Gray~

 The sun was setting in mid-December and the winds in Indiana were nothing like back home in Avondale. I tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind my ear and felt just how chilled they really were. I wasn't made for the midwestern winter. I missed the Avondale sunrises and sunsets. They were much more fluid, as if you might reach out and feel wet paint on your fingertips. The wind was picking up and made me thankful for investing in a warm winter coat. We never had such puffy, fluffy ones back in North Carolina.

My eyes darted across the skyline as I paused my footsteps. The gravel of the rooftop on my dorm building wasn't meant to be stood on as the pebbles scraped against one another. The static crunch of the hardly relevant rocks was a sharp contrast to the swirling whispers of breezes, gone as soon as they came. The tail of a poorly held braid hid my neck as it draped over my shoulder. It acted as a reminder that I really needed to get it redyed. The ashy brown was fading blonde and I was fairly certain my deep brown roots were beginning to expose themselves.

I picked up my beer from where I'd sat it on the edge of the roof and took a swig of the popping, buttery liquid. It caused me to wince, considering I never did like beer. I glanced down at the settings of my polaroid camera, switching them from bright to dim as the sun fled the scene. It fell away desperately like a thief in the freshly-fallen night. Holding up the camera, I snapped a few shots of the twilight and let each one come out in its own timing. The square in the center of each instant picture first expressed a stormy grey, but quickly faded to pastel color outlines and finally into the finished photo.

I smiled at their complexity, before tucking my camera back into its protective case and clicking play on the song that had been such an instrumental part to the last several years of my life. I hummed along to the melody and gathered my beer in one hand and my phone in my other. My camera case remained slung over my shoulder as I turned back to the fire escape that gave me access to the roof.

The trip back down was short. I had a dorm with a shared balcony on the seventh floor. The window at the end of the long, constricting hall gave access to the fire escape. I found myself almost tripping as I landed the last couple steps, but I maintained my balance with my beverage held up to the sky. If my dad had taught me anything, it was that you never spill an open beer. I climbed back into the window and smiled at the silent hallway.

Most people had skipped the pep rallies and events held on the official last day of the semester in order to get home for the holidays earlier. I found it cheaper to wait the extra few days and take a later flight. My door easily unlocked with the familiar click of my student card. It was quiet there too. My roommate had already gone south for the winter, fleeing the cold like a wild bird. I always found it ironic that her name was Robin.

My phone buzzed inside my pocket and I was met with a new text message from Becca. She'd had the same idea to wait the extra days before heading home, so we spent most of our down time catching up on our Netflix shows and laughing about the stupid things we had done over the first semester of junior year. Daniel had joined us a few times, but he kept making unconvincing excuses to avoid our plans.

I looked down from the window in my dorm to see a barely recognizable blue dot that was surely Becca's car. She was driving me down to the airport before she headed on the long road trip back to Maryland. She didn't see the point in flying home for the holidays, claiming it'd be much cheaper to just put a full tank of gas in her car and drive.

I zipped my bag tight and tugged it off my bag with a loud huff of my breath. It thumped against the floor, and I almost heard the whisper of a memory when AJ would be yelling at me for making so much noise. He always hated heavy steps and loud thumps from my room above my family's kitchen. I smiled and led the wheeled suitcase behind me as I closed my door and readjusted my tote on my shoulder. It was heavy with unwrapped Christmas gifts for my brothers and parents. They really deserved them, my mom especially, after putting up with a house full of boys for the last three years. Her only daughter was gone more than she was present.

I came to the staircase and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the chrome windowsill. It was distorted but I locked eyes with myself for long enough to see that my usually green-hazel eyes, tinged with a golden rim, were much more earthy and brown today. They usually did as they pleased, and I never intended on stopping them. Each staircase brought a new echoing thump and as they echoed together, began to sound like a machine gun. The bullets of sound ricocheted off the walls until they disappeared into nothingness.

Minutes later, I pushed open the large doors of the dorm to find Becca parked in a spot usually reserved to our dorm captain. She'd already headed home. Next to her old blue sedan was the stark contrast of Daniel's much older, but newly upgraded candy-apple-red lowrider. He had an obsession with the aesthetic of older cars, and I couldn't have began to say how many polaroids of his car I truly had. I might've been as obsessed with his aesthetic as he was.

With open arms, Daniel leaned on his car. I dropped my tote and left my bag in front of Freddie-- the name Becca gave to her car. I waddled over toward him, my smoky staccato breaths dancing with the accustomed air. I wrapped my arms around him, still in awe of how he never had a coat during the winter. Rain or shine; hot or cold; clouds or sun; Daniel was always wearing his Hoosier hoodie and a pair of joggers. His chin was warm against the top of my head as I leaned forward in such a way that if he moved, I'd splat against the hood of his car.

"Leaving so soon, Gray?" he asked as he moved so his breath was warm against my ear. I shivered with the odd warmth on such a cool day, before smiling and looking up at him. I rolled my eyes and noticed that his deep, unwavering tan had in fact reddened from the brisk air. His features were sharper under the bright white lighting. He arched a somehow perfectly put together eyebrow at my expression and his forehead bundled with small, curious wrinkles.

