Call Forgotten

This is how it will start.

There will be a quiet hum, a sort of pleasant buzzing. The sound whines on like a happy reassurance. Only soon, it stops. The blood rushes to her head. Lali will feel all the neurons in her brain slow down, heavy, her synapses lagging lazily like her cells have been coated in honey. Everything’s slow and sticky. The buzz will start to morph, to mutate. She gets goosebumps. The sound is amplified, crystallized, and the beat starts. Waves of sound smash against her. Organs pulsate, their shudders resonating shimmering pop. She’s trying to hang on to that familiarity, trying to make it stop. The beat pounds in.

Massive wallops crunch against Lali’s head, crippling her. The beat is interlaced with all sorts of whinnies, electronic whirs and beeps, cells reproducing and splitting. Underneath it, that beat pounds on. It’s what drives the whole thing. Lali will feel herself giving into it, all her motions synchronized with its impeding boom. It controls everything. She will not try to escape it, or drown out the noises. It will push itself against her muscles, licking across bones. It will make her sick. It will make her alive.

It is, Lali Sanchez will think, like a pulse.

***

A girl presses down her hair to look presentable. Her thick black locks flop down, clouding her vision with curls. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s bought hair strengtheners, and let her aunt slick back her head with noxious amounts of chemicals. Her scalp has endured such pain, such torture, that she is simply entitled to looking pretty at work. She never wanted this. On this day, of all days, it is so unfortunate. She needs to be beautiful today. That’s the only way this will work out right, the only way all the pieces will slid into place. This is the day Lali Sanchez will fall in love.

She’s doesn’t know this, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Lali will fall in love today, in this very library. Only she can’t quite tell yet.

Lali straightens up, chewing on a sickly sweet candy mint, lolling it about with her tongue. She fixes her skirt into a straight line. The skirt is satiny, and uncomfortably transparent. Its pattern is fixed with constellations of little daisies, flower nebulas that span out past her knees. She feels anxious. Lali is counting the titles on the bookshelves, and cataloguing them in her mind. It is her job to monitor the non-fiction section. She feels weird about this, like she’s some sort of looming gargoyle of literature. It was the only thing left for her. Lali cannot deal with people. She cannot hand over books nicely, or concisely explain the library’s return policy. Lali is strange. She is unable to concentrate when someone’s in front of her, unable to hear past their shuddering organs. A single person is deafening for her.   

Oh, it is worthy to note that Lali can hear the sounds bodies make. Their pulsating organs and cells sound like a symphony to her. That’s pretty important to her story, really. Make a point of remembering.

Lali is in total exile now. There is no real reason to fire her, and the older librarians are far too charitable to do away with such a nice girl. Everyone says she has potential. Everyone is waiting for Lali to expand, to flood the world with her brilliant thoughts. She looks like an enigma, anyway. Lali is not what you would call plain, but she is too strange to be attractive. Her eyes are dark. She has sharp collarbones that jut from her thin shirt, like pressed fingers. She seems bottled up. Everything compressed, slipped into a meat membrane, and packaged into skin. Everyone is anxious for Lali to be expand. No one, however, is more anxious than Lali herself.

She shakes away her thoughts, and suddenly stands up. This is a catalyst. Lali Sanchez is going to fall in love now, very soon, so just be patient.

She edges herself along the non-fiction section. Lali is quiet, letting her fingers trail through the notches of every book’s spine. She already knows this shelf, just like she knows every shelf in her section. There are over a thousand books in her section, ninety books on a shelf, and approximately thirty per row. Each row is two footsteps apart, and five footsteps long. Lali likes counting things like this. She finds it reassuring. Considering she has been placed in an area of little humanity, she doesn’t have to worry about people’s drum roll heartbeats, or the glitzy electro pop of their lungs.

Lali lives in silence. She learns to appreciate the books. Being cripplingly introverted is surprisingly helpful—a really effective reading incentive, it would seem. She loves textbooks madly, and devours them like inky candy. Lali has funny tastes. She learns to savor the moment when she can hear the subtle creak of a book cart, or the hushed voices of library patrons. No one ever goes to her area of nonfiction reference. Lali imagines people think the books are so very boring, so useless, they’re not even worth examining. Or maybe they just think that about her.

Lali pauses at one of the books, her hand suddenly compelled to stop. The spine reads “The End of The American Dream.” Lali Sanchez doesn’t know, but this is the tipping point. This is the explosion. If she had not paused at this exact moment, she would have never heard the music drifting towards her. She never would have turned around and saw him. She will see him, though, because right about now her hand will move exactly three centimeters to the right, and linger there for five milliseconds. Hewill be there in twenty-nine seconds.

Lali’s hand has just finished its fated orbit around the book’s spine. She suddenly hears something. Her eyes drift away from the book, alert. The notion of a human being is fanciful and silly, of course, because no one ever ventures to her section. She tries to distance herself from the idea, attempting to stop the nervous excitement that flushes through her like a sugar rush. Lali knows it is improbable. Still, she hears ghostly music floating towards her. It sounds bizarre. She has generally grown used to the sounds people make. Old, chain-smoking men sound like grunge rock, all guttural beat and electronic riffs. Teenage girls sound like plush, bubblegum pop. This is different. It has an intense beat running through it, a heady thud that makes her dizzy. On top of that there is a smooth, classical glitz. It is weird and haunting. Lali feels oddly compelled to it. It comes down in waves, a strange orchestral dubstep.

Lali tries to attach a face to the music, but it seems impossible. She finds it hard to imagine a creature that could produce such a sound. It rattles her, and she is intrigued. Lali leans forward, waiting for her musician to arrive. The library’s floor resonates with footsteps. He is almost there, his body tense, every atom of energy shuddering in anticipation. He edges further into the dreary library shelves. Everything is going to change. He turns his head slightly, taking a third of a second to do so, and stares forward.

As he does, Lali Sanchez is staring back.

Lali says nothing, and only watches. It’s what she’s good at. Lali notes how he has shredded jeans, and a slung bag pierced with Joy Division pins. His eyes look too light to be blue. Lali knows, fundamentally, that there are only a few eye colors to choose from. Still, she cannot place the boy’s. He has white infant eyelashes.  He looks bizarre. Seeing him in passing, Lali would assume he was just another private university prodigy. A pretty white boy. Something, however, stops her from issuing this label. Maybe it’s the strange music—the shimmering pulse of synthesized fuzz, backed by an ancient classical sound. Maybe it’s the way he studies her without speaking, in a way more curious than disarming. Most likely it is simply his hair, which is a shocking contradiction of sheer white. 

