She was 19 years old. She never said goodbye when she talked on the telephone. Her skin was the most perfect thing about her. It was like porcelain and bruised easily. Her nails and her clothes were usually all black, as if in constant mourning. She wore red lipstick everyday. She said she wanted men to think of her lips as plump red cherries so they couldn’t help but be tempted by them. She worked for a man painted with tattoos at the shoe store on 7th street. She stayed in the back of the shop drinking most of the time. Usually with the boss, leaving the sneakers and sandals unattended. Sometimes she went away and didn’t come to work for a while.

Her name was Waverly. And she was the most beautiful thing I had seen. That anyone had seen.

Her mother was a singer. She could sing any jazz song you could think of without fail. Their house was full of old vinyls, but the record player was broken. It had been for years. Her dad owned a motorcycle. He also owned their home, but he lived on the bike, never in the house.  They had one child, Waverly, and she stayed there just as rarely as her father. She hadn’t been going to school for a couple years and most of the time she slept at other people’s houses. They weren’t her friends though. She never really had friends.

She fell in love easily. Her love was deep, shirt-tugging, and undeserved, but also fleeting and nomadic. There was always someone in her life. Usually many. The men were older and most already had a girl, lots even had a wife. She lived for them, but got nothing in return. They were not good men. They were the kind of men with short attention spans and even shorter tempers. But she did what they wanted, because being with them, living with them, and having their attent was what made her feel most alive, I think.

Waverly got out of the car in front of the small champagne townhouse. Her house wasn’t her home anymore. It was just somewhere she went to pick up her mail. She turned around and leaned into the open car window. “It’ll only be second,” she said to the dark figure, his wrists folded over the steering wheel. The sidewalk in front of her house had a small tree growing out of it, right through the cracks in the middle of the path. No one had ever thought to get rid of it, so there it sat, marked with the initials of neighbor boys with pocket knives.

If you listened to her hard enough, you could hear her whispering to herself as she walked up the driveway, but I never knew what she said when she did that. She grabbed the letters out of the mail box. She wore a wedding ring. Maybe not a wedding ring. It was a pearl, not a diamond, but it was on the finger that showed she was taken. I knew though that she was never truly owned by any one person.

She started back towards the car, but then changed her course and walked up to the front door. It had been about three months since she had spoken to her mother and this was what compelled her to walk up the front stoop and leave her companion waiting impatiently in the Cadillac. The door was unlocked. She walked in and saw that her mother was sitting in the foyer. She looked old like the couch on which she sat, puckered and wrinkled with some spots especially worn down or sagging. Aged, but in no way venerable, not someone to look up to with any sort of reverence.

Waverly pitied her. The old woman wore curlers in her hair and her eyes were fastened to the television screen in front of her. Waverly hoped no man would ever see her in the state she currently saw her mother.  She was content with never making it to old age. She and I had that in common. In fact, she would talk about how surprised she was at making it to adulthood.

Her mother hadn’t heard her enter and she had changed her mind about wanting to talk, so she turned around with revulsion and exited. The car was no longer waiting under the streetlamp. He’d see her later. When he wanted her.

Further down the street her surroundings shifted from townhouses to raucous bars as she walked alone in the dark, a cigarette perched between her fingers. No, not walked. She swayed. The epitome of glamour and beguilement. The smell of alcohol entered her nose and dragged her into the dark building. It possessed a power over her. It had for a few years. She ignored the shrill whistle of a man whose eyes were but one set in dozens that followed her from the entrance to the bar stool.

“ You ain’t been back here in a while,” the bartender said. He slid her usual drink next to the mail that had strewn across the overly shiny wood bar top.

“I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve chosen to fall prey to my drinks in more private places,” she said. The bartender grunted.

“Well everybody’s missed you. Can’t you tell?” He nodded towards a group of men seated a few chairs over, all of them watching her with an unnerving intensity. She just continued looking ahead and began to open the mail. One was an advertisement containing coupons for cheap perfume. The second was from a man in prison. The last letter had a return address headed with the words “United States Army.” It was from me. Well, it wasn’t really from me. But it was about me. People often get pretty sentimental about this kind of thing. Especially when its written down. Letters are such a shmaltzy way to communicate. But that was not the way this letter was written. No one would really expect that in a letter from the army anyway, but it was still full of saccharine formalities like “We deeply regret to inform you.” My name was littered throughout the letter. They don’t tell you exactly what happened, they just tell you when.

She leaned forward onto the bar. Her hair hung in long dark curls mirroring those of silver screen starlets and it shrouded her face as she hunched over. She drank what sat in front of her and all that followed.

“You need a ride, baby?” A hand rested on her inner thigh. “I can help you out.”

