Nostalgia and Hipsters

    Unconsciously, she slid off her rain-soaked, harsh gray sweater and curled up in a ball next to her closest and only source of comfort, the cleverly named Mr. Bear. Tears rolled down her cheeks until she was numb to the cool wetness and her breathing had finally become slightly controlled. Never in her life had she felt so lost. Not the day after she got her permit and took her mom’s minivan on a joyride, only to end up stranded a good hundred miles from home. Not after she accidentally drenched the boys of her dreams in an entire canister of murky, mustard-yellow acrylic paint. But now, in a moment where she felt not one living, breathing person in the world was on her side no matter the number of karmically-positive deeds she did or amount of babies she kissed, she could not for the life of her find a way out. She suddenly wished Mr. Bear’s heart wasn’t a miniscule, atomically incorrect piece of fluff. Mr. Bear would be on her side, right? Despite a lifetime of salty-teared smothers and too-tight hugs of security, Mr. Bear would surely care about her enough to make this whole thing-her life- a little easier. But maybe she didn’t want to know that. It was probably better off pretending like Mr. Bear, and the whole world for that matter, wasn’t on a plan to sabotage her entire life second by second.
      The clock said 6:23 p.m., but she desperately, desperately wished it portrayed anything different. In an attempt to make her useless life go by quicker, Reyna had taken four of the sleeping pills her mother uses to get through dads snoring fits, to pass the time. Secretly, she had hoped to wake up months, maybe years later. Maybe fall into a pill-induced coma and wake up at age 23, skinny from her food-through-tube diet and surrounded by all her guilt-stricken “loved” ones who would give anything to take back the way they treated the chubbier, sixteen year old Reyna. But of course, not even a handful of Walgreen’s DeepSleeps could help her out. Best sleep of your life, my ass.       
    Groggy from what might have been, the worst 3-hour “sleep” of her life, Reyna stumbled out of bed just in time to hear her Ludacris ring tone playing at the highest decibel. A smile of realization crept across her face. Brynn. Following the concert, Reyna and her life-long BFF Brynn had gone into multi-month long Luda obsession-mode that only was to be outdone by Drake’s induction into the rap world. Each best friend had set the others ring tone to their personal favorite song from his set-list, so that each time they called each other their main-man would start off their hour long phone calls about nothing. But it had been months since Brynn had ditched little Reyna for the big, bad world of hipsters, weed, and berets and even longer since Fantasy had blasted from the speakers of Reyna’s Nokia. Searching every nook and spider-webbed corner of her room, she desperately searched high and low for her cell. When the only texts you receive are from your mother to make sure you’re still alive, for insurance purposes alone surely, the location of your phone becomes all the more irrelevant.
  Just as Reyna spotted her tie-dye colored case hiding behind some dirty gym clothes and a binder that looked like it indubitably thrown up her Latin homework, the music stopped. She glanced at the screen. One missed call from Brynny. Though their best friendship had come to an unsatisfactory, abrupt halt last November, Reyna still hadn’t been able to bring herself to change her former-BFF’s contact name. Changing that just felt barbaric. Talking on the phone was, after all, their thing. She still kept all of their old text messages about how hot Ryan Baker’s new short-do was, how Mr. Jackle had flirted with Brynn once again second period, and how despite what she openly denied to our whole chem class, Georgia Klassen did, indeed, have herpes. Whenever Reyna was feeling nostalgic she would read over, half-smiling for how much she loved being able to tell Brynny every dirty or horrible thought that went through her brain, and half-frowning for how much she missed it. Shaking, Reyna slammed down on the green button with confidence, feeling that this call would make Brynn her Brynny again and not those hookah-lovin hipsters “Willo,” a name I can only assume they derived from her last name, Willocks. Damn hippies. The phone rang once, then twice… the anticipation building in her chest like the temperature in Phoenix undoubtedly was on a spring day like today. Finally, the Brynny-Willo hybrid picked up.
“Uh..Hello?” the other side answered, her speech drawn out, foggy, and unfamiliar. Not Brynny’s old, energetic, high-pitched self, but like an older, cold, and hoarse stranger. Like Willo. The unwelcoming tone startled her. If there was anything about her best friend she thought would never change, it was her insationable ability to become friends with every last person she met in passing. Her bubbly, electric demeanor is what drew Reyna to her at such a young age, and what made Reyna want to be friendly and fearless, too.
“Brynny? You called me?” Reyna asked, suddenly disgusted at the pure desperation in her voice.
“Reyna?..,” her voice seemed muffled, like she was in a crowd of people, undoubtedly her hipster-licious pals, all sitting around swaying, just slightly (of course) to their indie music (that only they are cool enough to discovered) and discussing how conformist society was (using the word cliché so many times it hurts). Gross. “…I must have butt dialed you. Uh, sorry.”
      A clutter of noise later, that must have been Brynn- sorry Willo- shoving her blackberry back into her pocket in her drug-haze, Reyna fell into a sober drug-haze of her own. Her fingers couldn’t quite seem to find the end-call button as her eyes swelled up in disbelief. Crackles of movement on Willo’s part, presumably from her sitting down, and a slow Grizzly Bear song Reyna recognized from when Brynn was in mid-Willo transition whispered through the phone. Her Brynny had just talked to her like she would have a phone solicitor, like someone she had never met before and didn’t care to meet at all. More tears streamed down her face. After all these months, it was amazing that Reyna had been stupid enough to think Brynn Willock, only like the “cooooolest chick at Stark High” would be calling to chat about Ryan Bakers new relationship status on facebook, or Georgia Klassen’s recent cold sores. Brynn was beyond too cool for online social sites, sexually transmitted diseases, and worst of all, Reyna. The bond the shared years and years ago over the awful names their parents cursed them with, and their identical fake Louis mini-purses was long washed away right along with Brynn’s druggy-friends short term memories.
      Waterworks spewing from every angle of her face, Reyna tried to keep the ugly, painful sobs dad ever-so-kindly referred to “blubbering” to a minimum as she scanned through her contacts. Starting from the A’s she peered through her watery, fog vision to find the B’s. It was like she had beer goggles on in the middle of a tornado. She soon enough stumbled upon Brynny’s name. With a thud, she pounded Delete so hard, she though Cingular might sue her for abuse. Next she therapeutically went to the little, white picture of an envelope, encasing a years worth of text messages, and pressed “Delete All.” Nostalgia had, in the time of their 46-second phone call of pure, awkward heartbreak, quickly been replaced by a much-stronger, hipster-despising, heart-pounding, anger. Ditched, disregarded, and forgotten were some-what forgivable, but butt-dialed? That was the harsh, teasing equivalent of telling a child Santa doesn’t exist on Christmas Eve, or giving someone the new Ludacris CD only to smash in on the ground before you can listen to it. In the end, it wasn’t hard to see that Brynny was long gone and Willo-in all her red-eyed, latte-downing glory, was here to stay