She can’t speak. Lali wants to say hello, but her tongue seems heavy and her words have dried up against the roof of her mouth. In that moment, she notices something interesting. Something important. Underneath a curl of snowy hair, the boy has an elaborate hearing aid arched over his left ear. If Lali even attempted to speak, he might not hear her. Lali thinks that this is perfection. He is too beautiful to speak to.

Lali is in love.

She still doesn’t know it.

Lali Sanchez stares at the boy, for just the shortest moment. She creates a mental catalogue of him, because it’s what she does with everything. Then, once she is finished, Lali Sanchez runs away. It is also what she does with everything.

***

The day starts off as many do. A bit too cold, a bit too sleepy. Lali is bumping into things, forgetting how to operate her legs properly. She can’t anchor her head to the Earth. It’s a disquieting feeling, to be so drifty and aimless. Lali’s trying to iron herself into those routines, to that monotonous structure she relishes. She counts the brushstrokes as she cleans her teeth. She counts her footsteps to the bus stop, also counting the people she sees, and the number of them who look happy to her.

The library is a sacred place today. It is similar, of course, with its comforting purrs and creaks. Something about it has changed. It holds more promise. It specifically holds the possibility of seeing him, the boy with white hair, again. The idea terrifies and excites Lali. She knows nothing of speaking, and can barely communicate with human beings. If he chose to speak she would be paralyzed, trapped within her crippling phobias. Words stitched themselves into her mouth. They exist, and were waiting, but seemed to evaporate before she could get them out.   

 Lali is chewing bubble gum. She is always alone, so she supposes no one will really mind. Walking through the shelves, alert for any signs of people, Lali pops little florescent pink bubbles. The library vibrates with the sound of her gum. Lali turns, surveying the library once more through the fringe of her bangs. Lali is hoping for the boy. She still doesn’t want to admit this to herself. Lali was half-expecting to see a snowy head tucked behind literature, an indie rock pin left on the ground. She wants him to be tangible. She feels frustrated, her aspirations knotting up in her stomach. Lali goes back to the furthest end of her section to hide through the day.  

 When she gets to her section, there are three books waiting for Lali on an oak table. She knows immediately they are for her.

She runs her delicate fingers over their worn bindings, her limbs electric as she touched the page edges. After quickly becoming acquainted with them, Lali cannot wait. She slowly drags over one of their covers. Her breath quickens. The book’s check-out card is slid into its beige envelope, a single name written on it in inky cursive. Ash Gallagher. She stares at the name, her fingertips feeling the impression it made on thin paper. Lali is entranced. She feels like there’s something weirdly poetic about the boy being named Ash, but she cannot decide what. At least not yet.

Next to the card, the title page curves outward, introducing “The Great Gatsby.” Underneath Fitzgerald’s name, instructions for Lali are scrawled in ink. She is almost appalled that his hand has marred the novel’s pages, but his calligraphy is so pretty, she doesn’t mind it. His writing is strange. The instructions are not numbered out in steps, or even composed of sentences. Still, Lali knows they are instructions nonetheless. The instructions read: “Gatsby: 54, 40. Paper Towns: 150, 22. Fahrenheit: 39, 3.” Lali smiles softly. She knows what she has to do.

Lali’s hands flicker carefully through the pages of The Great Gatsby like it’s biblical text. Her pace slows, and then stops entirely. She is at page fifty-four. Lali’s finger slips down, and presses itself against Fitzgerald’s sentences. She slides across the words affectionately. At page fifty-four, Lali has counted until the fortieth word.

That word, curiously enough, is “you.”

She is enthralled. Lali quickly grasps the next book on the desk, and begins her mission once more. Excitement builds up as she searches for her next word. She feels like a child, on route to treasure. Lali reaches page one hundred fifty in Paper Towns, and counts carefully until she reached the twenty-second word. It reads “sound.” The puzzle expands, spinning out sheer webs of possibilities. Lali finds herself trying to imagine his message. She clings to the last book hungrily, pushing back its leathery cover. Lali dashes across the pages, all the sentences a blur, until she hits page thirty-nine. The word is at the very top of the page. It says “beautiful.” Lali reads it carefully, her eyes probing against it. She puts together the message.

you sound beautiful. 

Lali is perplexed. There is no inkling of a possibility that he could have listened to anything from her, not the slightest whisper, or even a simple hello. Lali had been mute when they met. The boy was deaf. Still, he has appeared to hear her. She doesn’t know how. It isn’t possible. Ash Gallagher is an anomaly, just like Lali. He communicated to her in the only way she would understand, in the only way her sociopathic brain could handle. No one had ever listened. He did.

Lali Sanchez finally figures it out. It had taken her long enough, really.

She is in love.

*** 

Lali Sanchez is giddy, popping sugar cubes in her mouth at an alarming rate. She feels the sugar dissolve on her tongue, deliciously gritty. It only adds to her elation. Lali counts the seconds it took for the cube to dissolve, and catalogues it, feeling the sweet granules fizzle away. Eight seconds. This pleases Lali. To be fair, though, lots of things are currently pleasing Lali. She is feeling like perfection. This is for a few base reasons.

1. Lali is chewing on sugar. Lali likes sugar.

2. Lali is in love.

She supposes the latter reason probably has a larger effect on her happiness, but sugar is awfully nice too. The moderation might influence it all as well. Lali got sugar a lot. She broke off pixie sticks, and let the dusty powder spill down her throat. She was well stocked in rock candy, crushed up and sickly sweet, and stored them in small baggies. Lali’s tongue was almost always dyed some sort of florescent shade. Her body had grown used to the sugar, her heart pulsating naturally despite the candy she’d downed. Love wasn’t like that.

Lali has never really been in love before. She has certainly read about it, which didn’t mean anything, because Lali had read about everything.

She feels as though this love needed to be reciprocated to be valid. Lali usually likes things that are fantastical—all abstract, with childish zeal. Her love is quite fantastical, but far too confusing. It is messy. It has no clear end or beginning and stretched out indefinitely, like a quirky optical allusion. Its lines are blurred up, almost skirting on fantasy. She knows she needs to make contact with Ash Gallagher. She needs to make him more real. A normal girl would talk to him, perhaps. Give out her number and smile.

Lali is incapable of all these things. She resorts to the only thing that makes sense in her mess of a head. She grasps a book (“The History of Oriental Flower Arrangements”, if anyone was wondering) and proceeds to search for her perfect word. Once she finds the text she’s looking for, Lali scrawls instructions for Ash. She grabs seven other books and does the same thing, then writes her extended directions. It is all magic. Lali is making her love a treasure map.

