There was knocking on Caroline’s door, a more aggressive knocking then she was accustomed to. “Come in,” Caroline said.
“Hey,” said an average build girl, her hair was wire straight, the bottom half of which was pitch black, but the top five or six inches of her hair revealed her ginger roots. Caroline couldn’t help but relate the effect of which to that of fire turning to ash.
“Oh! Hi Robin,” said Caroline immediately jumping up and running her fingers through her own hair.
“No need to get all spiffed up on my account,” said Robin dropping her shoulder bag, then dropping herself onto Caroline’s bed.
“No, I was just… not expecting company.”
“I can barely count as company,” said Robin her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Caroline sat cross-legged beside her, “What’s up?”
“Water damage evidently.” Said Robin observing the grey veins of mildew on Caroline’s ceiling.
“Not really,” said Robin, “I’m not on my game today.”
“Well my dad gave me the day off school, and then inexplicably drove me out here. My dad, the spokes boy for education, consistency and all things appropriate.”
“Yeah my dad gave me the day off too.”
“Ahuh, Caroline I think that are father’s have organized a play date for us.”
“Oh, I suppose that was kind of them.”
“I don’t think, I will ever understand you,” said Robin incredulously, propping herself up by her elbows to better examine her character foil.
“I’m not really all that complicated?”
“No, you are a genuinely mult-dimentional individual, quite possibly the only one I know.”
“Not my boyfriend. My best-friend. I mean we hook up sometimes, but he’s gay, and has a boyfriend.”
“Yet you think I’m complicated.”
“Its not complicated. If you really think about it, and stop polluting its simplicity with your archaic notion of propriety.”
“I would apologize but the last time I apologized to you, it didn’t go well.”
“You speak the apologetic language far t0o fluently. Only apologize to me if you really mean it, I’m not the Pope; I won’t absolve you just because you repent.”
“I don’t know. I don’t really have a problem with calming someone’s discontent, even at my own discomfort,” said Caroline sheepishly.
“You are far too compliant, I need to corrupt you a bit, get you a boy, or do you already have one?” asked Robin suggestively.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I saw you with someone the other day.”
“You know, Mr. Tall Dark crack hound, last Thursday.”
“That was my dealer... Hey that was your dealer!”
“He doesn’t cozy up to me like that.”
“Gross Robin, he’s trying to induct me into his prostitute ring.”
“Last time we spoke you sounded pretty amenable to that.”
“Well… where its safe, with my ante, not with some pedophilic junkie.”
“And you call my sex life complicated. So explain to me how you rationalize celibacy in your life then consider a profession of prostitution.”
“I just need money Robin, you know, for stuff. And I mean I think that business is kind of part of me.”
“Well I mean without it, I wouldn’t have been born.”
“I didn’t know that. You don’t really talk about your mother.”
“Yeah that’s probably cause I don’t remember her, she died less then a year after she delivered me. Antie Josephine took me then.”
“She does have that maternal quality.”
“Yeah its sad she never had her own kids.”
“Well she pretty much raised her share of children, she just happened to be one at the time.”
“Yeah, Benjamin never talks about his biological parents either.”
“There’s a lot we don’t talk about in this family… Anyway I have a pack for you, I don’t need this much and I thought you’d be Jonesing.” Robin went to her bag and brought a small paper package.
“No, I can’t take that from you! Let me at least pay you for it.”
“Well, how about I sell it to you for a secret?”
“Just something personal.”
“Well, I mean… This whole drug thing isn’t an act of teenage rebellion, I was born addicted to--” Caroline started, only to be interrupted, “no not that kind of secret --also I already know that. I mean not something that happened, something about yourself that you don’t tell anyone.”
“…Ok, but you can never say anything to Alder, cause he’ll just drop hints until Ant Josephine figures it out, then she’ll tell Benjamin.”
“I honestly doubt that if my dad and I ever do have a conversation, that it will be about you, but I promise anyway.”
Caroline considered for a moment, somewhat confused as to why she was so intent on exposing herself like this. She considered her most intimate thought, one she hadn’t even fully explored herself, a personal taboo. “… sometimes I think, I’m going to die in the streets… dissolve back to from whence I came.”
“Oh sweet oblivion,” smiled Robin to herself.
“Do you ever catch yourself passively trying to make that happen?” asked Caroline.
“I don’t really think I’m alive enough to die, or for that death to matter.”
“Well, none of my friends are happy living this life, and I listen and relate to an extent. But I don’t really care either way, because I’m not living,” Robin continued to trace the blemishes of time on Caroline’s ceiling. She considered elaborating, but ultimately, whispered to the ceiling instead.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Well, to put it into terms your familiar with, Shakespeare said ‘All the worlds a stage.’ And he was right. But to me, life can almost seem like my own personal show. Like, I mean, there are two infinitesimally significant events in our lives: our birth and our death. Everything between, is just entertainment.
“So you don’t care what kind of person you are?”
“Who you are is the lullaby you sing to yourself, as you drift to the eternal void. Don’t worry you won’t understand. That’s just an effect of being an actually living person,” Robin said, more than a little condescendingly, and perhaps sadly as well.
“Someone else will understand?”
“My dad is the only other person I’ve ever felt could see or even understand me, but then it feels like every time we see eye to eye, he closes his again. It’s like he’s just sleepwalking through his family interactions. Except with me, it feels as though he’s watching me, but when I try to meet his stare, he looks away.”
“Robin, after a while on H, you might just be getting paranoid. What are you on now?”
“A lot of stuff, nothing specifically. And you just do not get what I’m saying.”
“Doesn’t something in particular call to you?”
“… No, just depends on my mood really.”
“I envy you that, I really do. Sometimes I feel so helpless, then I remember that I’ve done this to myself.”
“Well, yeah; but to be fair it was kinda forced on you also.”
“But Benjamin put everything he had into cleaning me up.”
“He did. And if you were honest with him, he would do it again. But more then that Caroline, that was his choice for his life; and this is your life, the kind of person you are, the choices you make are not contingent on someone else’s. In other words, life accelerates at indeterminate velocity, if you don’t chaise it… your gonna miss it.”
“Is that a ‘Faris Beuler quote?”
Caroline burst into laughter; she’d gone lightheaded and her body, which always felt so foreign to her, was flooded with warmth.
“In my professional opinion you appear to be suffering from extreme female hysteria, which at one point was a punishable offence.”
“I hate when you diagnose me.”
“So you don’t want a prescription for that?”
“Sorry Doctor. Give me the drugs.”
“Well if you say so,” Robin, tore a paper package open releasing a large glass bottle of fluid and two syringes. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Caroline picked up a syringe and started squeezing out the clear liquid.
“Holy shit! Not so much! I mean you shoot that much and you won’t even enjoy it! Hell you won’t remember it. Relax,” robin took the syringe and sent half the liquid back into the bottle, “it’s called a trip Caroline, you might as well take in the sights,” with that Robin took Caroline’s arm, and gently injected the liquid.
My arm is tingling, no one’s ever been with me for this before. Thought Caroline, staring at Robin in nervous apprehension, as she injected herself with an equivalent amount.
“How much of this are you going to remember?”
“Ahhh, most of it, I think, I didn’t use too much… Why?”
Despite her reduced dose, Caroline had never felt so high, while Robin was endowed with a strange sobriety. Together they drifted along a trip not totally foreign to either of them, but walking hand in hand, their travels were reinvigorated.