[Candle (Sick and Tired) - White Tie Affair]

[Pristine - Snail Mail]

Things stopped making sense to Fizzy a long time ago.

    But, for whatever reason, her inconspicuous problems were immediately brought to light by a singular piece of loose-leaf paper, delivered right to her dim dorm room at the calm hours between dinner and bedtime. She lay on her small bed, head buried in her pillow, eyes heavy, still being able to smell the alcohol seeping through her. She'd been drinking way more than usual. What was it? The third time she'd been out that week? Whatever didn't show in her already disheveled appearance showed in his living space. Her side of the room was littered with blankets and textbooks, old jackets her friends took off when visiting her, and dried-out pens, all of which were crowding her way to the door, where a knock was repeating incessantly.

It was irritating, and her head was pounding from her night out.

    She opened the door after climbing over the heaps. There stood a boy, bright-eyed, his pink lips turning upwards into a warm smile as he looked at her.

    "Hey," he said. His eyes quickly darted to the space behind Fizzy, her messy room.

    "Hey," she replied, closing the door slightly. "What?"

"Is Jessica home?"

"No, no, she's out studying," Fizzy smiled, "why? Are you looking for her?"

He shrugged. "It's no big deal. Just, here," he handed her two envelopes, "one's for her. I think they delivered your guys' to the wrong room."

"Thanks."

"I already received mine. It's kind of crazy, what's happening."

"Wait what? What's happening?"

"You're joking, right?" His dark eyebrows furrowed. Fizzy's raised. "They've been saying that the semester might need to end early."

"That's what the letter says?"

"Open it and see."

Fizzy stepped out of the doorway and into the hall, her feet cold against the linoleum. As the boy watched her intently, she opened the letter with her name on it, only to reveal a statement that encapsulated exactly what the boy had just told her. It was a brief, strange statement, full of sentences that seemed to be put only for comfort's sake. And at the end of the letter, the president of the university, a jolly man who went by his first name, Valentin, signed it with an ominous, "see you all in the foreseeable future." The boy watched her finish reading and fold it up, placing it back in the envelope in a way that suggested that the letter was never opened.

    "Shit," Fizzy said. The boy nodded, solemn.

    "Didn't know it was going to get this bad. I'm sure it'll all pass, though, quickly."

"Hopefully."

"Yeah."

"Sorry, what was your name?"

"Marco."

"What is that, Italian?"

He brushed his hair out of his face, sleepily. "Well, I'm actually not Italian at all, my parents just named me that, I guess. You're Felicity, right?"

"Fizzy," she corrected, looking up at him, eyes surrounded by dark circles. Then she slowly started to retreat back into her room. 

"Nice to meet you, Fizzy."

"Yeah, you too, Mark." She closed the door.

***

The streets downtown were lively, especially outside the city's most popular club, where young men and women stood outside and clutched their little black bags over their exposed body for any bit of warmth they could obtain. Fizzy always loved it downtown, for reasons she could never really pinpoint why, but at any given opportunity, downtown was her favourite place to go. Riley, with a huge smile on her face and her loosely curled hair dancing in the chilly breeze was strolling beside her, not a care in the world.

    It was Riley's birthday a few days ago. And classically, she had sat Fizzy down one day in the yellow-toned lights of the library and together they devised a plan for how they were going to celebrate each of their birthdays, which were consecutive to one another, in the most effective way. At the end they decided that it was going to be meeting up with friends for karaoke, then a quick dinner at an overpriced restaurant downtown just with the girls, and whatever else they could fit in before midterms started off and life became perpetually tedious. 

    Riley was intimidatingly beautiful to Fizzy, as most people were, but Riley was the winner of people in that category. It wasn't like Fizzy wasn't beautiful, she was, but everybody around her seemed to be infinitely more magnetic. And Riley, with her done-up hair and plethora of phone contacts all inviting her to lunch, lining up for dinner, and praying to spend a few moments with her between classes, was just enough to send Fizzy into a spiral if she thought about it too much.

    "You look bummed out," Riley said.

    "What? But I'm not."

    "But you look like it, and you're terrible at poker face, so I just know something's up."

    "Karaoke was so tiring."

    "Is that it?"

    "No. Didn't you get that letter? School's literally going to close down because of the government not being able to get their shit together," she looked down at Riley's curious almond eyes, "it's tiring, that's all. But I don't really care, we all see it coming," Fizzy replied as they walked past a hotdog vendor and reached the restaurant.

    "I'm much too poor to be here," Casey said, as the other girls nodded in agreement, and they entered, Riley leading and Fizzy holding the door open for them.

