The Green House
The house is yellow but it used to be green. You can see the remnants of green when you walk up the porch steps and put your key in the lock, but of course you don’t need a key because you never lock it, none of you do, so you walk through the stained-glass door and wave hi to Mo and Linny who are in their bedroom smoking a bowl cross-legged on the bed—they would offer you some but they know you won’t take it, you’d rather be drunk—so you walk across the hardwood floors, original to the old house but painted black and always sticky, and into your living room of mismatched, passed-down furniture (on the floor: the pot Shelby puked in last week, Hallie’s dirty paintbrushes, a few crushed cans of PBR, one dead cockroach). You keep walking into the dining room where you have never dined but have often stood and stomped barefoot on the table, all of you yelling lyrics at each other over the music, and you wave hi to Mara who is sitting on the floor in her underwear in front of the mirror and swipe, swipe, swiping mascara on her eyelashes, and wave hi to Phoebe and Ally who are on her bed swiping on their phones, and you move into the kitchen, crusted silverware on the counter, and wave hi to Mara’s boyfriend Tim who is having a cigarette outside. Since Tim is here, that means Eric and the other boys must be here somewhere, and that makes you want to invite Parker, but the risks are too great: he will not respond, he will ask to bring friends, you will watch him watch Alex all night. You open the fridge—it’s mostly glass bottles and to-go boxes (and something fuzzy in the back that you all refuse to touch)—and you grab a Bud Light Platinum and trace your steps back to the front door to go up the stairs. Up here is the chalk wall, ghosts of tallies drawn outside the bedrooms, erased because last week you all discovered feminism and decided you should not compete for who’s had the most men sleep inside their bedroom, a relief because you had the fewest. You pause outside Jackie’s door where she’s busy trying on the whole of her closet. While she chatters, you grab one of her shirts off the floor, your favorite, and tell her you’ll be back for shots after your shower, and then you walk past Lily’s bedroom, but Lily is not home, is always working at the bar, but if she were home, you would sit on her bed and stay awhile—she would break from shuffling her anatomy notes, ask if your philosophy professor has gotten to the meaning of it all yet—but instead you will have to wait until you get to the bar to tell her about class, about how Phoebe and Ally and Tim never sleep in their own beds, and Eric is always trying to get into yours, and she will pour the beer and pass it to you until it’s 2am, and then you’ll walk home together, each holding a burrito and one of Jackie’s arms. Your bedroom door, when you get to it, is shut and locked, and you knock, knock, knock, and finally Eric and the other boys stumble out, laughing that they’re sorry, and you roll your eyes and shut the door and ignore that it smells like boy, like smoke, and they’ve left cocaine dust on your nightstand, but you know they only choose your room because it’s the furthest from everybody else, and here they are less likely to have to share their drugs. You are not mad. You drop your bookbag on the ground and sit on your bed with its pretty iron frame, where on the nights you are not carrying Jackie home, or she is not carrying you, you are here writing furiously, furious for nothing, glad to be safe in your bedroom, its black hardwood floors and white walls Hallie helped you paint, surrounded by your father’s Persian rug and your mom’s old Bible—you don’t read it but it’s nice to have near—but looking at the Bible now makes you want to cry, kind of. You don’t because your phone buzzes, but it’s only your mom asking how you are with a sunshine emoji, and you don’t have the heart to say anything except you’re happy and having fun, pink heart, and you plug your phone into its charger because you need it to stay alive at the bar, in case, and then you take your beer—almost empty now—and walk to Hallie’s room where she’s wrapped up with Taylor. They giggle and pull the blanket closer around them, and you mutter that you’re sorry, but they ought to be sorry for being so sick in love when they know Parker won’t touch you the way you wish he would. They must know because you’ve told Hallie who probably told Taylor, and you are angry at her even though you love her, and you’re glad she’s in love, you are, so you keep walking into your shared bathroom and open the shower curtain, turning the hot water knob as far as it will go and ensuring the spider in the corner is still there where you saw him last—he doesn’t bother you, and you hope he doesn’t leave. You lower the toilet seat carefully so the duct tape doesn’t give out, and you sit and wait for the hot water to turn unbearable. You feel the floor pulse beneath you and figure the boys have chosen a playlist, the girls are dressed and ready, they are waiting for you but won’t notice if you don’t show up, the party has just started, it is never going to end.
Razi Shadmehry (@razishadmehry) is a writer from Atlanta, GA. She is an MFA student at Northern Arizona University where she teaches creative writing and serves as the nonfiction editor for Thin Air Magazine. Her work can be found in The Cincinnati Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, and Red Noise Collective.