The Sound of Sunlight

A journal for my (semi)daily vignettes and short stories.

[thesoundofsunlight]

This was it. This would be the night. For most people it was their prom night, at least in a bunch of TV shows, but tonight was Brie’s own special night. The night she lost her V-card.

That’s how Chelsi talked about it anyway. Brie’s roommate hadn’t done it on her prom night either; Chels was way ahead of the curve on that one (because she had plenty of curves of her own, as she liked to say). Freshman year, in the back of her tennis coach’s car, and she’d have a nice long laugh if you suggested that she use “magical” as one of her descriptors. Brie had quickly learned that she had to go hang out with Ashley and Tamara, the girls across the hall, if she ever wanted a Disney movie nostalgia night.

“There’s nothing magical about it, hon,” Chelsi’d said. “But it does mean you’re opening up a whole new world of fun. You got to give up your V-card and let him hold onto his man card, and there you go. More fun for everyone.”

V-cards, man cards, these weren’t things Brie had ever talked about with her friends in high school. They were the viola section of the orchestra in a small private school, the raciest they had ever gotten was discussing whether it was okay for Tracey to french her cello boyfriend after dating for only 2 weeks.

But now that Brie was a college freshman, she had her own boyfriend, finally, and she’d frenched him after just one week! She was excited about breaking out of  shy flower mode so quickly, and she told Chels all about it as soon as she could.

Chels had told her to not call it frenching ever again, but congratulated Brie anyway before heading out to spend the night with some guy.

That’s where she was tonight, too, spending the night with some guy. Chels called him ‘her boyfriend, Dave,’ but there was a different one every week, so Brie didn’t think any of them really counted as boyfriends.

It was handy that Chels was gone for the night so Brie could pump herself up for the night. She’d put on a playlist of girl power music, blasting it as loud as you politely could in a dorm room, and spent the whole evening primping and strutting around the room, swaying her hips in what she hoped would be a seductive way.

She put on her nicest, laciest black bra and a scoop neck top that showed a decent (or indecent, depending on how you looked at it) amount of cleavage. Or it would if she had any. She considered stuffing her bra with socks and tried it out, posing for the mirror for the fifteen minutes before she remembered that Justin would discover them there when the bra came off.

She took the socks out.

And changed into a shirt with a slightly higher neckline.

She searched through the playlist until she found the song that she and the violas had listened to in the car that night that she had smiled at this random cute boy at the FroYo shop. It had been a big night for her.

He was a really cute guy, the FroYo Guy. But Justin was cute, too. His eyes were brown, not blue, and his hair was blond, not brown, but he was really nice and funny and in two of her classes.

And he was going to love tonight. Brie liberally drew on her eyeliner, something she didn’t usually use much of, but she was going for something sultry and smolder-y. Chelsi always managed to do it.

Brie borrowed a bright red lipstick from Chelsi’s dresser, knowing her friend wouldn’t mind. When Brie pouted into the mirror, though, she thought it seemed kind of hookerish and washed it off. Then she figured that was maybe the look she was going for, and reapplied it.

She got out of the dorm real quickly after that so she couldn’t change her mind.

Brie went down two floors to where Justin’s dorm was, hiding her face in her shoulder in case she passed anyone she knew.

When he opened the door, she tried to stand in a way that would flatter both her boobs and butt. She was so focused on seeing if he noticed that they both exchanged greetings before she remembered that she was supposed to be all pushy and sexy. She shoved him backwards into his dorm room.

“What’s going on, Brie?” he asked, completely missing the sexy-time makeup. “What’s up with the—” he gestured at her face.

So maybe he had noticed, then.

“I just thought,” she said in what she hoped was a sultry purr. “Maybe we could,” she thrust out her chest, “Do something special tonight.”

He wasn’t looking at her body like he wanted to ravage it. He was just looking confused.

“Have you been drinking?”

After a moment’s though, she said, “Yes.” She hadn’t been, but it would probably make her seem wild and crazy if she said yes. And she was drunk on girl power, anyway.

“No you haven’t,” he said immediately. “What are you doing here, exactly?”

“I just came to see you, and maybe…” She flipped her hair over her eyes and looked up at him through it. “We could do things. Or each other.”

She knew as soon as that one was out of her mouth that it was the worst way she could have ever phrased it.

Justin’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh.

Which was the most mortifying reaction she could have anticipated. Brie’s throat closed up like she was about to cry.

Justin’s face quieted down. He reached out to hold her shoulders.

“Brie, look. It’s not that you aren’t beautiful and tempting and of course I’d like to, but,” he shook his head. “Not like this. Not—”

He searched for words as he looked down at her. Brie filled in possible options in her mind as she waited. Not with you looking like a tramp. Not until your skin clears up. Not when you’re in danger of achieving the freshman fifteen.

They locked eyes.

“Not tonight,” he finished.

He nodded, in the way people nod when they are actually asking a question. She nodded back.

He grinned the big smile that she liked so much. “Can I walk you back up to your room?”

“Yeah, okay.” Justin took her hand in his but she immediately yanked it back. “I just want to was my face first, it that okay?”

“Sure, of course.” He stepped aside so she could get to the sink. She realized, too late, as she walked over, that she’d forgotten to wear heels.

Next time.

[thesoundofsunlight]

He looked so peaceful in his sleep.

She knew that wasn’t a very original sentiment, that people had been making that realization for so long that it had become cliché, but that didn’t make it less true.           

