Chase (standard:Flash, 1866 words)
Author: Anastasia	Added: May 10 2005	Views/Reads: 3503/2213	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A teenager has traveled across the country in search of a girl, but is confronted with complications upon his arrival.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


The party is small in head count but bursting at the seams with the buzz
of reunion and laughter. Everyone seems to know each other, vaguely; 
but they've all heard good things. Mutual friends, people who discover 
each other's identities based upon descriptions by other friends, 
friends who are excited to share new friends with their old ones. I am 
an outcast because I allow myself to be. 

Wandering about the house, I've lost Jay. I make my way into a girl's
cramped bedroom, a green bedroom adorned with pictures of friends, 
magazine clippings, and Beatles posters. Jay is not there, but instead 
there are eight or ten strangers sitting on the bed and the floor, all 
smoking pot. They ask me to join them. I sit down on the floor next to 
a girl with dark red hair and freckles. Hey, she tells me. Hey, this is 
my house. This is my room. I'm Candice. Who are you? 

I'm a traveler, I tell her. I'm from out of town. Who did I come with,
she wonders. I came with Jay. Apparently, she doesn't know Jay, but she 
knows someone who knows Jay. It doesn't matter, she says. We sit there, 
enduring moments, smoking and failing to make sufficient small talk. 
I'm quiet most of the time. 

Some drunken kids suddenly feel inclined to climb out the window and
onto a roof. I can hear feet scuffling on the shingles, uncertain feet 
as they feel their way through the dark. I follow behind them. 

I take a liking to my spot on the roof. A boy and a girl next to me
share half a bottle of wine, and give the other half to me when they go 
inside. I sit there with the bottle through rounds of comings and 
goings from the rooftop, people who want to see what is so exciting up 
here, and people who find out that it's really not much. I watch the 
street lamps below, little yellow sunsets teetering on the tops of 
buildings. The earth appears sloppily painted in different shades of 
blue, the expressions of all types of partygoers summarized by a few 
aggressive brush strokes. Everything is alive with melancholy, 
invigorated by an unrelenting sense of apathy. Nervous giggles 
reverberate as girls, stumbling near ledges, fail to decide whether 
they want to be up or down. No one sits still. So many girls, all of 
them talking, I think, but I can't be sure. Voices blur. Conversations 
melt into one another. I look up. Somewhere far away, the stars are 
moving. 

It is late now. Many people have left, or have gone to sleep, or have
passed out. Jay comes onto the roof and asks me if I'm okay, because I 
seem bored or even sad, maybe. I tell her that I'm fine. She tells me 
to come inside and lay down. I don't know if I'm fit to stand, I say. 
She insists. She guides me inside. Jay is a good friend, I think. 

I end up sleeping in the girl's bed, the girl belonging to the green
bedroom. I am still awake when she crawls into the bed with me. We end 
up doing things we know we shouldn't. Both of us are a little bit 
confused, and fairly intoxicated, but more than anything, I think we 
are wrapped up in a manifestation of instinct. As I touch her, I admit 
to myself that I know that there is something I have not yet achieved. 
There is a craving inside me that is so human, it hurts. It is not 
sexual—I have long lost my enthusiasm for the physical rewards of 
reckless promiscuity. It is, however, a craving that can only be 
satiated by means of sexual interaction. I'm talking about the 
momentary passion involved in performing the misdeed. And it only lasts 
for a few seconds, partially because the action was never based on 
anything in the first place, and partially because I've resolved never 
to commit myself until I find the person I've come all this way for. 
Until then, my heart only knows how to accept passion in small doses. 
So that is what I settle for. 

I can only hope that she has the same thoughts, and that she will
understand when she wakes up to an empty bed. 

And so in the morning, Jay and I leave early. Two other people come back
with us, people whose names I don't know. At her apartment, Jay makes 
breakfast for all of us. I watch her flip pancakes, scramble eggs, and 
fry bacon. I feel as if I we are all in a cartoon, the serious type of 
cartoon in which the characters' voices are muffled and there is no 
background music. Through grainy animation, colors appear pallid and 
aged. Jay is an ambiguous female cartoon force, a mother managing 
stovetop tasks. My brain shakes. Disoriented. I need to be grounded. 
Words pertaining to college and professors and even fiancés pour out of 
the mouths of Jay's friends, and though they speak eloquently, 
something causes their sentences to sound broken by the time they reach 
my ears. Something wants out of me. I have nothing to say and I am 
hearing everything that is not audible. 

With all the noise in my head, the only thing I can hear clearly is my
mother's voice telling me that I'm always lagging behind the rest, 
always fulfilling a selfish, childish desire to feel needed. Talking 
down to bring me up. I have traveled across a continent to find a 
person I no longer know. And it is selfish, because as much as I don't 
remember about this person, I don't remember about myself. And when I 
find her, I will have nothing to offer. I can only hope that she will 
offer to me something that I know she possesses, which is her knowledge 
of me. I don't deserve for her to tell me that, though. 

But I realize, now, that I'm not even looking for her. I'm chasing
someone else. I'm chasing me, but I'm nowhere to be found. 

"Are you in there?" Jay asks. 

"I don't think so," I reply.


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