Once the instructions are complete Lali sits back, satisfied. She has done well. Now, it is time to wait. Lali can do no more, and it is all in Ash’s hands now. She wonders how he will react to her message. In the depths of Oriental flower arrangements, peeking through yellowed pages, is Lali’s confession.

I hear you too. Come at noon tomorrow.

It’s awfully honest—more honest than anyone will ever know. Hopefully Ash will appreciate that.

***

The florescent lights are buzzing. They’re just as nervous as Lali. The books pages seem to quiver, ink trembling, timed in perfection with Lali’s shaky hands. She just can’t make her body still.

It is almost noon. The library is empty. Lali is loitering about the bookshelves, clinging to them for comfort. She looks pretty today. Not beautiful, of course, but definitely pretty. Lali was wearing a pretty white dress, and cotton candy pink lipstick. This all felt so fake to her. It was as comical and unfitting as covering an ugly boy in blush. She scrubbed off the lipstick in the library’s bathroom, staring at her thin face through the dirty mirror. She changed into a thick sweater and pleated skirt. Lali didn’t look beautiful. She never could. Lali did, however, reach pretty, and she found that it was all one could hope for.

Lali counts her steps as she paces. She thinks about Ash Gallagher. She thinks that she is silly to believe in someone so ghostly, and silly to think he would ever like her. He is so transparent. His silvery white hair, his small frame. Ash is such perfection. Lali tries to imagine the beauty of his life, trying to understand what it would be like to float through the world, weightless. He drifts without the slightest pinprick of sound, without the brute force of beats and whirs killing him. Ash deserves better than her.

They shouldn’t have happened, Lali believes. They are an improbability. The girl who hears too much, shut away in a place of silence. The boy who hears nothing at all, but still wears band pins on his bag.

                Lali tries to shake these thoughts away. They stay all sticky her head, glued to any loose thought. She wants to be calm, to be beautiful, and to be silent for Ash. She is frantic. Her brain won’t stop reeling. It all plays back in her head—the band pin, her pressed hair, bubblegum snaps, lipstick, footsteps, and the flash of white hair. Lali doesn’t have time to file her ideas. She doesn’t have time because soon she takes a deep breath (lasting three point nine seconds) and suddenly stops. Five seconds into the future and four feet away, she sees someone waiting for her. She sees Ash Gallagher. 

***

It was never meant to happen.

There were never supposed to meet.

Unfortunately, at three forty-seven pm on that fateful day, Lali Sanchez’s bangs slipped down. Ash had just walked by. In that moment, he saw a quick flash of motion in his peripheral vision. It seemed to be nothing important. Just a flash, accompanied by vague curiosity. He wandered about for a few more seconds, just browsing, but the curiosity chewed at him. He stepped towards what he had seen. Then, exactly four seconds later, Ash Gallagher saw Lali Sanchez.

She was wearing a nice little skirt, and it was distractingly clear. This caught Ash’s attention just long enough so that he would stay. He looked up, seeing Lali’s face. She wasn’t beautiful. Not today. However, she was just pretty enough that Ash continued staring. He liked Lali. He liked the way she had a dusting of freckles over her cheeks. He liked her dark eyes, so black it looked like they had eaten up by her pupils. Her mouth was soft and bubblegum pink. Lali, in those few seconds, looked appetizing.   

It’s funny the way things work out. If Ash had never seen her blurred bangs or freckled face that first day, he would never have been kissing Lali Sanchez right now. His hands wouldn’t be in her hair. Lali’s candy-colored tongue would never have been in his mouth.

 Lali’s extra sense seems kind of pointless to her story, doesn’t it? It was used very little throughout, and didn’t provide any miraculous twists. It was a silly subplot that never quite went anywhere. Lali’s story has been about a boy. About Ash Gallagher. She discarded any mention of her “special” hearing abilities a ways back, and never really employed them again. Her sense seemed a bit unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary until now, of course. Don’t worry. It’s about to become very, very relevant.

Lali Sanchez, as it would seem, is going to die.

Don’t be sad about it. She’s going to die with Ash, so it could be seen as poetic. Or just tragic. Either way, it’s certainly entertaining.

Lali is kissing Ash. She is knotting her hands in his beautiful hair, and pressing herself against her skinny torso. She doesn’t really know Ash Gallagher.  She doesn’t know how many pets he’s had, and couldn’t rattle off a list of his favorite foods. He is an empty person, waiting to be filled up with all of Lali’s expectations and ideals. While their lips are locked, his hands encircled around her waist, they have become each others’ imaginary perfection. Don’t judge them for that. It’s the only way they would ever work, the closest thing to perfect love.

While Lali’s tongue traces through Ash’s mouth, she notices the peculiar thing. The omnipresent music is louder. Lali has always heard Ash’s weird beat, and has taken note of its synthesized purr, its experimental buzz. As she presses her hands against him, the sound increases. Ash’s heart is racing. Her heart is as well. The sound is electrified, whirring unpleasantly. Lali feels so sick. She still can’t stop herself. She kisses Ash harder, ignoring the coils of sound that softly begin to rise.

Lali tries to ignore it, clinging on to her romanticism. She thought she and Ash were poetic. She thought it was just so perfect that the deaf boy loved her, the girl that heard too much. Lali made a very bad mistake. As the music turned shrill, she realized her misstep. She and Ash weren’t poetic. They were fatal.

There is a quiet hum, a sort of pleasant buzzing. The sound whines on like a happy reassurance. Only soon, it stops. The blood rushes to her head. Lali feels all the neurons in her brain slow down, heavy, her synapses lagging lazily like her cells have been coated in honey. Everything’s slow and sticky. The buzz starts to morph, to mutate. She gets goosebumps. The sound is amplified, crystallized, and the beat starts. Waves of sound smash against her. Organs pulsate, their shudders resonating shimmering pop. She’s trying to hang on to that familiarity, trying to make it stop. The beat pounds in.

Massive wallops crunch against Lali’s head, crippling her. The beat is interlaced with all sorts of whinnies, electronic whirs and beeps, cells reproducing and splitting. Underneath it, that beat pounds on. It’s what drives the whole thing. Lali feels herself giving into it, all her motions synchronized with its impeding boom. It controls everything. She will not try to escape it, or drown out the noises. It will push itself against her muscles, licking across bones. It will make her sick. It will make her alive.

It is the pulse of Ash Gallagher.

And, rather ironically, it is what suddenly ends hers. 

