dribble drabble - nano 13 being updated

[eden .]

new approach and longer segments. let's see if this works.
this has censored language.
3907 / 90379

The apartment was cold and not insulated very well. The floorboards were far from pristine. The surface was scuffed and dull, and when I stepped inside for the first time, I could feel the little grains of dust and gravel and sand under the soles of my shoes. I inwardly cringed, thinking about walking barefoot inside, which was my long-standing habit since the day I was born. To the left was a long hallway that was rather dark and not very well lit (although in general, this entire apartment was not well lit. Everything was dependent on natural lighting). From what I could tell from my position at the front door, the hallway had a window seat about halfway down that looked extremely uncomfortable before ending in a door—probably a closet—and turning a corner to the right into a separate room. Directly in front of me was a deep alcove that held two doors on each side. Upon further inspection, Eun and I discovered that each room led to a separate bedroom, each complete with at least a small closet, and one of them had a half bathroom, which left the entire right half of the apartment completely open.
The right half was essentially empty space, especially since the previous residents had already removed all of their own furniture. I could still see a faint dust square from where a large carpet had once lain. The far wall was completely made of floor-to-ceiling windows, although they were warping, browning, and forever stained. No amount of Windex was going to restore the glass to its original state. Swept to the left and right sides of these windows were muddy yellow flowers on a brown stained backdrop. It was no wonder they had been shoved out of the way and as much out of sight as possible. I made a mental note to get those replaced immediately.
Pushed towards the back corner of the space was a door that led to the single full bathroom in the entire place. Next to it was a sliding door that led to a black metal balcony that was more of a fire escape than anything. There were small remnants of a tried and failed attempt to grow something living there. Shards of brown plant pots and tiny piles of soil spread across the metal like wounded and forgotten soldiers of a long and tiring battle against the elements. Being that this side of the building looked out onto a sidewalk corner rather than the neighboring building, the “fire escape” was really more of a side entrance, the steps built into the open side of the apartment and sheltered at the side by some rickety wood planks to create a pseudo-staircase. It had a landing for each floor, which made the total landings four including this apartment’s on the top floor. I liked that it was there. I felt like it was some sort of secret entrance into my home. Not to mention that it was nice having two venues of escape or entry whenever I needed it for whatever reason (those were the sorts of things that I thought about).
With some exploration, Eun and I discovered that the leftmost room was a rather spacious kitchen considering the place’s size. The flooring was also made of wood, as were the cupboards and drawers, although they were lighter than the floor. There wasn’t an island, though, and the countertops were made of wood instead of granite or something. Well, no one could have everything. Near the back was an open space that probably would hold a small dining table and chairs set. A pair of gossamer, pale yellow shades had been drawn across the window on that far wall. The fridge was kept for us, as promised, and the dishwasher seemed to be in perfect condition. The water was running fine. When I walked back out into the hallway, I opened the door at the very end and saw that it was indeed, another closet.
All in all, it was a much nicer place than I had first expected for such a generous price (for two people). I stood in the entryway and glanced up at the dark ceiling, which only opened up when you walked into the kitchen and the larger empty area with the large windows. It felt a bit claustrophobic, but I figured I would be able to live with it.
“So what do you think?” Eun asked me anxiously. I thought that was the case for two reasons: I had been imposing on her and her roommate for about a week and a half now, and secondly, she genuinely wanted to make sure I was going to settle in a place that I would like. I glanced back down and her and said honestly, “It’s not bad.”
“Oh, my God, you hate it,” she immediately jumped to a conclusion, cringing and making an apologetic expression.
“Oh, my God, no I don’t,” I smiled a little, although I didn’t much feel like laughing as much as I would’ve. “It’s in a lot better condition than I thought it’d be.”
“Really?” Eun made a face. “But there was, like, mold and stuff.”
I shrugged, remembering the black and brown stuff that clung between the tiles in the shower (there was no bathtub) and the tiled flooring. “I mean, it’s not like it’s mushrooms or anything. My house in Cleveland wasn’t much different. It’s kind of gross sometimes, but I got used to it. I definitely won’t die.”
“Ugh” was all Eun said, but she didn’t go out of her way to stop me from moving in.
“So about this person I’m rooming with,” I inquired as we stepped out the door. “What kind of person is she?”
“What?” Eun frowned. “I didn’t tell you it was a girl, did I?”
“What?” I paused on the first chocolate brown step, one hand on the black and stained metal railing. “I’m not rooming with a girl?”
“No, I mean—did I say it would be a girl?” Eun chewed her lip.
“…I guess not,” I relented. I stared at her as she shrank a little behind her wide shoulders—as was her usual habit.
“Okay, well, then you can’t say I lied,” she pointed out before she took a deep breath and told me in a hurry, “You’re rooming with a guy that I’ve never met before sorry about that but it’s a good deal the best you’re going to get come on work with me here.” I blinked and sighed. I shook my head a little before continuing down the steps, coming to the next landing that was tiled scuffed off-white and brown. Then I looked up at her regarding me cautiously from the second top step.
“Are you coming?”
There was something almost like disappointment and concern in her eyes when I spoke. With a dejected look, she clunked her way down the rest of the stairs and joined me.
“What’s with the face?” I tried to ask her lightheartedly, poking her cheek with some of my old playfulness. Eun’s mood didn’t improve.
“A long time ago you’d have yelled at me in the middle of a hospice for making you stay with a guy neither of us knew,” Eun murmured into her coat collar. My finger paused mid-poke as I stared at her.
“Sorry,” Eun finally said when I didn’t speak up. “Sorry. Forget I said anything. Sorry. Stupid thing to say.” She shook her head roughly and shot me a small smile, her large almond eyes regretful. “Sorry.”
“No,” I said automatically, not wanting to make her feel bad, “it’s not a big deal.”
Eun kept her smile, but she didn’t look entirely convinced. I guess I didn’t feel completely sure that I wasn’t bothered by what she had said either, but I didn’t feel angry or upset. Actually, I felt more curious than anything else. When had I changed? When would I change back? Would I change back? Would I be stuck in this shell of myself forever? And everyone was noticing, too. Clearly, I was not as good an actor as I had thought I was.
I trailed after Eun as she took the lead out of the apartment. We passed landing after landing, the worn wooden doors shut tight on each one. When we first arrived, I would’ve thought that no one was living here if I didn’t see some piles of mail in front of some of these doors. It felt restrained and empty. It was as if Eun and I were the only people here.
“So about that roommate,” I began again as I climbed into Eun’s car. It was a pickup truck, and it wasn’t exactly new, so the paint job was scuffed and it looked all battered, but Eun thought that it gave it personality. And anyways, it still worked just fine, and it gave her lots of trunk space when she needed it, so she didn’t see any reason to get rid of it. Honestly, I just didn’t like it because I always felt cramped in the small front seat area.
“Right,” she sighed, pushing her bob out of her face and behind her ear only to have the ends bounce right back. It was mostly out of habit that she did it. She used to have long hair. Apparently she changed it during the summer. I didn’t know until about a week ago. I was still trying to get used to it.
“Okay, well,” she said, sitting back in her seat and staring out the windshield, “you know Jackson from our psychology class?”
“That one guy that looks like he’s constantly constipated?” I translated frankly, thinking back on this guy’s perpetually vaguely pained expression.
“Yeah,” Eun chuckled a little at that, “him. Well, he has an older brother that met this one girl at a party or something and they—”
“—f***ed?”
“Well, I didn’t really ask that,” Eun said reproachfully, her cheeks flushing at my bluntness, “but I guess they probably did? I don’t know. Why does that matter?”
It didn’t matter at all; I wanted to embarrass Eun. She didn’t seem the mind.
“Anyways, the girl has a friend that needed an apartment, so Jackson’s brother asked him to ask around the campus to see if anyone needed or knew anyone that knew of a place to stay. As soon as I heard about it, I asked Jackson if he could find out if the guy would be okay with sharing an apartment with a girl.” Eun paused. “Jackson told me that no guy would say they wouldn’t be okay with that.”
“It’s a guy and he’d be sharing an apartment with a college girl. Unless they have a severe girl phobia, no guy would particularly mind that.”
“Whatever,” Eun huffed. “My point is that I don’t exactly know him, but I don’t think he’s a bad guy.”
“Wow, okay,” I said, annoyed a little. I tried to keep my cool though, since Eun was the one that did all the work and put in the effort, not me. “Do you know anything about him, like, at all? He has a job, right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure he does.” So clearly she didn’t know much more than I did.
“Is he a student? Grad? Undergrad?”
“Grad, at least, I think,” Eun frowned. That put the guy at least four years older than me. This was getting really awkward really fast.
“I mean, we’re meeting him tomorrow,” Eun told me. “You can judge him, then.”
“I guess,” I grumbled, sitting back as Eun leaned forward to turn on the engine.
“Hey, I’m sorry about this.”
“It’s okay,” I said immediately. I felt like I was apologizing too much for too many things, lately. “It’s not like it’s your fault. It’s just kind of awkward living with a guy I don’t know that’s, like, five years older than me.”
“Okay, the age difference is only at least four years,” Eun tried to amend. I smiled at her tone as she gave me a side-grin. Moments later, we were driving back to the University.
“Are you going to be okay by yourself?” Eun asked suddenly, her hand hovering over her keys in the ignition. I started. I had been blankly staring out of the window, watching the scenery and city pass by without really taking it all in or really thinking about anything in particular. Sometimes it was nice to just stare and think about nothing.
“I’ll be fine,” I tried to reassure her. I had the same conversation with my dad last night when I told him Eun found a place that might have potential.
“I don’t need to be watched over,” I repeated the same words I said to him. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look, I’m not going to be depressed or commit suicide or something,” I dismissed the idea before Eun even gathered the courage to say the ideas out loud.
“But it’s only been a few months.”
“I know how long it’s been,” I told her with more frigidity than I really meant. Instantly, Eun deflated, leaning a little away from me. I swallowed my guilt and continued, “It’s not like I’m having a party watching everyone walk around me, either. It’s annoying. Like, I’m not some bomb that’ll go off and explode into tears in the idle of the hall. I want to be able to do things again. And I feel bad. I’ve been asking you and making you do all this stuff lately.”
“You know I don’t mind,” Eun said emphatically.
“I know,” I said, “but I shouldn’t grow dependent. I think it’s time I got over it.”
“Are you joking?” Eun scoff-choked a little. “Alex, this isn’t something you get over. Not just like that. It’s not like you decide.”
“Then how will I get over it?” I asked her innocently. Eun frowned at me, unsure of how to answer and knowing I asked it just for that reason. Eun never lost any of her close relatives. She had only been to one funeral, and it had been her grandmother’s second husband that she met only once or twice as a young girl.
“You’re so—” Eun began to say before she made a noise and shook her hands in the air.
“What?” I inquired. “I’m so what?”
“Nothing,” Eun dismissed me, getting out of the trunk. I scrambled out after her, calling, “That’s what I was talking about! Totally avoiding me. You know, after the first couple of weeks, that gets really old. It’s actually super annoying!”
“Stupid!” Eun exploded into the sky and wheeled around to glare at me. “You’re so stupid. You’re stupid for thinking you can turn it off and on like a switch. You don’t have to act like there’s a set time for ‘getting over it’. And you’re not even giving yourself a chance to be upset or anything and it’s because you think that after three months you shouldn’t be so sad anymore, but you lost your mom, Alex! What else are you supposed to do? Can’t you just get over your ego for a second?” She paused, her cheeks redder than what they had been and her chest heaving. I stared at her. I didn’t really know what to say in response to that.
When the silence extended, Eun immediately took a step back, apologizing—albeit somewhat grudgingly.
“It’s okay,” I said genuinely. “But I guess now you’ll have to do my homework for me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you know,” I shrugged, approaching her and throwing an arm around her shoulders, “since I’m so stupid and everything.”
“Oh, okay,” Eun grinned, relief spreading across her face as I indulged in some playful banter. And I let her know she was forgiven.

