there I sat on Abby’s bed, armed with a box of Twinkies. Although my happy-go-lucky size four jeans screamed in protest, my longtime lust for creamy, spongy goodness forced me to succumb. I carefully opened the box and laid out all ten oblong shapes of heaven in a neat row. I squeezed, poked, prodded and lifted one to my nose to inhale the sugary vanilla scent. Prudently, I placed it back on the bed.
Looking around me, I noted the room was exactly as Abby had left it. Her neatly made bed clashed with the tornado-hit room. She’d made her bed every morning, but rarely touched the dust-collecting crap on the floor. “It gives me a sense of order. Having all my stuff laid out in clear view,” she’d once explained when I questioned her. Rumpled clothes, chunky boots and Rolling Stone magazines camouflaged every inch of the ancient orangey-brown carpet. Dripping candles, odd knickknacks and guitar picks covered every surface of furniture in the room. Postcards, magazine clippings and posters of rock stars dotted plum-colored walls. Her favorite poster of the ‘80s Goth band, The Cure, hung on the ceiling directly above the pillow on her bed. She would gaze into singer Robert Smith’s heavily made up face as she drifted off each night. April said a face like that would give her nightmares, but Abby loved her men moody and weird. A younger version of Robert Smith was Abby’s dream boy.
Actually, we were both huge ‘80s music fans, which is pretty rare for people our age. We both got a real kick out of the big, teased hair, the heavy eye makeup, the melodramatic vocals, the robotic synthesizers. We liked most of the stuff from the era, but considered New Wave the best. We loved to mimic some of the over-the-top fashion we’d see in music videos on YouTube. We’d go to ‘80s theme parties wearing thrashed-and-safety-pinned t-shirts, florescent leggings and fedoras or big obnoxious bows in our hair. We watched Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off more times than I can count. We had several lines from The Breakfast Club memorized. Molly Ringwald was our hero. Abby would often joke we were born in the wrong era.
I ripped the Twinkie wrapper open just a tad to get a better whiff. Three years of self-control dissolved as I took my first bite. Sticky sweet love exploded in my mouth. I savored the first cake, but barely noticed my rebellious hands tearing through the plastic barrier of cake number two.
It didn’t make sense, how Abby’s material stuff carried on, life as usual, while her lifeless body was stuck in a box, buried deep in the earth. Shouldn’t her earthly treasures disappear in a poof like she did? Even her alarm clock acted as if nothing happened, obnoxious and perky, stating the time in bright red numbers. I grabbed the gloating machine, ripping the plug out of its socket and threw it across the room. I was pleased when it hit the wall and tore one of Abby’s Morrissey posters. There. Now something was different. The room needed to know Abby was not here. That she would never be here again.
I began to nibble on cake number three. The experience brought me back to scorching summer days, Abby and I sprawled on her living room floor, like cats, too hot to move. A vintage fan blew cool relief, the breeze running its fingers through our sweaty hair. Twinkie wrappers ever encircled us. Like dozens of other times, we played our favorite game, Would You Rather…? Go a week without makeup or a month without shaving your legs? Lose your hearing or become paraplegic? Make out with the young version of U2’s Bono or have the perfect boyfriend?
When we wore that out Abby said, “What’s your greatest fear?”
“I don’t know. Maybe going blind. Not being able to see the beauty around
Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman