“…and so I went back to Sonia’s place.”.

Sonia?

What is he talking about? Who’s Sonia?

And suddenly I seemed to wake up in the middle of a -pretty raunchy- conversation with my friends. We’re sitting in our favorite pub, drinking our favorite beer. The one we can afford.

“I don’t know any Sonia.”.

“Oh but I think you do. Or at least she knows you. She better… She bathed you in the sink a couple of times and never stops bringing it up. Have you even been listening?”.

I guess I haven’t.

“The babysitter?”.

“Yes of course! Now you remember? Listen, she’s invited me tonight for some drinks at this fancy place close to Place Jourdan, with a couple of her older friends.”. He winks at me. Ugh, I hate that wink. It slimed up the whole room.

“Fine, if you want to.”.

“Great, love the enthusiasm. I’ll send you the address. Get there around 8.”.

The slime had taken its place in other corners and surfaces of the room in the meantime. I can see a green reflection on the shiny wooden back of his chair. But nothing’s really there, so why can I still hear and -more importantly- taste it?

---

As I open my eyes a nasty headache reaches my temples. After work, I like to take a nap to feel as though a new day has begun. And I get to restart refreshed. For the first thirty minutes it just happens to feel as though I’ve been struck by thunder.

“It’s 7:15. Time to grab a quick snack and shower,” I whisper to myself. “Thank god the place is a fifteen minute walk or I would never have made it.”.

As I get ready to rush through the door, the headache is not letting up.

Last time I saw Sonia is probably when I was 15 years old. We had just finished up the school race and we were heading to the local cafe to celebrate our class’ victory. Some of us had been training for months beforehand. I never understood where this sudden burst of enthusiasm came from. There was no big price to win, and these were ‘difficult teenagers’ after all. I just guessed our class teacher had some magical convincing superpower. Or he was close enough to our age for his desperation to move something in us. In any case, it worked and the group formed an undeniable alliance.

It was mid November and the rain had been incessant for a couple of days. I always enjoyed that rainy weather in my city. It made the streets less crowded yet the lights of the restaurants reflecting on the wet streets made the early darkness, well… less dark.

The class was in ecstasy after a long afternoon of running. And the win only made the adrenaline rush feel higher. As teenagers do in that uncontrollable state, we were being boisterous and the conversations got louder and louder. The mix of adrenaline and hormones made for some flirty interactions as well. Sarah, one of my cuter classmates, jumped on Nikolas’ back as he took pleasure in feeling her on his back. I still don’t know whether she knew we talked about that gesture for the next couple of weeks.

“Want to share my umbrella? You look uncomfortably wet.”.

I look up to see Louise handing me the thing. “You can hold it. It’s romantic, like in the movies, you know? And your mom would kill me if I didn’t at least offer.”.

I take the handle of the umbrella mindlessly and grab her waist.

“You could thank me.”.

“I’m sorry, I think I have been spacing out there for a while. Did you see Sarah and Nikolas?”.

She looks back at them, as if to demonstrate she wasn’t paying attention before.

“Yeah, I’ve seen them. They’ve been like this all afternoon. I’m sure I’m not going to hear the end of it for the next couple of weeks.”.

“Strange. That’s what I was thinking,” I answer.

“Do you see a future between them?”. That question had some venom in it.

“You’re joking. We’re in secondary school. If the future consists of now until the end of this school year, maybe. Any time longer than that doesn’t even seem to exist.”.

We nodded seriously at the same time which made both of us chuckle. I squeezed her waist a bit. A sign of me still existing next to her. Though I think I needed that confirmation more.

When we turned the corner, we almost bumped into her. The raindrops on the umbrella definitely splashed her in the face, but how much was impossible to tell as she was already soaked.

“Sonia?”.

I told the rest of the group to go on ahead. The bar was a couple of hundred meters away anyway.

“So it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Sonia asked.

Obviously it had been so I didn’t answer. I knew she loved borderline rhetorical questions. I just lightly grunted instead.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Still a bit rough around the edges I see? I thought I could have received at least a nice greeting, or maybe even a kiss on the cheek.”.

This approach confused me. Nothing in my body language or intonation was hostile. I genuinely asked out of curiosity.

When I was a little kid I absolutely adored Sonia. She seemed like the coolest person to be around. The way she entered a room made the atmosphere change in a most peculiar way. There was nothing extraordinary about her words, or even her appearance, yet she had this way of capturing any audience tuned in to her. She must have been around my age back then. I knew she had lots of friends, and that she was a big fan of Britney Spears, fashion magazines and boys who rode skateboards. That’s what her parents knew as well.
Spending so much time together I figured out she also enjoyed overeating and then throwing up, writing in her secret notebook and playing God.

“You know, I never asked for this. Or better, if I did, I was too young to realize what I was consenting to,” I said.

The rush of adrenaline had made room for frustration and soon enough my face was turning red.

“And you think I did? I’m not that much older in the grand scheme of things.”.

We stood there staring at each other for a while, while cars were driving by, splashing us every so often.”.