[eden .]

it is 1 am I am just popping in to post this because I'm anxious to get crit v.v''
apparently if I want exactly 90379 words in 30 days (I figure doing a pseudo-nanowrimo will get me to finish this), I need to write 3012.63333333333 words per day, so I'm ahead of schedule ... by only, like, 550 words. >>
oh btw should I like put this on a separate thread b/c last time it had roughly 50 something parts eue
yeah I'll probably do that eventually a;lsdkfja;lsdkjf;alsd
6575 / 90379

The next day, we had a meeting with my prospective roommate after classes. I dragged Eun along because I was too nervous to meet the guy by myself, and even though I hated girl stereotypes, I had this pathological need to have some person next to me when I felt uncomfortable.
We first met at a Starbucks on a corner of some random street on some random part of the city. I’m not quite sure where it is, anymore, but I do remember that it was a very high class Starbucks. There were black couches and a wooden divider that had a large cut out in the middle of it, decorated with a bowl with blue and green rhinestones and a few elegantly shaped vases and bottled necks. There was a longue area with a long cherry table and a small brick, electric fireplace. There was a countertop lining the lounge walls with swivel stools looking out into a parking lot.
Sitting in one of the said stools in the corner, idly swiveling back and forth while looking out of a window, was Alexander, his ashen blond hair disheveled and falling into his eyes. It looked like a patchwork of multiple different hairstylists who came at him with hedge clippers with additions of his own dubious attempts at trimming it effectively. He had one hand around a grande coffee. I would later find out that he hadn’t had a sip of it before I arrived, and by the time I did, it was completely cold. He was carelessly dressed in a white shirt and jeans, as well as a pair of sneakers. His jeans, surprisingly, were in pristine condition. They didn’t look faded or torn. His shoes seemed to be completely clean. In fact, both articles of clothing looked completely new (they were). His shirt, though, was shockingly stained with shades of browns, blacks, blues, and reds. It wasn’t a sort of neon splatter graphic that some people stamped onto clothes. Some of the shades were half-faded and more than a few looked fresh; I wasn’t sure what they were at first. The same colors clung to his fingers and arms, and a few flecks had even made it into his hair. When I went closer, though, I saw that they were all paints, which immediately made me dubious. Did this guy paint for a living? And we were both supposed to cover the rent?
“Excuse me,” I prompted him nervously when we were about a foot away and he didn’t look up when we approached. I glanced at Eun standing next to me. She shook her head and shrugged. How am I supposed to know what he looks like? her widened eyes told me. But he was the only guy in the place that didn’t look like he worked as an accountant or looked half-retired, so we both decided he was the best guess as any.
He finally turned his head to take Eun and me in, black glasses framing his blank, passive gray eyes. He blinked and raised an eyebrow. I don’t think he was trying to act cool or laissez-faire, he was just naturally hard to rouse emotionally.
“Alexandra?” he asked me quietly. His voice made mine sound like a boat horn and three octaves lower than it really was. I always had a lower voice for a girl, but his voice made me feel more masculine than I already thought I was. I swallowed my discomfort and said, “Yeah. Alexandra Keum. Well, Alex. Everyone calls me Alex.”
Finally stirring, he shifted and turned his chair around to face me head on and extend a paint-splattered hand. His hand looked spindly and pale, like it’d had never seen the sun. It might not have, I considered, seeing as almost every visible square inch was covered in paint. There was some drying paint under his fingernails. I could see some tried and failed attempts to scrub layers away. His skin was vaguely green in some places and slightly pinker than it should’ve been in others.
“Alexander,” he told me quietly as I took his hand. I could feel the bones through his skin, but even though he felt extremely breakable (which was saying something, since I could barely lift thirty pounds without trembling), I had the distinct notion that he had seen some fights in his life. It wasn’t to say that he had been involved, but I thought it was wrong to quickly assume that he was one of those absent-minded painter types that softly smiled and seemed all sensitive and understanding. As soon as I met Alexander, I could tell there were as many layers of him as there were paint stains on his hands.
“I prefer ‘Alex’, too,” he commented lightly, smiling a little. I think it was mostly to come off as friendly, but he didn’t look particularly happy, himself. He released my hand and presented it to Eun, who took it and shook it with a returning smile.
“Oh, that’s funny,” I commented awkwardly, cracking an awkward grin. What else was I supposed to say? Eun introduced herself before she asked me, “Do you want something?” She pointed in the direction of the cash register, and I said, “Oh, I can just get something myself.”
“Oh, my God, no,” she practically snapped at me. I could tell she was fighting not to roll her eyes. “You might be roommates. You should get to know each other.” She left before I could get another word in. Grumbling, I called after her “Get me a mocha!” because when someone offers you coffee, there is no reason to say no.
“Honestly, I’m definitely going to be moving into the apartment whether you want it or not,” Alex confided in me as Eun disappeared. She threw up a hand to show me she heard me, so I turned back to Alex. I sat in the chair next to him.
“Really?” I asked politely.
“Yeah, my friend is making me move out,” he smiled ruefully. “We had a bit of a falling out the other day.”
Must not be a great friend, I thought to myself privately. I couldn’t think of a possible reason why someone would throw out their friend onto the streets because of a “falling out”. The only ones I could think of all centered around a girlfriend, but it definitely wasn’t any of my business.
“Well, I couldn’t find any other places that I could afford and liked as much at the same time,” I told him with a shrug, “so it looks like we’ll be roommates whether we like it or not.”
“You have a job, then?” he asked curiously.
“Well, I’m a student,” I said, “but I do have an evening job—when my orchestra rehearsals don’t conflict. But usually I can get gigs to play at, too.”
“Oh, you’re in an orchestra?” Alex asked. His eyes brightened a little and he straightened up in his chair. “What do you play? Are you a music major?”
“God, no,” I answered his second question maybe too sharply.
“Oh” was all he said. I watched him deflate.
“I play the viola,” I continued, pretending I hadn’t noticed. He frowned a little, which hadn’t surprised me.
“It’s basically like a big violin,” I said, although I hated describing it like that. It implied that the viola was essentially just like a violin, and you could equate the viola with the violin save for a few differences, but it was much more than that. But I had to admit that more people knew what a violin was, and I needed to use something as a basis for comparison.
“It goes lower than a violin does, but it doesn’t go as high,” I explained. “But from far away, they’re easy to mix up. You hold a viola just like a violin.” I had come across people that thought that I was referring to a cello when I said “big violin” and “lower than a violin”. Yeah, I’ve met people that didn’t believe me when I told them about the existence of a viola.
“Interesting,” Alex nodded slowly, but I could tell I was losing him.
“So, what do you do?” I asked, hoping that I could get him talking about himself, at least. His answers, though, were short and to the point, without much elaboration. I wasn’t sure if that was because of arrogance or reservations. I could understand the latter, since both of us were basically strangers at this point, and I was sure that it wouldn’t be a problem when we moved in together, whether we were looking forward to that or not. But if it was from condescension, though, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to live with him.
“Okay, well, I’m Alexander Cross,” he gave me his full name. “I’m a freelance painter.”
“Oh,” I nodded, trying to keep my expression as passive as possible. He must’ve spotted some doubts, though, because he added, “I work a lot of odd jobs, though. I get commissions, but at the moment, I’m not popular enough to live off of them.”
“Oh,” I said again. I felt like an idiot. “Well, it’s great that you get requests. So you’re good, then?”
“I guess I’m not bad.”
Well, at least he didn’t brag excessively.
“Um, so how old are you, Alex?”
“Old enough that I don’t want to tell you,” Alex chuckled a little. I immediately felt like a kid. “How old are you?”
I asked first, I thought to myself a bit sulkily, but I indulged him. “Nineteen. Twenty in May.”
“So next year?”
“Basically.”
“Wow,” he raised his eyebrows. “You’re young.” I chuckled a little nervously. How old was this guy?
“I’m seventeen,” he told me with such a straight face that I almost believed him. Thankfully, Eun returned with two cups of coffee and frowned disdainfully.
“Jackson told me you’re over twenty,” she chided him, handing me my mocha. I murmured a “thank you”.
“Oh, then the cat’s out of the bag, then,” Alex shrugged good naturedly. “I’m twenty five.”
I almost spat back into my coffee cup, but thankfully, I was able to finish the sip with a calm expression. Internally, though, my brain was on overdrive. The guy was six years older than I was, and was a complete stranger. I was suddenly very sure I didn’t want to room with him.
Clearly, Eun as not excited that Alex was most definitely not even a student anymore. She didn’t hide her worried expression. Alex met it coolly.
“Don’t worry,” he tried to assure us. “I’m not a serial killer or something.” When neither of us said anything, he raised both hands as a gesture of peace and suggested, “Okay, well, why don’t I have my friend check in on me and you every couple of days, Alex? She’ll be more than happy to be all over my back for a week or two more.” I did not miss the slight malignance that colored his otherwise indifferent tone.
“Um,” I bit my lip, trying to think of what I wanted to do. “Your friend is a girl?”
“Her name is Angela,” he said willingly enough. “I could even call her for you, if you want.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said hurriedly. I immediately latched onto my girlfriend-fallout theories, though. “Um, if she doesn’t mind, then that would be okay.”
“I’ll talk to her, then,” he nodded approvingly. “She won’t mind.”
Incidentally, Alex told me much later that she most certainly did mind.
We spent a few more minutes partaking in small talk, exchanging a few generic questions in an attempt to get to know each other better. I was thankful that he didn’t try to put on a move or something. It wasn’t that I thought I was hot stuff, but I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about living with a guy that seemed ages older than I did. Alex wasn’t stupid though, and he seemed to sense my line of thought. He kept carefully and quietly away from me in the conversation, leaning on his arm into the counter and back into his seat, but never forward or too close to me. His expression was kept artfully passive, and he didn’t ask my any intrusive questions.
“So what do you major in, Alex?” he asked me when we arrived to the subjects of school.
“Um,” I bit my lip. “I don’t really know. I was in biomedical engineering the last two years, but I’m not sure how badly I want to do that, anymore.”
“You’re in your junior year, though, right?” he pointed out. “Will they let you change majors?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged uncomfortably. In truth, I had only been internalizing this concern. I hadn’t raised it to any of my friends and family. Eun slapped me lightly on my upper arm behind me. I glanced back at her and waved my hand to wave away her questions. She frowned but obediently went back to her iPhone.
“Well, what would you change it to?” Alex asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged again. “Maybe something related to English. Like, literature or writing or something.”
“That would be interesting,” he said. “If you want to, you should do it.” I shrugged again. I was unsure of how much time I wanted to invest in a major that I considered too unstable to hold down a good job.
“What did you major in?” I asked him, in turn. He blinked once before he told me, “Business administration.” Saying it out loud seemed to physically pain him. I paused before I replied, “Oh, that’s cool. So you’re, like, a businessman, then?” I hoped he didn’t think I was making fun of him. It was obvious from his current predicament that his life had taken a very different track from his major.
“Half of one,” he told me with surprising openness. “I dropped out after my sophomore year.”
I could sense Eun start a little behind me, and I was very aware of how long I stretched the silence until I said, “Oh.”
I was an idiot. Was that all I could say? Alex didn’t seem offended, though. He just smiled—albeit stiffly—and played with the rim of his coffee cup with one long finger.
“Well,” he finally sighed when neither of us asked any more questions, “I should get going. Start packing and everything. You know.”
“Right,” I managed.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he smiled, getting up and throwing away his coffee on the way out. From the sound it made when it fell, I could hear that it had been quite full. I gripped my own cup as I watched him walk across the parking lot and into his car, which was considerably shinier and well-kept than Eun’s. It looked like a nice model, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t much of a car person.
“I’ll come over every couple of days too,” Eun promised me as soon as he was outside. “Sorry, I didn’t know he was that old!”
“It’s not like I can back out, now,” I shrugged with more bravado than I had. “Thanks, thought. Yeah, please do that,” I added seriously.
“College dropout,” Eun sighed dubiously, a cheek in a hand. “How is he not a hobo?” I could understand the feeling. Both of us had come from backgrounds that emphasized college and the college process. Everything was for college. That was what we grew up with—Eun from her family and me from the school that I went to. And both of us had realized very quickly, even without those influences, that without college, we weren’t going to make it very far. That was our perception, anyways.
“If he’s high the next time we meet him,” I tried to make a joke out of it as he drove off, “I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll kill me for you,” Eun laughed a little.

