Lyllian’s common sense boards the plane without a backward glance. It’s her Holiday and by god Lyllian can manage without her for a few days, or a week or even a month! The rest of Lyllian’s cognitive senses silently protest but slink back into the recesses of her mind as she lounges in a supped up chevelle, windows cracked, taking drag after drag off David’s dirty green hashish pipe. It’s chipped and so is he.  Angry and harsh. The dark night behind them rolls in. Another long night at the warehouse, too tight jeans and too tight corners.

Lyllian had taken a temp job working nights pulling auto parts. She’d taken a temp job making taco salad and pb and butter (yes butter) sandwiches at a small something something affiliated daycare. She’d taken a temp job sitting in the back row of a humanities class after a speech class her head on her hand listening to the buzz of the pasty white lights. Where was she headed? Those hopes are bright and hard in her head but so is her inexperience.  Lyllian is not a drinker. Not a pot smoker. Not even a day tripper yet the one thing she does suffer from is pride. And not the good kind.

Lyllian was trying to discover something. “What?” her best friend Sabrina begs eyes disapproving. Lyllian was always the good one. The quieter one. The guilty one. The reclusive one. Her passion smoldered in books and writing. It was Sabrina who attacked life head on, was loud, demanding and never picked the right guy. Lyllian had picked the right guy. But he’d flown away. For a bit.

“That guy is a stoner and you can do better!” Sabrina admonishes Lyllian with a ground beef grape leaf her mom grew in her rainforest kitchen in her hand. “May I remind you about a certain twelve doughnuts?” Lyllian shoots back eyes angry. Sabrina laughs uproariously. Twelve doughnuts is code and I cannot break that trust even now.

This is the year of Lyllian. Not smart Lyllian or moral Lyllian or even nice Lyllian. But fixated and rebellious Lyllian. Lyllian who gives you the finger and trounces on your righteous high horse.  Her mind races back to Michael, as it often does, when her physical self is in a place of depravity. She can blame him for her behavior. Her burning the candle at both ends. This is stupid of course and misguided. 

By 1998 Lyllian’s common sense had forgiven her her complete lapse in good judgement and after much yelling and throwing around of words like ‘naïve’ ‘self-centered’ and ‘gullible’ they were back to words like ‘straight-forward’ and ’passionate’ but still a little green.

Next Chapter: Lyllian, November 2016, again, Seattle