We’re hand in hand in the dusk on a long stretch of drying asphalt. Traffic lights do their thing unobserved by a single individual. Although its midsummer, dark blue clouds block out much of the sun. The horizon is a strange and brooding pastel. It barely stopped raining and we’re so happy together. When the rain resumes we just take our shirts off. The light present is chimerical and seems to change position in the sky every building we pass. It could be any day, any decade. No cars pass us by during our ten miles or so stroll, no airplanes fly overhead. The one she arrived on is having its wings de-iced somewhere beyond the horizon in another world, consuming a new batch of explorers. Sunrise never happens this morning, it just postpones itself ever farther behind a curtain of rain. We fall asleep exhausted, happy, hopeful.

Just weeks before we were sending emergency signals from our respective locations, Brandie and I, hoping someone would pick them up. We gelled, we did so right away. I love technology, all that sweet plastic and chic engineering. We sure wouldn’t have met without some. From words on a computer screen into my arms. Oh, the beauty of microprocessors. She had a brand new tangerine iBook while I rocked my Pentium 2 desktop, complete with a 3D accelerator card. At least my band is going places now that I have a multi-track studio at home and all the special effects it can muster. I went frugal with my partying for months so I could afford a candy apple red Fender electric, too. We were all over the local radio last summer, when things were good in every possible way. Even the humid Scandinavian summer couldn’t stop me from recording music far into the night, every night.

Brandie prefers chatting in pink. She knows much about algebra as she used to be a prolific poster on science forums. Ever since she went missing I’ve been doing serious digging online every single day. Three-point-one million websites on the internet and no signs of my Brandie. Three months gone without a trace. I know she was depressed. Ever since Columbine, she wasn’t the same. Nobody she knew got hurt, but I guess those boys with guns hurt a generation.

She told me all about her flight thoughts upon her arrival. Eleven hours in the clouds give you the strangest ideas, ones you should try to emulate. That’s about the only good thing about flights from LAX to Helsinki. For someone less than five feet tall Brandie would climb hills and stairs very fast. She said she had to learn to run early. Pudgy short girls are apparently not popular in America. We’d try voice calls, but the technology isn’t there yet. There was pain in her voice, especially in her laughter.

I had walked those miles on my own many times before, unaware of what it meant. Brandie allowed me to forget that. Mother would freak out when I would disappear first thing in the morning before sunrise to walk without a destination for hours on end. The previous night we would’ve discussed my future very much matter of fact as the TV talk show hosts performed their monologues. Guitar practice was still important to me, but I felt incomplete and kept my emotional beacon switched on, projecting screeching feedback louder than any amplifier. On occasion, my bandmates would frequent my room, the same I’ve had from the age of five. Mother would be somewhat elated then, sometimes talking excessively and hindering our rehearsals. Like most single parents, she too couldn’t heal the emotional cuts and bruises inflicted by assholes in school. I’ve known many young people check out in various ways. Music is my way out There’s no drawbacks, just a mild addictive quality to fame. All it takes is just one more demo tape to impress the hip suits at some budding record company, or maybe one of the big ones. I will mostly approach those who would admit to owning a PlayStation on their company bios.

Life for me is still mundane in the summer of ninety-nine. An interpersonal level of meaning was constantly missing. That extraordinary spring morning rocks formed a circle behind us as trees stood still in the wind. Hold me, she told me then, and I would, in the cold early mist of a Helsinki suburb. A pristine digital camera couldn’t capture the beauty, nothing could. Even I struggled to feel the emotions I held for her. I would’ve quit the band for her. I would’ve sold all my tech. So why did you leave me then you fucking bitch? Why burden me with that amount of beauty and then dare to disappear back into America and oblivion? The gun laws in Finland are so strict I can’t make my exit the way I want. But this needs to end now. That agonizing summer mist is leaking into every season and every day. I even thought of flying to LA at my most desperate to seek her out, but I bet she would pretend I was invisible. One last walk out of here. I’m sorry, mother. Fuck this.