[CaptiveLegacy]

Im going to follow this, so I can find it and finally read this story c:

Just saying, you inspire to actually start working on my story. Seeing others work and accomplish a story makes me want to have the same feeling c:

[eden .]

ty carrie I hope you enjoy it ;u;

omg I'm the same. when I see other people working diligently I feel the need to do it as well ... I guess I feel it more competition wise than anything else but yeah XD

so I added in Alexander's POV after chatting with a friend. ty friend <3
so I'm editing this post accordingly, and then I'll edit the other parts accordingly when I feel like it. until then, they'll be a little off until like part six or seven =3=
censored language.
who knows. / 90379

“So where is the b----?” Angela asks me with a sniff, slinging her purse over her shoulder and eyeing me with contempt.
“Don’t call her a b----, Angela,” I sigh, taking some of my easels and canvases under my arm and carrying a plastic bag filled with my painting supplies with the other. “She’s a kid.”
“She’s almost twenty. That’s not a kid.”
“You haven’t even met her. Don’t judge. And would it kill you to carry something?” I add with some frustration. I nod at her car, which has more room than mine in the trunk. If I had a Volvo, I wouldn’t be asking her for her help to carry everything in the first place, but the fact is my Cadillac cannot hold all my easels and canvases, not to mention everything else. Angela only tosses her straw hair and assumes a haughty position next to my car. I shake my head and begin walking towards the back staircase. I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. It doesn’t feel secure, having two entrances. After a moment, I hear Angela’s heels clicking down the sidewalk in my direction. I glance over, but she is still lacking any items to carry up.
“Honestly, Angela?” I sigh. I am beginning to have enough of her. There is a reason she and I decided it is time I moved out.
“What?” she asks me waspishly. “It’s not like I’m kicking you out or something. Wasn’t this your idea?”
“I think you supported it,” I point out. I pause on the staircase to stare down at her. She has also stopped to glare at me from the ground.
She is too stubborn to get my stuff for me, but she does end up coming into the loft. She nearly gags at the sight of it, complaining about all the bad things about it.
“There’s mold over here!” she shouts to me from the full bathroom. “There’s water stains! The floor is filthy! What’s with these windows? I wouldn’t be able to survive in this place!”
“I guess it’s a good thing you’re not moving in here, then, isn’t it?” I ask her coldly, my patience splintering a little. I throw down my things without much care. I hoped I wouldn’t regret that.
Angela pauses and regards me with an unreadable expression. She seems conflicted and perhaps a little hurt, but I am not moved. I just want to forget her. I want to forget everything. This was supposed to be the day when I could do just that.
“So this girl,” Angela finally speaks up. “What is she like?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug, stifling my annoyance and picking up my things. I focus on arranging my easels and canvases in the open area. “She seems pretty normal.”
“What, she’s not worried about moving in with a guy?”
“Oh, by the way,” I bring up, now that she reminded me, “I told her that you would check in on us every couple of days to make sure everything was okay.”
“You kids aren’t my responsibility,” Angela snaps. “You’re not my responsibility.”
“Just for a month or two,” I promise her. “It’s not like I’m happy about it, either.” When she does not say anything either way, I guess that she agrees but doesn’t want to say it out loud. I go back to arranging things.
“What does she do? She’s in college, right?”
“Biomedical engineering,” I tell her. I didn’t tell her that Alex was thinking about changing majors. “Columbia U.”
“Oh, a nerd,” Angela says dismissively. “What’s her name, anyway?”
“I don’t see why you need to know,” I frown a little angrily. I feel more annoyed than is probably appropriate for the question Angela asked, but she and I never really got along. “She’s my roommate, not yours.”
“What, you want to protect this innocent little girl from Angela’s wrath?” she coos, her voice poisonous honey. I almost sneer but force myself to calm down. I just had to tolerate Angela a little longer, and everything would be over.
“What is this, jealousy?” I ask vehemently.
“The day I get jealous over you is the day I kill myself out of shame and lack of self-respect, Alexander,” Angela spits at me.
“Then why are you still here?” I demand, abandoning my easels and paintbrushes again and wheeling around to glare. “You think I want you here? No one asked you to show up!”
Angela stares at me as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Then she scoffs and looks towards the ceiling. I’m not quite sure, but I think her eyes are a bit wet. But that doesn’t make me feel any worse. I don’t care about Angela enough to care if she cries.
“Fine,” she finally says, her eyes mercifully dry. Without another word, she turns on her heel and exits the loft, slamming the sliding door of the back entrance with enough force to make the room shudder. At first, I think to myself, Good riddance, but when I hear the unmistakable sound of a car engine being started up, I fly out onto the staircase outside. I lean over the rail and see her inside her car and backing out of her parking space. A glance over reveals that she has opened the truck of my car and has confiscated all the miscellaneous items I had planned on bringing up: mugs, silverware, dishes, towels, blankets, and other things that I am sure Alex, as a college student, would not have in abundance.
“Angela!” I shout, stumbling down the steps as she begins to drive away. Of course, she doesn’t stop, although I hear her honk. Even with that, I can hear her vindictiveness. I finally get to the sidewalk only to see her at the very end of the street already, beginning to turn the corner to head to our—her—house. She raises a hand out the window to wave a sarcastic goodbye before she disappears. I stare after her before I sigh. I close my trunk and step back inside.

