Hello September

I got the marks back for my third creative writing portfolio just an hour or so ago. I was very pleased by  the comments my tutors made. Which made me think, if they like it I'll take a chance with the rest of the world.
This is the second and much shorter piece from the eight-thousand-word submission. I cringed a little when I reread the name choices (who's called Millie, except my aunt?), and it's a bit of a downer, as stories go, but please enjoy.

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What it looks like.

Today is the best day of the rest of your life. You do not know it yet. You will find out tomorrow. I am helping you. Say thanks.

            Once, you held a tape around your waist and it measured something. You don’t remember what, but you remember that it was smaller than the thing that it measures today. But you don’t remember ever being happy with the answer the tape gave when you asked it the same question. You will ask again tomorrow, but by tomorrow you would have gone out tonight to celebrate being alive, or being bored, or being afraid, all of which you so often are. You would have called your friends, and laughed on the phone, and asked them to meet you up for drinks – no, no dinner, guys – because you wouldn’t have been hungry. You would have gone out for drinks and ordered a glass of wine. Ha, you know you mean a shot of vodka. Gin and tonic! Or all three. And then you would have had an order of curly fries – no, make that cheesy fries. Just a little nibble, so that the alcohol wouldn’t rush all the way to your head. Not too fast, anyway.

            You wouldn’t have danced, because, no, no, you’re only here for an hour or two. You have too much work to do. Behind your desk, at home, in front of your computer, after you check your twitter, and update your facebook, and oh-my-god is that her? She looks so skinny! You hear she had surgery. Her boobs look so good. But you would never do that to yourself, you’re too good for that. Or too poor. Or too afraid.

            Someone would have just got engaged, and their page would be full of congratulatory messages, and oh, so she married him in the end? What a loser. And you would only be online a few more minutes anyway, so you can’t be bothered to check out all the pictures of her ring – there are twelve, and you can tell it’s cubic zirconia because the eleventh picture didn’t quite catch the light in the same way the eighth did. And you wouldn’t want to be her anyway, because your life is so much better, because you’ve gone off on your own, and you’re bettering yourself, and you’ll become an intellectual, and that’s better than becoming a wife.

But you have work, all that work? Yes. You would be too busy organising and shuffling your papers to feel any scorn. Why should you? You are still young, and attractive, and all your best years are ahead of you.

            They are not, that’s what I’m telling you. This is your best year.

It is now, with your eyes bleary from alcohol and envy, wondering whether or not it is better to have a cookie or to go to bed hungry, because of how you’ve heard that the body holds on to food much longer if you don’t eat, and anyway it’s wholegrain flour.

It was better when – remember when? – when you could run nonstop for thirty minutes without pausing for breath. It was better still, when you could fit into that blouse without a bra; when all you wanted was for Mike to remember your name; when you could text Millie without looking at your phone.

You have lost that.

You’ll wake up in the morning, and you’ll remember that yesterday you hadn’t started the day before bloated from gorging on an entire sleeve of biscuits. You’ll wonder what happened to all your size ten clothes. You’ll check the mail and you’ll see a pile of bills and you’ll remember when you asked your mum for a pair of hundred dollar jeans. You’ll kick your eighteen-year-old self for wanting to grow up and you’ll finally see what I mean, because nothing has happened the way you dreamed.

Your boss asks you to pick up his lunch one day and something in your mind makes your eyes turn red. You wonder why; after all he frequently asks you to get his photocopying, and only last week you babysat for his fiancé. It is right then, as you’re walking out of the door with the cash in your hand, that you realise you’re not going back. Lucky thing you have your purse with you.

Your stomach turns a little bit because you are at first angry, and then afraid, and then really tired and it all happens very quickly, so you lean on a streetlight and take a breath. The back of your hand goes up to your neck but it is cold on your skin, and when the bill in your hand scratches your chin you realise what you’re doing. You figure you deserve a free lunch after all you’ve been through, anyway.

The first person you want to call does not pick up your calls anymore, so you call your mother instead. She says, what? You did what? You’re doing what? You sigh and pretend not to hear. Hello? You say, and talk about how bad the network is. You hang up but she calls you back and this time it’s clear.

You’re still paying your college loans, she reminds you, and you tell her you know. She also reminds you about how you promised to pay for her new couch, for her birthday, and how she has already redesigned the space around it. She warns you about your brother, who tried to start his own business and is now only a bus driver. She asks you if you think you’re getting back at him, the one whose phone number you are no longer supposed to remember anymore, but who you still call – but only from public phones, so that he cannot tell that it is you, and so that even when he knows it’s you he can only hang up, while you can call him again. Ha.

You tell her, you say, mom you don’t understand. You say, mom I hate it there. You explain, you say, only today he asked me to get him lunch!, and how oh that’s so degrading, mom. Before she hangs up your mother asks you not to be stupid, and to go home and lie down.

You take a walk instead, with the piece of paper in your hand sometimes making you smile. You walk round the block and marvel about how it looks so different in the afternoon. You tell yourself your mother is an old hag and the thought makes you giggle, because you know she cannot hear; because you know you are outside, taking a walk, in the middle of the day, when your boss has asked you to fetch his lunch. The fear in your stomach is gone, but you decide to go home, just in case you change your mind.

You have never seen the sun fall over your laptop from that direction. Yes, you are on facebook. In the middle of the day on your home laptop it feels much different than on the office computer. You start to feel guilty until you realise you have no work. You click open her page again and think, maybe you should start going to the gym. Might as well, seeing as you now have all this time. You fall asleep in an hour.

When you wake up you go for another walk. The something in your stomach is trying to make you remember what time it is, and to let you know that you would have just been leaving work at this time.

The something in your stomach is trying to tell you that all you did today was facebook.

The something in your stomach is trying to tell you that you could have done that at the office, and still gotten paid.

It is because you are ignoring this something that you go for a walk, and you don’t make it as far as the park before you turn back. You decide to call your friends up, a drink tonight, guys? But they all say no, they are busy, they’ve had a hectic day, babe, maybe Friday?

The something in your stomach tells you that you are bored.

You find yourself dressing up for work in the morning, but you laugh because you know you’re not really going. You are laughing only on the inside when you find yourself in your boss’s office, saying how you’re sorry and you fell sick. He blinks up at you and says, “Rose, is it?”

You apologise for lunch but he has forgotten, and his secretary has shut the door in your face. You walk back to your desk and find a pile of papers waiting to be entered into the system. It’s going to take you all day, with no time for facebook breaks. As you begin, you don’t realise that the thought you just had was about how even yesterday didn’t suck this much.

So now you know. And you realise in an instant that you’ll never escape the tape rule. There will be more numbers in the morning.

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