April 23rd - "Jazz Cats"

Sitting on the couch with Regina, Lucille made a wide motion with her hands. “I’m telling you, you really need to watch it. It’s the best romantic comedy anime I’ve ever seen. Sure, it can get a little weird, but there’s passion in there. And sure, it’s an unconventional relationship, but you can tell they really like each other. They just don’t express it the same way like other couples do. Honestly, all things considered, it’s pretty heartwarming.”

Regina, game controller in her hands, had been fully immersed in driving aimlessly around Los Santos. Lucille, in real time, could see how her words broke that layer of immersion. Regina paused the game, leaned back on the couch, and gave Lucille a grand look of disbelief.

“Dude…it’s about a guy addicted to some girl’s drool.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but once you get past that-”

Thirty-rack of beer in hand, Cousin Jackie thundered into the living room. “Sup, [REST OF GREETING REDACTED TO COMPLY WITH HONEYFEED’S TERMS OF SERVICE]!”

Yeah, times had changed, and you couldn’t say things like that anymore, but Cousin Jackie was unapologetically herself, for better or worse, warts and all. She had been that way since Lucille had first met her in high school, and Lucille had no doubt she would stay that way for the rest of her life.

Jackie was Regina’s cousin - both of them had that particular shade of strawberry blonde hair that spilled messily down to their shoulders. But while Regina tended to slouch and generally spoke quietly, Jackie could only be described as a force of nature, standing up straight with a bit of muscle to her (Jackie was known to be a complete menace in their school’s intramural leagues). Regina wore a ragged black Nirvana shirt (you know the one); Jackie still wore her black-and-green high school sweater, the one with the triple E on the front for East Eden Eagles. Years ago during her senior year, she proudly wore it before every game when she brought the girl’s basketball team to the state semifinals.

Lucille first met her during their freshman year of high school - she also lived in East Eden, just on the other side of town. She had been a local sports star, briefly flirted with joining the United States Marine Corps (oorah), and ended up attending the same college as Lucille. For a commuter like Lucille and a worker like Regina, the house Jackie now shared with three other roommates turned out to be a home away from home. They were there often, and they were there now - this was Jackie’s couch they currently sat on.

Lucille reached for her wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

Jackie set the rack down next to the dirty coffee table and waved a hand. “Aw, c’mon. I’m hosting. And we’re graduating in a month! Don’t worry about it.”

After a moment, Lucille reluctantly put her wallet away. She was alright, that Jackie. She was the type of girl who thought the sinking of the Titanic was a crazy plot twist and refused to believe it was a real ship. She was the type of girl who could ruffle Regina’s hair without getting a stern look. The only way to describe her was - she was her, she would always be her, and sure, that meant being a bit over-the-top, occasionally obnoxious, and there was that one time in high school when she tried to stick a finger up Lucille’s ass, but when you dealt with her, you knew you were dealing with somebody undeniably real to themselves and to the world.

The old couch groaned as Jackie sat in between Regina and Lucille. She offered up a beer, but Regina shook her head. Regina only drank about once a month, and already hit her quota last weekend. In contrast, Lucille took up Jackie’s offer, but she drank it slowly. She found that her ability to drink had rapidly diminished since arriving on the wrong side of twenty. Regina had been Jackie’s plus one, and Lucille had been Regina’s plus one, to some hell-raising parties during their freshman and sophomore years. Gods, she was strong then. But now, anything stronger than a gin and tonic might earn her a hangover that lasted until 5 PM the next day.

Jackie, of course, was a physical specimen and finished two in the time it took Lucille to get halfway through her first one. She and Lucille sat in silence for a time, watching Regina drive down dark desert highways, cold wind in her (playable character’s) hair. Behind them, taped on the wall above the couch, hung the classic college posters - George Constanza’s Timeless Art of Seduction and the famed Kramer portrait. All five of them enjoyed the quiet, rhythmic motion of the car across the screen, mingled with the noises of real cars rumbling down the street outside of Jackie’s house.

“Oh, that reminds me, my speaker should be done charging,” Jackie realized. Her eyes suddenly took a devilish grin to them. “And I have a surprise, too.”

She got up, leapt over the coffee table, and disappeared down a hallway towards her own room. Lucille and Regina shared glances - Jackie’s last surprise involved making all three of them borgs (blackout rage gallons). Such homemade drinks - mixtures of vodka, kool-aid, and gatorade - were classics of the new youth culture Lucille rapidly found herself growing out of touch from. In its short history, borgs had earned illustrious accolades such as sending forty-six university students to the hospital in a single day (fortunately, no cases were serious).

Jackie returned with a speaker in one hand. Lucille could only widen her eyes a little in surprise - she expected a gallon full of murky, questionable content in Jackie's other hand, but instead, she carried none other than a can of compressed air.

Regina paused the game. “...uh-”

Just like that, the nozzle was in Jackie’s mouth and she pressed down on the handle. There was an audible discharge of air, and Lucille and Regina could only watch dumbfounded as Jackie did a little dance. She let go of the handle and gave them a happy grin mixed with a look of stupidity.

“Oh man,” she simply said, her voice deepened by the air. She laughed to herself, then found a remote on the coffee table to turn on the mood lights. Mood lights were another college classic - cheap strips of light from China that could utterly bathe a room in its light. When Lucille walked by a college dorm the other day after her evening class got out, she saw the entire building covered in a kaleidoscope of color, each room projecting a different hue into the night. In the present, Jackie chose red, an intense choice only used when you were really getting into a crackhead energy kind of mood.

