It’s Christmas Eve and she sits in a booth wearing nothing more than shorts and a holiday sweater. She scratches her knee from hitting the table and pulls her boots up past her newly found bruise. Her eyes are sore and decided to hide them behind oversized glasses, hoping that no one thinks she really has pinkeye. She laughs to herself because she imagines the epidemic she could cause if she really did have it. Just a simple scratch of the eye and a reach for the bathroom door… what a complete catastrophe she could cause. She imagines the possible headline on the evening news, “Outbreak of pinkeye commences at local Coffee Bean on Christmas Eve”. She smiles at the thought but is relieved that she has just been struck with a frightening case of allergies. Regardless, she wears her glasses as protective eyewear, as if it would save her from germinates that would cause further contamination.

The vinyl sticks to her legs because although it is already the end of December, San Diego never seems to let the sun go. She sighs out loud as she thinks about the feelings she has coming home for the holidays; as if breathing them out would rid her of them. She looks around and sees a group of teenagers shuffling around, teasing one of the guys to, “Do it”. She laughs again, thinking, “Do it, Pussy”. They see her look over so she pretends to look past them at an old couple deciding whether or not Splenda would be best for their early morning coffee. She opens up her massive bag and pulls out a notebook and her favorite ink pen. The notebook is empty. And it has been so for months.

Hastily, she reaches for a napkin and starts drawing what comes to her. She calls it her, “Napkin Series”. A series of free-associated, collected napkins from her travels here and there. She doodles her thoughts, because for some reason, she can no longer capture them in words like she used to. Words being so concrete and tangible, she no longer feels as though she herself can use them. She feels neither concrete nor tangible. She feels pensive, almost emotionless but overwhelmed by a sense of burden. She feels disconnected from the inside out and senses a need for connection. She wishes for a way to reach out to someone and say, “Hey, you there!” But even if he looked over at her, she wouldn’t know what to say.

She thinks about writing a story. A story with characters; real characters that would accept and understand her. Characters that she could connect to. An unconventional love story about friendship, growing up, making mistakes, letting go, holding on, and the best fucking time of their fucking lives. The story would be about a group of friends that she had wished for her entire life. Because growing up having moved around so much, she never quite knew how to have friends this way. They would all be bounded by music, and drugs, and youth, and an intensity for living life to the fullest. A cast of misfits whose humor would be just as revolting as it is endearing. They would each have subtle whims and quirks that really made each of them… a character.

She looked down at her napkin and smiled. Alas, a breakthrough! She brushed aside her napkin and began to jot a few lines in her notebook. She began to write her story…

“… and in this moment, she felt infinite… “