PEARL

ONE

TRACK 1
THIS NIGHT HAS OPENED MY EYES
THE SMITHS

updated version - please read again!

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IDA BLUESTONE felt like the star of another shitty, star-studded, overly-romanticised teen movie that sends out every wrong message under the sun and Hollywood definitely doesn't need any more of. This was because she, aged seventeen, was sitting on a closed and cracked black toilet seat, staring at the chipping candy-pink paint of the closed cubicle door and smoking what was surprisingly only her first cigarette of the day.

The door's pastel shade, as well as the soft lemon hue of the tiles covering the bathroom floor, jarred with the piss stains and wet clumps of used toilet paper decorating the filthy floor, along with a few chunks of relatively fresh mud from the soles of Ida's jet-black Mary Janes.

The juxtaposition of pastel and piss made the brunette smirk around her lit cigarette, because no public (well, sort of) bathroom had any business looking like a fucking candy store, especially one in a teen mental institute.

That was just sick.

The would-be star of Netflix's next glamorised car crash of a story knew that she, on the other hand, was a pretty picture. Alongside the Mary Janes, Ida wore pearl earrings and a white blouse with short puffy sleeves, the hem of which was buried beneath the high waist of a pair of cornflower blue jeans that were a little flared and no longer bore any trace of her stomach lining - or rather, any trace of Ida's failed suicide attempt less than a month ago in (very fittingly) another bathroom cubicle of a similar size and dire state of cleanliness, although far more dull in palette and belonging to a high school rather than a hospital.

Her aforementioned black shoes shone from the sordid floor like diamonds and tears, and their dark shade made the white of Ida's blouse and ankle socks and said socks' delightful little frills appear even more spotless and virginal. Similarly, the cracks on her full lips that nicotine was surely worsening (and was, in fact, the cause of) emphasised the softness of the pale skin that the birthmark on her neck was swimming in like a little island, as well as the softness of her freshly-washed brown bob and the fringe that fell so exquisitely into long-lashed eyes as greyish-blue as silver stones. The delicate bathroom-pink shade of her lips matched that of the lighter held in the hand that lacked a cigarette, keeping a frayed and near-empty pack of Marlboros company.

Overall, Ida Bluestone knew that her appearance was quite a contradiction. While some parts of her were doll-delightful, such as her sea-blue eyes, some parts were destroyed. While some parts were as soft as satin, such as her rosy cheeks and their dusting of dark brown, what someone might term "cute" freckles, some parts were as scratched and raw and bleeding as savagely-bitten nails.

In a way, Ida thought that she was more or less a human embodiment of the stupid bathroom she found herself in, for she was pretty but filthy. Like a doll that has been pawed at one too many times by the grubby hands of a chubby child, Ida's pearly prettiness had become marred by the copious things she'd put it through since the age of about fourteen: the pills she'd popped, the alcohol, the smoke that was continuing to rot her lovely lungs, all the boys, all the sex, the absence of condoms and a clear head and - for the grand finale - the stunt she'd recently pulled in a locked school bathroom stall, featuring a much larger popping of pills and culminating in a stomach pumping.

It was fair to say that Ida's long-suffering prettiness stood out like a broken thumb beside what was attached to her wrist, dangling from it like a bracelet and twinkling in the sharp, spasmodic lights overhead. Ida took a long, hard, pointless drag, then held her cigarette between her teeth so that she was able to reach for the off-white hospital band she had yet to remove. She twisted it around to read her own name, scrawled in a nurse's hurried hand.