I have a story to tell, but it isn’t good. It doesn’t end in a satisfying way, like warm distilled vanilla on your tongue. It is not story-shaped.

Some tales are story-shaped. They thrill and captivate, spin webs of action before settling down into that gratifying resolution. They push themselves into all the right receptors. Perfectly shaped, fluid and lithe, they have the ability to grasp the audience and thrust them into a journey. They brandish supple edges, a clear climax. They appeal to everyone. They make readers gasp, and cringe. Or stop mid sentence, just to savor the beauty of what they have just read. I don’t think my story is beautiful. It is jagged, and cheap. It sticks to your mouth like drug store lipstick.

It is a lopsided story. It curls awkwardly, ashamed.  I think I am okay with that. I think I need to write it quickly, or, really, I never will. I tend to over think things sometimes—just a little. So I will save you from me, from my over-thinking. Here it is. Here is the story. It is not in the right shape, but I will give it to you: crumpled in my palm like a dollar bill.

***

She had brown hair.

I know that’s a horrible way to start a story, but it’s true. It had a soft auburn resin and looked like spun sugar in the sunlight. It crinkled into tiny curls, her scalp covered in little springs. Her hair was beautiful. Let’s focus on that for awhile. Imagine seeing a head of brown curls flash by. A girl is rushing across a street. It is raining, raining so hard that water sloshes up to the curbs. She is stumbling into a payphone from the rain, her springy brown locks slick with moisture. She slams the door of the payphone desperately. Leans against the edge. Her breath slowly fogs up against the edges of the glass, murky clouds forming in between the panes of silicon. She is stunning. I know this for a fact. Still her face eludes me, always obscured by that perfect angle. The curly cue phone wire spiraling in front of her eyes, her vapor breath puffed out, and that scrawl of graffiti on the glass.

She stays there for a few minutes, just breathing. Rain streams down and slaps the concrete. Condensation blurs her phone booth to white. 

She runs out of the booth, and vaporizes into water and smog.

***

It is summertime, and the road bears the heat’s weight with ripples. The air is sticky with humidity. I am getting gas at an old station. It is rundown, retro stylized and gleaming with rusted chrome edging. It curls around the local diner. Everything warbles, delicately hazy. Then I see her.

She is sitting in the diner, smiling and talking to the waitress. She laughs at something I cannot hear. The waitress is in front of her, her pen and paper covering the girl’s face. The girl gets up slowly, her head of curls coming into vision. Right as she does the waitress shifts into the perfect position to block the girl’s eyes. The girl walks in careful strides to the door. The sunlight gleams on the windows of the diner, the spiky glare against the glass flashing over her features. I hurry my work. I slam the fuel door shut frantically, pushing out the gas nozzle. Gasoline hits the ground in inky spurts. The black liquid falls towards my sneakers, and drips along the ground.

I jam the gas nozzle into its slot. My head shoots up to the diner, and I scan for the girl. I trail my eyes throughout the parking lot, throughout the surrounding roads.

She is gone.

The door of the diner is still swinging.

***

The air is brisk, and I raise the edge of my collar to shield my neck. I’ve just began walking out of the lecture hall. The campus stretches out, wide gravel pathways edged out, and my friend Ally walks up to my side. I smile. Her hair is red, her makeup shades of bruise-like purple.

She slips her arm past the crook of my elbow, linking us. We walk as our feet crunch against loose stone. Ally’s rambling about a book in one of her literature classes, something with philosophy undertones. I nod when she looks at me. I mumble agreeably when she makes a point. I feel ghost-like and cold, walking alone even though I feel Ally’s possessive grip. It feels strange and disorienting. The weirdest rush of déjà vu hits me, and I try to ignore it. Ally is getting louder.

She’s talking about time, the fourth dimension in space, about how even mathematicians need to calculate it into their equations. I agree with her absently. This obviously means a lot to her. She talks about aging, about the past and present, and the optimism and nostalgia that occupies both of them. Ally talks about a nostalgia for the future. It seems boring and pretentious.  I block out her sound, and stare towards the dorms blankly. A bus drives by the road next to us, stirring up thick clouds of dust. Through the wafts of dirt I see someone I recognize.  It’s her.   

The girl’s arms are pressed against the window of the bus, leaning dreamily asleep. I want to yell. I want to sprint to the edge of the street and move in front of the bus, frantically waving, doing anything to stop it. Somehow I’m just frozen. My blood runs stiff, its red platelets replaced with slick formaldehyde. The girl’s eyelids flutter, opening, and I can’t bring myself to move.

For one glorious moment, she sees me. The girl looks shocked. Her eyes widen and her hands flatten against the glass, reaching outward.

The bus whirs away with sudden speed, turning onto the main highway. The girl’s face blurs. I don’t try to run, or fight this, because I know what will happen. She seems to forever be a microsecond away. Seconds slip around her like saran wrap, always creating that tiny barrier between us. The girl seems so timeless, so familiar, but I don’t know her.

I turn my attention back to Ally slowly. She is vaguely annoyed, but doesn’t care enough to argue. She begins to chat amiably to me once more, but I don’t hear her. All I can imagine are the girl’s eyes opening. I just barely saw them, of course, but seeing them was so entrancing. A deep sadness seems to burrow into my gut thinking about it. I don’t know why. No logic, or simple reasoning, could even begin to explain it. And that scares me.

***

I am riding on a train to stay with friends in Cardiff. It’s late, the passengers are becoming restless, and I’m a little anxious about my accommodations.  The novelty of the train had worn off in the first hour. The smell of foreign plastic and hand sanitizer saturates the cart. It is a sterile, florescent sort of place. The train rattles to the side. My luggage is digging into my side, creating grooves of red against my rib cage.  

I attempt daydreaming. It is the best thing to do. I trace my fingertips against the foggy window glass, letting nonsense spool out from my hands like unfurling yarn. Drowsiness sets in. I curl the edge of my finger, turning out a spiral squiggle. My eyes are about to close, when I hear heels click against the floor of the train. I see her come in. Her brown hair is threaded with auburn streaks under the stark light. I try to stay silent, as I see her face come into clear vision. I know that face.

“It’s you,” she states, surprised.

I can only nod. She has sat down in front of me, smiling curiously. Her mouth curls up in the most eerily familiar way. Her hands settle in her lap and I have the strangest urge to grasp them. I want to trace the lines on her palms, memorize the designs on her fingertips. I need to make her real.

“So you finally found me,” she adds, amused.

She shifts in her seat, staring out the window, seeing the curls I drew on the window. My face flushes red.

