A/N: Name changed out of respect and love.

A Day in the Life of Lani Lee

By: Brenli

Lani Lee wakes up at about 7:00 A.M. every morning. She can’t really help it. Her big border collie named Perseus begins to howl and run at about this time, making such a racket that it is nearly impossible to fall back asleep.

It takes her only a half an hour to get ready for the day, because she has no where important to go. She does not go to school or work, currently. Her life is, for the most part, dull, though two weeks ago she had found out that she was pregnant with her former boyfriend’s child. She had dumped him the week before then.

Today, like most other days, she does not have a packed schedule for the day. She has but one goal today: return to her ex boyfriend’s house and get her things.

However, it is still morning, and she has all day to perform this task. Lani Lee goes about the day slowly. She cooks pancakes for breakfast and offers the burnt one to Perseus as she eats the other two. Then she drinks her milk directly from the carton, wipes the subtle milk moustache from her lips, and leaves her house.

It is customary for Lani Lee to leave her house and stay out all day, but this time, she doesn’t have her ex boyfriend’s house to hide in.

After catching the bus, she goes to the Northtown Mall. She has no money, but she enjoys shopping. She hopes, in vain, that she can find the friends she had lost contact with while dating her ex boyfriend.

She recognizes no one. No one recognizes her. Lani Lee passes a shoe store with the exceptionally small tennis shoes for babies on display. She feels a momentary pang in her heart, but she quickly shakes it from her and pretends that she has somewhere important to be. After about an hour of this, it is already time for lunch. She knows she should eat to accommodate for the baby inside her, but she can only stomach a pretzel. About an hour after this, she throws up in the women’s bathroom.

She cleans herself up and leaves the bathroom, deciding that she should get it over with and go to her ex boyfriend’s house. Lani Lee has to return home, first, to retrieve a bag. She does so with robotic, practiced movements. On more normal circumstances, she would grab this bag and fill it with clothes so that she may spend the night with her ex boyfriend. Today, she will bring it empty and fill with the things she may have left at his house on accident.

Lani Lee takes the bus to her ex boyfriend’s house. No one recognizes her, but she feels as though everyone can read her perfectly. She tries her best to ignore this paranoia and approaches the door to her ex boyfriend’s house. She knocks.

He looks disheveled and tired. He obviously had not woken up yet.

“I came to get my shit.” Lani Lee swears plainly. She never had a very clean mouth. She imagined her child would swear like a drunken sailor, thanks to her.

“Whatev.” Her ex boyfriend shrugs and lets her in. He is too lazy to even finish the word, and he doesn’t care. That’s the problem with Lani Lee’s ex. He doesn’t care.

He sits in the living room the entire time, watching Lani Lee go into his room to pick up two of her shirts, one pair of her pants, three of her books, and her beat up stuffed bunny. This bunny was sitting on a table, next to a tiny, though noticeable, smudge of spilt white powder. This white powder was the other problem with Lani Lee’s ex. He loved it more than her. Some of the white powder is on the bunny’s left ear. Lani Lee looks at it in disgust and knows she’ll need to wash it the second she gets home.

“I’m leaving.” She says plainly.

“Yeah.” Her ex says this as his excuse for a farewell. She wonders if he feels she is not worth anything more than one or two syllables, but she doesn’t say anything. She is feeling ill again, and more than a little hurt, but she does not cry. It is never in Lani Lee’s nature to cry.

Lani Lee decides that she will spend the rest of the day at home. Once she reaches home, she immediately throws the bunny into the washing machine and washes the poor stuffed animal. Then she sits down with her mother and watches Oprah, eating out of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Her two new boyfriends.

She never really imagined she would seriously spend the day watching Oprah and eating ice cream. It was not a future she had considered for herself, but here she was. She jokes with her mother about eating pickles and ice cream, though she doesn’t seriously want to eat such a concoction. An hour later she tries it out of curiosity and decides it doesn’t taste all that bad.

She tries calling all of her friends. Several are too busy with schoolwork, or their own boyfriends. A few don’t even like her, anymore. One former friend had forgotten who she was. At last there was one friend. She, too, was busy with schoolwork, but she was willing to stop and talk. Lani Lee shares the events of the day, and then she cries as she speaks. This is a side of Lani Lee that few ever see, because it is never, EVER in her nature to cry. Except for now.

She is lonely and depressed. She only wants to make sure she is never alone, but every man that she opens her legs for is bad. If that man happens to be a good man, Lani Lee gets bored of him quickly and leaves him. In spite of this, all she wants is to never, ever be alone. Now she is not alone, for she has a child inside of her, and yet, she sobs and tells her friend that she has never felt so completely, utterly alone.

Lani Lee asks what is new with her friend. She is envious that her friend has been dating the same man for years now. She wishes she could go have gone to Seattle with them for the weekend. Now, her friend is swamped with schoolwork, and has to let her go.

Before her friend hangs up, Lani Lee asks what she has to work on. It is a desperate attempt to make the conversation last an extra minute or two. Her friend tells her it is a writing assignment, a nonfiction narrative about a day in the life of a person. Her friend laughs and shares the terribly adventurous and exciting day of ironing clothes and that strange Catholic TV channel that her mother watches while praying the rosary.

Lani Lee laughs with her friend, and says that if she wants to, she may write a narrative about her own day. “It’ll be easy, ‘cause I just fuckin’ sobbed it all over you.” She swears and coughs from her strangely sad laughter. It brings her joy but makes her friend feel depressed.

“You don’t think that’s too personal?” Her friend asks.

“Why? Do they know me? Do it. Then give me a copy.” Lani Lee says, and she hangs up the phone.

It is early evening, but she is tired already. She eats more ice cream and then she goes to bed at 8:00 P.M., and her friend deletes her mother’s name from the title, replaces it with Lani Lee’s name, and begins typing again.