Give Me Sun

My Creative Writing final/the begginnings of my second book

Rachael-
Before I say anything else, I have to apologize. I am so sorry you have to find out this way, and if there were any other way to do it, I'd never be asking you to do what I'm going to ask you to do. But as far as I know, there's isn't another way, so it falls you - my dead girlfriend's illegitimate half sister - to inform Green River of a couple things.
Was that too much of a bombshell?
Sorry.
But it’s true, Bonnie is dead. She died last night, in the basement storage unit of an apartment belonging to a drug-dealing ballerina on the upper east side of Manhattan. Sounds like a soap opera, I know. It was three in the morning exactly. The devil's hour - does that strike you as ironic? She overdosed on heroine backstage on the third night of her first real show here. I never saw it coming, but what could I do? She was here, gasping and giggling, and then she was gone. Just….evanesced, in seconds. I don't know if you're exactly on speaking terms with her mother at the moment, but please tell her father and the girls that Bonnie is dead. Chastity and Ellie cried the one time Bonnie called from NYC; it doesn't seem right that they should still be waiting for her to come home.

***

There. I said it. It seems so insensitive. But so is death. So is all of this.

***

Another thing Green River needs to know:  It was Bonnie and I who broke into the church last summer. I hope they aren't still blaming that poor boy for it.

***

The church. I remember that with painful clarity. It was the height of summer, pretentious cheer in late July. My fingers felt like dread, my lips were chapped with anticipation dry and biting as February wind. My heart was on an acid trip. As usual, the escapade wasn't my idea.
"Time for a revolution," Bonnie had snickered beside me. Her breath tasted of winter, diluting the heavy summer heat and loosening its invasive grip.
The walls radiated fire and brimstone, shouting years of epiphanies only to be swallowed by silence. Christ bled from the windows.
"You go first," I said.
"Chicken," Bonnie had chided, "No, you do it, I have to go get something," She ran down the center aisle, flaxen hair rippling in the ethereal wind she created. The dusty rocks in my hands badgered me. Had I listened, I would have heard them scrape together in an earthy snicker, suicide soldiers to begin a cataclysm.  Instead, I was counting the beats of my heart, subconsciously trying to ascertain that it was still going. Jesus stared at me from the window, cold-eyed and patronizing. The rocks coerced. I raised my hand, arm, and shoulder, one following the other, a ripple of something foreign and rebelious beneath my skin. And I noticed that the "savior’s hand has bleeding.
That was ironic, Jesus giving bread to the poor with bloodstained hands. I might have laughed had I not realized that it was only my flaming red hair reflected, screaming blasphemy against glittering sainthood.
My eyes found their reflected counterparts and searched my face, moving of their own free will. I was inundated by the need to tear my skin from my bones, take everything apart and sew it back together, new. Untouched by reality. The unremarkable gray eyes, narrow shoulders, small mouth and boyish hips barely qualifying as curves hit my like a slap in the face - because underneath it all was boredom, far-reaching desolation. It was a face that, if nothing was done, would become my mother's, softened and creased by years of unflinching obedience. But something was done.

***

We were the ones who smashed the windows in the middle of the night. But it wasn't exactly hard. They never locked the door or anything.

***

I let my arm fly like a medieval trebuchet, hurling the makeshift bullet through Jesus’ quietly mocking face.
Excruciatingly satisfying.

***

We were also the ones who stole all the communion wine. And the brandy, but the preacher never admitted to having that.

***

That had been our bad habit. I can't count the times we curled up in the wheat fields and drank ourselves sick, laughing. Of course, I was the sort of person who got drunk after one shot - whereas Bonnie could down a bottle and still walk home in a straight line.

***

Two weeks after that, when we realized exactly what kind of place Green River was (you remember that – Temperance’s forced wedding and Jon Marc getting beaten up after he kissed that boy.), we left. The sudden disappearance of all the money in the collection plates at the church was also us. We took a train to New York City. Cliché, I know, but we were raised on Cherry Aimes.

***

But how beautiful it had been...experiencing the enormity of a city after fifteen years if 437-resident Green River was astounding. It didn't take us long to fall in with a gang of the sort of anomalies that are common (there's a paradox for you) in big cities - several actors, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet who dealt glass to fund his addiction to opulence, a Rockette, and a high-end investment banker who was secretly a drag queen. And how we had flourished. Under the artificial light and heavy layer of smoke (I won't say from what...) something in us sparked. Our closet-sized studio replaced the wheat fields, and we were weaned off brandy onto straight vodka. I remember sitting across our tiny futon from her, watching her.. Her curly hair, dyed indigo, red knock-off Prada stilettos, her hands draped around the bottle with the same sort of messy grace as the translucent t-shirts thrown over the single lamp, long fingers tracing over the frosted glass like ballet slippers on concrete sidewalks. Her hands and the rest of her screamed dissonance and every time we touched felt like an “up yours!” to the purity ring that wouldn’t come off. To all of Green River. And so gracefully we spiraled towards that basement.


***

We found jobs and ended up living in a closet-sized studio. After six months of living on ramen noodles and cheese, Bonnie actually got a role in a play. A minor one, but still. I knew she was doing drugs the whole time, but I never expected it to get that serious.

***

Who am I kidding; of course I knew it would end up a disaster. Most things involving her did.  But I was too caught up in life we were leading to notice the way she shook when we danced, the way her snowy blue irises nearly disappeared into dilated black voids.

***

She died laughing though. I don’t know if it helps to know that.

***

That one actually was true. Bonnie had died laughing, a high-pitched possessed laugh, through which she managed to choke “See you in hell, sweetheart. I won’t drink a drop ‘till you get there…”
But somehow I don’t think that was the sort of thing that would have comforted Rachael.

***

That’s it.
I really am sorry you had to find out like this.
Tell my parents-

***

No, no more pretending.

* * *

Tell my mother I miss her and that she can come live with me whenever she gets sick of that misogynist hellhole. Tell her there’s more out here than she knows and that I’m waiting for her. Everyone else can shove it.

***

Touché, huh?
Again with summer had come disaster, striking this time as one more life unraveling in a sweltering city, rather than shattered faces of saints and sinners mingling on a stone cold floor. Inability to conclude my thoughts buzzes around my head. I haven’t moved in hours. It’s over.
It’s over.

It’s over.


Finally.