Alison

Written: 9/30/20

It was wildfire season in California. The sky was painted with streaks of scarlet, and the air smelled faintly of ash and charred lumber.

Quinn and Teddy Baines, the ditzy pair of twins living on Yarmouth Avenue, chased each other around their backyard with rubber garden hoses. They ran around the parched turf buoyantly as their hoses spewed icy tap water about the garden. It was hard not to crack a grin at their squeals, but they would soon enter the house and trail mud all over the hardwood.

Their mother, Marta Baines, laughed heartily at the two from the kitchen window as she drew her steaming tray of marinating beef out of the fridge. “Hot as hades,” she mumbled to herself in the frivolous voice of a housewife, wiping the vexing beads of sweat off her forehead. Her every movement was delicate and spry, and she was skinny—far too skinny. She was said by many to have resembled a starved horse.

“James, would you be a dear and turn on the AC?” She asked her bastard, good-for-nothing husband. Her question was met with the distorted sounds of television. And so, the air conditioning system was never turned on until Mrs. Baines herself trudged into the lounge and flipped its switch.

James Baines, her husband, enjoyed his day off work. She found him loafing by the television with a foaming glass of beer in the grip of his palm. Mr. Baines worked an office job 100 hours a week, which had helped him grow a gut and become an alcoholic. He grinned at his wife as the gentle scent of warm spices wafted over to the family room, which was returned with a glare.

Their often-neglected daughter, Alison Baines, had secluded herself in her bedroom, seated at her tiny desk positioned conventionally in the corner. Her sheets were tossed frenziedly into her purple laundry basket, leaving nothing but a bare mattress framed with skinny slabs of wood to rest by her window. Crumbs and pieces of trash littered the surface of her desk, and mounds of unworn clothing lay on her carpet in heaps.

Alison glanced over at the iPhone 8 she received for her twelfth birthday. 4:22PM, it read, and her head fell back onto her desk. Another day had gone by, and she had accomplished close to nothing since the beginning of summer vacation. A long breath eluded her lips as her ears were satiated with an odyssey of sound. The act of listening to music at noon had its way of clearing her mind and easing her temperament, which she looked forward to on days like these.

Alison Baines: a girl with many descriptions. The procrastinator who never turned in a complete homework assignment. The archetypal literature club president. The antsy daughter that never came out of the house on weekends, who was often neglected by her parents.

She had one good friend—Gabe Espinoza, the more outgoing one of the two. Gabe was often invited to attend social events with the more unruffled students of Grenada Heights High School, which made Alison writhe with jealousy. The pair usually hung around in the living room (when Alison wasn’t mad at him), feeding themselves with baked goods and Russian literature.

She contemplated the silly little crusades of Raskolnikov and Myshkin as the notion of hosting another reading session with Gabe rolled into her mind. Perhaps she could invite him over to binge War and Peace for a couple hours.

Her rumination was interrupted by the unpleasant cacophony of arguing between Mr. and Mrs. Baines. Alison slowly brought her earbuds out of her ears, trying to make out what they were quarreling over.

“You just sit there watching football all day on your day off, huh? I’m sick of you, for looking so fat and so fucking square all day!”

“If you got a job, maybe things would—”

“I’m a freelancer, James!”

“Then get the hell out already!”

Alison Baines clenched her jaw and put her earbuds back in, wishing she never even bothered to listen. Her mind was once again flooded with music. She closed her eyes once more, failing to notice her door creaking open.

She had no idea where she was headed in life. She knew the last thing she wanted was to end up like her father— who worked a nine-to-five job slouching in front of a computer screen, his marriage failing and his eldest daughter writhing in a depressive state.

It seemed to her that her lifeless soul was headed in the same direction. Either that, or she would die a very unfortunate death before she became an adult.

She squeezed her eyes shut and smashed her fists against her desk, sending bits of trash into the air. Alison was going to get her life together today. She was sure of it.

That is, until she saw the state her room was in.