“First time?” she asked them. Lucille and Regina could only nod. Jackie laughed and leaned against a wall. “Let’s each do it and play a song. I can go first.”

You could learn a lot about a person based solely on their choice of music. Lucille wasn’t a particular expert on music, but she knew rap, pop, and rock were the most popular genres of her age demographic. And admittedly, each of those genres were big umbrella terms for dozens, if not hundreds, of microgenres (she had once witnessed a half hour argument between Jackie and her roommate over the definition of “trap punk”).

The first song to come on fit Jackie to a T. Completely covered in red light, she whipped out her best dance moves to Insane in the Brain. 90s old-school hip-hop - that very much described her.

Manufactured dance moves, ones perfect to be repeated across social media, seemed to be all the rage nowadays, but Jackie danced to her own drummer. She moved along to the beat, jabbing a finger out to the chorus, her sweater bouncing along. She rapped out some of the lyrics, inhaled air to some of the others. Lucille had to admit - Jackie’s energy was infectious. She was the type of person who could really rally a group, and with each movement of her arms and legs and body to the record scratches and crash of the hi-hat cymbals, Lucille felt herself nodding her head on the couch. Halfway through, her arms had joined in, while her foot tapped against the wooden floor.

The song came to an end. Jackie held out the can of air to Regina, but her cousin just waved her away with a hand and a shake of the head.

Jackie nodded and tossed her phone over. “You can still pick a song, of course.”

It took Regina a minute to find her choice, but considering her high school quote and the T-shirt she wore, it came as no surprise to Lucille. Nirvana’s Come As You Are contained one of the greatest opening riffs and bass lines known to man (and yeah, yeah, Nirvana took it from Eighties by Killing Joke, but they took it from Life Goes On by The Damned first). Come As You Are wasn’t very much of a dancing kind of song, but Regina nodded her head a little and tapped her foot, and that’s the most dancing you could get out of her. She still had the controller in her hands; she pushed her car to the max speed and drove into the city, the bright lights flashing by. She had a small smile on her face, enough to make Jackie play some air guitar while Lucille finished her second beer.

And then came Lucille’s turn. She already knew the song to play, but Jackie’s hand was outstretched in offer, the nozzle pointed towards Lucille. Time slowed down - six years ago, Lucille saw Jackie in this same pose in the high school bathroom, the primitive vape in her hand. She took it back then - but that was back then. Back then, she was young, and nowadays…

Lucille was still young. At age 22, so many signs pointed to otherwise, but Lucille refused to believe it. And in the grand scheme of things, 22 was still so young, but when you hit your early-twenties, you’ve finally grown old enough to understand the concept of “youth”. For the first time in her life, Lucille now had a well-marked time period which she could call her youth, and she knew that time period was rapidly approaching its end.

But she decided she still had time.

Lucille held the container in her hands, feeling the cold metal against her palms. The application seemed easy enough, so she chose her song, placed the nozzle in her mouth, and after a moment of hesitation, fired right as the opening melody to Letter From Yokosuka played.

In a nutshell, whip-its work by depriving the brain of oxygen. Lucille didn’t feel the effects at first; thirty seconds later, after handing the can back to Jackie, they hit her all at once. Long ago, Lucille had used Windows XP with its particular error sound; you ever see those videos where a thousand of those error sounds go off at the same time? That’s the best way to describe how Lucille felt at the moment. The world just bounced around as the errors went off until she finally hit the blue screen, which was ironic because the red lights danced in front of her face.

But that’s what the music was for. Letter From Yokosuka by Nujabes was a calming piece, a mixture of relaxing pianos and horns and other instruments Lucille didn’t know the names to. The music ensconced her, pushing away the error noises, and a sort of blissful numbness washed over like calm waves. Jackie outstretched an empty hand in offering; Lucille took it and was hoisted to her feet.

It all felt so natural. As the music played, Lucille joined Jackie in dancing. The two moved back and forth, the pianos whispering softly to them, the horns inspiring them to move their arms. Lucille pointed at Jackie, who responded by leaning back and moving her chest. She stood back upright and pointed at Lucille, who took over by doing a small spin. Lucille only realized now she was laughing; so was Jackie, while Regina watched it all with an amused look on her face.

Getting high off of condensed air was an undeniably stupid thing. And the majority of people enjoyed their youths without it. But this was Lucille’s youth, hers and hers alone, and if she wanted to spend it in a stupid way, she would. The consequences could be a tomorrow problem; everything could be a tomorrow problem, because today she felt fully, completely young again.

But what is today but yesterday’s tomorrow?

Fortunately, there were no long-term consequences for a single use on a single night (or ten uses on a single night, as the case turned out to be). But the clock ticked on, Regina spun her car keys around a finger, and then, all of a sudden, she and Lucille stood on the street, Jackie waving goodbye from the front porch.

While Regina started the car, Lucille took one last look at Jackie’s house. The street, for once, was quiet. Everything was still and full of clarity, down to the details on the power lines, on the parked cars.

That’s another thing about understanding the concept of youth - once Lucille understood there were times she couldn’t go back to, that there were times she’ll miss with every ounce of her heart, she couldn’t help but wondering, right there in the present-

Will there be a day in the future when I want to go back to this night, too?