“My ride just pulled up, but thank you.” She stood up without looking at the voice’s owner. His face crumpled with the realization of her uncharacteristic rejection. On her way out she threw away all but the last missive,which she tucked into her bag next to a compact.

The street was void of waiting vehicles. Her fingers fiddled with the cross that hung from a gold chain around her neck. She had been raised Christian. She and God didn’t get along anymore, yet the necklace remained. Headlights reamed through the darkness and illuminated her figure leaned up against the bricks. She recognized the driver. Chances were if she stayed somewhere long enough she was bound to run into someone like him. The town was too damn small and she had shared the company of so many.  It was a man that had been blessed by her infatuation some months ago. It had never really ended, but he hadn’t been in town for a while. He parked and opened the door for her, so she entered and sunk into the leather seat. His face was stern, almost frighteningly serious. His aura of danger drew her in. After a few minutes filled only with sound of breathing and the radio he turned to her and smirked, “What a pleasant surprise seeing you sitting there. It’s like you were waiting for me.”

“Just a lucky coincidence I suppose.” She slowly turned to him, reverting to the seductive tone she had become so accustomed to using around men. His eyes had returned to the road and did not meet her doe-eyed gaze.

“So, how ya been?”

“I’ve been good, How-”

“Bullshit, I know you f'ng missed me,” he interrupted. His half smile was mocking and he laughed. She lifted a cigarette  and without missing a beat his hand abandoned the wheel to flick a lighter as it reached her lips. She kissed the air and the smoke flowed out.

“I can tell by your sad face, you missed me,” he said.

“What have you been up to?” She stared out the window as she spoke like her eyes were searching for something.

“Work mostly. I’ve been up in the city a lot, dealing with lots of people less important than you.” She forced a smile in response. “This alright? I got an apartment up there,” he said as they pulled into the parking place at a somewhat nice complex.

“Course.”

The place was better furnished  than Waverly expected. She hadn’t remembered him being very rich. He poured her a drink and sat next to her on the edge of the sofa. “Why do you still look so depressed, baby? I’m here now.” He leaned over and the smell of liquor on his breath flooded her nose.

“Just some bad news.” Her tone was flat now.

“Well I can help you forget.” He closed the distance between them and pressed himself against her. She pulled her face away.

“C’mon,” he said and made an even more forceful attempt. Again she tried to reject his advances. It took quite some time for the two letter word she kept repeating to actually reach his ear, but eventually he stopped abruptly and shoved her off the couch. “What the hell is wrong with you tonight?” His eyes pierced her like stilettos as she shrunk into the ground in fear. “Get out,” he motioned to the door and then picked up the handle of whiskey, “And take this with you. It’s all you really want isn’t it?” He shoved it into her hands and pushed her into the hallway. “B****.” He slammed the door.

She sat in the hallway staring at the flowery wallpaper. She wore a cocktail dress with loose long sleeves, a tight waist, and an A-line skirt that was slightly longer than what was currently in style. But now it wrinkled around her and was hiked up indecently. She was unmoving as the minutes passed. The only motion occurred when she painted the rim of the bottle with her lipstick. The high heels were stripped off her feet and she instead held them as she walked barefoot towards the exit.

The cab dropped her off right up against the curb in front of her house and she was pleased to see all of the lights were out in every room. The cabbie grabbed his payment and sped away down the otherwise empty street. The sound of the door opened alerted her mother who was now awake and pacing through the kitchen.

“Hello?” her mother said to the dark entrance.

“It’s just me.” Waverly’s voice was quiet and squeaked.

“Waverly? What are you doing here?”

“I’m just going to sleep, that’s all.”

“It’s been months Waverly.” She shook her head. Her arms were crossed and shoulders raised.

“It’s late. I’m going to bed and you should too.” Her mothers face scrunched in disappointment, but she followed Waverly’s recommendation. She walked upstairs alone to her bedroom and saved any further questioning for the morning.

Waverly headed into the basement. It was dimly lit by a single hanging bulb, but was in no way scary. There were shelves weighed down by forgotten keepsakes, photos, and records. Things were put down here, and never taken back out. The mass of memorabilia only grew as her mother aged.

Without any interest in the other mildewy cardboard boxes, she turned and went into the cobweb-adorned crawlspace beneath the staircase. She emerged clutching a shoebox to her chest that looked as if her tight grip was the only thing holding it together. It had been home to a pair of black pumps that were long evicted. The box from the television became her seat. Again her posture returned to sunken state as she discarded the lid of the shoebox onto the floor. It was mostly papers inside.

On top was a photograph, featuring yours truly. Wearing a well-fitting uniform, I held my hand like a blade in front of my forehead. My hair was dark brown like my eyes, my face childlike, and my build average. Her fingers wrinkled the thick polaroid print in a stiff grip. I could tell you exactly when it was taken: five weeks after I enlisted and two before I was deployed. She had been there when I signed up. She had smirked and told the recruitment officer she was my sister. I lacked any other family. I guess that’s why she ended up on the list of people to get the notification. “Signing my life away” she had called it. I had just turned 18 and she was a year and a couple months younger.

