Andie Taylor

Washington is a beautiful state, and in truth that is the only adequate way to describe it. Many people forget about it in the northwestern corner of the United States, but I promise if you visit it you won’t forget it again. It has beauty unparalleled almost anywhere in the world. In the west stand the Cascades, an impenetrable barrier that even weather couldn’t overcome at times. The east is much drier and not nearly as pretty, but I still like to visit it sometimes when I need some time to think. Most people don’t live in that part of the state, and the silence is like an eerie blessing. It works wonders on the most complicated of problems, almost like a drug that dulls the senses, letting you think more clearly. Too much of it though, and you become immune to the effects.

I lived in Lichens, Washington. Lichens was about forty miles west of Seattle, close to the Cascades. It was a small city, but gorgeous, and I wouldn’t change one thing about it. Some people couldn’t really appreciate the city, I mean the architecture and landscape, but I guess they just never had really seen it the way I had. In my eyes, it was art at its best.

I had lived in Lichens close to seventeen years then, about a week before I turned eighteen, and I had seen a lot more than most of the people there. It was the little things people always overlook, at least that was what I had come to notice, but sometimes that means they missed the most interesting part. Most haven’t ever been down on Main Street on the hottest of summer afternoons when McCormick Park was filled with kids playing tag and swinging like monkeys on the playground. They haven’t ever stopped to listen to the street musicians walk up and down the dusty park trails playing jazzy tunes for pennies. They’ve never really seen the cooler part of September, the time when the sun drops lower in the sky leaving vividly bright red sunsets that illuminate the worker ants carrying their food across an empty Jackson Street.

I remember this one time when I was down on Summit Boulevard late one autumn evening. The sun had just dipped below the horizon; an orange haze had filled the previously blue sky, exposing everything that small street corner had to offer from the dirt in the cracks in the sidewalk to the smear on the window pane of the Lichens post office across the street. I was getting snapshots of the people walking by on their way home from work. After awhile I began to wonder if that haze worked on people too. Did it expose all of their inner thoughts and feelings for a short moment’s time? Were they even thinking at all or just walking around oblivious to the beauty around them?

I put down my pencil then, laid it on top of my sketchpad on the bench, and began looking into the people’s eyes. You could see a lot in some of their eyes. Despair, pain, heartbreak, disappointment, rejection, and a loss of hope, but none of them looked content or happy with what they were doing, like they were forced into a life they didn’t want. I didn’t understand it really, how one could appear so happy but when you really saw them, they were some of the most dissatisfied people I’d ever seen. On the outside they had the look, black suits, tie, perfectly manicured hair, brief cases. They had the gold nameplates on their desk offices, the in scripted titles like CEO or District Leader, and the secretaries that screened their calls, but beneath all of this, they weren’t happy. They were hopeless beings masked by a distorted view of success. I didn’t want to be like that, and I decided at that moment if that was what success was measured as then I would just as well like to be considered a failure.

My parents didn’t see it that way though, they didn’t see a lot of things the same way as I did, but I still loved them anyways. My dad insisted I went to the University of Southern California, that was where he went, but I didn’t even know if I wanted to go to college. I didn’t measure success on the same terms. Money and things, they all disappeared the way I saw it. Mom wasn’t as particular as to where I went as long as I got a good education, and for that reason, if for none other, I went to USC in the fall of 1999 to start my post high school education.

Parents can put a lot of pressure on kids; I realized that when my dad began campaigning for me to go his school, but sometimes that pressure was unnecessary. Sometimes they knew what was best for them, but a lot of times I think a kid, girls like myself, should be allowed to make an objective decision. It would make people, especially a youth on the verge of adulthood, happier to know they got to choose the outcome of their lives instead of having someone else always dictating their every action. Maybe I just saw things a little differently though. That said, I conformed, and wilted to their pressure, applying to USC in the spring of ’99 and getting in with a partial scholarship. Little did I know that the summer before my freshman year would be my last. Thinking back there’s a lot of things I should have done that summer, a lot of opportunities I missed..

* * * * * * * * * * *

Lichens summers weren’t ever all that unbearable. The temperature never got much higher than 90, and the mornings were often actually a little chilly. The fog was still there from the night before; sometimes it lasted well into the morning. There was dew almost every morning in the spring and summer too. The westerly winds pulled it in from the Pacific and so we tended to always have it a little wet outside, but it was nice. You know the type of rain that was only there for an hour or two and then the sun would shine brightly through the cloud cover and that would be the end of it.

I liked the summer most; everything had a fresher feeling to it. It was almost like a burden had disappeared just about the time vacations started. My summers usually paled compared to most, at least in their opinions, but I just found different things fulfilling. I didn’t need a hundred friends or need to party every night of the week. I was satisfied having my best friend, Liza, short for Elizabeth, over most every day so we could hang out.

