and what that could bring. She prays she doesn’t have to talk much to the cashier.
She puts the bags of food with less long-lasting items in her right hand in case she needs to run and take out her knife. She doesn’t think she’ll need to, but it bothers her that her hands are full and can’t hold onto it.
She gets back fine. The air is still cool. There is a breeze. But her face is damp and her arms sore, her wrists burning where the plastic of the bags embossed bracelets onto her.
She gets back to her apartment and puts away the groceries. She has class in an hour.
When classes moved online and her roommates went back home, she told her parents she wanted to stay up at school so she could focus more. She lied about one of her other roommates staying behind. She had some leftover birthday money and bought her new clothes soon after.
This day’s class is mainly a discussion on a book almost everyone is actually reading because now they have too much time to. The class can be very quiet, but have been doing their best to fight through awkwardness. Cynthia spends a lot of the time staring at her own square with her own picture. Some other students are at desks, some are swaddled in blankets on their bed. She is at the kitchen table because that place has the most passing light, neither too bad nor too good. The professor is at their cluttered home office.
The professor has some form of humanity that already feels antiquated, they start each class by asking how everyone is doing. There’s only about twelve students and they each give short responses. The standard replies are some variation of “staying sane at least today,” “okay” with no further explanation, or “kinda bad” with no needed explanation. The professor kindly advises everyone to make sure they go on walks and drink water and assures them it’ll be over so, so very soon, hopefully.
The lesson is long and boring because everything is boring now. Cynthia comes in and out of focus on the material. She glances out the window often. She has trouble internalizing what she does hear. The class and course work pass the time and measures the week. These classes have been her only real interaction with other people for some time now.
And Cynthia only has classes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this semester, which she’d originally orchestrated to make things easier for herself. Two are large lectures, and the other this small discussion. But now, the extended weekends feel no different than the weekdays, the individual days feel no different than another day, the weeks blend together, the months are never ending, it was both just last week and two months ago. Tomorrow creeps in during the night and moves all the furniture one inch to the left.
Class ends, and as normal now, Cynthia gets off her computer, goes to the couch, lays down, and goes on her phone to look at the news. She does this for hours. Some numbers get higher, some get lower, both are bad outcomes.
She makes dinner. Pasta, butter, and chili flakes. She thinks about sauteing some garlic and onions to add. She decides she doesn’t want to dirty a knife; she tells herself it’s just to ration.
She’s been practicing speaking while doing makeup lately. She had to order materials from websites since shops were closed. It took a while to find a color that matched her complexion in person and not just online, having to deal with return packaging. She watches a few tutorials first and then follows along, looking in the bathroom mirror. Her hand is shaky and her voice feels like it’s always about to break. She doesn’t quite care for the sound of it either. She also doesn’t have much to say.
She looks a little rough, but decent. She gets herself looking like she’s ready to go out, dressing in some of her new clothes, but she knows she’s far, far too early for any event. She pours herself a glass of wine, the first of a few that night, and goes to the balcony. The apartment complex has a row of balconies all the same level, separated from the next unit by a four-foot wide three-story deep gap. She overlooks the street and other balconies across it. Less lights on in apartments now, more dark squares. But still some lights lingering like hers.
She hears her neighbor begin to open their balcony door, she goes back inside, leaving the door open and the slider closed. A moment and then the smell of smoke follows her in.
Cynthia sits on her couch looking ready for a night out and gets drunk re-re-watching old tv shows. Recognizing the moments where she used to laugh, even out loud at once, at the show is passable stimulation while she sipps and pours and sipps and falls asleep.
She dreams another rerun. She is in a mall. Ever expanding in it’s mall shape. No one else is there. It’s closing time. She knows this like an instinct. She dreams more in third person than first. She is wearing her new clothes, but she can’t focus on her face. She walks around. She sees gates pouring down from the ceiling and locking her out. She wanders. She manages to get into some shops, to browse for a moment, she vaguely likes the clothes she sees, and then she hears on the intercom that they were closing. The intercom doesn’t sound like words, but she understands. So she leaves. And searches for the next shop. And the next. And at some point she wakes up. She realizes she is awake. She realizes she was dreaming. She tries to remember, sand in a sieve. She is left with an impression of the familiar dream. She feels unrested.
