Wishes

Dia and I had finally gotten a chance to get together. The first year of high school has been stressful as all hell so far, it’s scary to think that it is only going to get worse from here. A month in and I already feel like I am falling behind. I shouldn’t have taken advanced classes, I’m not that smart. Oh the imprisonment that high school is. My prison was a maze, and I had lost the map. Everyone says I should know my way out fine because I have my map, no one listens to me when I say it’s gone. It is my own fault anyways I remind myself constantly, for I was the one who lost the map. I was the one who allowed myself to fall behind in the first place. Maybe this prison maze would be easier to navigate if I wasn’t such an idiot. Anyways, Dia was the one that suggested we go thrift shopping, the idea of buying useless things always cheers me up. She knows me well enough to notice I needed a distraction. Hanging out with her was just the medicine I needed to get out of my own head. I was waiting outside my house on my old porch swing waiting for her to show up. I watched the highway waiting for Dia’s mom’s grey honda to pull into our driveway. Lost in my thoughts, the time seemed to go by fast and soon enough she was here.

“Lilly!” Dia said as she ran out of the car to help me get my stuff. “Are you excited?”

“Of course I am. I really need a break.” I smiled. For some reason it felt forced, but I was happy. I did need a break, and I was estatic to sleep over at Dia’s. But for reasons unknown I just felt like climbing into my bed and reading a book or sleeping. It won’t feel forced for long I told myself, forcing myself to be optimistic.

“Let’s get going then,” Dia smiled warmly, taking the vast majority of my stuff and helping me shove it into the back of her mom’s car. We sat in the car, and she was right, I was excited.

“Dia, look me in the eyes,” I say in a goofy voice. The goofy voice also seemed more forced, but if I acted happy and my normal quirky self, maybe I just would be. I hate taking my least favorite aunt’s advice, but maybe she is right when you say “fake it until you make it.”

Dia looks at me. I drop the silly voice. Maybe I don’t need to fake it, maybe we are too old for that “I need you to be my impulse control,” I say. If I want to waste my money buying stupid things you have to stop me.”

“I could just buy useless things for you!” She says.

“No! You will not waste your money on me,” I reply.

“I have plenty, you know cause my parents give me an actual allowance.”

“Shut up! I will spend my money and my money only.”

“Sure…” She smirks.

We continue in a conversation going from politics, to the best kind of pizza toppings, and whether or not Dia will get married or become a crazy cat lady. We agreed that she would be both obviously. The car ride was long due to me living in the middle of nowhere, but I was glad because I loved hanging out with her. The forced smile was genuine now, Dia always knows how to cheer me up. Eventually, we pulled into the thrift shop.

“Remember girls, we aren’t going to buy any coats or winter boots, leave those for people who need cheap winter stuff.” Dia’s mom reminds us. We nod and walk around the store to find hidden treasures. The store isn’t too crowded, my favorite kind of day because Dia and I can act like idiots. Dia always acts more mature, she looks more mature too. She’s 5 inches taller than me at 5’9, she looks like she could be a senior already. Me on the other hand, I still have an itty bitty babyface. People could have easily thought we were siblings, especially since we both have dark brown hair and pale skin. Except she looks like she’s a supermodel or Katy Perry while I look like a sewer rat and not in a cute way. I shouldn’t compare myself and I tell myself that often but I still do. I have no excuse really, I’m part of the problem. How can I blame society for putting unrealistic beauty expectations on young girls when I have the same standards for myself? Honestly, how can anyone blame “society” when we are society? Every single person is responsible for part of the problem and…

“Lilly! Look at these pants!” Dia interrupts my inner monologue. Which I’m thankful for, too often I get stuck inside my own head.

“They are really cute. I would totally wear those but pants rarely fit me right and we can’t try anything on.”

“Well we can buy them and they have to fit at least one of us, and if they don’t we can make some sort of DIY thing out of them.”

“OK.” I smiled as we continued shopping.

We found a whole bunch of shirts, all in which were more of Dia’s style. After a long discussion with her “fashion assistant” ( for some reason I was the fashion assistant, although I knew very little about fashion.) she managed to pick out the 3 best shirts. Sadly, we decided to not buy the pants. We rounded the corner at knick knacks, where I usually buy the most useless crap.

“Oh my… Lilly looks at this guy!” Dia holds something out that I can’t quite see, so I walk over to her setting down the teapot I was holding.

“What is it?”

“It’s a radish dog!” She hands the trinket to me, and it is in-fact a radish dog. The small glass figure was a dog shaped like a radish.

“This is so bizzare… I need it.” I say.

“I thought so.” Dia replies happily. I continue looking through the knicknacks. I come across a very cool bottle.

“It looks really interesting.” I say

“Then buy it!”

“What would I do with it?”

“Use it as a plant vase.”

“That’s a good idea. Ya I should definitely get this.” Dia knew my passion for filling old stuff with plants

We victoriously left the store with our goals meant, Dia with her new shirts and me not spending all of my money on knick knacks, just the two amazing finds. We got into the car are started on the slightly shorter drive to Dia’s house.

“We should do a fashion show for you when we get to your house Dia.”

“Gawd, that’s a good idea! But what are you going to do?”

“Be a supporting audience.”

“Nonsense. You’re going to go through my old clothes.” Dia smiled.

“Thank you, you don’t have to do that.”

“But I want to.”

On the way home we talked about how excited we were to watch this new show. We were going to binge the whole thing sense she had a Netflix account and I did not. We pulled up to her house. We did the fashion show, then right after dinner we started watching the show, me and Dia were equally confused, it did not meet our fairly low expectations, but we had a good laugh at it instead. The hours went by quickly as we sat in her bedroom, her on her bed and me sitting in an awkward position between her bean bag chair and yoga ball.

“Wow that’s bad.” She laughed when the season finale ended.

“Why did we watch the whole season then?” I said getting out of my weird position and starting to set up the blow up mattress on her floor.

“I have no freaking clue at this point.”

“What time is it?” I ask

She grabs her phone off her white nightstand “Like 3 am. What should we do?”

“Go to bed.” I laugh.

“Or we could try and open the bottle you bought.”

“Like get the top off? What if it really stinks inside.”

“Well you’ve gotta open it if you want to use it as a vase!”

I nod as I grab it from my bag. “Here you try it. You’re stronger than me anyways.” I hand her the bottle.

“I can’t get it.” She says as she hands it back to me.

I take a minute to look at the bottle, to really examine it. It was opaque which was odd for old glass-works as far as I’m aware, (however we need to take into consideration that I don’t know as much about any given topic as I think I do) but it was beautiful. It had a dark blue and indigo swirled coloring, and the cap was pitched black. I tugged at the cap expecting it to be a hard task, but it came off amazingly easily. A bit of smoke came out of the bottle, a grey-ish blue color. I sniffed it because I wondered what it smelled like, but it was odorless. I looked over to Dia because I expected her to give me a bad time for impulsive smelling the smoke, but instead, she was frozen. Not in a scared way, literally frozen. Her dark chocolate eyes didn’t blink, and her body didn’t move a muscle. In the air a fly that had been hovering us obnoxiously moments before stopped in mid air, its wings did not move.

“Dia!” I screamed. Dia did not move. “LIDIA!” I screamed louder, still, her face remained still as a statue. The smoke began to circle the whole room, only it and I moved. I was scared. I stood there frozen as the smoke contracted to form a figure, the figure of a boy.