"Making plans to change the world while the world is changing us. It was good good love...so what to do with the rest of the days afternoon? Hey, isn’t it strange how we change everything we did? Did I do all that I should? That I coulda done? Remember we used to dance, and everyone wanted to be you and me. I want to be too. What day is this, besides the day you left me. What day is this, besides the day you went "

- Dave Matthews

There was this girl once. She's long gone now. Found bled out in her bathroom from smashing her head into the mirror a bunch of times. They weren't sure if she'd done it or someone else. I don't think it matters, really. She's dead. That's it. But, like, there was a time when I could've loved her, I guess. I tend to romaticize over time, so maybe I just liked her. But whatever. I'll say I loved her, it's believable

She was one of those people that was always around. Never left the picture, so you didn't hink about what it was like when she wasn't there. Our mutual friends were freaks, I guess you'd call them. The people that are all incestuous and there's always wierd-ass stories going around about wierd-ass parties where we take wierd-ass drugs and do wierd-ass shit. But none of it really 's all just stories and rumors. Now, I'm not denyine that we fucked around a lot, literally and figuratively. But it was just what we did. We were a cummunity, kind of. It just seemed natural to do that kind of shit when we were together. We were all the same type of people. It made sense to us

She was this chick, man. Just this chick. A short, skinny chick with non-descript hair that wasn't any certain color or style, who wore t-shirts and jeans and this odd kind of half smile. Like she was always saying "why the fuck not?" Not really attractive by most standards. Her eyes were cool, though. Changed colors almost every day. Like one of those cheap mood rings we used to get when we were kids that never seemed to be accurate. And she could fuck like and angel, man. I know that's not proper, or whatever, but it's true. Nobody was ever as good as her, and no one ever will be. She just had a gift in the sack. Magic, kind of, and everyone knew it

We used to joke about it. Hell, she did too. Whenever someone would say or "fuck" she'd look at them with that wierd little half-cocked smile of hers and say, "That's my job, sugar, you just say when.

Cocky little bitch, really, but she had every right to be, I guess. Smoked like fuck, too. At the least she had two packs a day. I was kind of suprised she didn't keep over from lung cancer

But she was a part of this group that I was a part of. We knew each other as well as any two humans could. Lot of times I'd sit up on the porch roof with her all night and talk about shit. Some of it pointless, yes, like the argument over which superhero would win in a fight. She said Batman, but she would. She had a thing for Batman, I think. Other times we'd talk about our lives. She had these god-awful stories about when she was a kid. Shit that makes you think the guy in that book "A Child Called It" was a pussy. And she's tell these with the most casual, "I-don't-give-a-fuck" attitude. Like it didn't matter.

I loved her, but then I mean the way I loved everyone in the group. They were my family, and I'd do anything for the time we tracked down this punk-ass creep who'd tried to rape Leslie, and we beat the shit out of him. Four or five of us, and we got away with it when the vops came by, because I explained what was going on. The cops liked us. We never caused trouble, and anythign we fucked up when we were fucked up we fixed up right away.

I think she was dating Jake for like the third thime in a year. This was almost seven years ago. Now, she was only 18, and the average of the rest of us was at least 21, but she fit in. She came into my room one night all fucked up and crying, and asked if she could cleep with me. She was having bad dreams. I understood that well enough. So I said sure, and she crawled in next to me in my little bed and curled up. It felt good, actually, the way she put her head on my shoulder and curved against me. It felt really nice. She trusted me

I forgot about something. Can't believe I did. I mean, it's kind of like her symbol. She always had this nasty old bandana tied around her wrist. It was old and dirty, and she never took it off. It was a part of her, just like that smile. It was always there

Except that night she didn't have the bandana on. She had it with her, in her pocket, but it wasn't around her wrist. I had my one hand resting on her shoulder, and when I shifted my hand slid down and brushed her wrist. She winced.I sat up and looked her in the eyes. (They were blue that night) She pulled her wrist up to her chest and was cradling it. I took her hand and pulled it towards me. She made some noise, but didn't pull away, and when I looked down I almost jumped

Man, I gotta tell you, I've seen some damage before, but this was insane. She hadn't cut, she'd ripped. Fuckin' guages, like, real deep. It scared me, and I don't scare easy.

I didn't ask her what was wrong. She woudln't have told me. She could talk about her past, and if she was wasted enough she'd say some shit in her head that was really fucked up, but I didn't know how bad it was. Now, I hate shrinks. They're just out to sell you pills and keep you messed up so you keep on paying I tell you, she needed help. Bad

We spent the rest of the night lying there, not talking. Just being there for each other. And when we woke up late the next day the sun was turning the room red. She looked me full in the eyes (now they were grey) and told me not to talk about it. Ever.

So I didn't. But she talked to me about everything else. And she spent every night after that in my room.

She wanted to go back to school. But when she finally did go back to college the next year, she left us. Not just me, but everyone. First it was because she didn't have a ride, then it was because of new friends. Then we hit the same old, tired story. She met a guy who "understood" her (I couldn't help wondering "who the fuck am I?" when heard that.), and he got her to start using

She'd done some shit before. Mostly chemical, you know. Acid, meth, extacy, the usual. But after a bad run with some tainted PCP, she'd sworn off drugs. But she wasn't ready for this. Cocaine. Something like that took her in. I can see how it got to her, though. Some people need to feel numb.

And I wouldn't have had a problem with it, really, if it hadn't been messing her up even more. She had a chemical imbalance somewhere in her brain, and when the crack for into the it made it worse. She started geeking out in school, right in the middle of classes. Finally she snapped. Ran out and ran off. They found her in a parking lot a couple hours later with her arm scraped real close to the bone and the hair on the back of her head rubbed away, from moving back and forth against the brick wall of the laundromat building for so long.

She got worse, and her boyfriend couldn't handle it. He started kicking her around, and he'd freak out if she had a bad moment. Or sometimes he's just leave her alone for a couple days, and then she'd beat herself up just as much. Sometimes more.

It led to what I said in the beginning. She did alone in a bathroom.

I miss her. Like hell. You know, I never tried to help her, but she never wanted help. Fucked-up reasoning, I guess. But then, you didn't know her the way I did, and you don't love her like I do

Mark it down as another neo-boho drug-addict fuck. You'd probably be right. But that's ok. Different worlds are different worlds, man. This is just a story.