September 3rd - "Regina's Very Own Chapter"

Amid the bright lights of downtown Tokyo, Regina stood on the street defiantly. The orange-painted steel of the Tokyo Tower loomed up ahead of her, and Lucille confidently gazed down at her former friend from the top of the structure.

“I’m tired of having to start each work week again,” Lucille haughtily declared. “So I’ve decided to destroy the concept of Monday.”

Regina clenched her fist. “But Lucille, if you destroy Monday, then Tuesday will just take its place!”

Lucille pondered that, then cackled. “Then I’ll destroy everything, Regina, starting with you.” She levitated into the air, bright lights swirling around her. “Come, show me what you’re made of!”

Before they could fight, the alarm blared and Regina blinked herself awake. She sat up in bed, cracking her neck, switching off the alarm moments after it triumphantly announced the arrival of 9 AM. Regina usually woke up at 6 AM for work, because the 7-3:30 shift was the best, but it was a Saturday so she let herself indulge and sleep in for a little. Every night, she’d try and usually succeed in getting at least seven, if not eight or nine, hours of sleep, and it was with this stored-up energy that she easily swung out of bed without a single complaint.

The rest of the house was quiet - her parents were already out running errands, and Jackie liked to sleep late - so Regina leaned her head back as she showered, enjoyed the silent heat in the bathroom as she brushed her teeth, then sauntered slowly over to the kitchen. Outside, through the windows, the first light of autumn shone down upon the back patio. To be fair autumn light wasn’t much different than summer light, at least in the twilight zone known as September. You could argue it was late summer still, and some certainly did, but the air got cool and crisp enough at night that you knew something had shifted.

In the morning quiet of the kitchen, Regina tossed a couple of breakfast sausages on the frying pan, dropped in a pair of eggs alongside it, seasoned it with a touch of garlic, and soaked in the rising smells - the sausages were apple cinnamon, not her favorite, but that was alright - and slight plume of smoke. When she retrieved the carton of orange juice from the fridge, something seemed out of place, but she decided to pursue that line of thinking later. The contents on the frying pan went onto a clean plate, and with the cup of OJ in hand, she nudged open the door to the back patio.

Not quite summer, not quite fall. Cicadas still buzzed out there, somewhere in the domesticated patch of woodland that could be found behind every good little home in New England suburbia. She ate slowly, because she had nowhere to be. She thought slowly, because there was nothing pressing to think about. Live slowly, and live often - that was the name of the game for her, except she didn’t even realize. This relaxed sort of living where time drifted away because nothing needed to be done, and anything that did need to be done could be dealt with as the time arose, drifted through her subconscious as she drank slowly and watched the September wind make the trees slightly dance.

After finishing, she slumped in her chair, hands on her stomach. A lawn mower started up somewhere; cars, unseen but definitely heard, passed by on the neighboring avenue. A batch of leaves on one tree had already changed to a caramel color - Regina watched them sway for a long while.

Something was missing though - that element of chaos, of unknown, of boundless energy shifting in a thousand different directions all at the same time. Regina liked to sit and go wherever the sea-breeze took her. Any moment now, it would come…

Right on cue, her phone buzzed in pocket. A goofy grin on her face, Regina placed the phone to her ear.

“Yahallo!” Lucille greeted from the other side of East Eden. “Yahallo and good morning!”

Regina tended to laugh more within her mind than she did through her mouth, and today was no different. “You’re in a good mood.”

“It’s autumn!” Lucille exclaimed. “Summer’s done, time to wash away all the old, time for a fresh changing of the guard and all.”

Lucille had an odd way of speaking, like some sort of beatnik poet hopped up on too much coffee and dreams. Regina didn’t dislike it.

“And me too,” Lucille continued. “I’ve undergone some real change this past summer, and now it’s time to expand on it. I’ve been far too existential recently, Regina. Wrapped up in all of these problems that not even Hegel or Nietzsche could solve. At least, I think so, ‘cuz I haven’t read them. But no more existentialism. You see, now that it’s autumn, it’s time I entered my slice of life arc.”

Lucille also spoke like an otaku perpetually in motion. Regina didn’t dislike that, either.

“Slice of life arc,” Regina repeated, dry amusement at the ends of her voice.

Surely, Lucille was now waving her free arm dramatically in her bedroom. “Apple picking, flannels, long-boarding! We haven’t boarded since high school.”

Regina boarded last week.

“Football! Let’s throw a football around.” Lucille was now surely balancing on one foot, imitating serene Tibetan monks, or at least her impression of them. “I want to be on some Non Non Biyori shit. You ever watch that? I want to be on some Hotarun shit, some Natsumi shit, some fucking Renge shit.”

“...you know, you really shouldn’t put ‘fucking’ and ‘Renge’ next to each other like that.”