“I suppose I did.”

Silence pulsates in the air. She reaches for the cool glass of the window, her finger extended delicately. Her hand moves in a messy semi-circle. She outlines a blurry human silhouette masked by the curls I drew. Its fragile body is curved, eyes obscured by my doodles. She seems upset. I watch her eyes slide to my hands, resting on the edge of the seat. Her palm moves towards mine hovering, hesitant. I can feel the energy of her skin floating above my own.  She won’t touch me.

“How does it feel,” she whispers, “to see me here, like this?”

I don’t know what to say. Images swirl in my mind—scattered memories and newspaper clippings projected across my eyelids. I want to tell her I don’t know. I want to say that I don’t even know her, that this is madness. All I can feel is the electricity flickering through my spine, her presence crippling. Everything is out of order. I can’t articulate what it is, but it lingers over us like smoke. Endings and beginnings seem jumbled. I look up and see her face, the one that has evaded me for so long, staring seriously back into my eyes.

I feel like I am living a memory. I open my mouth to speak.

“Nostalgic,” I say.

She smiles. Her mouth stretches wide, like an open wound. 

“We always meet in passing, don’t we? Surely you’ve noticed that. We will perpetually be traveling in opposite directions.”

I stay silent for a moment. Thoughts press up against the roof of my mouth, ready to burst. I want to touch her hands, her kinky curls of hair, her lips. Anything to immortalize her in this moment. I can already feel her drifting. I don’t know how, but I can. Her presence seems to slip away into nothing. I would like to imagine that the dimensions of space had collapsed at that moment, crumpling together and pushing at the seams. That she had slipped through the cracks, as a time traveler. A misunderstood girl trapped within the wrong place, the wrong century, bound tightly by the ticking of watch hands. This is a terribly romantic notion. Still, I have to cling onto these ideas.

She lingers a moment more, her hand quivering above my mine. Her skin seems frozen, crystallized, as her trembling fingertips stay floating above. I can’t stand it. I close the distance. My hands reached upwards and clasp hers tightly, feeling the texture of her skin.

“Remember me,” she says.

Our touch implodes. Everything stops.

***

I am riding on a train to stay with friends in Cardiff.

                I feel restless. Something seems to be looming, some important event which I need to remember. I feel like I’ve forgotten something essential. Uneasiness creeps over me as darkness sets into the scenery. It is getting late, and the only reassurance of time is the ticking of my watch. I close my eyes to sleep.

Whatever I needed to remember probably didn’t matter, anyway.

He had pretty eyes and a charismatic smile. His sweater was the nicest yellow color—like mustard—and it looked to be cashmere. Its carefully woven surface seemed to cloud across his pale skin, so soft. As I sat on the velvet seat I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel if I ran my hands across that perfectly plush sweater, and if his smile would reach his eyes if he looked down at me. His teeth were so white it was blinding. They were perfectly carved and rounded, like beautiful piano keys struck out of his pink-hued gums. He talked about God in a casual way, a friendly way. That was reassuring. This was my introduction into Jesus, into religion, and I had expected a stuffy man; one who wore a hat like the Pope’s and had satiny robes carefully created by his disciples. I supposed the man’s mustard sweater would suffice, as its sheer fibers were woven by silvery machines that pumped out millions like it.

His eyes were a soft blue and they crinkled around the edges when he grinned, like his red tissue was sealed with white wrapping paper. He quoted the bible with a sense of satire. This made me like him. He spoke of Jesus curing a man who couldn’t walk, explaining how he cured him to prove his powers. It was intriguing. My plush pew was positioned on a balcony, giving me a clear view of his preaching like a spectator at a baseball game. My new stepbrother and stepsister were with me. They had perfect thighs concealed tightly in bleached jeans. Sheila was a few years my senior, with curved eyes and elfin ears branded with studs. She had a porcelain katydid body that made me cross my arms over my stomach. Her eyes drifted to her cell phone constantly, knowing that there would be unanswered messages. People sought her out—even in church.

Kyle was busy shaking his head, his blond hair laid out across his forehead. He was one year younger than I was. Girls liked him. I remember the night when Sheila and I stole his cell phone and looked through his pictures. We found the shirtless photos of him, his twelve-year-old body stretched and tense. I had felt sick. Sheila began laughing, her ossified fingers reaching rosy lips.

“He sends that to his girlfriends,” she had whispered.

Now, as I watched his bored eyes wander across the holy stage, I wondered if he thought I was pretty. I didn’t like him. Not like that. I just wanted to be one of his girlfriends with too much eyeliner, the girls with pants tight like cellophane. When the handsome pastor told us he had a friend to introduce, I didn’t pay much note to it. A man with haunted eyes stepped center stage and Kyle’s own eyes unfocused.

“Hello. Thank you for having me,” the man said politely. He had good stage presence and a searing smile, just like the thirty-something pastor.

“I,” he said, “Used to lead a homosexual promiscuous lifestyle.”

The church quieted. Kyle’s eyes focused.

“I recently met a pastor in Nashville, and I told him I had news I’d like to discuss over coffee. The next day we were sitting in a nice little shop, and I explained my confession to him. He said to me ‘James, I’m glad you’ve shared this with me. How can I help?’ Since then, the church has been my home.”

The man continued to tell us about his rebirth, about his healing and reintegration into society. I was wide-eyed and curious. This was before I had become a gay activist, a prosecutor of ignorance. The only thing that I thought was odd was how the fresh-faced man on the stage had told so many people about his homosexuality. He obviously regarded his acts as sin, but he seemed so very eager to tell as many people as possible. It all felt wrong. I had assumed faith would seep into me by way of diffusion, the pastor’s tentacle words enveloping and saturating my heart. This man was a verification of why I had been so suspicious. After he finished speaking high school kids in cashmere sweaters dashed down the aisles like lemmings, collecting money. The handsome pastor told us that we needed to part with our worldly possessions. His smile was infallible.

The buckets passed around quickly, quietly, and my family gave no money. Kyle’s stares drifted down to the cushy velvet chairs, prodding them with his Popsicle stick fingers. He looked up at me, at my face, but didn’t see me at all. I swallowed. I couldn’t help but wonder if the ‘friend’ on the stage ever had a boyfriend who cared about him. Maybe he actually loved a man and it meant something. Did they ever rent a studio apartment together? Did they wake up in the morning and feel the joy of clear light, playing with each others hair? Maybe they just spent an awfully long time being drunk, drowning in blasphemy, keeping each other company because they had nothing better to do at all.