[eden .]

saldfsfdaj;asfdj;dfsaj;
the parts are getting shorter I knew this was going to happen v.v
8159 / 90379

I spent the majority of Wednesday stressing about how I was going to live with a twenty five year old guy. It wasn’t like I thought Alex was hot or anything—he actually was kind of like a glass figurine, at face value (although I think it would be unfair to say that he’d be completely helpless in a bad situation)—and nothing about his personality was particularly attractive to me. And he didn’t seem interested in me in that way, either, so that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that he was a guy and I was a girl. I didn’t like gender stereotypes either, but there were statistics behind this implication.
And of course Eun couldn’t keep her mouth shut for twenty seconds, so by the time school was over, everyone had heard that I was rooming with a guy that was six years older than me. All the questions were essentially about sex. That’s basically the only thing that college students care about. And beer. Beer is good.
In all seriousness, Eun and I were not on speaking terms by the time we were driving over to my new apartment, a few of my things stuffed into her trunk. I had to begrudgingly admit here that having a truck was very convenient.
The contents of the truck came to this: three boxes (one for textbooks, one for clothes, and another for everything else I couldn’t fit into my backpack), a backpack (filled with whatever I couldn’t fit into the boxes), and my viola, situated between two boxes in my attempt to keep it flying out of the trunk. Most of my things were in Cleveland, gathering dust in my room. My dad and I agreed that until I got a new place, there was no sense in trying to move everything to the campus. I only took some fall clothes and my textbooks for the first few months of the year. And my viola, of course.
Incidentally, I was careful to avoid saying exactly how old Alexander was to my dad, who was already adamant that I should not and would not room with a guy. He wanted me to call him once a day to make sure I was alive. I was able to shave it down to two times a week.
We arrived at the apartment and clambered out of the truck, bemoaning about how we would need to lug everything up four flights of stairs. Presently, Alex came down. He saw us out of the window.
“Did you bring all your stuff up, already?” I asked. He snorted a little and told me, “I didn’t have much stuff to bring.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but since I was basically going to see them all when I went upstairs, I didn’t pursue it. I grabbed my backpack and slung it across my back and pushed a few boxes out of the way. Before I could reach it, though, Alex took the handle of my viola case and lifted it out of the trunk.
“No!” I exclaimed, practically leaping after him. He paused, surprised by my reaction, and glanced at Eun for an explanation.
“That viola is her baby,” she rolled her eyes while she took the lightest box—the one filled with clothes—out of the trunk.
“Ah,” Alex nodded, smiling awkwardly and holding the case out to me. I glowered a little but took the case with a mumbled “thank you”.
That left two boxes for Eun and Alex to carry in addition to the one Eun was carrying already (my argument was unless Eun gave up the clothes box, I wouldn’t be able to carry a box one handed). Eun sulked but eventually gave up the box to me. She wasn’t mean enough to make Alex carry both of the boxes. That meant she took the miscellaneous materials box and Alex took the textbook box.
“Jesus,” he said as he took it. “Do they make you buy libraries, now?”
“You’re not that old,” I reminded him. He smiled and led the way around the back of the building where the back staircase was. There was less door opening and fewer steps involved. The downside was that it was freezing.
A minute of complaining later, we were inside of the horribly insulated apartment that was certainly warmer than outside (but only just), unpacking my things. Alex had meant it when he didn’t have many things to bring. The only new things I spotted were painting materials—canvases, paintbrushes in a dirty cup, a palette, easels, paint tubes, and lots of other things I recognized but couldn’t name—and a single bean bag chair pushed into the corner of the open area. In fact, Alex had claimed the entire open area as his own.
“My studio,” he introduced us to it with a grand sweep of his hand. I blinked before I grumbled, “You can’t just take this spot without asking me.”
“Can I have this spot?” He had a very innocent expression on his face as he slid the staircase door closed. I glared at him.
“You’re not going to be using it for anything, are you?” he prodded.
“Viola,” I took a stab.
“You can do that in your room. All of my stuff won’t fit.”
“Like, studying or something.”
“Room.”
“Come on, look at this space. Where’s the living room supposed to be, then?”
“I didn’t know you thought this would be a living room.”
“What else would it be?”
“A studio,” he grinned at me, although his tone wasn’t sarcastic.
“I am done with you,” I muttered, brushing past him towards the front of the apartment where the alcove was. “Which room did you take?”
“The smaller one,” he said to me. “The one without a bathroom.”
“Oh,” I said appreciatively. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”
“Well, considering that I’m basically going to be living in the studio,” he shrugged, “I thought that you should have the larger room. Don’t college kids these days hermit in their rooms?”
“You’re not that old,” I repeated myself, smiling a little this time. I slipped into the left room, the place empty and devoid of any previous presence, and placed my viola and backpack in the middle of it after unceremoniously dumping my box of clothes. Eun followed after me with her box and set it down next to mine.
“He seems nice,” she grinned at me in this secretive way, as if there was something to know. I stared at her for two seconds before I got it.
“God, Eun, is every exchange between two people considered flirting to you?” I rolled my eyes. She stared at me before she insisted, “You two would be great for each other! You seem to get along really well, and—”
“He’s twenty five.”
“Six years isn’t that much.” What she didn’t say that we were both thinking is that my mom was eight years younger than my dad when they got married, and everything worked out for them.
Well, almost everything.
“Whatever, I don’t like him like that,” I dismissed her, going out to get the third box. Alex had been prudently staying out of my room. Never enter a stranger’s room without permission. [censored] can get awkward.
He was standing in front of his easel, staring at it with his head tilted to the side.
“What are you doing?” Eun asked him. I cringed a little. I wasn’t sure how he was going to handle being interrupted. He didn’t seem to mind, though.
“I’m trying to think of what to paint.”
“What do you do?” I asked curiously, now that the subject was open. When he didn’t react, I elaborated, “Realism, impressionism, modernism…”
“Realism, I guess.”
“Do you use references?”
“Yeah, most of the time. There are a lot of new things, around here.” I glanced out the window and into the dirty street with trash-covered sidewalks outside and the unkempt buildings linking them. I wasn’t sure how great it would be to paint something like that.
“Your box is right there,” Alex interrupted my thoughts, nodding towards the box resting in front of the alcove.
“Thanks,” I said before grabbing it and dragging it into the room. I opened it and looked over the contents. Ugh, education. Eun joined me on the floor, sitting cross-legged.
“Are you good, then?” she asked after a moment. I glanced up at her.
“What, you’re leaving?”
“Yeah, I have homework and stuff.” I stared at her. She sighed a little impatiently and said, “Look, Alex seems like a good guy, and I don’t think he’s going to hurt you as soon as I leave, so just calm down. Does he seem bad to you?”
No, he didn’t. But to me, that didn’t account for much.
“Anyways,” she sighed, “I have to go home eventually. Look, I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” I frowned, but I knew she certainly couldn’t stay forever. I stood up with her and walked with her to the front door.
“Nice seeing you again, Alex,” she called at his shirt back. He didn’t look at her, just made this noise that showed that he had heard her. I felt kind of annoyed, but I wasn’t going to lecture him on how he should behave.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Bye, dear,” she grinned, her car keys jingling in her hand as she walked out the door.

[eden .]

