Picture You

I’ve had my eyes fixed on the molten orange light from inside the kitchen window since the sun went down. In fact, I can’t remember if the chair below me was always this dusty, or if I’ve been collecting soot from the bonfire a few feet away. I can’t even remember a time when that bonfire was just wood and newspaper. The ash from the newspaper has settled in the pool, tinting it with a gray haze.

I press my eyes shut and the dry warmth beneath the lids is extinguished at last. When I open them, she’s there again. I curse myself for thinking I could leave the window unattended for even a self-soothing second.

My view is obstructed by a boy. He crouches to string Christmas lights below the windowsill, the top of his toque covered head blocking her backlit silhouette. I silently beg him to move so that I may continue to commit her frame to memory.

“Do you have a bottle opener?”

The voice earns a quick glance. There are two boys, one short and the other tall– the only two ways they come. I turn back to my window and regret ever looking away. She’s gone again.

“No,” I say, furrowing my brows. “I loaned it to Sarah, she hasn’t brought it back.”

“Yeah, we know,” the short one says. “We asked Sarah, she said she gave it to Mike.”

“And Mike gave it to the birthday girl,” says the tall one, whose every feature is now making my skin crawl.

“And where is she?” I ask. Part of the question is dipped in curiosity; I don’t know whose party this is.

They shrug in response, their stupid shoulders moving in sync.

To signal the end of this insipid discussion, I turn my head back to the window. Still nothing. I don’t hear shuffling of dejected footsteps, so I crane my neck back toward the two boys, who seem to be waiting around until they’re satisfied. I take the unopened beer bottle that rests in my lap like an egg in an incubator. “Give me your beer.”

The tall one complies, and I use my bottlecap to jimmy his open, and then his friend’s. I drop the bottle back in my lap.

“How are you gonna open that one?” The short one. He’s as dumb as he looks.

“I’m not.”

Before they can further inquire, a faraway intoxicated voice beckons for them in some cigarette lit corner of the yard. I return to my perch, attempting with all my might to will her back into frame. Though, I know it won’t be that easy to conjure her. She must be in high demand.

I hear shouts from the other side of the bonfire. I can hardly see the source through the high flame, but I can make out the obscured shapes of two girls grabbing at each other’s hair. A crowd gathers. A gang of people from inside the house come rushing out, nearly knocking over the flimsy plastic chair I’ve settled in. As the shouting continues, I can identify a few slurred words and phrases like “Cheater!” and “You ugly bitch!” With very little effort I can construct the story that’s playing out beyond the flame, which is now roaring wildly with the crowd.

I wonder if she might come out for a glimpse, too. No, probably too barbaric for her. The window is still empty, except for the orange bulb above the kitchen sink and the glow of the multicolored Christmas lights below. The warmth radiates from the window so intensely that I feel as if I could burn.

It smells like it too.

Right beside my head, a girl in a short tulle skirt hasn’t yet realized how flammable her garment is. She clutches a red cup in her manicured hand as she eggs on the fight, which I snatch and quickly fill with ashy pool water. I splash it onto her half shriveled skirt and the flame subsides, leaving the scent of burnt plastic behind.

“Jesus!” She whips around at me and reclaims her red cup rather violently. “What’s your problem?”

What an odd way to thank me, I think.

“Sorry, I’ll get a towel,” is what I actually say.

I pick up my unopened beer and disappear inside the house.

A girl is sweeping furiously inside the living room– it looks like someone knocked a portrait over. I ask her where I might find a towel and she tells me there’s paper ones in the kitchen.

The kitchen. Its warm shine calls out to me like a lighthouse, though I can’t quite see the room over the waves of the treacherous seas I navigate. I slither around bickering couples and push past the smiling ones. I can’t tell if I’m stepping on hardwood or if I’m flattening toes half of the time. I surface in the narrow kitchen, and I locate the paper towels above the sink full of unwashed dishes. I set my beer down on the edge of the counter.

As I reach on my tiptoes to grab them off the shelf, a chill wind from outside the open kitchen window slides past my waist. I freeze.

Instead of the orange bulb above the sink, the warmth of the bonfire radiates the otherwise dreary scene beyond the window. The Christmas bulbs produce glowing circles of multicolor that illuminate the world outside from below. Directly in the center of the picture frame is the empty chair I once sat in.

“You.”

I hold my breath as I turn to see who owns the voice. It isn’t her, it’s some other girl.

“Would you take those paper towels to the bathroom? Someone’s spewing.”

She’s gone before I can answer. I’m not particularly tempted to enter a bathroom with someone who’s losing their lunch, and likely their liquor. Though, I’m admittedly in no hurry to dry off Miss Kindling outside.

I grab the paper towels, and I take a final look at what the girl in the window frame saw outside: another girl, situated in another painting.

The bathroom door is slightly ajar, but I offer a knock on the chipping white doorframe anyway. There’s no response. I push through.

“I have paper towels,” I say, softly, like if I were any louder I might startle some more vomit out of her. “Are you okay?”

For the first time, we exist under the same warmth. Now that she’s no longer backlit, I can admire more than just a silhouette and the way it fills a square. Her eyes, which I could only imagine before, are smudged in black and glazed over with red. She seems to have haphazardly thrown her hair–or rather, around half of it–into a bun. I set the paper towels down along with my beer beside her and pull the rest of her wild hair back.

She swats my hand away.

“You don’t want help?”

She shakes her head.

“Sorry. I’ll just leave the paper towels here, then.”

I begin to leave.

“No,” she croaks, and she manages to keep her eyes open long enough to study me.

“No?”

“Sit,” she says while awkwardly slapping the edge of the bathtub beside the toilet. I take a seat at her behest. She presses her forehead against the toilet seat and I can’t help but laugh. “What’s so funny?”

What can I tell her? You just aren’t how I pictured you, standing so gracefully between the pillars of the windowsill like a Baroque painting. It’s like now that the frame is gone, I can see the whole scene and I can’t seem to understand why the painter wouldn’t capture the entire thing.

“You look silly,” I decide. “Can I please just fix your hair?”

She shakes her head. “No. You’ve been taking care of everyone all night.”

“What?”

“Outside. First with the boys, then the girl with the hideous skirt.” For a girl who is spilling her guts into a toilet bowl, she’s remarkably articulate. “Now the paper towels.”

“You saw that?”

“And you can’t even drink because Mike lost your bottle opener.”

“How do you know all of that?” My question feels stupid the moment it leaves my lips. I couldn’t see her eyes when she stood in the window. She probably saw me staring at her the entire time.

She pulls my bottle opener from her jeans and hands it to me. I rip a piece of paper towel and hand it to her in exchange. She dabs at her lips, wiping off any remaining gloss she might have had left.

Beside the toilet, hung over the scrubbing wand, is a cheap pink sash.

“This is your party?”

She nods once, pressing her eyes shut to shut out whatever is plaguing her now.

I can’t think of anything to say.

“Happy birthday.”

Her pale lips squeeze into a wry smile. The irony isn't lost on me.

She flushes the toilet a final time.

“Do you need water?” I ask, already beginning to stand.

Her warm fingers wrap around my wrist. Maybe there was never a warm kitchen light, maybe it was only her.

“Just sit with me.”

I glance at the mirror mounted over the sink. There’s a new painting inside the golden frame.