“Ah, screw yourself,” Lucille chided.

This time, Regina laughed through her mouth. When it subsided, she idly twirled a strand of strawberry-blonde hair around a finger. “Well, I’m going fishing today if you want to go.”

“...eh, that’s boring. At least for me. Come by my place once you’re done tonight and let’s do something.”

Regina chuckled. “Sorry, but I got a date tonight. It’s reuben night, Lucille. Already got all the ingredients. Gonna keep it lowkey and go to bed early, you know how it is.”

“Ah, fine. But I got all day to convince you, so you’ll be hearing from me.”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Lucille let out her usual, slightly erratic laugh, then bade her farewells. With quite a pleasant feeling running through her, Regina returned back to the kitchen and investigated the fridge. Something was indeed out of place because it was missing entirely. Regina already had a suspect in mind.

Somewhere along the way, two hours had passed, and Jackie was now wide awake. Regina could tell because she was thundering out expletives behind the closed door of her bedroom. As Regina got closer, rap music leaked through the exposed space beneath the door; it took her two rounds of knocking before Jackie heard and told her to come in.

As always, the first thing Regina saw when entering her cousin’s room was the line of memorabilia on a prominent shelf on the wall. Chief among them were the two trophies for MVP of the East Eden women’s basketball team, won during Jackie’s junior and senior years, freshly polished and shiny. All of the awards were - a plaque celebrating the rare feat of 1000 points scored in her high school career, the ribbon for her team’s state semi-final appearance, a blown-up picture of Jackie sinking a long three in that appearance which took place in none other than the Garden, the same home court as the Celtics, a fact she was immensely proud of.

The central part of the shelf, however, contained something much quieter. It was an old photo at one of New England’s thousands of ponds somewhere in deep summer. Jackie slung an arm around Regina, who, perhaps a little shyly, displayed a caught largemouth bass for the camera on Lucille’s phone. BIGGEST FISH THIS SIDE OF THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI, Jackie wrote in sharpied scrawl in the white space below the photo. Regina had unexpectedly caught it on an otherwise normal trip to the local lake, but Jackie put it front and center on her wall of fame all the same.

That’s why Regina hesitated a little before speaking with an accusatory tone. “Jackie, did you eat my pickles?”

Jackie currently sat on her bed, a console controller in her hands, pixelated basketball players running around on her screen. A jar of empty pickles rested on her night stand, along with a used fork on a used napkin. Jackie glanced at the jar, then back at Regina.

“...no?”

“Those were my pickles, Jackie.”

Jackie, currently dressed in an old East Eden soccer t-shirt and shorts that exposed a boarding-related bandage over a knee, tilted her head. “Eh? But they weren’t labeled as yours.”

“Turn the jar around.”

Jackie did so, and saw the initials RM written across the front. “Oh. Sorry.”

“I need those pickles for my reuben night. In your travels today, can you pick some up for me?”

That earned another “Eh?” from Jackie. “You’re not going to Lucille’s tonight?”

“You too?” Regina gave an idle shrug. “I’ll guess we’ll see, then. Just please get me my pickles.”

Jackie dutifully saluted and then went back to cursing at her television screen. Regina left Jackie to her cousin’s version of a relaxing Saturday morning, made a couple of sandwiches, and headed outside for her car. The old Reginamobile was a legend in high school, but a car with low-functioning brakes can only work for so long, so to the scrapyard it went. This new beater served her well during these last four years, only breaking down twice on her, and that’s all you could ask for. She tossed on a bucket hat because it’s not fishing if you didn’t wear one, and the first weekend of autumn was hot and sunny without a cloud in the sky. And with that, she turned the key in the ignition and headed off.

Regina tended to drive, because Jackie didn’t need a car while in the city and Lucille…you don’t want to be in a car when Lucille was behind the wheel. But Regina's passengers often commandeered the aux, so it was nice to just drive by herself for once, her 90s rock playlist coming over the stereo. Sure, she didn’t really mind Jackie’s trap music and Lucille’s Japanese-techno-dubstep-anime songs, but sometimes, it felt so peaceful to just be alone.

A short hop on the highway later, Regina was in a few towns over, pulling into the lot for the local lake. Backpack on her shoulders, tacklebox in one hand, fishing rod in the other, folding chair held by the crook of her armpit, she made her way down to the shore, finding an isolated spot to set up. The lake bristled as a breeze ran through it; out in its center, a couple of canoes chugged along.

Fishing was quiet. Simple. An easy way to get away from everything, to take deep breaths and watch the subtle waves of blue water beneath blue sky. The point wasn’t even to catch anything; it was to cast your line out there, see the red-and-white fishing bob sway along the surface, sink deep into the chair, put on some music when the silence grew deafening, and then pull out your earbuds when you yearned for the quiet again. Regina ate more than the fish did that day - two sandwiches and a bag of chips compared to a single bite from a perch with a yellow coat of scales that was released soon after it was caught.