Cynthia rubs her eyes. She becomes annoyed and rises and goes to the bathroom to remove her makeup. She inspects and is then relieved that nothing has gotten on her clothes. She is then frustrated because she is now expecting break outs.
Cynthia eats. Cynthia cleans her dishes. Cynthia does her homework for the week. This keeps her busy until Sunday.
She comes back to focusing on staring out the window. She fogs over watching clouds run shadows across her balcony. She watches for some time.
Cynthia is so bored; she decides to be daring.
She gets dressed up, make-up done-up, but she stalls at the door.
Probably won’t need a wallet for a walk, but she feels so naked without it. Will need keys obviously. Will need her phone. But she finds again she has no effective pockets. She considers wearing her old coat, but rebukes that, it would defeat everything. She is a bit befuddled by having to carry everything. She has not really considered getting a purse or a small bag. She has her backpack, which she supposes would work since she’s a student, but it feels wrong. So she decides, carry her keys and her phone. And the knife, she thinks on further. She is just wearing normal shoes, it is day, she can run. She hasn’t run in a very long time, she is a bit winded thinking about running, but she knows she can if she needs to. She sets the knife down and she slips her mask on.
So all set, she goes out the door.
There are lots of clouds crowding the sky, but sunlight bounces through warmly and holds Cynthia’s legs beneath her shorts and her clavicle at the edge of her blouse. She walks fast like she was trying to get around a slow walker. She rushes through the apartment lined streets onward to the university campus. There, filled with trees, and sunshine, and squirrels, and open space, and geometric patterns on the ground, brickwork, and tall buildings, new buildings, old buildings, ugly buildings, inviting buildings, ivy, flowers, bushes, grass, and very, very few people, she speeds through all to the far side of campus’s parking structure. And she finds the stairs and climbs the four stories, a few cars only on the base level. She gets to the top and goes to the edge and looks out over this edge of campus. She imagines herself screaming across from this tower. But she just watches the birds and the clouds move and cast shadows below. And she takes off her mask.
When she comes down, she walks slower. Meandering through campus maskless. She veers away from anyone else or any small groups. She visits the buildings she had classes in. She visits the buildings her classes started in this semester. She looks and she moves alone, unburdened.
On her walk back to her apartment, she starts to hear a frat house before seeing it. She slips on her mask. Music blares out an open door. As she approaches, she sees people on the balconies, people behind open windows. Crowded and loud. Cynthia sets her head straight and doesn’t look in their direction, those on the porch standing and drinking and talking loudly. As she passes, she wants to look to see if they are looking at her, but if they were, then she knows she would burn. So, head forward, feet underneath a forced steady pace, she walks. And continues walking. The music softens behind her. She rounds a corner. She walks.
From around the next corner, a cop car came cruising. Cynthia lowered her head. The cop approaches. Driving slow, then slower, then almost stopping in line with her. Cynthia keeps walking, head down. The car stalls. Then it moves again and turns the corner to the street of the frat house. Cynthia doesn’t hear the music stop. Cynthia realizes she is clenching fists around her phone and her keys, digging into her palm.
Her mind is a whiteboard. Written in permanent marker are three bullet points: Was it my height, was it my shoulders, was it just me. She tries to write over the statements, but when she goes clear, and erases, she is still left with them.
Cynthia shakes as she opens the main door to the apartment building. She calls the elevator. She gets in. She pressed her floor with her elbow. She waits. The door begins to slide closed. A hand shoots in. The elevator opens again.
“Sorry,” the woman said. Cynthia recognized her as her neighbor. They have never really spoken and only know each other at the level of recognition. Cynthia keeps her head down so the neighbor wouldn’t recognize her now.
The elevator hums a long ride up three floors.
When the doors opened, Cynthia hurries out and to her door and gets in. She is hot with red. She wants to throw something. She wants to scream now and wants to scream forever. She goes out onto the balcony and closes her eyes.
“Hey, do you mind if I smoke this around you?”
Cynthia looks over to the same neighbor, now on her own balcony across from herself.
Cynthia nods ‘no.’
“Cool.” She sparks up. When she exhales the wind whips it towards Cynthia, but it dissipates before reaching her.
Cynthia looks ahead below. A car is driving down the street.
“I’m dreading in a year or so when we start seeing a bunch of shows and movies about quarantine,” the neighbor says.
Still not wanting to show her voice, Cynthia mumbles, “hm?”