I think I like emotional Alex and more cheerful Alex
censored language
10218 / 90379

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered furiously that night. I tapped my mouse pad a few more times with more intensity than I probably needed.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked me, looking up from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It was paperback and creased on the spine. The pages were bent and a few of them were wrinkled with water stains. I had that book since I was in fifth grade. Apparently, Alex had never read them before in his life. When he told me, I immediately told him that if he didn’t finish the entire series in one night, I was going to kick him out. Surprisingly, he obliged. In maybe two hours or three hours, he had finished the first book and was already eighty percent through the second. His reading speed was incredible, but I wondered how much of the content he was really taking in.
“I’ve watched the movies,” he had said, “but I never read the books. I actually didn’t like the movies very much.”
“The fourth, fifth, and sixth movies sucked,” I had sniffed. “They omitted a lot. The third task and the Department of Mysteries were a lot less exciting in the movies than I thought they were going to be.”
Alex had only stared.
“There’s no Wi-Fi,” I whined, pounding the floor with my fists childishly. He blinked from his seated position against a wall.
“What, don’t you have connection on your phone?” he asked.
“Well, yeah,” I admitted, “but I can’t just depend on that for internet for the rest of the time we’re staying here. Some of my homework requires me to email stuff to my teachers.”
“I can drive you to a café or something that has Wi-Fi,” Alex offered me. I made a noise that didn’t indicate whether I was for or against the idea.
“Fine,” he sighed heavily. “As soon as we get food, and beds, and some couches, and pots, and pans, and plates, and cups, and spoons, and forks, and towels, and soap, and tables, and lamps, then we’ll get Wi-Fi.”
“Yeah, I got it,” I muttered, frowning moodily at the locked Wi-Fi networks of my neighbors. Maybe I should just ask some of them for the password? Then again, that would be really awkward. I disliked awkward things.
“If that’s your biggest concern,” he continued, “then I think you’ve got your priorities kind of mixed up.”
“I’m putting the Internet first,” I said flatly. “There is nothing wrong with my priorities.”
Alex couldn’t help it. He snorted.
“Seriously, though,” he said, sobering up quickly, “we should start buying stuff. I don’t think we’ll have formal furniture for a while, but I think food would be great. And after that, soap and towels would be good.”
“What about beds or mattresses or something?” I asked. “I don’t like sleeping on floors.”
“I’m used to it,” Alex shrugged, “but if you want, we can buy an air mattress for you.”
I wasn’t so keen on the idea of that being my sleeping area for maybe over a year, but since it was better than nothing and it wasn’t like I was loaded, I agreed.
“What’s your salary?” he asked me.
“Depends,” I shrugged. “People know me as a violist for hire, so hopefully I’ll get some job offers soon. And then there are my other jobs when I have time. It’s, like, minimum wage, though.”
“Mine aren’t much better,” he frowned. “And I sell a painting maybe once or twice every two or so months.”
“Awesome,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying sarcastically. Of course, Alex didn’t react.
“We should buy non-perishables,” I tried to contribute. “No meat or something like that. I guess fruit, if we didn’t mind eating it from our hands.” I was thinking more about grapes and stuff like that. “Crackers. Cookies. Chips. If we get more Tupperware, I can start making pasta or something.”
“You cook?” Alex asked me, sounding vaguely surprised.
“Kind of. Why?”
“You didn’t seem like the kind of person that would conform to society’s domestic female role,” he rolled off his tongue without blinking. I snorted. It occurred to me that I should’ve given Alex more credit. He seemed a lot smarter than he let on.
“Where did you go to college before you dropped out?” I asked him suddenly, realizing that he never really told me where he went, yesterday. He started, as if he was surprised and somewhat upset that I had asked this, put down the book, and told me uncomfortably, “M.I.T.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. I had to admit I was taken aback a little. I didn’t think that he would’ve gone to such a school. I didn’t think Alex was stupid, I just didn’t think he would go for schools that were closer to top tier. It didn’t seem to match his personality.
Then again, he did drop out.
“But you weren’t in engineering or whatever?” I asked curiously. It seemed strange he didn’t do something like that when he went to something called an institute of technology.
“It was just easier to get into” was all he told me.
“What do you mean?” I asked when he didn’t elaborate. He shrugged. I wasn’t sure if he meant that M.I.T. was easy to get into (I was a little annoyed at that, since I had also applied and was stressing over the results—although I was accepted) or if it had to do with something else entirely. It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, anymore, though, so I let the subject drop.
“What do you do at your college, Alex?” he asked me, since this was apparently the only thing we were allowed to talk about. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to talk about my family, and Alex didn’t seem to want to talk about his, which was fine with me. The fewer ways our conversations could relate back to my mom, the happier I was.
“You said you go to Columbia U, right?”
“Yeah,” I tried to say without looking to proud of myself. It was an Ivy League school, and although I knew somewhere very deep in my heart that a name didn’t always reflect a school’s quality, it was something I appreciated.
“I applied there,” Alex said. I didn’t think he was trying to be malicious or snobbish. It was just a comment that he said simply because it related to what we were talking about.
“Oh, did you get in?” I asked a bit stiffly. I was seriously hoping he said no. I always had the need to be in the top half of any given group in terms of intelligence. In this case, it was just me and Alex.
“I think so,” Alex frowned, casting his gaze up at the ceiling. I couldn’t believe he didn’t remember something like that.
“Why didn’t you go?”
“My dad was too pushy about me going to an Ivy League, so I went out of my way to get accepted to as many as I could so I could go somewhere else,” Alex said tonelessly.
Daddy issues, I immediately thought to myself. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Alex, but my spirits were sinking every other second.
“I’ll go get something to eat,” he offered before I could respond. I watched him rise from his seat and head towards the door. “Is Wendy’s okay with you? I think there’s one a couple blocks away.”
“Oh, let me get some money,” I said, not wanting to owe him anything. He waved a hand.
“From the looks of things, it seems like you’ll be doing most of the work,” he said. “It makes me feel bad, especially since I’m older—”
“Dude, you’re not that old.”
“—so I feel like I buying you stuff isn’t so bad every once in a while.”
“I wouldn’t say Wendy’s is much of a treat,” I said happily, falling back onto the floor. My stomach audibly grumbled as I did.
“Your stomach seems to say otherwise,” Alex smiled. “What do you want?”
“Filet mignon.”
“Chicken nuggets it is.” He left without another word. I shouted after him, but he had already closed the door.

“Who doesn’t like chicken?” he asked me when he came back with two paper bags and a drink holder with two sodas. I frowned and snapped, “I don’t like chicken!”
“Jesus, how did you family feed you?”
“We didn’t eat chicken.” There were only one or two dishes in our household that really revolved around chicken. On those nights, I would stubbornly skip dinner. My mom kept telling me to grow up. I never even touched any of her chicken dishes. I didn’t know what any of them tasted like, even though my dad seemed to really like them. And now, of course, I would never know.
“What—Jesus, Alex, okay, I’m sorry. I’ll go return it, it’s fine,” Alex suddenly said, sounding panicked. I started and realized I was crying, although compared to the hysterical episodes I had during the summer, this was considerably calmer. I wasn’t even sobbing, really. Tears were just falling.
“Oh, my God,” I muttered, quickly wiping my cheeks with my sleeve and sniffing. I was furious with myself. Didn’t I say I was going to get over this? I looked so pathetic, and Alex didn’t even know what was happening. For all he knew, I was some insane teenager who apparently had a mental breakdown when she was presented with chicken.
“I’ll get you something else,” he offered, already backing away to the door nervously. Clearly, he wasn’t any better at dealing with crying girls than about eighty percent of his half of the population. I waved my hand to make him stop.
“It’s fine,” I said, my voice thick. I sniffed and blinked furiously. Thankfully, I stopped crying.
“It’s nothing,” I insisted. Alex didn’t look convinced—well, I didn’t really blame him—but he came forward anyway. I was frustrated with myself. Was everything that reminded me of my mom going to make me break down without control? It was stupid of me. This was chicken we were talking about. Seeing chicken shouldn’t cause such a strong reaction out of me. Completely unreasonable.
Alex sat down in front of me, placing the food on the floor. He looked like he felt extremely awkward. Again, no blame from me.
“Um,” he began, “are you sure it’s okay?”
“Yeah, no, I was just thinking about something else,” I said, vaguely waving my hand in the air and lifting my gaze to the ceiling to stop my eyes from welling up again.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, stop asking,” I said, silently begging him to stop asking. He took the hint. He reached for one of the bags and glanced inside.
“You can just have our fries, then, if you want,” he offered. “I’ll eat the chicken stuff.”
“It’s okay,” I said stubbornly. “You bought it for me, so I should eat it. Where’s mine?”
“You—” he began, but he cut himself off. I think he was going to say that I was being stupid and unreasonable, but of course he wasn’t going to say that in a situation like this. With a helpless sigh, he pulled out a wrapped chicken burger and handed it to me.
“Bon apetit,” he said almost sarcastically. I grunted and took my first bite. It tasted like grease and Americanism. And chicken. It was disgusting. I think it must’ve reflected on my face, because Alex rolled his eyes and tried to take the sandwich back.
“Honestly, Alex, this is really stupid,” he finally came out and said it. “If you don’t like it, just don’t eat it.” I ignored him, pulling away when he reached for me. With another sigh and kind of a half shrug like “what-f***ing-ever”, he got out his dinner and began eating himself.
“My mom’s chicken was much better,” I muttered into the bun. He glanced up and snorted.
“I should hope so,” he commented dryly around his French fries.
Yeah, me too, I thought to myself silently. I threw down the sandwich and drained the soda to wash it down.
“For future reference,” I told him, “I prefer Sprite, not Coke.”
“Eat your damn chicken, Alex.”

