I can not, will not, swallow pills. Vitamins, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory, white capsules, round capsules, diabetic pills, you name it. I don’t let people photograph me. My nose looks too long, my hair greasy despite it just being washed, my gums too big, my eyes sunken in, etc. I’m an aspiring underachiever; I know the answers I just choose not to do the work. Life is so much simpler the less I do. Every day it becomes easier. Do you think that’s strange?
But that’s not strange, my friend. Strange is the girl who sat next to me in my college freshman biology class carrying cookies in her purse. Not in a plastic baggie or wrapped in paper. She ate every crumb amidst her lip liner and mascara and licked her fingers loudly. I suppose it made her happy.
Strange was Timmy from the cafe putting maple syrup on everything that touched his hands including his coffee. Perfectly good coffee ruined. I dubbed him Maple Timmy.

Strange was Sonny Jones intensely and emotionally attached to his 99’ Chrysler by the age of twenty-one with no girlfriend to speak of. He cried for days when it broke down on I-85. We college boys have no spare cash lying around for fixing cars. Either way, the next object of his affections became my father’s lawn mower. Mr. John Doe sold it to him for the grand total of $5.67.
Strange was Sarah, doe eyes, mousy hair, rose-colored lips, love of my life, pronounced dead at nineteen. Strange and sad is that she would know nothing of it.
I had passed the house many times on my way to Sonny and Andrew’s apartment down Spruce Avenue. It wasn’t one of those gigantic apartment complexes, like a society all on its own, but tiny, cramped, and annoying like their fat cat Gerbil. The neighborhood was aged, the houses old, beautiful, out of an old Hollywood movie with a touch of Gothic. Except for Sarah’s house of course. Hers was decaying, purple paint pealing, sharp angular features stretched in every which way. It looked as if it screamed in rage. The architecture’s designer must have been insane. The lawn was dead, which is why I can’t remember what possessed me to make my way up the rotting steps. Dead grass, unkempt grass, makes me twitchy. I would have given it life for her, but she couldn’t let me, wouldn’t let me; I don’t know which one.
I’m on my way to Sonny’s house in present time. Something happened to Gerbil. I spy a squirrel up ahead, and not the live kind. A bike always lay in the middle of the yard, red and distracting. Loud colors make my head spin. I don’t remember much from that day, I hardly remember the days I spent with her. I have a feeling they were beautiful and full of loud colors and exotic sounds. She had problems; issues that needed to be dealt with, but I just…no matter how hard…I just can’t remember what they were.
Her laughter is etched into my bones. Its clear, sharp ring haunts me. It jumps off walls and reverberates through me as I pass a pharmacy or drug store. Eleven months, thirteen days, sixteen hours, twelve seconds and counting, and with every stroke of the clock, each breath that I take, my memories of Sarah are further obscured by that irritating white glaze. A heart shaped face and chocolate eyes are all that are left.
My neck is aching and I feel the need to bend it back the way hers was. The way…hers…was…blank. I draw a blank whenever I get to this part of her story, which, inadvertently, is mine as well. Though, in this strange piece of my life, they both ended the day she did. The grass is still dead and the red bike has rusted into the ground.