“I don’t think they’ll be good until about five maybe ten years from now when it’s actually been processed. Although I guess, what even is there to process. I wake up. I do zoom school in pajamas. I stay inside. I smoke,” she flashes her cigarette, ”And I sleep. That’s about it. Rinse, repeat.”
Cynthia lets the conversation die there.
The neighbor tries to perform cpr, “Sorry, I haven’t talked to anyone new in a while, am I bothering you?”
“No, no no no,” Cynthia blurts out, her voice roughly pitched up.
And then a look from the neighbor.
A smile. “I’m Jane.”
Cynthia looked her over. “I’m Cynthia.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you. I guess we couldn’t handshake even if we could,” she says across the gap between them.
“Yeah.”
Jane snuffs out her cigarette. “Well, I’ll see you around,” and then, “I really like your makeup.” Jane goes inside.
Cynthia goes back inside and looks in the mirror. She practices talking. About books. About movies. About her day. About what she wants to do. About how she wanted to love. Her voice sounds more her own.
Cynthia starts keeping her balcony sliding door open. She’d starts dressing more in her new clothes and doing her face even when she just plans on staying home. And when she hears Jane’s balcony door open, and starts to smell smoke, she more often than not manufactures casualness and goes out to see Jane. They catch up as much as anyone can in this time. Most of the time they’d just watch the quiet street in silence.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when this is over?” Jane asks once.
“I don’t think it’ll be over all at once. I don’t know when we’ll really get normal back,” Cynthia said.
“Let’s say it happens overnight.”
“I think I’d just like to go back to school. In person. Where there’s crowds, but there’s not really people watching you, not closely. Where there’s just, I don’t know, space, and time, to try things. I miss school for that.”
“I think I’d go to a bar. That’s real privacy in public.”
Around noon a few days later, Cynthia hears a knock on her door. She had been keeping up with her cleaning more so the apartment wouldn’t look a mess, but she’d slept in and was wearing old clothes. She lingers. Knocks come again.
She grabs a mask. She opens the door.
It is Jane. She is holding a plate of cookies. She is not wearing a mask.
“Hey, I was procrastinating by baking. I thought, hey, maybe you’d like some.”
Cynthia felt her voice try to conceal the rest of her appearance, “Thanks.”
Cynthia took the plate and gazed down at her formless long t-shirt and sweatpants and felt her unkempt hair and stubble beneath her mask.
Jane says, “Hey don’t worry, I have comfy pjs too.”
Jane walks away, “hope you like them.”
Cynthia closes the door. She takes off her mask. She goes to the kitchen. She takes the cookies off the plate, washes and dries the plate, and resets the cookies.
The days are still largely tedious. Cynthia drudges through classes. She spends hours glued to the news, making herself sick.
She’d taken to reading comments for posted articles. ‘They’re blowing this out of proportion,’ ‘we’ll be shut down at least two years,’ ‘What kind of gremlin doesn’t wear a mask,’ ‘I hope he gets it.’ It’s the same three to five sentiments repeated, over and over, by different people playing the same parts. Cynthia loses another morning, this morning, to this stale, macabre morality play. She misses her morning window for shopping and decides to now go in between the noon rush and the 5 pm rush.
Dark clouds sail in from the edges of the sky as she walks over. She checks the weather on her phone. She remembers the only oasis in her deserted kitchen is two power bars. She decides to try and beat the rain.
Swift up and down the aisles with her cart, by the vegetables she hears her claimed name.
“Cynthia? Hey!”
Cynthia looks over to see Jane.
“What are the odds?”
“Yeah,” Cynthia says.
“Hey, do you want a ride back to the apartments. I have a car.”
“Oh, I’m good.”
“Come on. It’s going to rain. It’s no harm.”
Cynthia looks at Jane’s mask. She wears a bright pink cloth mask with white bands to wrap around her ears. Cynthia feels her KN95 on her own face. She had missed getting the N95 but had stocked up on the KN’s when she could. They are supposed to be reliable.
“Thank you,” Cynthia says.
Cynthia buys a haul of things she’s been missing. Canned goods, even some chips, even some more wine. Things bulky and heavy she’d have to stagger getting and going without.
Jane buys frozen meals and some Smirnoff.
They check out and load it into an average looking car. “Had it since I was sixteen,” Jane says.