Kyle’s body rose from the seat and stretched. My eyes were burning. I thought back to when we sat in my dark bedroom, talking casually about school woes. He told me how he kissed a girl with tongue, but didn’t want to.

“Why did you do it, then?” I had asked, feeling my throat tighten.

His watery eyes never showed conviction, never cared. He looked down at his lap. He was probably Christian, just because his mom was. His mom was probably Christian just because her mom was. Kyle didn’t go to church or pray. He spent his time dating girls, taking pictures exploited his skeletal body, and sticking his 7^th grade tongue down the throats of classmates with pink bra straps.

“Kyle? Why did you do it?”

He didn’t bother looking at me, his face apathetic. The darkness of the room made me want to brush his hair from his forehead, as if he wouldn’t be able to actually see the motion. He looked so young.

“You don’t get it. I had to.”

At 4 AM, Violet is insatiable.

She is a raging insomniac, a girl with a sharp nose and a tendency to chew her nails. Violet stays up all night ingesting words, poetry, internet binary. She goes to Wikipedia’s page and hits random. Violet reads of Icarus, of Velvet Underground, of Davy Rothbart and Red-breasted Pygmy Parrots. She cries sometimes at night. She doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the beauty of the world, the thrill of her pulsing computer screen and yellowing book pages. Maybe it’s the snaking knowledge, the messages slithering into her system and resonating in a series of brain synapses (which she has read all about.) Violet tells herself she’s hormonal, but even this is a lie. She eats free-trade chocolate and listens to “Neutral Milk Hotel”, sometimes taking breaks to groom her budding novel. She has resolved to only write at 4 AM, designating that sacred hour each morning. Her novel is strange. It’s hallucinogenic, phantasmagoric and labyrinthine (her three favorite words which she often uses out of context.)  

Violet is afraid of light. Google has told her she’s “photophobic.” Violet has many other incapacitating social phobias, but chooses not to dwell on them. She does, however, mull over her aversion to the bright quite a bit. She considers childhood drama that could have caused this event (as she is taking an online psychology course) but cannot think of anything. Her parents were flawless. Her mother baked pies bloated with cherries, her father milled about cubicles. She went to charity balls with mother, to office bashes with father. People said she was charismatic. Violet considers the fact that her small talk could have been used up—her fabricated laughter evaporated into storm clouds. She confides with her laptop. Violet’s a hypochondriac, a bibliophile, a nyctomaniac. These definitions are comforting. It’s so lovely that she can catalogue herself like that, putting her mind into tidy little file folders.

***

Violet used to know a boy named Isaac. She once tried to put him in file folders, and maybe that’s why he left. He got so mad. Maybe he just couldn’t stand a mess of a girl, one who relished psychological disorders like candy. Violet met Isaac at an insomniac support group, one of those little things her therapist made her go to. He was so eccentric. His eyes were always shifting, always incredulous at the world he saw. He seemed so pleased with mundane events. In one of the sessions Isaac spoke of his insomnia.

“My mind will just spin off,” he breathed, “the noises of the world turning around me, the music from my radio. Night just seems so addictive. The sounds are perfect, you know?”

Violet didn’t know. She could only think of how hearing was only vibrations are detected by the ear, nerve impulses perceived by the brain’s temporal lobe. She tried to relate. Violet listened to tapes that claimed to help improve social dexterity. They came in faded covers at her library, people with 80’s hair grinning on the CD cases. She would go to her parent’s basement and slip them into her CD player, sliding on headphones. She loved the crackle of sound when she hit play.

Hello. My name is Patricia/Patrick. How are you doing today?

“Badly,” Violet confessed, “I haven’t slept in two days and I can’t get Schrödinger’s paradox out of my head. That poor cat…”

You may answer ‘well, thank you, how about you?’

“Well, thank you, how about you?” Violet parroted.

I am fine, thanks for asking.

Violet knew her victory was deplorable, but she couldn’t stop the swell of pride sweeping over her. She imagined herself as Icarus—a shining hero soaring to the blazing sun, buoyed by her social capabilities. Even though the conversations were predetermined she felt so special, so important, just because the silky-voiced woman spoke directly to her. She applied her knowledge when talking with Isaac. He seemed to humor her.

From then on, their relationship spiraled on naturally. They only saw each other at the meetings, but there was a sort of kinship in that. They both had similar views about insomnia. Violet had never been able to sleep because her brain was always calculating, always trying to conduct scientific studies and decipher indie rock lyrics. Isaac related to that sense of restlessness. There was a large difference between their conditions, though Isaac did not know this. He, of course, wanted to cure his insomnia. Violet did not.

She embraced her disorders with vigor, counting them on her fingers like a child. She loved anything relating to science. It was nice to chart up her weight, her flesh, her brain, her soul. Violet collected knowledge about from an unbiased view. It made it easier somehow, not thinking from one’s own perspective. She made a list of everything she knew about herself.

1.                   Violet has insomnia. She does not want to be normal.

2.                   Violet is a bibliomaniac and internet addict.

3.                   Violet has O negative blood.

4.                   Violet has many social anxieties.

5.                   Violet aspires to be a psychologist.

6.                   Violet likes things that are black and white.

7.                   Violet is an atheist.

8.                   Violet has no family.

9.                   Violet is in love with her boyfriend.

10.               Violet’s boyfriend doesn’t love her.

That was only seventy-one words. It was actually sixty-one words, really, if she removed the word “Violet” from each line. The declarations were neat. It pleased her that she could squeeze her life into a list like play dough into a mold. No confusion, no wonder. Just cold facts.

***

Violet remembers the night Isaac broke up with her. They were at a 24 hour truck stop, a romantic scene for two sleepless lovers. Isaac had bought her a Slurpee and was busy writing his poems on a napkin, watching her with each stanza. Violet was his inspiration. She liked knowing this. His green eyes shone electric at this time of night, new energy pulsing through arteries, as he wrote his labyrinthine notions at an alarming rate. They were hallucinogenic and phantasmagoric.

Violet recalls how Isaac kissed her. He was always so careful, mossy looks cautious as his mouth edged closer. Car horns blared. Sneakers squeaked. Isaac just whispered his poetry under those florescent lights, drowning out the 2 AM noises. His words seemed to seep into her ears like noxious chlorine, a murky sort of high that made Violet’s legs rubbery.