I’ve known Liza for close to five years now. We met in the 7th grade when she moved from Baltimore, midway through the school year. She was my first real friend, the only person I had ever really opened up to. We always had had a certain connection, the type that came along once in a lifetime. That didn’t mean we were anything alike though. In fact there are few people whom you could have found to be more diverse. I was short, a shade of an inch under 5’3. My hair was long, down close to the middle of my back, and a dark auburn color. My eyes are hazel colored, and I like them, even if they always were a little dull on color.

Liza though, was without a doubt, one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, both in looks and substance. She was the perfect height I think, 5’6, with a body I could only have dreamt of having. Her hair was shorter, above her shoulders, and vibrantly colored, all the time. She had her blues, pinks, and oranges, and she looked great with all of them, but she looked best with her naturally fiery red hair. It curled ever so delicately too, unlike mine which was straighter than I can stand sometimes. Her eyes were an emerald green, and they sparkled when you look at them the right way.

I love how she acted too, nothing affected her. Some things may have bothered me, although you would have never known it, but with her everything slid off like water rolled off a ducks back. Maybe that’s what drove her to be so outgoing, so personable. She saw every person with the possibility as a chance of friendship, and maybe that was why we became friends. She forced me to talk to her, but in a sweet way, she made me believe what she was saying. She was the only person to ever do that to me. She made me trust her, and for whatever reason she always trusted me too.

That was the thing with her though, I think she innately trusted everyone when she first met them, but if they break it, they can forget the thought of ever having it again. And they always did, it was only a matter of time. I was her one exception though, we never really had a fallout of any kind; we always just clicked.

That’s why the last summer was so hard with her. I knew we wouldn’t ever wake up again and see the early morning fog or dew again. We wouldn’t see the same sunrise or sit and watch shooting stars at night and make wishes on them. It was like death row in a way, we tried to make the best of what was there before I left for USC, but we always knew our day was slowly creeping towards us. Nevertheless we tried to make it last for as long as possible




* * * * * * * * * * *

“You like Charlie? Still! I heard he still likes you too Skank.”

That was my nickname for Liza. She was my Skank and I was her Whore, and no one would ever change that.

“No he doesn’t Andie. He was an asshole anyways; he just looks for every girl he can fuck. Excuse me but I’m not that type.”

“Yeah you are Skank.”

She laughed a little bit and then sat on my bed. It creaked as it slowly pressed farther into my cream carpeting. The sun shone in through the window, giving everything a certain orange tint. I loved my room because it was so secluded. I lived on the top floor of my parents’ two story house, but my room was the only bedroom up there. My parents’ room was below me next to the kitchen. Black and white rainbows, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Cascades and Rockies, and downtown Lichens covered the walls of my room. Photography was my passion, but I was very selective of who I let see it.

“Are they almost done? It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for them to finish their last wash,” Liza complained. Patience wasn’t a virtue of hers.

“We got another two minutes.”

We had taken pictures of some kids in our senior class. It seemed like every guy wanted to be in one with Liza. Too bad they didn’t know they never had a chance with her. No matter what she said, I knew she liked Charlie. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent half the day developing half a roll of pictures of him. I had my own dark room, complete with chemicals, dry cloths, enlarger, trays, and a drier. I spent a lot of alone time in there; it was like my own personal sanctuary where I knew I was always safe. Liza and her picture perfect Charlie had been invading in on it lately though.

The timer buzzed across the hall, and Liza was in the dark room before I had even moved.

“Watch out Liza! You’re gonna get dust in there!”

“Shut up, I know what I’m doing Whore!”

If she ruined my pictures of downtown, I swore I was going to kill her. I thought that they would turn out well. I had captured the sun right as it dropped behind the trees and stone buildings, placing a certain glow on the surrounding concrete, park, and benches. I liked one in particular the most. It had this girl of about six with her blonde hair in pig tails, swinging on the tire that hung from one of the large oak trees. Her smile though was absolutely adorable, and Liza might have ruined it for a guy she claims to not like.

That was something that frustrated me more than anything else with her. It was not that Charlie was all that bad of a person, he was actually very nice, it was just… he was a horrible boyfriend. Everything was really black and white with him. There were no shades of gray, which was frustrating, because in my eyes the world was only shades of gray. No single bit of reasoning was ever completely perfect, unless it was considered completely perfect absurdity.

An example of that? Take the idea of love. Charlie and Liza always said they “love” each other but since when was love a use and abuse sort of relationship? Since when did love equal sex? That was what was to them. They were each other’s firsts, and that to them was what their love was based upon.

