Pink sat alone.
People streamed past her. Wisps and blurs that moved too quickly for her eyes to catch. Her mind was slow. She felt drunk, but no alcohol pumped through her veins. The frown carved upon her face sank.
She wasn’t the bright kind of Pink. She could never be the bold Pink, the one who won everyone’s attention in a mere second. She wasn’t a lovable kind nor the emotional kind. She was the subtle kind. The palest of pale. The worst kind, she thought. The one who ached to become White so desperately. So similar, people would believe she was. But deep inside she knew that such an achievement was impossible, even if she were to try for the rest of her life. The thought flowered inside her head. It pained her fake-drunken brain and fallen heart.
‘Normally people in relationships actually socialise with each other.’ Old words floated in and out of her mind. ‘You know? They pick up the phone when the other calls. They go on dates every week, not every other month. They do things together. Anything together.’
‘I’m sorry, babe. It’s just…’ Pink said.
‘It’s just what?’ Her girlfriend asked. ‘Exactly. It’s always just something with you, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
‘Then what does it mean? I’ve just fucking told this girl I’m in love with her. And we’re sitting in this classy restaurant because that’s what couples do. And all she does is complain? What the hell is that supposed to mean, huh?’ When she didn’t respond, the girl who loved her left. When she didn’t come back, Pink left too.
Pink’s face felt sticky. That kind of sticky you get from drying tears and fragmented hearts. That kind of sticky that happens when you cry for hours upon hours on a bench in the middle of the city.
Pink looked down at her hands. With her legs crossed, they fell upon her lap. Her fingertips fiddled with rose petals. They screamed with such a joyous intensity that they made the girl want to gently rip them apart.
So, she did.
When she looked up again, the sun was easing itself down, casting a dull glow over the horizon. Broken petals littered her lap. They danced in the air, whirling and twirling before falling on the ground as her body shivered. Pink wished she listened to her mother. ‘Bring a jacket. It might get cold,’ but this was Australia where the temperature didn’t know what single digits were.
That didn’t stop her feet from feeling numb, and she wondered how long she’d been sitting down. Her skin tickled from a breeze. It soared over her and above, into a universe unknown. Pink wondered what it would be like to be the wind; to soar across the sky, away from the rest of world. But then she remembered that wind was dictated by temperature, and, in fact, she would not be free, but instead stuck in a constant loop of trying to be what she wanted.
It sounded regrettably familiar.
A girl on the other side of the street stood against a wall as people flittered and fluttered around her. Bright and petite, she looked like somebody that should have the choice to soar across the sky but wasn’t allowed to.
The frown carved upon her face sank a little bit lower.
---
Yellow observed the mirror. A young girl stared back. Her puffy eyes and acne scars saddened Yellow. She wanted to reach out, put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, give her a little hug and tell her the world wasn’t that bad, but she couldn’t. The girl didn’t move. Yellow didn’t either.
Back in her room, she stared at the ceiling. When she was younger, her father had decorated her roof with little glowing stars. She would draw small lines in her head to connect the small dots and create her own small series of constellations. With a universe of plastic stars wrapped around her chest, she would fall asleep, the leader of a whole new world. Now, she looked up and saw a disjointed mess of uneven sparkles and felt the hole in her chest widen a little bit more.
Her mind wandered around in a continuous loop, trying to find an entertaining channel, but everything available just made her sad. Her phone buzzed. The little amber light flashed every other second. On and off and on and off. Her best friend’s drunken snapchats were left unopened, as were the videos of her ex-boyfriend kissing someone who wasn’t her. Each shot of liqueur burned their throats, all the way down to Yellow’s chest.
She threw the phone across the room. It hit the coloured wall too loudly, adding to the pattern of scratches and dents.
Yellow could hear her parents. ‘Well, you know what? At least I don’t cheat on my fucking wife!’ Their voices didn’t try to be quiet anymore.
‘You were the one that slept with the next-door neighbour.’ Judgemental hatred weeded itself up the stairs, underneath the crack in the door, all the way to Yellow’s ears.
‘Are you calling me a slut, Mauve.’ All the noise was insufferable. ‘I swear to god.’ Shallow remarks and catty comments pounded themselves against her room. She wanted all of it to end.
So, she left.
The sky was deciding whether to darken when Yellow stepped out of her apartment’s doors. Little rain droplets fell as she hurried down the street. Pausing underneath a closed café’s awning, she studied the night. People steamed along the tight sidewalk, every single body moving in perfect co-ordination.
Her breathing quickened. She was pushed back against the brick. Coldness seeped through her thin silk shirt as rainwater covered her skin. She was frozen against the wall. Her head was whirling. Shaking off the frost, she tried to move but the weight of hundreds of bodies was too much for her heavy soul.