    The restaurant was sultry, yet quaint in the right ways that made it seem as though regular students like Riley, Fizzy and their friends could eat there but big celebrities had their fair share of moments in the booths as well. A small lady in tight, black clothes and a big smile led the group to their booth.

    They all slid into the U-shaped nook one by one, hands brushing against the cool leather seat.

    "Anything to get started?"

    "Water," they all replied in unison, and the waitress quickly left.

The news of school possibly being cancelled indefinitely quickly dissipated from Fizzy's consciousness, and all she could focus on was the menu in front of her, filled with names of foods and alcoholic drinks she'd never heard of before. Luckily, the rest of her friends weren't too familiar with anything more expensive than a four star restaurant on the university's campus and before she knew it, they had ordered drinks and food that couldn't possibly get anyone full. The charcuterie board took up only one tiny corner of their already small table. What was even on it? Fizzy thought. Prosciutto, three blocks of bite-sized cheese, a sausage or two.

    "Forget it. I'm going to get hammered tonight, instead," Riley said, loudly.

    "What if we went clubbing?" Fizzy replied, with a big smile, maniacal.

    "Maybe I'll finally make out with a guy, you know, I've been abstinent for nearly six months. Six months!"

    "Haven't made out with one for nineteen years," added Octavia, who was sitting across the table, and everything was lively, normal, until they all had something to drink and words became mumbled and altogether more exciting.

***

It was nearly two in the morning, and Jess was clacking away at the keyboard, so focused on the screen in front of her that a passerby may think she was waiting for something to pop out of the pixels. Fizzy watched as the blue light from the laptop shone onto Jess' square glasses, and illuminated the area behind her, casting a dark shadow of a hunched over twenty-year old with a midterm paper due at 9 A.M the next morning. Jess didn't seem to notice how bothersome the typing was to Fizzy, and continued as the sound seemed to increase. Perhaps even ascend in tone, if that was even possible.

    "Am I bothering you?" Jess asked, eyes not leaving the screen for even a second.

    "No," Fizzy lied.

    "I can move to the corner of the room, if you want. Or go to the library. Or go under the covers. Or —"

    "It's fine. I'm just having a hard time sleeping." Fizzy sat up. "How's the paper going?"

    "I think I'm going to need to ask for an extension."

    "Why didn't you work on it earlier?"

    "Fizzy. I have so many papers. Look, I think I should go to the library, I'll get more work done. I'll see you in the morning."

    "Okay, bye."

It was quiet for a moment or two. Calm, good, just the way she liked it. Fizzy stood up, wiping the sleep from her eyes and walked to their bathroom, turning on the harsh light which stung her eyes so badly she could feel it in every little part of her body. Looked in the mirror. She almost gasped at what she saw — big puff of hair and tired eyes, all combined with flushed cheeks from tossing and turning minutes before, back when Jess was still typing away, and finally a painful pimple looming right on in the middle of her chin.

    "You look terrible," she said to herself. Grimaced.

Truth was, Fizzy was the best she'd ever been. Despite her nighttime antics, her most recent year at university was proving to her that maybe there was something in her that was actually worth saving. However, there were parts deep in her that wanted university to end early, so that perhaps her summer could start early, even if that meant that Riley and all her other friends would fly off to their respective homes. The year before, her first year, had been absolute hell for the most part; full of confusing drunk texts and a charming boy in her Latin class (God, out of everything, Latin?) that didn't seem to care about her the minute she started caring about him. But after meeting Jess, Riley, Casey, she was suddenly more clear on just what she wanted to do with her life.

At least, that's what she thought.

    It was all working out so great until Marco showed up at her door with his fresh faced demeanor and that damned letter which could signal the end of her life as she knew it. Or, maybe, she was just over dramatic and everything would go back to the way it was once everything blew over and the government figured out all the logistics and saved the sick. It was possible, right? Fizzy sighed, washed her hands, turned off the stinging bathroom light and crawled back into bed, knowing full well that she was just much too naive and hopeful for her own good.

    It was all she knew, though, to be hopeful. That's what gets people through things. Even a few months ago she wouldn't have thought this way, but, as her life slowly turned around it was increasingly apparent that that's just how things worked. And she was turning twenty soon, so it wasn't a good approach to believe that everything always turned out for the worst that early on in her adult life. Besides, mindsets like that typically developed after you got married and landed a dead-end job and were approaching forty, or in your mid thirties, at least.

    She listened to the quiet buzzing of cars driving by, and thought about Riley's intoxicated laugh from the night before, tunes of karaoke songs swirling around her mind, and miraculously, everything fell away and she drifted off into a deep sleep.