I had wanted to be in the fight. Not just watch it happen. My life had been apathetic, lacking any real meaning or mission. I saw posters with men standing strong and proud urging others to join them and I knew that was who I needed to be. And although I never could have imagined the horrors it would bring, the army provided a medicine to my feeling of worthlessness.  It was for the country. It was for her. But she had never understood. Her eyes turned dark whenever I had mentioned it and she never saw me to say goodbye when I left.

Beneath the photo were a couple of letters. They were marked with my nearly illegible scrawl. Her hands had lost their tight rigidity and now began to shake. I don’t quite recall what the letters said, probably just light conversations that never said anything of importance. Never reaching below the superficial, never into the grimness of my hellish stresses in the jungle. I think she had written back for a while after I had left. Delivering letters to a war zone was not an easy feat though. Man, that must have been a tough job. So maybe I just never got the letters from her. Or maybe her pen had never once even brushed paper. Something changed in her when I had left. She could not forgive me for the abandonment. She would not wait patiently for me to return. It pained her, so instead she filled her thoughts with other distractions, poisoning her purity.

She threw the remaining documents onto the cold cement floor. Her head had been gradually hunching forward and finally came to rest with her hands across her face and her elbows perched on her knees. Her pristine eye makeup now smeared and tainted the pale skin of her cheeks. Still carrying her heels in one hand and her drink in the other she willed herself up the wooden staircase and out the back door quietly.

Behind the house there was a dirt path that twisted through a wooded area. They lived right on the edge of town, where the buildings became forest. She stumbled down the hill of the backyard and onto the path, dropping her shoes in the grass as she went to be picked up some other time. She paid little attention to her surroundings, unperturbed by the empty darkness that enveloped her. She knew these woods. She had grown up trekking through them. I knew them too. Although I had only walked the entire length of the trail once.

The bottle was much closer to being empty when she reached her destination. Each step was more unsteady and precarious than the last, but she remained standing. Her face, now void of any makeup, was wet with tears. The quarry was relatively small and had been filled with a shallow layer of unnaturally blue water. The dirt path had transformed into a small shore made up of small rocks that seemed to go unnoticed by her exposed feet. This was a common place to find love struck teens or drug deals, but tonight it was empty save for Waverly and the moon. She vomited into a bush.

We had come here once, four days before I left, our last time together. I can remember us sitting there watching the stars and feeling the sting of mosquitoes. I don’t think our skin ever even made contact that night, but it was intimacy in its purest form. With no one else would either of us ever be able to recreate that closeness. The night was clear and brisk, with all the stars unveiled.

“Canis Major,” I had said, pointing straight above us.

“That one is brighter, right there,” she said.

“Thats sirius. Its the brightest star in the sky.” I turned my body so it was facing her.

“You know things that most people don’t.” She returned my gaze as a smile extended gracefully across her face. Even in the darkness I could see the brightness of her teeth. That’s what I remember most. It was never really a relationship, just a connection. I assumed she didn’t think of me in a serious way, that it was short-lived and then purposefully forgotten.

She crumbled to the ground. Still conscious, she lay in the fetal position, her sobs now more evident and audible. It’s strange how it’s called that. The fetal position. I suppose that must be how unborn babies really sit, but it makes me think of the warmth and comfort of a mother. It sounds like it should be calm. In truth adults only really laid like that in times completely the opposite. It was in times of great pain and stress that we needed to resort back to this position, not calmness. She began shivering. The alcohol had burned going down her throat and warmed her stomach, but the rest of her was left chilled as she drifted into sleep. She had been  through worse. I knew she would be ok.

The first thing she noticed upon waking up was the sound of a truck speeding by on a nearby highway. She used her weak arms to lift herself into a sitting position on the edge of the water.A new person now occupied her body. One that was calm and stern. Her eyes lifted to the horizon, where the sun was just beginning to show itself and the sky was a deep orange. Most people would have said it was a beautiful sunrise. But when someone you love dies, everything looks like s***. She looked down at herself. No longer was her hair perfectly curled. Her dress was snagged covered in dusty dirt.

She stood up uneasily, one hand reaching to cup her throbbing head. Within a few steps she was in the water. The morning sun made it glitter around her. She walked even further out, but because the water was so shallow her legs were still the only subaqueous part of her body even in the middle of the quarry. Her fingers rested gently on the water, barely breaking the tension of its surface. She was completely unmoving, her face showing no emotion, completely content in her solitude. I finally was able to hear what she whispered under her breath. Something she had never said before.

“I’ll be okay. I can be alone.”