It is sprinkling when they get in the car, Jane first, then Cynthia to see Jane has removed her mask.
Jane says, “Oh. You can take that off. I’m so sick of wearing them, right?”
“Right. Yeah,” Cynthia says.
“I don’t really see anyone. Besides we’re in this car together already, if somethings happened it’s probably already happened.”
Maybe it was because just one other person was doing it, or that there was reassurance that everything would probably be okay, statistically, mathematically and thus morally. And the rain is starting in full. Cynthia takes off her mask.
They drive to the apartments and park in the garage. They go up in the elevator and to their doors. As Cynthia unlocked hers, Jane says, “You know, we’re basically in each other’s bubbles now. You should come over sometime. Just to hang.”
“Thanks,” Cynthia says.
She goes inside, closes the door, locks it. She puts away her groceries. She washes her hands. She stares at the drain.
Cynthia meets Jane on their separate balconies a few days later in the early afternoon. The day is especially long, they both notice. Jane asks her if they still had the wine they bought.
They start drinking together on their separate balconies.
They both have glasses of wine. Jane is smoking. Jane says, “I realized I’m probably going to turn twenty-two during quarantine and I think it made me stop thinking I’m seventeen anymore. I mean I didn’t really think I was seventeen, but when I pictured myself in my head, even though I saw how I looked right now, there was always an invisible seventeen next to myself. And now, I don’t really see anything. I don’t feel twenty-one, but I don’t feel seventeen either anymore. Maybe it’s just because after twenty-one there’s not really another milestone until what? Thirty, I guess. Then forty. Then fifty. But it’s not like you get to do heroin or something then, once you’re twenty-one, the whole of everything is out in front of you. Maybe that’s how we measure time, by an age making us feel we’re allowed to do something.”
Cynthia perked up. “What if you never feel ready?”
“Then you live at home.”
“But nowhere feels like home.”
“Home is where you’re comfortable.”
“But what if you’re not comfortable with yourself.”
“Then change.”
Cynthia shook this idea like a calloused hand. “I don’t know how to be me anymore. I think about how much of me is stored in everyone else. To my friends in classes I was funny, to my friends in clubs I was reliable, to my family I’m smart. And then I started thinking about who I was myself, especially when this all shut down and I had too much time to think. And now I think about how nobody knows me like this. I know I could text or call them, but it feels like we’re all in our own heads and I don’t know what I’d say. There’s just a gap I can’t mind. And even lately, when I’m walking on the street and I’m nothing but the clothes I wear, when I’m alone, I don’t know if that’s really me, I have no one to test myself against. When I’m alone, I’m just quiet.”
Jane takes a drag. “Do you read?”
“Almost only for class.” Cynthia says.
“Do you play anything?” Jane says.
“Never learned.”
“Do you watch videos?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you talk about what you see and learn in those videos to others later?”
“I have.”
“So maybe when you’re alone you just research who you are.”
“And then you test it out with others.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
Cynthia takes another sip and empties her glass. She picks the bottle off the ground to pour more. A drop comes out.
“I have some wine over here. Just come over.”
Cynthia knows all of Jane’s roommates had left like her own.
Cynthia wants to be inside and warm and warm inside.
She considers bringing her pocket knife. She picks it up. It seems to weigh differently now. Something about civility. And something about it not really being to protect her from what she’s afraid of. She abandons the knife in a desk drawer. It rests next to her bracelet.
She leaves.
They meet up now on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays as breaks from Cynthia’s schedule. Cynthia adjusts at first to being in another small room with another person. Jane’s apartment is also a mirror image of her own. She finds the discomfort has a fast half life, it dissipates but never fully disappears.
Cynthia has started wearing her clothes for her online classes. She still sat in not well lit places, but she has begun starting to pitch her voice as well, although she rarely answers questions. In her large lecture she still keeps her camera off. She emails her discussion professors of her name preference. No one says anything in discussion. Some days she wears makeup to them.
A couple weeks later, Cynthia and Jane are in Jane’s apartment. They are lounging. Jane gets a text and says something about someone stopping by to drop something off. About a half hour later there’s a knocks on the door and Jane answers.
“Hey Sam,” Jane says.
“Hey.”
“Come on in.”
Cynthia turns to look. The new woman, Sam, and Jane come in. Sam wasn’t wearing a mask. Sam slips off her backpack, reaches in, and pulls out a book and hands it to Jane.