When Isaac was there, she didn’t think analytically. Things got messy. Violet’s mind whirled into uncharted galaxies as his hands marked her cheeks in elegant calligraphy, fingerprints webbing across skin. It scared her. It excited her. It made her so irrevocably confused and senseless that she did silly things, things like kissing him back. It was petrifying when he stopped speaking. When his hands relaxed around her waist and he just watched her, his eyes warm with emotions that unsettled Violet. The unspoken words seemed to weave between the couple, a sticky threading that bound them tightly. Violet was overcome with the impulse to run. Why did relationships evoke her fight-or-flight response? What was wrong with her?

The cashier had cleared his throat. He was did it in that impatient way, a way which meant they needed to get out. Isaac ignored him, but Violet broke away and briskly walked up to the door. Isaac seemed hurt. She flit outside and let the icy air bite at her cheeks. It felt good, slicing across her, putting sense into that muddled brain. The wind whipped away Isaac’s fingerprints. It was atonement. 

Isaac fallowed her, speaking in a bitter voice. He said he felt rejected. Violet told him that was ridiculous. He began getting upset, yelling about how she always ran away. Violet wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t listen. She shut him out in the tidiest of ways, refusing to let her ears detect the vibrations, refusing to let her temporal lobe sort them out into anything distinguishable. It wasn’t her fault. It truly wasn’t. She just had insomnia, haphephobia, nyctomania, photophobia , automania, eremophobia, and crippling philophobia. Nothing was ever her fault.

     Isaac left, breaking the transparent string that bound them. The words unspoken seemed to lace into Violet’s bloodstream, clotting arteries and making each cardiac pulsation a painful experience. She wanted to chase him. She wanted to snake her arms around Isaac’s torso and hold him tightly, feeling his human warmth. Curiously, she didn’t move.

I love you.

The words stuck in her throat, trying desperately to crawl out. Violet wanted to say it, really, she did. The only issue was that she had logophobia. Very unfortunate indeed. In the darkness, amidst a frigid parking lot, Violet felt her wings of wax melt away to nothing.

Her name is Juniper, and she has eyelids soaked in Cranberry juice. She always looks like she is about to cry. Her corn snake body is concealed with a frothy pink skirt, her eyelash-less eyes batting away the gaining water. She intrigues me. Her mother is in a wheelchair, thick brown bangs slicing against a humbly weathered face. Her mother’s hair quivers as she tries to unlatch June’s grip, let her go because Honey, oh Honey, it is school time and Mommy has to leave. June’s crystalline shrieks pierce through the preschool. The twenty-something teacher helps cut her mother free. The teacher’s bracelets clink as she pulls June’s arm, trying in vain to release the woman in the wheelchair. Once the disentangling process is complete June’s chest is still heaving, rattling, her ocean eyes wide and furious. The teacher assures the woman that her daughter will love it here.

June’s shrieks echo through the hallways as her mother wheels away.        

***

June is always sulking, always angry. I am trying to plant walnut trees in her backyard, but this is not something she likes. I find the little nuts and horde them all in my dress, staining the pastel fabric with sooty streaks of dirt. June wants to play tag. Her eyes are filled with liquid, threatening to brim over in floods of shiny tears. I do not understand her demands. I only want to watch my trees blast from the ground, shooting forward into space. Their trunks will rocket into another atmosphere, lush leaves exploding from the limbs like emerald firecrackers. Unripe buds will slither from woody branches (colored like eggs from that special Easter) and suddenly burst. Boom! Explosions of color, vivid crimson blooming in the air as if the petals were soaked in blood. I will then climb my creation like Jack did with his beanstalk.  I will fight ogres with leathery skin, an epic battle for golden poultry. 

I know I will win these beautiful wars of wit, for I am invincible. I can outsmart any beast, any man, any ogre. The world’s eyes will widen in awe when I save the day. Unfortunately, June is bawling now. Her voice resonates at an unpleasant octave. I drop my flights of fancy, the naked walnuts tumbling to cement. I tag her it. She stops crying.

***

We are playing in June’s house, fudgy fingers smashing dolls to and fro. Her mother, Irene, is in the kitchen—her wheelchair providing an automatic seat. I envy her. How nice it would be to not have to walk around, getting fretfully tired with each step. If only I could wheel around. It would be fun to wax the floors, slipping rapidly like cotton on ice.

My mother told me that the people in the “accident” with Irene had to pay her a bunch of money, enough money for the rest of her life. This only makes her situation more appealing. She and June have stuff everywhere. Their kitchen is a river of unopened boxes, the “As Seen on TV” logos so prevalent it’s dizzying. June has a colossal play structure in her backyard. She has a pink television in her bedroom. I do not understand how she couldn’t be happy with the plethora of color, waves of plastic toys crashing over her feet. 

June decides we need to go to the kitchen, so we do. She opens her shiny refrigerator. Food is piled up precariously, left-overs chocked in saran wrap. June gets chocolate milk. She doesn’t offer me some, so I don’t ask. All of their counters are messy, a clear resin of spoiled juice coating the tiles. Irene looks worried. Her hands are on the table, sticky from the juice, flipping through those scattered envelopes and punching things into a calculator. She murmurs then sighs, murmurs then sighs. I think about asking questions but I don’t. I have better things to do.

June is skipping away, chirping my name like a parrot. I race her back to her bedroom but lose. She smiles, her sunken cheeks flushed, and grabs a magenta remote. The television screen fizzles to life. A commercial is half-over, something about dolls. A theme song fades in, nautical lore painting the TV. Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

“Spongebob Squarepants!” she shrieks, giggling.

She squeals the appropriate words when they pulse across the glowing screen.  I want to build jungle forts and track sparkling constellations at night. It confuses me profusely, the animated characters doing stupid things. She laughs when they act dumb. How is that funny?

“Can we play?” I ask hesitantly, tugging at my collar.

She is positioned on her flouncy bed that seems to be in the process of molting. All her clothes are strewn across its surface, slipping off the edges. Her ocean eyes meet mine.

“Don’t you like Spongebob?” she asks, as if it’s a rhetorical question.

“I’ve never seen it.” I say. 

June’s face is incredulous, hanging open so wide I could fit my fist in it. The butterfly clips in her hair are falling off, so her expression looks even dumber. Maybe she likes this, though. Maybe she wants to be dumb like sea life on the screen, dumb so she can be funny.  My TV is old, cracked, only having three channels. It isn’t pink like hers. Mom put foil on its antennae. The quality flickers if I put my hands in front of it, which morphs me into a magician. I can scream Abracadabra and fling my peachy fingers in front of the pixels, causing them to sputter into gray fuzz. It is magic. June is missing out

***

I am in a warm living room, boxes shoved away to make room on the carpet. Irene has just popped in a VHS tape. June and I are watching this ‘environmental’ movie, the one where animated animals war against the humans. It isn’t the animation I am used to—the cutesy, bulbous and familiar. This is different. It looks like an old-fashioned painting. Thick strokes of Astroturf green and yellow fill the screen, showing us a rabbit’s clandestine meadow.  The furry little creatures venture too close to a chain link fence. A faceless man toting a gun clomps over to them. The man is gruff and demonized, his features shadowed to ambiguity by a plaid hunting hat. The littlest rabbit jumps at his boots. The man is irate. June and I watch as the rabbit’s blood splatters the screen, dingy colors of maroon pulsating against the television’s surface. We don’t speak. We only stare.

