A Tired Night by the Traffic Light
Daniel “Stareye-Sama” Avilés-Espejo
This town’s corny. Not fun, but we’re fun. Trees, deer, asphalt, a sidewalk that nobody walks on, and up to three kids that even care about it. Up to three that know the cliff behind the retirement home is a good place to play, and not go home. That the hill beside the factory is safe and home to deer, who’ll stare at you and approach, once they’re comfortable, at night. They’ve consumed too much FLCL, Green Day, or whatever, and tuned out too many classes to know the town as anything but Endsville, themselves as the few Jesuses of Suburbia, and it all as stupid.
At the light, before the crosswalk facing their school, is a girl who’ll inspire, who the kids will forget about, and conceptualize: “Whatsername,” “Snotty,” “Dreamy,” “Juju,” and she won’t know.
When you met her, she probably was coming out of the class she skipped, and looked up at you with her nose snuggled into a snarl with her top lip readying to curse. She’d have green hair, a collar, an oversized hoodie, but not “bed-head” because she’d have mosh’d in her car too hard for her hair to stay in a spot.
She’s music.
Your best guess, Hell, my best guess, is that she was the poorest girl in that rich suburb because you don’t see that humble hope in the eyes of the landlords, and their kids don’t have the spite curled in her nose.
She’d have had a litter of puppies eating out of paper plates, while she drank out a Party-Size soda bottle and burped herself into remembering her ferret, who she’d scurry back through her house to scoop into her arms, so that her lonely pet could lounge with her and the dogs outside.
All this, while her parents are working (they’d have left her a tupperware of mac-and-cheese, but she’d probably not have seen it, yet).
I think it’s hard to say how she’ll change when she does: That’s what no one got to know; Who’d this girl be? What’d she mean? What did she already mean?
Half of the people I asked didn’t know her name.
I think her friends knew, anyway, but I never knew them.
—
Up on the top of the bleachers are two young boys. One’s drinking lemonade, and, the other, a coffee. The two are graduated, at this point, and had been in need of some comfort before college, so they’re here, comfortable, in the 40 degree wind of Spring, on steel benches.
It feels like now, but that was back then. Half a year ago now, a game of baseball, or something like it, broke out among the neighborhood’s youth, down on the field below the bleachers.
The boys in the bleachers cracked jokes.
One of the little ones tripped and skinned their knee trying to get to home base.
The kids are sweet, some mean.
The sitting boys needed to laugh, though. Anyway, they’re leaving soon.
—
The last time I saw you, your girlfriend and I were talking about how cool you were.
It’s been so long since.
I think I figured it all out. I’m there now. How are you? It’s been so long.
You haven’t posted in a while. I mean, I guess you have. You got another ferret.
I heard you and her dyed your hair red together. Went to some concerts.
I’ve been great too: Performing. Proud of how I look. Meeting a lot of great people.
I’m sorry I just don’t know why you do it all the way you do. So..Cool. I want to, I’m trying, reaching for that me that I saw in your hair.
You’re going to move away one day.
I’m sorry, please don’t die or anything.
I—
—
I’m sorry, she’d say, and this was “Snotty”. She stood alone, by the water, in my head.
I would’ve stayed like that forever if I was her, you know, Snotty would say, but she didn’t: I just wanted her to: What Snotty did say was, These hot chips are fire and the more it hurts the hotter you are, right? Go fuck yourself; Get your shit together. She cracked her neck a few times too. That’s the first time we actually talked, me and Snotty.
An hour or so after that, exhausted, I turned back to the beach Snotty had told me off from. She was in the corner of two white, padded walls, in a ball, hiding her face.
Between her knees was black snot.
I think she hit her head.
I think she broke her nose.
Hazy, my head gaped, confused. Snotty squirmed, curling even deeper, pushing into her knees with her face, trying to writhe out what I was inflicting upon her. I stopped trying to understand, but, if I’m honest, I was slow about it. Snotty’s back broke out black wings that curled around her. I wasn’t looking, though.
Comfort was what I felt.
The feathers were soft on my face.
And my teeth were aching like atrophy, or maybe over-use.
And my knees and pants were too wet with black.
And my eyes were ring’d and my little bit of make-up was long gone.
I’m sorry.
And my nose..
That hurt a lot.
It wasn’t so full anymore, though. Most was on my body, or in my throat.
I wanted to scream it out.
Shake.
Holler my head off.
I am Snotty. Let all be me.
My head’s so full, it’s time I loom: Brew from soul to sky, let all be me.
Of asphalt and dreams, let all be me, for they won’t need my name, if all is me. Let all be me.
—
The green-haired girl couldn’t get a job, smoked a cigarette, and passed out on the side of a bridge. People are mean, so that’s how the rumor went. Her life was probably beau—
—
Let all be me, let all be me.
—
I fell asleep, right by my bed. A song too loud, inside my head.
—
I think the traffic light was yellow. I don’t think it was—
—-
Just pick something.
—
Cars will have to stop. Let them: It’s nice.
They’re all looking.. and I’ve.. Well..
I guess I’ve crossed the street.
Daniel Aviles- Espejo is a writer graduating from the School of Arts & Sciences in 2025. Whippany’s where he grew up, and the East Coast attitude mashed with looking up to the emo teenagers in the handful of towns he moved between before that laid some of the relevant groundwork for this piece.
As hellish as it is, forever live New Jersey!
Daniel wrote this short story in Caridad Svich’s Creative Writing Course during the Spring of 2022 semester. Svich selected it for inclusion in WHR.