“Thanks. You want to stay?” Jane asked.
Cynthia clenches her jaw.
“Nah, I got some homework I’ve been neglecting.”
“We still on for tomorrow?”
“Yeah. See you then,” Sam then turns towards Cynthia, “Hey,” and then, “Cynthia right? Jane’s talked about you. I like your name. We should all get together sometime. See you.”
Jane sits back down near Cynthia.
Cynthia is cloudy. She feels the need to approach with hesitation.
“Everything good?” She asks.
“Oh. Yeah. That was Sam. She was just giving me a book from a class she already took.”
“And you’re hanging out tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Gonna drive to the beach, don’t worry though, we sit away from everyone.” She sees Cynthia staring at her. “She’s in my bubble. I have a couple people in it. Like you.”
“How often do you see each other?”
“I don’t know. Couple times a week.”
Cynthia ran the numbers, as many as she could.
Would you want to go tomorrow?”
“Maybe some other time,” Cynthia says.
Cynthia soon excuses herself saying she is going to eat back at her apartment. She goes straight for the shower. She turns on the tap and looks in the mirror as the water heated. She stares at her face, her hair, her clothes. She likes how she looks. She looks in the mirror as she takes off her make-up. She sees the pieces she likes coming off. As she undresses she feels uncomfortable with the reminder between her legs. She gets in the shower and scrubbs. When she gets out she wipes off a streak of the mirror and sees her bare face and dripping hair.
In the steam at the bottom she writes ‘Cynthia.’
In the shower are sudds. They connect together before circling the drain.
She texts Jane she wants to meet her other friends.
There is Sam and Marcy. Sam doesn’t talk much and Marcy asks a lot of questions. “Where do you get your clothes?” “What hairstyle are you going for?” “Have you thought about painting your nails?”
They meet a few times at Jane’s and drink and watch movies. There isn’t always a lot to talk about, so they sometimes just sit, together, in silence.
They don’t talk about the news. Cynthia wants to, but she doesn’t know what to say. And she is afraid of saying the wrong thing. The protests have become more prominent.
And then it is announced that bar’s were opening again.
“We’re all gonna go.” Jane said to Cynthia.
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry, it’s all regulation. And come on, we are the hottest we’ve ever been, don’t you want to be seen?”
And then, “Great, we were thinking of helping you get ready too.”
“I don’t know if I want to wear that,” Cynthia says.
“I know this dress will fit, it’ll look great on you,” Jane says.
“It’ll help give you curves,” Sam says.
“Don’t you want to look like us,” Marcy says, “We’ll be looking nice too.”
Cynthia puts it on and lets them do her makeup.
The bar is crowded and felt more so. They sit outside at a table. Cynthia tries not to count the paces between theirs and the next.
Cynthia drinks and chats and tries to have fun.
She excuses herself to go to the bathroom. As she puts on her mask, Marcy says “You look perfect with your mask on.”
Cynthia leaves. She lingers in the mirror in the bathroom. She comes back.
People are a little drunk by this point.
“So, when did you like come out?” Marcy asks tipsy loudly.
“What,” Cynthia tries to smile and say away.
“And like why Cynthia? I think you’d make a good Bella.”
“I think Cynthia is cool.” Sam says. “It’s unique. Jane had a lot to say about you before we met. You seemed so cool. And so mysterious.”
“I think a guy could really go for a Bella. Don’t you want a guy to like your name?” Marcy says.
And then Jane adds, “But like when did you come out?”
Cynthia blushes. She looks down. “I’m just trying to figure things out.”
“Oh,” Jane says. “Okay.”
When they leave they walked back to the apartments. Sam’s and Marcy’s were in the same direction.
And then politics comes up, all jumbled and slurred in the night.
“The numbers aren’t as bad as everyone says.”
“November is going to be a landslide.”
“I think the protests are fine, but rioting isn’t gonna solve anything.”
“Some of those are local shops.”
“I saw them starting fights with the police.”
“Nothing was ever solved with violence.”
“Stonewall was started with a brick,” Cynthia says.
A moment.
“What’s Stonewall again?”
At the edge of the street leading away from the shops and to the apartments, there is a homeless man sitting against a wall. He is bundled and bearded. He stares absently ahead.