[eden .]

I realized I ended the last chapter with food too but oh well I don't care enough to change it at the moment
rated closer to pg since there are innuendos but like nothing pg-13 worthy, to my understanding of pg-13 ???
13160 / 90379

“Hello?” I moaned into the phone, shifting underneath my jacket. I curled my toes in my fuzzy socks.
“Alex!” I recognized Eun’s voice—barely. I immediately wrenched the phone away from my ear as I heard the blast of music, crowds of people, and the peal of Eun’s very nearly slurred voice. I glanced at the screen and checked what time it was.
God, Eun, I thought to myself. I huffed into the bean bag chair that Alex had offered to me as a place to sleep. He said that he could take the floor. I didn’t think it was chivalry talking. He just usually slept on floors.
“Alex, are you there?” Eun caroled. I made a mix between a grunt and an annoyed, unintelligible shout. I heard movement somewhere in front of me and opened my eyes. Alex was scratching his head and looking at me questioningly from the floor. Wow, he really did sleep on floors without a problem. I closed my eyes, again.
“A-A-A-A-A-l-e-e-ex,” Eun giggled through the phone.
“What?” I finally yelled into the phone, my furiousness overtaking my fatigue. “F***ing what, Eun? God, are you high?” The floorboards creaked again as Alex shifted. I looked at him, again. He looked vaguely concerned that I asked if Eun was high.
“Expression,” I muttered to him. Although she certainly sounded drunk.
“I’m calling you!” she exclaimed. “Like I said I would.”
“What time is it, Eun?” I asked with masked patience. There was a pause as she shouted to some people in the background, asking for the time.
“No one knows,” she whined.
“Two in the morning,” I told her. “What do you want?”
“So-o-o-o-orry, did I ruin your and Alex’s night?” she giggled. “Hey, if you two slept together, it would be Alex doing Alex, right?” She laughed uproariously, joined by a couple of other people. I guessed I was on speaker, so I said “Go the f*** to sleep” and hung up. And then she called again after, like, thirty seconds, so I turned my phone off.
“Sorry,” I said to Alex, who was wide awake, now. “Eun’s at a party.”
“Oh,” he said. He blinked and asked awkwardly, “Did you want to go?”
“No,” I told him stoutly, sinking into the chair. I was basically curled up like some sort of cat, my knees brought up to my stomach and my back curled up against the wall. I was going to be stiff tomorrow.
“I never really like parties,” I continued. I wasn’t very tired, anymore. damn it, Eun.
“Why not?” Alex asked. “Do Columbia’s parties suck?” I guessed he was kind of a party goer in his college days.
“I guess not,” I said blearily. “I just can’t talk to people easily. Starting conversations and everything is hard.”
“Ah, you’re introverted.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “What, you think I sit in a corner all day and don’t talk to people?”
“I said introverted, not autistic,” Alex said almost impatiently. “Calm down.”
I sulked before I muttered, “Sorry for waking you up.”
“It’s okay. I wasn’t really sleeping.”
“What were you doing?”
“Painting.” He nodded towards the previously blank easel now covered with penciled in outlines of the skyline. It was already half filled in, the buildings red and brown with brink and the streets a slate color. It made the outside, smog choked sky look a lot more beautiful and ephemeral than it really was, even though Alex hadn’t omitted the trash and cracked windows from his painting. In fact, there were tons of tiny details that were added in already, although he had left the top half of the canvas was completely blank, save for a dark purple-black skyline. It was clearly going to be a skyline.
“I like it,” I complimented him. “You made the street look a lot more significant than it really is. The brick tones are really pretty. Like, warm, you know?”
I always made a point of actually giving some sort of comment beyond “it’s good” when I complimented someone’s work only because it always annoyed me when someone only said “it’s good” when I played a piece for them. Well, thanks, I guess.
“Thanks,” Alex said. He seemed a little surprised I gave him such an extensive review. But he didn’t look bothered.
“I think I might get rid of it, though.”
“What? Why? It’s a good painting. You just need to fill in the sky. You’re, like, eighty percent done with it already.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
Alex gave me an offhand shrug. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get me to keep telling him why and how he was so talented or if he genuinely thought that it was trash.
“I mean, Picasso didn’t do the Mona Lisa in one day,” I pointed out. I didn’t want to stroke his ego, if that was what he was going for. “You just need to take your time. You did this in, like, what, four hours?” I had gone to bed at around ten out of sheer boredom. There was nothing to do in the apartment. “That’s pretty damn good for a four hour painting.”
“I guess.”
We paused.
“So were the parties at M.I.T. good, then?” I asked, steering the conversation in another direction. Alex glanced at me and shrugged. He didn’t seem to like the fact I had asked this.
“They were alright.”
I didn’t ask anymore. I never knew what to say to him.
“Well, we have”—I checked my phone—“four and a half hours before I have to start getting ready for school. Do you feel like sleeping?”
“You woke me up.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yes, I heard you,” Alex smiled. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”
After, we stopped speaking for a minute before I said, “So when’s your birthday?”
“What?”
“I want to celebrate your birthday, roommate.”
“January never.”
“Dude, you’re not that old.”
“And yours?”
“May third.”
“Oh, you’re a Taurus.”
“What you buy into that stuff?” I giggled a little.
“Angela is.”
“Oh, your…friend that kicked you out.”
“Yes. My friend,” he added emphatically, his smile fading a little. There was another long awkward pause.
“Maybe I’ll try and sleep a bit more after all,” Alex finally sighed.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably a good idea.” I went back under my jacket. I watched as he lied back down onto the floor.
“Good night, Alex.”
“Good night, Alex.”