Love to me was something completely different. Love was the things that couldn’t be described, the moments when you looked into someone else’s eyes and you saw yourself completed. You didn’t fall into love. You found it. In my mind it was always there, a constant in the constantly changing ocean of thoughts and emotions and feelings. Love was a passion, a deep desire, to consummate your quest for fulfillment. It was entirely unpredictable and completely expected. It was the hair-splitting chills that you felt when ever they held your hand for even one solitary moment, how whenever their warm breath grazed ever so lightly on your neck making your entire body tingle in anticipation.

You couldn’t fall into that, and to me you couldn’t fall out of it. Love was like a thirst, something we always desired to quench, and consequently we often ended up doing things that only momentarily fix that desire. To Charlie and Liza, that was sex, but I believe deep down they believe the same as I. That was the only way I can explain why they would have gone through that charade again. Their relationship was not love. Instead, it was the search for love and a temporary fix until they truly found it.

But with all that said, I was not going to stop her from being happy, and I really think she was most of the time with Charlie. I think that’s the main difference between a black and white viewpoint and that of one that recognizes every shade of gray. Black and white is concrete, definite, and often unsympathetic to anything illogical in their mind. Shades of gray imply a deeper understanding that nothing is absolutely perfect but nothing is absolutely wrong either. That was dangerous when misused but a truth that I couldn’t deny. It was like a photo that was undeveloped; with certain chemicals a beautiful picture can be captured and many times even enhanced, but under other circumstances the picture was distorted and skewed. Does that make it wrong, or does it simply interpret it in a way you might not understand?




* * * * * * * * * * *

I chased after Liza then, following her into the darkroom. I opened the door only slightly, scraping my body against the wooden doorframe as the oversized USC sweatshirt stretched tight on my skin. I was trying to allow as little light in as possible because that would damage my negatives.

Liza was in the back of the room with the drier turned on and running half of a dozen photos at the moment. In her hands was a picture of Charlie and her downtown earlier that morning. It had a slightly reddish tint to it, slightly underexposed, but still a nice shot nonetheless. Liza was fascinated with playing with the shutter speeds on the camera, always trying to get a new and interesting effect, but sometimes her toying amounted into a wasted roll. That one wasn’t so bad though.

I shut the door behind me gently. The handle clicked lightly as it closed. She looked up from the photo and glances in my direction. There was a tear in her eye, and she set the picture down by one of the wash trays.

“Sorry. Period,” she said with a cold shudder.

Was that her excuse for everything?

“Excuse me, Skank, but last time I checked that was sometime last week for you. What’s the matter Liz?” I said, even though I already knew her answer.

“It was just that… I don’t know… I just think that…”she stuttered.

“You think what?” I said calmly.

“That… That…”

“That you really love him?” I said, cutting through her jittery attempt to avoid telling me what I already knew. She had a way of dancing around subjects that bother her, even if we were best friends; she still played the game with me sometimes. And I didn’t mind it really. I kind of just liked to get to the point with her on some things.

“Yes. I mean. He was my first. You know that, and sometimes I think he’s the only one that really understands what I’m feeling”—

A straight jab to our friendship. I knew she didn’t mean it like that though; it was just the way it came out.

—“it was just that he’s sweet. He understands how I feel about some things. I miss him when he isn't here; even if I say hate him. I don’t; I couldn’t. I mean he pisses me off, but he always knows how to fix it. I trust him. Besides you, he’s the only person I can almost completely trust.”

“Just give him some time. He’ll come around. He always does. But don’t let him walk all over you all the time. You deserve better.”

“Like Milton?” she said sarcastically.

Milton was from our third block English class the semester before. He was a quintessential example of the term “overachiever”— if there ever was one. He liked me, and had a penchant for wiping his nose on the sleeve of whatever sweater he had chosen to wear for that particular day. He had these thick rimmed, black glasses that always seemed to get caught and skewed in his disheveled mess of hair, but really he wasn’t as arrogant as most of the “self-proclaimed geniuses.”

“I’m sorry, Skank, but he seems more your type. Believe me I’ve heard the stories of you two during homecoming last year.” I sniped back with a small grin.

“Hey, if it pays the right price…”

“Nasty. I didn’t think even you would stoop that low.”

“Hey you know!”

“Yeah, I know, I know, for the right price.”

And with that, we both laughed as she wiped her watery eyes. I was glad I could help her — well at least help her smile. Her smile was beautiful too. One of those picture perfect ones you would see in Vogue and Seventeen by the girls in the prom dresses that I could never afford. Sometimes it made me jealous.

I wished I had that.




* * * * * * * * * * *