Ryan Ramos is no (bailarin) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-08-03 20:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, ryan ramos |
Marvel NY - narrative
Who: Ryan Ramos
What: Getting to grips
When: Recently!
Problem was, even if you had the apartment, you couldn't just live there, right. The phone that had showed up, a hundred people's lives showing up, it was better than her abuela's novellas in the late afternoon, kitchen steamy with someone else's laundry paid for by the basket and the crescendo of music that signaled someone falling in love or getting betrayed or back from the dead, some shit like that. Ryan, she stayed in that apartment as long as she could. Yellow walls and wrapped in the blanket her tia made with the air unit humming until it was arctic, instead of summer-heat. Sunshine meant outside, right. With the sidewalk hot under her bare soles and one of those cheap ice-pops, mostly color instead of flavor and one of her cousins hanging off the pocket of her jeans, me-too, me-too a chorus. Summer was sleeping two to a bed, the heat sticky and wet but Ry had grown out of summers like those a decade ago and the only other summer she knew was the clean sharp smell of sweat, laundry-washed lycra and the shudder of the ceiling-fan overhead. Hands, damp-warm on her belly, or the curve of her waist, or somewhere around her thighs and heat unknotted every muscle in her body, sweet as an hour-long warm-up at the barre. Heat melted her like butter, but Ry wasn't melting anywhere, anyplace so she cranked the cool until it soaked into the walls and she wrapped herself in cheap, scratchy wool and watched novellas until the pills ran out. That was the problem. Not food. She sat on her ass long enough she wasn't gonna need to eat because it was going to stick to her bones anyway. Already a week, two weeks of the shit in the pantry with no class to work at, to condition, puberty was back, right. She didn't need to look to see. Tits were bigger, ass was bigger. The kind of summer that put you back with the amateurs when fall came. She'd nailed a sheet over the floor to ceiling, back of the bedroom, the barre right next to it. It fell like a ghost and it had hurt like a bitch, putting weight on her knee even a little but the mirror was gone and she didn't have to see her own mess, right up next to the barre like a cosmic fucking joke. The pills had come with a number on the bottom. Local pharmacy, instead of Vegas and that didn't surprise Ry any, not no more. The way it worked, the people on her phone, they could send pills, send women one side of the country to the other and make em believe they were never anyplace else in the first place. (Sometimes. Mostly in the shower. When she leaned elbows gainst the wall to hold herself up just long enough for the water to spill down her back, matt her hair to her skull, sleek as a ballerina and the weight on her knee sent pain shuddering in hot, dark shocks down her hip. When she was so fucking scared she'd slip, take the curtain down with her, the fucking brace leaned against the john so she could reach it if she fell. Sometimes then? She wished it had fucking taken her before.) The pills, she had enough for a few weeks. Long enough she'd got round to eating graham toast cereal outta the box, and the cash gone from the stash on the dresser, the kind she emptied out her wallet at the end of the week for the takeout the next. And there was no fucking way she was waking up without em. Ry didn't need to imagine it. Acidic metal, back of the throat and the pain in dull, thudding strobes inside her temples, all over and a long, ugly burn from hip to knee. She put it off, long as she could. Enough so she was breaking those pills into pieces. But there was one left, and that meant pharmacy. The sweats didn't roll right over the brace. Had to tear em, soft worn gray ripped over metal, the flaking white print proud of coming from somewhere no whitebread princess had been taught to point her feet, hold in her ass, and smile through pain. Pain that was blunted ache, and you gritted your fucking teeth when you wanted to scream and her ass on the floor, easing pants over her ass, using her hours-in-class core muscles to lift from her stomach stead of using her knees, Ry felt that scream ripple low, roil around with the nausea that tasted like copper in her mouth. Limping, right. Shredded sweatpants, and a muscle tee and her hair snaking over her shoulders like she'd never fucking heard of hair-spray and grips and nets, and the crutch crammed under her arm until it bruised like a dance partner who'd never learned to lift a girl right. She looked back, to close the door. Fraid of not remembering keys, of not remembering the empty bottle to prove the script was hers, fraid of not remembering how to be, outside the cold comfort of the apartment. Saw herself, three foot high, black and white, script over her torso telling everyone she was Juliet. Maybe she was just fucking afraid she'd forget how to be her. The door slammed. |