train tracks.

Long eyelashes fluttering and then laying out as a fan on her cheek.
She wore a lot and loved cranberry vodka more than she loved God.
Her family raised her catholic, but she stuffed the rosary under the bed, because who needs religion anyway?
She loved The Black Crows and smoking weed in the cemetary behind her house.
"She Talks to Angels."
We rode bikes along the railroad tracks everyday that summer. We had this idea that we'd ditch our bikes as soon as a train came, and we'd jump onto an empty car. We'd be really quick so no one would see us. We weren't really running from anything but the rules. We just wondered how far we'd be able to get away. Turns out we were never in the right place at the right time, so she'd just sit and smoke her stolen cigarettes, and I'd tell her everytime she lit one that they'd kill her. I was wrong.
She spent most days in a bathing suit, and our summers were never long enough.
Cheap beer, cute boys, and too much truth or dare.
I was always home by curfew, and I studied real hard. Yeah, I was that girl.
Her senior year, while I was making college visits, she was getting tattoos and falling in love.
I told her love was for old people, and she told me I should stop reading those damn books all the time and really live.
There were matching bracelets made of yarn in middle school. Hers was blue; mine red.
She came to my dad's third wedding with me. We sat around and ate all those small square mints from every table. I told her that I hated my dad, and she gave me a handful of mints and said, "Yeah, what a bastard."
She was never afraid. Not when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Not when her dog was run over by the mailman, and not when she stuck the keys in the ignition that night. Me? I was afraid of a lot of things.
We'd always play truth or dare. Neither of us knew how to turn down a dare, but the goal was to see who would crack first. One summer she dared me to climb the fire escape of an old building in New Albany and sit on the roof. I did it and nearly got caught, breaking my arm on the way down. I was pissed that I was in a cast and in trouble, and she couldn't stop laughing, so I dared her to get a fucking life.
Instead, she ended it.
We had big plans that summer. Make a roadtrip out to Baltimore to visit Johns Hopkins--my dream school. Even though I wasn't headed there in the fall, it was still nice to pretend.
She liked coffee at 3 am, and she celebrated Halloween all 12 months.
SHe had too many Coors Light and cups of jungle juice.
She was laughing at everything.
"Michelle, don't worry. I'll be fine. I'm fine."
It was 4:07 in the morning when her mom called.
4 days before graduation.
Her mom carried her cap and gown in a plastic garment bag and her dad never looked up.
The empty chair, the pink roses, the thick suffocating air trapping us all in the gymnasium.
I threw up in the parking lot.

My name is Michelle Jones, and I write stories. I've spent my entire 21 years playing make believe. Everything is a game in the end. Whether it's a bet you've made with yourself, a rousing game of yahtzee, or a lifelong round of truth or dare, everyone's a pawn. I guess it all boils down to no one ever really wanting to deal with all the bad shit in the world. We've lost track of the good things because our lines have become blurred. Perspective and appreciation are shot to hell, and we're left grasping blindly for our imaginations to take us away from things we don't want to see or feel.

Her body was wound around a tree like a rubberband. Face cut to pieces with shards of glass peppering her cheeks and hair.
Just another girl. Another fraction of a column in the obitiuary section. "Oh it's such a shame. Where did they go wrong?"
She's lying in that cemetary again stoned as all hell. Laughing at everybody because it's just another round.

I pick truth this time.
What are you so afraid of?

Truthfully?
I can't remember.