It wasn’t as though he looked violent at other times, either. A lot of times, he looked silly, or focused, or, most often of all, ridiculously attractive. All were good looks on him, but none had the same quality as his face when he was asleep.

It made him seem more innocent, more like a kid. Maybe that was a weird thought, to compare her boyfriend to a child, but it felt like a nice though to her.

She always loved the stories he told about himself as a kid. She could imagine him so well as a bright eyed little scamp of a boy, probably because he behaved that way often enough. His inner six-year-old twinkled through.

The kid in those stories was great fun, obstinate just because he could be, righteously believing in the rules of fair and not fair. He was dumb in that way that kids are; he had that stubbornness that, for some nonsensical reason, makes them cute. His child-size perspective of the world made it big.

There was something else she could see in the kid, too – a vulnerability. It came through in his actions, somehow, or maybe it was more in the way that the stories were told.

The six-year-old him didn’t know what his life had in store, he didn’t even think about it. Making sure that the neighborhood kids weren’t cheating at kickball, that was the important stuff, not the nebulous path of his future.

Now, years from then, she knew the future that the six-year-old him did not. She could see how his black and white understandings had faded into grays. She could see how the future had become a nuclear presence in his life, although it had grown no less hazy as it had grown in importance.

But on mornings like this, when he slept with his brow unfurrowed and his hands not clenched, when his face was relaxed in the comfort of his dreams, on these kinds of mornings, she couldn’t see any of that in his face.

It wouldn’t last, this peace. It never did, not for anyone. The six-year-old him had lost hold of it; the sleeping him would soon awake and not even remember that he’d had it.

Until then, she curved her body into the softened angle of his, protecting that beautiful boy for as long as she could.

[thesoundofsunlight]

The day had cooled down rapidly. The flat gray clouds had suffocated the sky and masked the sun.

Speeding down the winding road to the island, Madison was happy to roll down her car windows and let the chill wind in to curl around her fingertips. A tendril of it wrapped behind her neck and made her shiver, but she welcomed the change form what had been a sweltering day.

The little island where she lived was a far drive from the city where she worked, but she liked the separation. Everyone that made up the town’s tiny population liked it – that’s why they all chose to live in seclusion, after all. Even so, there were usually at least a few other cars on the road, but not today.

The wind had a bite to it. The weather was volatile; the scent of rain tainted the air.

Madison pressed a little harder on the gas.

The bridge to the island was very high, no mere rain storm would be enough to team up with the coursing water below and flood the island’s one connection to the mainland. She would rather not cross it with strong gusts buffeting and bullying her car around, though.

Between the harsh wind and the chill in the air, it was time to put the windows back up. The barriers clicked into place just as she rounded the bend that brought the bridge into view.

As she ascended, she saw a swarm of circling birds out over the midnight colored waves. And in her sideview mirror, another pack of them congealing over a spot back on the coast. Birds never circled like that above prey with long to live, and Madison felt a twinge of pity for whatever animal had met their fate, and what it would become after the birds had their full of it. Strange, that multiple creatures had ended so close to one another.

Her attention turned back to the road as she reached the crest of the bridge.

She slammed the brakes before she drove into darkness.  Covering the island in a massive, swirling cloud, were thousands of circling birds.

They weren’t flying low enough to be in the way, none of them swooped down to the earth to snatch at whatever prize they were hoping for. They just kept spinning through the stormy sky, as dependable and unyielding as gears in a machine.

Madison slowly eased her way down the bridge and onto the twilit island. The birds didn’t cease in their procession.

They just spun, biding their time. Waiting?

[thesoundofsunlight]

Her house was a garish anomaly on the street.

At night, it was brighter than any of the wheezing old streetlights. In the day, with the lights all dead on their strings and the blow up snowman deflated in a puddle on the lawn, it was just pathetic.

Her dad loved it, though. Couldn’t get enough. Since they lived in the snowless, decidedly un-Christmas-y land of south Florida, he always said that their house brought the magic of the season to the neighborhood. She knew better – the only thing their family added to the neighborhood was embarrassment.

He’d come in that morning and asked for her help setting it all up. Asked wasn’t the right word, really. He’d announced the opportunity, like it was an exciting event that he already knew she’d jump at the chance to be a part of. When she had declined his amazing offer, his face deflated just like that lawn snowman. Pathetic.

She could see him now outside the window, toiling away. Sporadically whistling Christmas jingles, stopping short whenever he had to save his breath to lug a huge tangle of Christmas lights across the yard.

Back when she was younger, she used to help him, as much as a kid can actually be any help with physical labor. The first Saturday of December was when the trappings came up every year. And yeah, maybe she was breaking a family tradition, but she also thought she was making a stand, a kind of silent protest.

It didn’t make any sense to do all this every year. Obviously, she didn’t get any kiddie Santa Claus magic from it anymore. And the money that had to go into the electric every year – it had to be expensive to light up the house bright enough to be seen from space. She hadn’t gotten a new pair of jeans, not even thrift store new ones, in months, and even her good ones were breaking out in those thready spots that fortell holes. And yet their family’s limited funds went to broadcasting to the Martians that it was Christmas in south Florida.

The kids that rode the bus to school could see the holes on her jeans; they knew that her family was scraping by. Why did her dad insist on using those Christmas lights to show everybody that he didn’t make practical decisions managing his money?

It was like they were always saying on the news, Christmas was all commercial now, anyway. And despite the halfhearted carols outside, did those Christmas lights prove that it was all about money.

[thesoundofsunlight]

Me and my sister.