At sixteen, I’m sandwiched between two shelves in the east-most
aisle of a convenience store that hasn’t seen my face on its own, the same
way you don’t buy a singular bottle of Pepsi when it comes with one free, and
it doesn’t make sense to eat a palm-sized bowl of Samyang without three sticks
of string cheese. So, it’s strange when you find it on its own, as though
something is missing, and something will always be missing as you
chew on the undercooked noodles that would’ve been a tad softer if
you had the patience to let it sit. I let my hands circle the concave
dent in cereal boxes around me; Coco Crunch; Fruit Loops; Cinnamon Toast
Crunch; if I asked you today, I think your answer would be the same,
you’d still tell me you like Coco Crunch the best because it was
the first cereal you’d ever tried and you’ve always had a way of holding
onto things and never letting go. I’m embarrassed to admit I still remember
what happened; because I was there and I never did forget; the
milk stains around your mouth and crumbs on the collar of our white uniform,
you should be more careful, you know? I know I shouldn’t think about you
when things ended so badly, but I still wonder who’s blowing crumbs off
your shoulder when you eat and fans you when the sun’s out and it’s 30°C; well,
I don’t know how you’ll find someone who loves you the way I do; you
were my best friend once; you were everything; so I’m glad you’re happy
if you are; sorry, I unfollowed you on Spotify so I can’t see how many hours
you’ve spent listening to our favourite song
okay, that’s a lie. Two girls clad in netball jerseys chatter among themselves
as they stumble into the store, pushing, pulling and stumbling into each other’s
bodies in the hysteria of their laughter. They cast a stare in my direction, pausing at the
head of the aisle, like they’ve chanced upon a dead body. She looks depressed, one of them whispers loudly, but it’s easy to neglect a ghost. She starts pulling cereal boxes off the shelves, and in every movement there’s a sticky reminder of the times we’ve clawed through ice-cream freezers, fishing out sticks of $4.30 Magnum ice-cream, it’s a rip-off, don’t you think? We buy them anyways. We always buy them. But now I’m here between cracks of unwashed tiles, the guts of soda bottles pouring in between them, because someone was careless enough to knock them over and not clean them; and no one wants to fix things they’ve broken; maybe broken things aren’t meant to be fixed; I roll around between heart-shaped gummies and crush Kit Kat wrappers beneath my weight, and a garbled song that was overplayed during the summer of 2016 chokes out of the dusty speakers; ‘Cause you know it’s been a long time coming / Don’t you let me fall, oh; I know there’s no point prying six years of friendship out of the drain, but teenage minds are built to clutch and to hold, to take things that seem so miniscule in the face of adulthood and make them so large; I should be running / You keep me coming for you; Teenagehood
is nothing if not running and rebelling, if not crying and comforting and becoming more
whole. And something something, I wish I could pretend I didn’t need you, but the teenage mind is a traitor too; it can’t decide if it should keep you or let you go.
I saw you at the end of the hallway and you were laughing with someone else so I guess it isn’t just me and you and the 7/11 underneath my school anymore, and I guess it’s okay that you’ve moved on while I still have yellowed receipts in the back pocket of my skirt, and; Ah girl, you okay? I should accept that I won’t see your face when I peer between the gaps of seaweed bags on Aisle 3 (Asian Snacks, Confectionaries, Baked Goods); Ah girl ah? What happened to you? And I need to delete the videos we’ve made of our impulsive decisions, buying $5.20 wafers with trading cards of our favourite anime, promising we won’t fall for the scam but coming back anyways; Ah girl? And I’ll never be able to drink Pepsi because you won’t be there to try the flavours I don’t like and; Ah
girl, are you okay? I DON’T KNOW. I don’t know.
Editor: Leila W.