last resort

e i g h t

"HI," I COO, BACKING BACK INTO the doorway. My heart elevates into my throat, my mind stuck on her like a scratched record. Ashlynn's Levi's cousin.

Ashlynn's Levi's cousin!

Golly, the irony in my life just doesn't want to leave me alone. Ash's high voice still zings in my ears an octave as high as crickets in the dead of night. She could work on her harmony with sopranos. Or society.

"You're the next door neighbor?" She asks, placing the bat on the navy table top if the ping-pong table.

I stumble into the room, cautiously keeping my eye on everything. Levi switches on the TV, keeping himself busy with it. He's blatantly ignoring her. Ashlynn rushes over to me like a flaming arrow, ready to hit and burn me. I don't like the burning part, though, it's making my heart palpitate and my palms clammy. I had my fair share of ambushing, but this new-friend-thing is still a bit of a fresh wound to me. A salted wound, burning like the charring piece of wood—the arrow.

She greets me with a tight embrace, her floral candy scent extracting my aura and overpowering it like a WWE fighter. She squeezes me two dress sizes down, juicing out all cell plasma like orange juice. I wrap my arms around her tiny corset waist, wrapped up in a long, pale high waist jean and a white crop top. I am still clothed in the same as I was all day, she had the decency to dress. It didn't even cross my mind to maybe slap on another piece of clothing.

I'm still getting used to the spontaneous dinners at whom could be the new generation of super-offsprings. I don't think I could possibly get used to visiting other people, even if I were destined to visit others. Then again, I'm still getting used to this whole Miami thing. My mother lives for ambiguous, spontaneous dinner parties and tea dates with whom could be Russian immigrants here on a ninety day green card to find a person to marry.

She releases me, throwing my balance back. I stumble, wheezing, having a severe amount of difficulty to reshape my lungs back to sacks and not pancakes. My vision washes black as my blood rounds back into the top half of my body. I managed to survive the squeeze of an anaconda.

I am a survivor.

"Your house is really pretty. And big. And close to the beach," she rambles, struggling to figure out if she wants her weight rested on her left leg, right leg, heels or toes. My eyes flank to all the sides she scoots to. She's like an hyperactive toddler whom just had a whole can of Red Bull.

Everywhere.

"I'll thank the contracto's who built i'," I thank her awkwardly, adding a nod to make my sarcastic retort less robotic. She giggles curtly before turning around to the ping-pong table. To no surprise, the back of her shirt is tattered up and cut open in gaps, supposedly fashionably. I like ripped clothes and cut outs and all, but there's a thin line between okay cuts and just downright slut-like cuts.

"You wanna' play ping-pong or something?" She turns back while talking to me. She shrugs, encouraging an answer out of me I do not yet possess.

What if I'm too short to play ping-pong? What if I really suck at ping-pong? I have the tendency to suck at any sort of coordination with bats, balls, feet and hands. Or movement overall. I suck at moving. She could mock me for being limp-like and awkwardly structured together in all the wrong ways to activate physical activity, or the way my gate changes when I have to turn the gears up to sort-of sprint in short rounds back and forth.

With rambling thoughts, I look over my shoulder at Levi, stretched out on a bean bag chair in blasé, as if he knows he lost the battle with Ashlynn. My breath hikes in my throat, rocketing guilt down my veins so hard my fingertips start tingling.