#

Most unpopular girls don’t think about suicide; All of these girls do. Me, Olga the mouse, and even some popular ones on their bad days. They tolerate us to look better. I started planning my funeral at age six. I’m flat chested and fucked up, I know. Not a day goes by I’m not reminded of that shit. But I’ll die of natural causes. I want to see tomorrow and maybe even next week. To get along with everyone would be so nice, but unobtainable. I’m trash and I know it. Days pass with me looking up serial killers on my smartphone. There’s beauty outside and inside the human body. I’ll be a pathologist someday, maybe an undertaker. Not popular career choices among trendy girls. They found out about my morbid little interests so they call me Gorina. Stay away or you’ll get infected, eww. What a freak. Short fucking bitch too.

Sometimes the clock hands would actually stop moving during lessons. Recess is always hell. There’s this one boy. Our eyes met a couple of times, but I don’t think he likes me much. He makes me sleep better when I think of him, but he’s not enough. I want to be spoiled but I also want to take care of myself. I hope he knows this. I started eating. I like to think we’ve met somewhere online at least. I’ve sat by the train tracks looking for traces of him so many times, comforted by the loud sounds of trains, getting burnt by the Pomona sun. At night they have the prettiest lights here, shining by the tracks. With trains, things can go either way.

I miss mother most on my birthdays. She would walk these same streets with a couple of earplugs deep in her head, rocking some New Radicals and Spin Doctors. Sometimes she’d bring me along and we’d talk about snails and Europe. Mom would be only forty-two this year, so I pretend she’s still with me. We are keeping warm back to back near the train tracks. Sometimes Olga comes along, but I think she always feels like a third wheel. Mom is smiling and listening to her old CDs while I jot down words and limbs in my notebook. She won’t die for another twenty years, because I won’t let her. I don’t remember the way pain and medication made her all loopy towards the end. I skipped the funeral and I never visit her so-called grave. She isn’t there. I love my grandparents, but they are hurt like me. Wounded people can’t shelter well. At least they let me do what I want, only checking in every now and then to see if my homework is done. I don’t mind reassuring them I’m going to graduate high school. They are so adorable.

My dad isn’t there either, so I must imagine him, too. They met in Helsinki, Finland. Maybe he had Viking blood and a beard, but probably not. Mom told me he was a scrawny young man. She didn’t keep any photos of him. He just wasn’t ready to be anyone’s father. There was a darkness about him, too. I draw parts of him every day: his face, his guitar, his hands.

Two girls from Pomona High walked under the trains since my time in this school. One was Olga, the other I didn’t know. I promise my mom every night I won’t ever do that. I’m only here because of the sounds the railroad cars make. I love the smell of steel and gravel. And I enjoy being close to scenes of struggle. Some weekends I stay out all night, drinking cinnamon tea and feeling kind of awesome. Mom makes me dress well for those occasions. I usually don my coarse mesh fishnets and a skull-print corset. Style before function. I’ll make sure to pack only my best wardrobe for my trip to my other home, Finland, where I have to visit at least once. I’m not nervous, I’m over-caffeinated.

LA is orange as my plane ascends at dusk. My video camera records parts of it, but most of the wonder will be impossible to recreate afterward. Eleven hours later and I’ll hopefully be walking in some of my father’s footsteps. I’ll stick around at the airport where my parents met for the first time, absorbing the artificial lights and foreign language. I want to see the music shop he frequented to buy his guitar strings from. I’ll cry for his losses, as his dreams take over and guide me where I need to be. He’s not all gone. I’m half of him.

Back in Pomona, I’ll check out of the train tracks, going down other roads with a cute boy, my mom, and my dad by my side. I’ll be Gorina alright, unfazed by corpses at the med school mortuary, never failing a class. They’ll get the same respect as the living in my hands, whoever they were during their time as living humans. Late at night, someone might ask me for the way to where ever and I’ll do my best to guide them, clueless as I am.

– Robert Ciesla