When I finally convinced Eun to drive me home (“Why can’t you get Alex to pick you up?”), it was past five in the afternoon. I went around the back and went up the stairs. I slid the door open and crashed through the narrow opening with my backpack and viola.
“Alex, I think we need to oil this door or something,” I called into the apartment, narrowly avoiding knocking over his easels. I threw my backpack onto the floor, safely in the corner, and placed my viola next to it before moving towards the kitchen.
“Alex?” I called for him wearily, thinking of all the homework I really didn’t want to do tonight. “Are you there?”
I walked into the kitchen and straight into a woman’s breasts.
“Oh, my—” I started, backing up and shaking out my head. I gathered myself and stared at who I had run into.
It was a woman who looked to be around Alex’s age, maybe a little older, her dirty blonde hair strung in tight ringlets to frame her face and tumble around her slight, tastefully tanned shoulders. Her face was smooth and full without being too round. Her nose and cheeks had small, charming little freckles on them. She had the air of someone that definitely had a good head on her shoulders while still being really cutthroat. Kind of like a killer lawyer that was super-hot, I guess.
The main thing, though, was that she was half naked. Her legs were bare and she was wearing a button up shirt buttoned halfway, just enough to barely cover her chest but leaving a deep “V” nevertheless. The sleeves were slipping off, so her shoulders were exposed. I wasn’t sure if she was wearing a bra or not, to be honest.
“Um,” I said awkwardly, “hi.”
“Hi,” she said, giving me a smile that those b**** cheerleaders in high school dramas give you. Think Quinn from Glee.
“Can I help you?” I stammered.
“Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” she smiled. She lifted a somewhat chipped and paint-fading mug from the counter and toasted me. “Just getting a glass of water.”
“Oh—wait,” I said. “Where’d that come from?” The last time I checked, neither I nor Alex had actually brought anything more than the clothes on our backs.
“Alex?” I heard Alex calling me. I turned as he approached from down the hall. “Sorry, I was—” He stopped short as the woman came into view. “Uh” was about all he could manage, but I thought it summed up the situation nicely.
“Hey, babe,” she smiled warmly before sashaying out of the room, her hips swinging excessively. “I’ll get going right now, okay?” She passed the mug to Alex, who wordlessly took it, his eyes wide and looking rather alarmed. When she turned the corner, he immediately turned to me and said, “This is not what it looks like.”
“Oh—dude—I mean,” I scoffed, the corner of my mouth tugging upwards out of sheer amazement, “no, don’t worry about it. Like, you’re single, you’re in your twenties, you’re a guy, you have your needs, whatever.” My voice had gone up at least two octaves and cracked at least once. “Excuse me. I just remembered this really important thing I need to do.”
“I—what—Alex,” he said after me as I began making my way back down the hall. I heard him replace the mug on the counter in the kitchen. A few seconds later, he was tapping me on the shoulder. I gave him my attention.
“Look, Alex—”
“Dude, honestly, it’s fine,” I tried to assure him. “It was just kind of awkward to see her, like, half naked in our kitchen. Like, I guess I knew that this was probably going to happen—subliminally—but wow, how did you guys even have sex? Like, isn’t the floor kind of uncomfortable? I thought you’d wait until we had, like, a bed. Or a couch. Wait—new ground rule—no sex on the couch unless you agree to bleach it the following morning. And would it kill you to call before I—”
“That’s Angela,” Alex finally burst in after many attempts to try and fit his half-formed explanations into my rambling. I paused, blinked, glanced down the rest of the hall towards the studio, then back at him.
“Angela?” I repeated. “As in Angela: The Girl That Kicked You Out Of Your House Angela?”
With his lips pressed together, Alex gave me a stiff nod. Immediately, my voice dropped down three levels in volume to an accusatory hiss as I stalked a little closer to him.
“Why is the girl that made you homeless half naked in our apartment?” Alex held up his hands, shook his head back and forth, and opened and closed his mouth helplessly.
At that moment, she came back fully clothed—thank God—with a black purse slung on her shoulder. To my annoyance, she was wearing her heels inside the house. I was already trying Alex to break this habit. I didn’t need some other white girl ruining my plans. She found us nearly nose to nose in the empty hallway. Immediately, I backed off, retreating back onto my heels after realizing I was on my tiptoes. Likewise, Alex straightened his back and stared at Angela. If there was ever a time I had seen a guy feel more uncomfortable before in my life, my memory was clearly worse than I realized.
Angela gave me a brilliant, Colgate toothpaste commercial grin and extended a well-manicured hand. I took it as she introduced herself, “Hi. I’m Angela.”
“Alex,” I replied. “Well, Alexandra.” I saw her raise a penciled eyebrow.
“Oh, you’re both named ‘Alex’? How funny!” Her laugh was like wind chimes. But her grip was deathly. I wasn’t sure if she thought I was thinking about sleeping with Alex or what, but it was clear she disliked me for some reason.
“I was just dropping off some stuff from the house for you guys. You know, stuff that I don’t really use anymore. I heard you guys needed them.” She threw an almost flirtatious smile over my shoulder at Alex. I glanced back at him. He was skittering side to side and glancing around as if there was going to be some other person in the apartment Angela was looking at.
“Anyways,” she continued, looking back at me and finally releasing my hand, “I’ll see you guys around, okay?” With a pleasant wave, she floated out the door and down the stairs. I weakly lifted my hand that she hadn’t crushed and kind of flopped it back and forth a little. When she was finally out of sight, Alex came forward and slammed the door closed. I could actually feel the floorboards shake a little, and the gust of wind that came from it shocked me. I stole a look at his expression, and I was incredibly surprised and a little taken aback at what I saw. He had the blackest look in his eyes. He was downright furious. I didn’t think that he could get that mad.
It wasn’t long before he caught me staring. Something about my expression must’ve made him guilty, because he immediately relaxed and took a deep, meditative breath.
“Sorry,” he finally mumbled around the hand he held to his forehead. His brow was furrowed and he was frowning as he regained his self-control. “Overreacted.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. I was actually pretty impressed. If I were mad enough to slam a door like that, I would’ve spent the next ten minutes shouting and ranting at the closest person that would listen. Or I forced into listening to me. There really was no difference to me.
“So, um.” I scuffed the floor a little with my socked foot. “She brought some cups, huh?”
“And some pots and pans that she doesn’t use anymore,” Alex said, sounding relieved that I didn’t linger on his outburst. Well, I figured everyone was entitled to a freak out every once in a while. I was like once every two minutes.
“Well, that was nice of her.”
“I asked.”
“Well, it was still pretty nice of her.”
“Yeah, ‘nice’ and ‘Angela’ just don’t sound right in the same sentence.” I thought about that for a moment.
“Yeah, they really don’t, do they?” I agreed, laughing a little.
“Sorry about…that.” Alex waved a hand in the air. “She was probably doing that just to make me look like an idiot.”
“Wow, what a great relationship you two have. How could she have ever thought to have kicked you out?” It was a half-made, maybe-not-so-subtle-at-all-but-you-can-avoid-it-easily-if-you-want question of why Angela made Alex leave in the first place. Of course, Alex didn’t miss a beat, but he didn’t answer anything. Instead, he just chuckled a little mechanically.
“Anyways, you can make that pasta you were talking about, now,” he grinned. I felt mine fade a little.
“Oh, yeah, wow,” I said. “Geez, well, it’s too bad. We don’t have any ingredients. And I have all this homework to do and I really don’t want to make you go to the market alone…”
“Don’t worry about it. I bought spaghetti and cheese and sauce and everything already.”
“…Oh, wow, great.”
“So let’s get you to the kitchen,” he crowed, spinning me around and ushering me towards it.
As it turned out, Alex wasn’t bad at cooking either—probably because he cooked for himself before he moved here (for some reason, I couldn’t see Angela cooking for Alex)—so the cooking didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I made him grate the cheese and do the sauce. So basically I just boiled the pasta and added salt to the water. And then mixed everything together.
Our first dinner was this: Alex was eating out of the single bowl that Angela had spared us (“Oh, look, it’s the one that I painted a design on”) and I was eating right out of the pot, we were using plastic sporks that I had swiped from the cafeteria (I had brought as much as my already swollen backpack would allow), and we were sitting on the floor that was covered in invisible bits of gravel. I don’t think either of us had been happier in our lives. We nearly cried tears of happiness over the meal.
Halfway through, I cleared my throat and asked Alex, “So, will Angela be coming over to check on us like that every time?”
He stared at me, noodles half in his mouth.
“Because she is really hot,” I said with a completely straight face. It was only when I caved and laughed at his stricken face that he realized I had been joking. He joined in after maybe another two seconds to make sure I wasn’t going to pop up and be like “no but seriously”.
“No,” I broke in abruptly after he started laughing too, “but seriously. Can you tell her to just dress like that in front of me from now on?”
“Tell her yourself,” he shook his head, going back to his dinner.

[eden .]

considering taking this out completely but for now I'll just keep it.
all the parts and word count should be straightened out from here on ... for now.
14748 / 90379

“You’d better have a good explanation,” I growl into the phone. I double check to make sure Alex is in her room doing whatever she was doing as Angela yawns on the other end of the line.
“It’s late, Alex,” she sighs. “Can this wait?”
“What the hell was that, today?” I demand, going into my own room for maybe the first time since Alex and I had moved in.
“Whatever do you mean, lover?” Angela coos. I nearly kick the wall in frustration. Instead I run my hand through my hair, ignoring the tugs and pulls that happen as I tear through the strands held together with paint.
“Is your very existence made to make mine harder?”
“Try the other way around, sweetie,” Angela orders me coldly. “You should be thankful I came back and dropped off everything in the first place.”
“You wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t drive off two days ago,” I point out angrily. I am careful to keep my voice muted and quiet, however. I didn’t want Alex coming in to ask what’s wrong. I didn’t want to upset her within the first week of moving in together. And it would have to involve a lot of explaining.
“How’d Alex take it?” Angela asks me casually. “Alexandra, that is. Isn’t cute that you have the same name?”
“Well,” I say with savage pride. I am not sure why I am so proud that Alex took the situation with such grace as if I am her good friend or close relative, but it was incredible to see how readily Alex accepted what had been happening. She had actually been fine with the concept that I might’ve brought a girl home, which amazed me. She approached it casually and calmly, unlike a certain someone that happened to be speaking to me.
“Well, at least one of you has balls,” Angela says calmly but just as heatedly.
“What is this for, Angela?” I explode quietly. “I was under the impression you didn’t want me in the house anymore. Or your life.”
“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to get a roommate,” Angela says to me. “Or stay in the state. I thought you would take the easy way out and run away out of this place. As usual.”
The insult stung more than it should’ve, especially since it came from such a regularly bitter person like Angela. Still, I didn’t say anything more a moment while I tried to regain some composure. Angela didn’t speak either, but I could tell she was feeling very smug that she had gotten under my skin.
“Please promise me you won’t ruin things,” I finally beg her. Angela must’ve paused, surprised that I had made such a request.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asks innocently, using her lofty tone again. I hold back my insult and say around gritted teeth, “You know what I mean. If you want me to make a new life, then don’t make it harder for me than it already is. Besides, Alex is a kid. She doesn’t need any trouble.”
“I was a kid,” Angela points out almost wanly.
“I know.”
There is silence on the line before Angela says to me, “I’ll check in on Tuesday.”
She hangs up.

[eden .]

gah, the first time was better I think. idk, maybe it depends on what I'm playing at the time. \:
15774 / 90379