Perhaps one day, if Regina ever made it out to the wilderness of Yellowstone or Grand Teton or even Arcadia, just a morning car ride’s north, she’d cook something she caught on a campfire. Lucille had all these grand dreams, of exploration and fame and becoming a prominent thread in the very fabric of human history, and Regina greatly appreciated her for that. In contrast, and maybe it was just the Irish blood in her, but all Regina wanted, when all this was said and done, was a little house to call her own, a nice plot of land in the back, vegetables in the garden, not too far from civilization but not too close either.

That would be far in the future. Things like dreams took time, after all, and couldn’t be built in a day. For right now, Regina planned on enjoying things as they arrived, however they arrived. She had only turned twenty-two a few days ago, after all.

Time passed by unseen as Regina stood to stretch her legs, sat to rest them, performed the usual routines that came with fishing. Thinking, lots of thinking. It’s amazing what happens when your senses aren’t overloaded - so much room to breathe. Even that was something she did slowly as well, because there was no reason to breathe fast.

The sun was starting to dip by the time Regina made it back to the car. Once again, now that she had been thoroughly relaxed, she yearned for a little bit of chaos. Perhaps she could go to Lucille’s tonight, but she wanted those reubens. And more to the point - introversion was always be a tough thing to handle. Being with people took energy, and sometimes, you just don’t have it, or rather, you think you don’t have it, because it’s a lot easier to say no and eat your reubens than it is to get dressed and prepared and go out and be quick-witted on your feet for the night.

If it weren’t for the little nudges that came to her, then Regina might’ve said no every time, until she couldn’t say no anymore because the offers to go out would stop coming. But Lucille and Jackie, they always nudged her, sometimes too much, but just enough sometimes to make her sigh with a smile and go,

“Alright, alright, I’ll be there,” she said into the phone while driving home. Lucille called her a minute ago, proclaiming with big words likely picked from a thesaurus or Russian classical literature about how Regina just had to be there, because Regina was her dear friend.

“Awesome! I can’t wait!” Lucille exclaimed through the phone. “You’re the best, Regina. It’s like…you’re the Saint Peter to my Jesus. My rock.”

“...let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

They laughed, and soon after hanging the phone up, Regina pulled off the exit back into East Eden, driving slowly across town, arriving at Lucille’s home shortly after sunset. Streaks of dark blue stretched across the sky as she walked up the front stairs. She rang once and let in a big inhale and let out a big exhale. Being here already made her tired but also made her glad.

“Regina!” Lucille greeted, waving her arms ecstatically. Without warning, she took hold of Regina’s hands and pulled her through the door, right into the kitchen. There, Jackie wore a big party hat and gestured to the table.

“Happy birthday!” Lucille and Jackie called out, both of them making pointing motions at the chocolate cake on the table waiting for her. Spelled out in red-colored frosting across the top of the dessert was the simple word REGINA. A pair of candles shaped like number two’s planted behind her name rounded out the cake.

Suddenly, all that tiredness was gone. Maybe it remained on her face, but Regina rarely showed her emotions on the surface. Inside, she felt some sort of bubbling sensation, a feeling of rising on warm air.

“Aw, you guys,” she finally said. “I said I didn’t want anything too crazy.”

Lucille reached out and cupped the sides of Regina’s face, her palms and fingers warm to the touch. “Ah, but you’re our little August baby. You’re the youngest one out of us three. In a weird way, maybe I just feel like your onee-chan sometimes.”

Again, Regina didn’t dislike it, but she gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Still on about that?”

“Because we’re family!” With happy open mouths, Lucille and Jackie pointed at the lone decoration in the kitchen - a banner stretched across an open doorway.

“Take a look at banner Regina!” Jackie called out. The banner said FAMILY LOVE REGINA.

The feeling broke through to the surface and Regina laughed, and it was a long laugh, far longer than the usual muted ones she let out. Lucille was pleased, her hands doing little claps, while Jackie disappeared into another room for a moment, then returned with a gift wrapped in newspaper.

“My gift for you,” Jackie said in the humblest voice she could muster. When Regina took it in her hands, she realized the gift both looked and felt like a jar. While Jackie and Lucille watched with bated breath, Regina opened it up and came face to face with-

“Sorry for eating them earlier,” Jackie said sheepishly. “But I’m glad I can make up for it now. We won’t keep you here too long, I know you had your own plans tonight.”

Regina studied her gift for a moment, wondering if she had the heart to tell Jackie, but she decided with a smile that it didn’t really matter. “Ah, that’s alright. I think I’d like to stay for a while.”

She set down the jar of green banana peppers and joined her friends.