When Aimee was in college she liked to steal something from every party she went to. It didn’t matter what— a potted plant, a bar of soap, an empty picture frame. She kept them in a large box in the back of her closet, where they mostly remained, save for once every few months when she’d take them out just to see if she could remember where each one came from. Years later, when a second-rate therapist asked her why she did this, Aimee would say, “There are billions of people in this world, and I’ll never really know any of them, and none of them will ever really know me. At all those parties I went to, I was just another face in the crowd. Another girl to fuck and forget. But some morning after, someone probably woke up and thought, ‘I would never know, so they would wonder about it forever. And that would be proof I was there. That would be proof I lived.”
Aimee was a girl of average height and average build. She had brown hair that curled at the ends when it was wet, but it was usually flat. Her nose was not dainty nor large, just simple and straight. Her lips were not thin but they weren’t big either. Her teeth could’ve been perfect, but they were just one shade off white and had a chip in the upper left incisor. Some people might’ve said she was pretty. Some might not. Aimee’s appearance was forgettable in every aspect except for her eyes— they were very pale blue, the color of ice and emptiness. (Eyes like that could make someone feel cold long after they forgot the rest about a girl with brown hair and chipped teeth that they once knew.)
There’s a thin line between desire and disgust. Sweat rolls down the back of the neck. Cheeks flush at the touch of a hand. Eyes bulge. Skin folds. It only depends on how you choose to view it.
“Which do you feel when you look at me?” Liam asks. He has Aimee pressed up against a wall
in a loud frat basement. (Aimee is eighteen. She met Liam twenty minutes ago, and she does
not mind.)
Aimee stares Liam in the face, head cocked slightly to the side. His hair is greasy and one of the
buttons from his shirt has popped off. She wants to figure him out, but people are something she
has never been good at.
“Aimee,” Liam repeats, licking his lips as he says it, “which do you feel when you look at me?” Aimee watches his slick pink tongue glide over the cracks and has a sudden urge to hand him the chapstick in her left jean pocket. Desire, she decides, is what Liam is feeling at this moment. (Aimee does not feel desire. She feels nothing.)
Aimee was born blue, at least according to her mother. (This is not a metaphor for sadness, it is simply a fact). “You had the cord wrapped around your neck,” her mother had explained a while back, “and for what seemed like the longest time, you wouldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. It was terrifying. And I’ve had this nightmare ever since then, you know. I see you— not you as a baby, I mean you as you are now— and I see you leave this world exactly the way you came into it.” (Blue is not a metaphor for sadness, but maybe it should be.)
Liam drags his pointer finger in lines and loops down Aimee’s back, drawing pictures that she doesn’t bother to comprehend. She’s not sure why she’s in his bed once again. It is not the first time and it won’t be the last either.
“I can’t figure you out,” Liam remarks. His finger runs in circles around her vertebrae, one by one. “I can’t tell what it is you want.”
“Maybe that’s because I don’t want anything at all.” Aimee responds.
“Everyone wants something.” Liam’s finger pauses halfway down her spine.
Aimee stands up, retrieves her shirt from the floor, and leaves. She does not look back at Liam, but before she walks out the door, she picks up the small ceramic elephant that’s been sitting on his dresser and slips it in her pocket.
Imagine what would happen to an earth without spiders, where the insects became so plentiful that they poured from the trees and coated the ground. Or maybe, think of what would happen if gravity ceased to exist, but only for a few seconds. What if the sun was green and the grass was yellow, and the moon glowed all on its own? What if Alexandria’s library hadn’t burned down? What if pharmaceuticals had never been invented, and the whole world died of heartbreak without any baby aspirin to cure it? Not that Aimee would know the answer to any of these questions (She had never felt heartbreak before).
Aimee thought about her mother’s nightmare often. She knew it was dark and gruesome, so it was not a thought that she enjoyed— she hated it. More than she hated the thought itself, though, she hated the fact that she secretly found it beautiful.
“Why do you think it is,” the therapist asks, “that you find proof of your existence in the absence of something else?”
“I don’t know,” Aimee says. “Isn’t that for me to wonder, and you to tell me?”
“No one knows you better than yourself. I’m just here to help you come to terms with what you already know.”
“I don’t think I know myself any more than I know anyone else.” Aimee replies (That is to say, not at all). ▲