After the credits begin to scroll, we steal her mother’s make-up. I talked her into it. June slaps blush on her translucent face, and I paint my lips a bloody red.

When my mom arrives we sprint from the powder room, ill-fitting heels clicking against the wood floor. I sing ‘Fallow Me’ to both of our mothers, just like a glittering rock star. June doesn’t know the words. Only when I finish singing can I hear her cries.    

***

I am at Petco with my father (before the divorce, of course) and I watch June’s ossified face frown. I surprise myself by being so nonchalant. She doesn’t look at me, tugging on her father’s sleeve with petulant impatience.  I haven’t seen June in six years. She looks malnourished. My father smiles, his yellow-hued canines gleaming (a trait I only noticed after the divorce) and June’s father smiles back. They chat in that way adults do. I am trying to catch June’s eye, trying to penetrate her bored attitude. Her chest dons a pink top, her bony hips concealed by a cheetah print skirt. Her skirt is very short. It would look inappropriate on anyone else, but she has pink-hued lamb thighs.  Her knees are red and knobbed. My thighs are pale and curved—no longer letting me get away with skirts like hers.

June is clutching a newborn puppy. The puppy looks infantile and sickly, shivering against her. I can’t help but think how the puppy looks like her. Our father’s amiable chat seems to have ended and they depart quietly, footsteps against linoleum. My jaw seems frozen. Nostalgia is chocking over me, killing me, reminding me of our first day of Preschool. I want to say something to her. I want to say: do you still watch the Wiggles religiously? Or have you become sophisticated, plugging into mainstream pop. Do you still cry so much? June, even now, you look like you will start crying. Are you eating okay? Are you feeling okay? Your cheeks are sunken in like muddy potholes, arms and legs transformed into the twigs you used to hate.  What made you like this? Was it that rabbit? You know what I’m talking about. The little animated rabbit that the man shot. I could understand if seeing that kind of murder could upset you, June. It upset me too.  I understand that we’re all not meant to fight ogres, steal golden hens and riches. That’s fine. It’s what we do, right? I’ll be the one to plant the trees. I fight. I sing. You just crumble. 

Marina Campbell’s suicide was unexpected.

She had been so lively. Her Twitter feed was an endless stream, an emanation of all her immediate thoughts and wishes. Really, she just had a dentist appointment? The stingy dentist had fondled her arm in a most suggestive way? That couldn’t be tolerated. Her legions of followers adored her with passion, voicing their many opinions by commenting. It was unsettling when Marina’s tweets suddenly stopped. Her devotees were plugged in, plastic chords and wires canceling out real-world sounds and emotions. They only felt what she felt. They only believed what she said. When Marina’s electronic dictation ended, a virtual riot began.  

                Her Facebook account was the first to go. Her profile picture was from that time she went to Maui—sun-kissed and wild, her eyes shone with nebular sheen. Her rosy lips looked lovely against such pale skin, ossified fingers folded in her lap. Marina’s jeans squeezed her thighs like cellophane. She had a freckled constellation (like Orion, they wrote) at the bridge of her nose, a miniscule birthmark a little left to that. Her fans knew losing that picture would be a travesty. Unfortunately, Marina’s Facebook feed was shut down in January. The DailyBooth account was next to disappear, those precious moments erased forever. This lead to her MySpace evaporation. Marina’s followers knew what was coming and swarmed her Twitter page, begging her to stop the inevitable, but it was too late. On January 14^th Marina Campbell ceased to exist. 

                There were always the conspiracy theorists who said it was all a hack. An inside job, of course, by someone close to her. Someone who had the opportunity and motive to make a computer mouse sharp as a machete, sharp enough to puncture Marina’s sputtering heart and murder her with a few clicks. They created many Facebook pages, some titled “R.I.P. Marina Campbell” and others writing vulgar things about the supposed heist. Her followers created websites brimming with forums, an electronic ocean come alive. Stoners used 80’s slang to explain their sorrow. They discussed her suicide in emoticons, acronyms, weird neologisms so warped and twisted that it was a language in itself. Someone on Youtube video blogged about it, claiming they were her killer. No one really believed the boy with frantic eyes. Still, though, his rant made it to Youtube’s featured videos. He got on a talk show a few days later, that one with the girl from Alaska. Nobody watched it.

                Marina had a virtual funeral on BlogTV. It was quite tasteful, really. There were truckloads of video montages from her supportive fans. Someone had done a superb ukulele cover of a song from her favorite band. They played it softly in the montages, pictures of Marina mingled with the photos of her worshippers holding handmade signs. Marina had canceled her Youtube page awhile ago, but a few people had saved clips of her videos on their hard drives. Marina was immortalized. In the video montage, they added in a part where Marina kissed her camera good bye. A boy titled “ComputerWhizz212” edited Marina’s kiss in slow motion, the topography of her cherry lips vivid in high definition. Also, if slowed, the viewer got a clear view down her shirt.

Marina’s new funeral song was available on Itunes. The voices of her fans had been edited together, creating one soaring voice. The electronic bits of sound resonated through speakers, oscillating furiously like loose bees buzzing. The crystallized music seemed to quiver in the air—electronic, synthesized, and undeniably raw. It was a pleasant sort of church dirge that spoke of Marina’s rise to heaven. Soon, though, it was downloaded illegally and auto-tuned.  The song was blasphemously remixed until the words were indistinguishable. Someone else posted the new version on Vimeo, the video tag a picture of Marina donning a bikini.

   No one truly knew if Marina was alive in reality. All her fans could deduce was that Marina’s online self (the only part of her they loved) had broken down, her pixels reduced to ashes. They wired Pay Pal accounts to her memorial website, selling T-shirts and various kitsch. “ComputerWhizz212” even wrote up an obituary complete Marina’s face formed out of typography art. He sold that picture on his personal site, raking in the revenue received from the pop-up ads. It was all a beautiful remembrance. Marina Campbell’s memory was cherished with each and every sale made.