Jane, Sam, and Marcy slow a bit. And maneuver as they get closer. So Cynthia becomes the closest and the rest are covertly cowering behind her. Cynthia felt their movements. She glanced at the man as they passed. He looks at the ground.
As they got further away, the group reformed, and the conversation began again.
“That was fun, we should do it again while we still can.”
The next day Cynthia looks at getting tested. The university is doing them, but not under her insurance. It would cost over a hundred dollars. She researches. It would cost even more at some places. She finally finds a covered pharmacy doing them.
It’s conducted in the drive thru of a pharmacy. Cynthia has to walk there and stand in line in person between the cars. She was wearing her old clothes this day. When getting dressed she just couldn’t imagine being treated a certain way standing there like that. When it was her turn, she fumbles and holds things between her legs as she swabs deep up her nose. She finishes. She puts the sample in a drop box. She sanitizes her hands. She makes the long walk back to her apartment.
Cynthia stops seeing Jane. She says hello in the elevator or in the hall and replies to her that she is busy with finals coming up.
Finals never do come up though. The protests surged. Her professors cancelled tests or gave extensions. Her main discussion just held the final class talking about the weight of all current events. The professor tells everyone to rest as much they can over the break.
Cynthia stares at the news, scrolling endlessly. At the videos. At the pictures. At the headlines. Cynthia progresses from reading comments on stories to picking individual commentators and looking at what else they have posted. Someone calling for violence is both very into cameras, guns, and politics. Another makes sparing political statements and instead mainly contributes to a cross stitching community. Someone pro-protests, but anti-riots is very into a children’s franchise. Cynthia looks into the actors repeating recycled phrases finds eclecticity if not contradictions. She finds people.
During these binges on the couch, Cynthia more often wears her old clothes. Unsure of everything and uncaring of it all.
She saw there was going to be a protest in the city, near campus. She had been growing ill with the overwhelming news, the headlines concerning her lack of control.
The day of the protest she wore old clothes because she felt that’s all she could handle.
The protestors meet in a park near campus, a gathered mass. There is a stage built for speakers. There are no clouds in the sky that day, but two helicopters. One news, The other police. It is a warm day, and everyone could feel it on their foreheads, backs, and behind their masks. And they were all meeting for Breonna Taylor. The plan was to march down the streets and meet with a protest for George Floyd. Then they would go through the heart of the city. Marching on the street, cars honking for them or at them. People handing out waters. People holding signs. People being seen together.
But there, at the stage, several speakers come up. They speak of what it meant to be treated differently for no fault of their own. They speak of injustice.
And they speak of solidarity.
Cheers come on certain phrases, on certain names.
Lots of all types of people were there. Cynthia was nervous of the proximity, but the speaker’s words eased her, not by claiming difference in safety, but by differing importance. This was not a night out; this was a cause.
Cynthia stands some ways away from the stage, shouldered a few feet apart from others. And in sight, with a group of their own group, Cynthia notices a person standing and holding a sign. They are tall, they have strong shoulders, they are dressed uniquely, they have dark skin and they were holding a sign with two flags. One was light blue, light pink, and white. The other was for BLM.
And this person, Cynthia knew, was beautiful standing out openly in the crowd.
And as they moved from the park to the march, she wishes she had worn her new clothes.
Later, after some time to think and to reevaluate and reopen up to some old contacts in her phone, Cynthia catches herself in mirrors more. Sometimes she is in her new clothes and wearing makeup, other times she has just woken up. Sometimes it’s in the mirror, or the windows of a car driving by, or a door with glass. She catches herself. And she feels herself. So often, for so long, she has felt like just a floating consciousness, but lately, every once in a while in these glimpses, she feels physical. She feels her legs and her chest and her face. And she feels good. And she feels her age, young and vibrant. She feels like she is an adult, young. And even sometimes, if only for that moment, she feels sexy, like she can feel sexy. She feels like herself.
And sometimes Cynthia remembers that person at the protest, on that day, shown in that light, and hopes they are happy and are loved and are safe. Because Cynthia, she, perhaps they, think that’s all anyone has ever wanted, to stand out in the sun.
*****
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Cole Sabala (They/Them) is a recent graduate from UCLA. Their main focus is in writing prose, but they also create poetry, screenplays, and visual art. They are concerned with addiction, mental health, and queer issues as well as how they can overlap.