Suddenly she wanted to be at home, looking in the mirror at a girl who everyone thought she was. The girl she wanted to be. What would it be like to have a smile that could illuminate a whole universe by itself? What would it be like to not cry when you glanced at your reflection? What would it be like to look into a mirror and recognise the girl who looked back? She ached to be the girl who didn’t smash her phone against walls over and over. To be a girl who was loved. The idea bloomed in her mind. It rippled throughout her body and a melancholic smile almost reached her face. She looked up at the sky as small droplets floated down without a choice; they were raindrops and that’s what raindrops did. She imagined what it would be like to live without a choice. To be free from this life and this responsibility and this universe and just live against this brick wall of a closed café until her heart stopped beating and a few seconds longer. What would it be like to live like someone else? That old woman with the overly-dyed hair. The child with a universe of possibilities shining in her eyes. The young man who walked next to his mother, a distasteful grin plastered on his face. But at least you had someone that loved you. That adored you. The idea was everywhere in her body. It hovered in front of her. It was getting colder. The world was getting darker. Her eyes got heavy and she wanted to float up into a world of plastic constellations. She wanted everything. She wanted anything. But the idea of love was everywhere in her mind and it was nowhere.
The bodies around her had evaporated and she took her first breath without the weight of a whole universe trying to fight itself in. She stood there, against a brick wall, until the only light in the world was shining from a tall lamppost across the road.
Her steps were small as she travelled back home. Faces blurred against the darkness of the night. A couple glided past. Hand in hand. The façade of love. They looked anywhere but each other.
Back in her room, Yellow fell asleep to a world full of fake stars.
---
White laughed. She reached for her glass of water and held it to her lips. It was practically full, even though they had been there for hours.
‘So then, they asked us if we wanted to sell.’ With the rest of the table, she laughed. She met her boyfriend’s stare; his wine glass was at his mouth once again, a lively smile plastered behind. The table was filled with whispered gossips and melodramatic laughter. White continued to smile and laugh, but her mouth never chose to speak. She played with her plate of salad, pushing it around in circles but barely eating any of it. People whose names she did not know and did not want to know crowded the large table and she felt insignificantly small again.
‘And what do you do?’
Eyes darted towards White. Her eyes flickered instantly to her boyfriend. His sharp eyes were wide, his glass frozen in his hand, hovering just above the table.
‘Um, I… Ah.’ Her mouth felt dry. Her brain screamed at her: why didn’t you drink that stupid water it was just water what is wrong with you what is wrong with you everything you do is wrong. But her mind was spinning, and no words came out of her mouth. She felt like she was hovering above the world, frozen just like her boyfriend’s wine. Her eyes started to itch, ready to cry. Fingers clenching and unclenching around her knife, her mouth ajar, she-
‘She actually works at home, don’t you honey? It’s a lot of work, isn’t it?’ White’s boyfriend said. His voice is honey and love and purity, and she does nothing. Her head slightly nods in response as she takes a sip of water.
Everyone laughed. Nothing was ever funny.
The world was dark when they finally emerged. They left the table of hilarity with kisses-on-cheeks and half-fulfilled stories. Even in the night, the city was alive with people. As they walked down the street, couples pushed past, clearly too infatuated to care about the universe that surrounded them.
‘Why did we have to park so far away? The parking on this side of town is horrendous. I can’t believe that people choose to live like this,’ her boyfriend said. ‘Don’t you agree, honey?’ Their clasped hands were too tight. White tried to keep pace with his long strides, but she couldn’t and didn’t. The pressure in her arm just tightened and she stumbled over her feet again and again.
‘What is it?’ her boyfriend pressured.
‘Hmm…?’
‘You seem off with the fairies. What’s wrong with you now?’ He properly looked at her for the first time that night. It lasted a second before he slid into his car.
‘That…That girl over there.’
‘The one sitting by herself?’
‘Yeah,’ White said. In the gloom of the night, the girl sat, illuminated with light that seemed as if it just appeared. ‘She seems upset. And lonely. Perhaps I should just go ask if she’s alright? She might have missed her bus or something. We could offer her a ride home.’
Her boyfriend was fixing his seatbelt. ‘And why would we do that, honey?’
‘She looks young. She reminds me… of me…’
‘Honey, get in the car. We are going to be late home,’ he said.
‘Yeah… Of course.’ White muttered. ‘Sorry.’
She climbed into the car.
--
Pink’s eyes locked with hers.
She was there.
The one she loved from afar. Forever from afar. But never from such a small distance away. So graceful, she practically breezed into the car, the wind easing the door closed behind her. It carried her away so quickly; she was there and then she wasn’t and suddenly, Pink’s heart stung.
White was gone.
Pink decided she wanted to leave too.