"Yes, Daniel. Don't get too comfortable, it's only for two weeks," I scoffed and glanced over at Becca, who had this look on her face that could only imply one thing. She was reminding me of an unseen fact, and how it should be altering my physical situation. No taken girl in her right mind would be hugging her friend for this long. Especially when that friend was a boy.

Eli was back home, and while he'd been distant for some time, it didn't change the fact that I was his girlfriend and I should be undyingly loyal to that fact. Snapping back into a conscious stream of thought, I ruffled my eyebrows and realized I'd missed something that one of them had spoken. I didn't ask what was said, but I pulled away from Daniel and turned to Becca with a deep sigh.

"You better be safe on your flight," Daniel instructed with a sense of his protective nature that he always carried about him. He reached into his hoodie pocket and handed me a folded piece of paper. I tucked it into my back pocket and did a once over of him.

"You better grow up and stop passing me notes," I retorted and gave him a laugh that really came out as more of a snort. I covered my mouth with my hand and released an earthier laugh, rooted deep in my amusement of myself. He shook his head with disdain and turned around toward his car.

"Maybe I would, but for some silly reason, you keep passing them back," he chuckled and nodded to Becca. "By Beck, see ya after break!" After sliding into his driver's seat and starting his roaring engine, he flicked on his headlights which sharply contrasted with the darkness. He pulled away and nothing was left but the sharp fluorescent lights that illuminated the parking lot.

"You ready?" Becca asked me, as she hit unlock on her car keys, providing a short beep and two red flickers into the navy night.

"Been ready since the day I was born, babe," I teased as I threw my bag into her open trunk and shut it a bit harder than I had intended to.

"Doubt it. Now, get in my car, loser," she spoke through a hearty laugh with a flip of her shoulder length, dyed black hair. Her naturally loose curls had fallen slightly from their bouncy state, signifying she'd probably spent the day packing and stressing over something.

The music took over the silence; the bass thumping relentlessly at my eardrums. I prefered acoustics, although some of Becca's playlists weren't half bad. I stared out the window and counted the streetlights as we pulled onto the main university street and made our way to the destination at hand.

***

The airport was bustling and lively. The monitors above my head rolled continuously with flight times and destinations. I paused and looked at the paperwork in my hand as I tried to match my flight to one above. It was harder than I initially had expected, but it made me thankful for the hours of space I had given myself. The time made everything seem less rushed.

I finally pieced together the puzzle and headed for the terminal. I needed to be there in an hour, giving plenty of time for the last round of security checks. My suitcase had already been sent through and took its own journey, leaving me with my tote and my camera. My steps were rough against the hardened tile flooring, giving the impression that I weighed twice as much as I really did.

While I waited in the painfully stagnant line, I pulled out my phone and texted AJ my estimated arrival. A few moments later, as an interruption to the game I was playing, he responded a simple, 'Thx, sis!' I looked up to see the river of people had continued to flow through the damned security.

It ended up taking me almost forty minutes to make it through the weaving obstacle course they'd set up for holiday travelers. I could see the terminal directly in front of me as I surfaced from the sea of people. I pressed onward and handed the lady at the desk my papers, which she punched in her system and gave me a more valid looking ticket-- at least more valid than a stack of print-outs sent to my e-mail.

Luckily I only had to wait out the boarding time in those stiff, horrendously patterned chairs for a few minutes, because my back had already began to reject sitting in them by sending a dull ache to my tailbone.

I stood as the distorted speakers announced it was time to board the plane, causing me to instantly stand and head to the front of the line. I was second to a man in a crinkled pin-stripe suit that seemed to be a bit too tight for his frame. He smelled oddly similar to my dad, causing me to open my mouth as if I'd ask what was the brand of his cologne. It made me smile a bit, as I wondered why someone in a suit would be heading to Raleigh.

Once on board, it didn't take me long to find my seat. I had a window, looking out to the tarmac. It was a seat perfect to take pictures of the wing extended like an arm into the cloudscape. I sighed as more people flooded into the aisle, searching for their own seats. My earbuds had been tucked inside my ears, and I looked back out the window, wondering how I would describe the day-like sensation of all the industrial lighting. If the stars weren't ghostly visible to my eyes, I might've been tricked into the illusion lingering in front of me.

A flight attendant with a tight golden-brown bun picked up the microphone and seemed to give a generic announcement, and I attempted to read her lips without removing my connection to the music. I got some of it, reading her lips to make out: "Thank you...Twenty minutes...Turn off...Safety...Airlines..." I tried to bridge the gaps, but rather weaved intricacies of what could have been said rather than what was actually said.

It seemed like eternities, but eventually, the plane rumbled underneath my feet. The steel bird came to life, ready to carry its passengers to the next destination. I pulled out my camera quickly and attempted to snap a few shots as we distanced ourselves from the landing strip. My ears popped almost immediately, and soon after I was lulled into a boredom induced sleep.