I leave my room and lean against the closed door. I massage with my face with my hands and sigh into them. Angela shouldn’t be affecting me like this anymore. I had thought I was over it. I had thought I was going to start over. Restart everything at zero. This time, I would focus only on my painting and live my life and do all the things that I wanted to do when I was a kid but couldn’t. Had I been naïve?
Angela will only last for a few months at the most, I remind myself. It is mostly for Alex’s sake that I invited Angela to look in on us, so I tell myself to suck it up and tolerate it.
And speaking of Alex. I pause as I hear muffled noises on the other side of the closed door in front of me—Alex’s door. The sounds could only belong to her viola. I had never heard one before, but I knew what string instruments sounded like—vaguely—and anyway, what else could make a sound like that?
For a moment, she played two notes together, and then another two. I wasn’t sure what she was doing. After a few seconds of this, however, she stopped and continued with what sounded like exercises. Notes went up and down in an orderly fashion. It wasn’t very interesting. I stared at her door absentmindedly as she played, slowly focusing on cooling down. I had a sort of meditative process. Meanwhile, Alex continues with her practice. It is considerably more boring than an actual performance, which I guess I should have seen coming.
After I believe I have regained some sense, I straighten up. At that moment, Alex begins to play her music for real, and I pause without realizing I had done so in the first place.
The first string of notes spin off and into the air, cheerful and bright and laughing with life. I can see warm yellow and amber twirl in the air before disappearing with a giggle. It’s like those older lamps and light bulbs that filled rooms with that soft, warm ambiance. Something like an older streetlamp that had a round light bulb and sat on a black pole. The air is filling and swirling with pink and gaiety. I can see cream and very pale baby blues. The ceiling and walls stretch away as the room expands and swells. As far as I can tell, Alex stays in the lower parts of her instrument. It’s rich brown and burnt orange down there, but still manages to feel thin and light. I don’t lose the bright, uplifting sensation. As I slide down the wall and take a seat, I can almost see an entire scene bloom before me. The fabrics nearly rustle. The tiles almost shine. The faces don’t quite appear. I close my eyes and let the music move me. I feel joy and excitement as the notes rise and fall with cheer and goodwill. I feel uncertain and doubtful as the color changes from a sky to a royal, borderline ominous blue. I hesitate as the colors become a few shades darker, the tones become a bit heavier. I relax when the tune becomes jovial, again, but it is short lived; the notes spiral towards darkness, again. I force myself to sit through it all. I had to absorb it. I had to take it all in. Already, the colors are seeping under my eyelids, making the darkness shake and shudder with every swell and deflation Alex created. I could imagine a spectrum of light and tendrils swirl from her fingertips and fly into the air like newborn birds.
And then the music stops. I hear muttering on the other side of the door. Alex is swearing rather colorfully. I open an eye and watch the door, wondering if she is going to start again. I hope she will. I hope very much that she will. Already, the colors are fading. The hall is filled with strange echoes. The last few ripples of color ruffle through the air. I feel the last few vibrations of her music shudder through the wood and sink into the floor, lost. The twirling colors like pinwheels unravel before my eyes. I feel like I have lost an old, long-forgotten friend I had only just rediscovered. I feel like something has been robbed from me. I almost reach out to snatch a last wisp of the paling memory of a bubbly white-yellow, like champagne, but I’m too late. Everything is gone. I feel like crying.
After a few minutes, the sounds from the other side of the door stop. It does not seem like Alex is going to be playing, again. Finally, I rouse myself. My bones creak and my joints feel as if they have rusted over like unoiled cogs in a clock as I rise. I feel ages older. I have woken up from a long sleep. I lean against the wall and stare up at the ugly ceiling neither of us like.
The apartment is dark. None of the lights are on. How long had I been sitting there? The sun has more or less sunk. The sky is heavy with night-blue. And now that the colors are gone, the hallway only seems colder and emptier than before. It feels like I am stepping into a shell of something.
Almost automatically, I walk to my canvas. I nearly throw the city painting off the easel. Alex said she liked it but I know better. It’s empty. It’s flat. It’s fake. No matter how many times I painted something, it would always be like that. A shade or a shadow. A shell. I never knew how to fix it. But I can do it now. I know I can.
Once I impatiently place the fresh canvas on the easel, I lift one of my paintbrushes to my palette. I hover over the stained surface. I glance at the dauntingly blank surface in front of me. I straighten up. I hesitate.
I replace my paintbrush. I have already forgotten the colors.

[eden .]

This is an essay in response to this article that my English teacher assigned for us to read [and respond to]. I wasn't sure about it at first, but after I got going, I really started getting into the essay [it's a full three pages long ;;]. I thought that it was a really interesting subject to write about, so I thought I would share it. It's about our generation, so I figured we should all have a chance to read about it, although it's specific to American kids [American paper, American specific. Sorry guys]. It's still an interesting read, though.

David Brooks, a professor at Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale, argues in his essay “The Empirical Kids” that the newest generation—more specifically, my generation—has become complacent, conservative, and wary of change through quoting and observing an essay written by one of his students, Victoria Buhler. He speaks to the adults of today, many of whom are, no doubt, our parents, about the many reasons Buhler lists that caused what she dubbed “the Tinder Effect”, where our generation (who aptly names us “the Cynic Kids) considers many options but rarely confront an issue or express ideas for the world to hear. According to Buhler, my generation prefers to see data and empirical evidence that proves that an action that we are considering has been successful in the past and, if it has not, my generation dismisses the idea. I agree that my generation, as a whole, are less vocal and generally more timid, and I also agree that we are wary because of the environment that we were born and raised into.
Brooks supplies 9/11 and the financial crisis as two major historical roots that my generation were welcomed into. As Buhler in her essay correctly pointed out, students in the nineties “grew up with…prosperity at home, and the democratic triumph in the cold war abroad”. Unlike my generation, this generation “naturally had a tendency to believe deeply ‘in the American model of democratic capitalism’”. I cannot say that, in my experience, I have ever met a student my age that truly believes that America is the pinnacle of freedom and the ideal nation. I typically can sense even a small kernel of doubt and cynicism in my peers, as we have seen the aftermath of 9/11 and George Bush’s blunders, and we are living in the aftermath of the economic downturn—which also happens to be the most crippling in the entirety of American history since the Great Depression. It is hard for us to imagine a prosperous, triumphant America. And why is it, others may ask, that we cannot fully appreciate “democracy” and “freedom” in the way that the older generation can or envision a “golden age” America? The answer is simple: we have never seen it. By the time we were old enough to understand what was going on around us, we knew in the back of our minds that “the economy is bad right now”, even if we did not fully comprehend the meaning of this. “Terrorists don’t like America”. “The government is flawed”. When I was younger, those were the sorts of things that would run through my head, even if I did not have reasons or specific pieces of evidence to back up these claims at that age. But even as a child, I carried this seed of doubt for the country I was born and raised in. Buhler wrote “the capitalist system, with its promise of positive-sum gains for all, appeared brutal and unpredictable”. To us, I believed that we encountered capitalism in the middle of the “brutal and unpredictable” period. We have only seen the bad and the worse. So why would we have faith in the strength of America when we have not encountered anything to show for it?
Another, somewhat less developed point in Brooks’ essay was the “anxiety that in the race for global accomplishment, [today’s students] may no longer be the best competitors”. I especially feel that this is true, as I come from an Asian background. While my family tends to be much more lax than the stereotypical Asian household, the reality is, I tend to hear much more about the Asian school system (specifically, Korean systems) and how hard they study and how well they do on examinations than, I expect, how much a non-Asian child would hear from their families. I feel intimidated and inadequate. I think to myself, “How will I compete with these people? How am I going to get a job or get into college? Is it even worth trying?” Yes, “anxiety” is the perfect word for the underlying worry that is quietly nagging on us every day. More and more, I feel that the expectation for not just me, but my entire generation to go to college (and, if you really want to have any chance in this world, graduate school) and become successful leaders in our fields. We are afraid of failing, but we are also unconfident in our abilities.
Thus, Buhler concludes from her analysis that we tend to shy away from major change in our society. She calls us “the Cynic Kids” who “don’t like the system” but “are wary of other alternatives”. At the same time, we are “dismissive of [our] ability to actually achieve the desired modifications”. Again, I agree with this statement, and agree that it is rooted in the failures in society that we quickly followed. It is true that we have our own opinions and support our own ideas, but I feel that there is very few news of young groups holding protests or organizing large groups to show support or show disapproval for policies these days. Buhler continues to point out that “we are deeply resistant to idealism”. From this, I would like to build on Buhler’s own point which states that “the Cynic Kids…require hypothesis to be tested, substantiated, and then results replicated before they commit to any course of action. We are generally wary of doing something that has not proven itself effective or, worse yet, something that proves catastrophic. We have seen what idealism has led to in this society, and what American arrogance has culminated in. Idealism has been tested. Idealism has been refuted. The last thing we want is to replicate idealism’s results. We have a notion that too much confidence in a country is synonymous to being a blind and foolish disciple. I see reports of zealous Americans with great pride in the United States and feel scorn and disdain. “These people are the reason why no one likes us,” I think to myself. As Buhler says, “we are unable to scientifically appraise different options, and so, given the information constraints, we stick with the evil we know”.
Yet, at the same time, we are reluctant to initiate groundbreaking movements or revolutions. Again, Buhler’s statement of our lack of information rings true, here. While we are not reverent fans of the world we live in today, we also do not know of any better world. Again, we have not seen it. I believe that we are a pessimistic generation as a whole (or, as Buhler appropriately names us after, cynical). We do not focus on how society will become better; we focus on how society will crumble even further than it already has. These thoughts make us afraid, wary, and reluctant to create change. We have, after all, only seen negative effects from people who have tried to facilitate reforms and revolutions. Thus, we settle for doing…nothing. Nothing, we reason, is better than worsening the situation.
David Brooks writes an essay in reaction to one written by Victoria Buhler, a student of his, who wrote about her observations being part of the newest generation. She dubs us “the Cynic Kids” and suggests that, because of the negative results of American idealism and strong faith in capitalism in the past, we have deep seated anxieties and quiet doubts about the true stability of American society. I agree wholeheartedly with Buhler’s opinions and analytics as a part of the very generation that she discusses. We are careful not to put too much stock in individuals praising America and how accomplished it is. We approach anything related to America in any way with a “glass half empty” mentality, an unspoken disapproval of our own country twisting our perspectives. We are nervous about shaking what we perceive to be a crumbling foundation even more than we need to. Yet, we must acknowledge that continuing to keep such a mindset will only slow change and keep society from improving, while it does not stop society from worsening. It has always been the youngest generation that has spearheaded change in American history. Perhaps it is time our generation stops sitting on its thumbs to pick up some of these spears.