Maybe the end is near,
but I've been waiting all year,
to get the hell up out of here,
and throw away my fears.

A M E R I C A N T E E N
-Khalid

saturday | september 20 | 2:34 pm

VICTORIA pushed the key into her apartment door lazily, lacking strength physically and mentally. She wished this day never came. She disposed her keys onto the tray near the front door, slamming the wood behind her. "Ugh," she moaned and rubbed her eyes tiredly.

Vic sluggishly walked towards the center of the room and gazed at the picture of herself, smiling brightly five years ago at graduation. Her brown hair braided back into two french braids; her pale lips stained with red. How she wished she could relive that day.

Her mother and father stood with both arms wrapped around her, proud that their only daughter graduated high school at sixteen. She was smarter than the rest of her class and had knowledge beyond her years. They saw the brightest future for her and supported her choice of going to culinary school. It was everything Victoria could ever ask for.

She felt like a teenager now filled with angst and trepidation. She wished she didn't feel so dark inside sometimes; wished that her life didn't reflect another Hallmark movie drama. But, maybe this happened for a reason. Maybe her life was spiraling out of control in order for her to rise. She tried to make light of her circumstances, tried to believe them herself, but it was hard to do such thing when problem upon problem entered her life. Her father's words from graduation echoed in her mind;

'You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.'

"Cosmo! I need cuddles. Please, baby. I'm hurting badly," Victoria cried, as she landed face first onto the couch. She laid there for a few seconds, listening to her own breathing. No sound was heard around her, and she suspiciously raised her head from the plush cushion.

"Cosmo? I'll leave you alone afterwards, I promise. Just one hug," She compromised, but still didn't hear any rustling. 'Hmm,' she thought. 'That's weird.'

Cosmo usually welcomed her at the door after a long day at work. Although he was relatively quiet and enjoyed his solitude, he appreciated little rubs here and there when she returned. Now, he was no where to be seen and Victoria's heart began to speed up. She was sure she was going to have heart problems by them time she reached fifty years old.

"Alright boy. You got me. I'll buy you that toy you like so much so you can stop tearing up my boots. And I'll throw in a new litter box. Just come out and greet mama."

Silence.

Victoria jumped off of the couch and ran around the apartment like a chicken with no head. Suddenly, she was filled with energy and adrenaline. She searched high and low, underneath the cupboards and between the crack between the wall in the fridge. She traveled into her closet, looking behind her shoes and inside the crates. She even opened her toilet seat, to see if he was hiding in there.

Nothing.

"Oh shit," She groaned in realization, and ran back into the living room. Her eyes zoned in on the open window, still pulling in air from the outside and chilling her apartment.

"Ahhhh stupid, dump, stupid!" Victoria whined, and ran to look out of the window. She was met with the light brown reflection of the sidewalk, in front of Mr. Blackbeans food truck. No cat in sight.

"Just my fucking luck."

"He's gone! My baby! My cat! My everything!" Victoria shouted hysterically through the phone.

"Okay. Calm down..."

"Calm down? Calm down! Never tell a woman to 'calm down' Matthew. Now, I'm less calm!" She complained while pacing back in forth in her foyer. How could he have gotten away? How could she have left the windows wide open? Victoria felt bile slowly creep up her throat, already assuming the worse. If something bad happened to him...he was her only family. Vic loved him more than anything in the world.

"Yeah, sorry I forgot. My last girl got mad at me for telling her to calm down. I think it was her...time of the month. Safe to say I saw red in more places than one." Matthew grimaced and Vic could almost feel him cringing on the other side of the call.

"Matthew!"

"I'm sorry! What do you expect me to say? You know I'm not good at comforting people." Vic could hear movement of the other end of the line and the beeping of a microwave.

"I don't know. I'm sorry, it's just-you're not helping. This is such a bad day. A horrible day. I want to just...you have no idea. I-I'm going to call Talia instead. She'll hopefully understand," A tear escaped her eye before she quickly brushed it off of her cheek. Vic muted the call, so that she could sniffle without Matthew hearing her on the other side of the phone.

"Wait!" Matthew exclaimed, making Vic's eyes widen at his tone. She stopped pacing for a
moment, clutching the phone tighter in her hands. Did he find something about her Cosmo? Matthew continued, "Can you uh...text me if she's alright when you call her? I hope her hangover from last night wasn't too bad."

Victoria was instantly hit with a wave of disappointment, tempted to tell Matthew that he was being incredibly inconsiderate of her feelings. But, she stopped herself, knowing that it was her biggest pet peeve when people placed their own problems on others just to make them feel bad too. Instead, Vic tried to cover up her real feelings with humor, "You care about her more than my Cosmo! You monster!"

"Well, she is a human... and cooks food for me sometimes. I'm actually eating some of her leftovers right now. Tell her they're delicious."

"Bye!" Victoria clicked off the call, ending their conversation abruptly. It was no use speaking to Matthew; he was as useful as a broken clock. Her fingers led her to her contact page, where she dialed Talia's number. Vic audibly groaned aloud when the call went straight to voicemail.

"Hey, this is Talia. I don't care who you are. I'm probably never going to call you back. But, if you have money or chocolate chip cookies, leave me a message. If not, bye."

BEEP

"Talia, Cosmos's gone and-and I need help finding him. Send out a SOS to everyone you know. It may sound silly, I know, but I really need this. Ask your dad if he can send out an AMBER alert too. And tell Genesis for me please. I'll call her later, of course, but just tell her for me as a heads up. Anything will be good. This is Victoria by the way, just in case you still haven't saved my number after three years. Please help and I'll talk to you soon."

Victoria threw her phone across the room, and it landed on the sofa. The device nearly rolled off of the couch and onto the floor, but she didn't care if it broke. She gripped her hair in distress and contemplated what to do next. She couldn't search around the building again or knock on her neighbors doors. They already disliked her from her loud singing at night. Vic couldn't ask the food truck guy about Cosmo again, since his answer would be the same, "I see cats everywhere. This is New York for Christ sake. What do I look like, a cat whisperer? I'm just here to sell tacos."

Vic decided on the best solution for herself in that moment; something that could somewhat take her mind off of it all.

"I need ice cream."

She trudged towards her freezer and pulled out a tub of cookies and cream ice cream. Hearts and stars began to float in her eyes at the sight of the beautiful label. Although it expired a week ago and had some freezer burns along the rim of the container, Vic still rejoiced silently in her head. It was food, and food brought her comfort.

"I need you after the day I had," She muttered to the container, on the brink of delirium, before grabbing a plastic spoon from out of the kitchen drawers. She walked quickly to her room and sprawled across her bed with a sigh. Her head was still pounding and her mind was reeling from the events today, but she found peace in her small abode.

Searching for the remote, she automatically logged onto Netflix and began watching Gilmore Girls to try to cheer herself. It was a failure of a plan though, and did little to raise her spirits.

"Why can't I be like Rory and have a Jess and be in Yale and live a good life and complain about the littlest things, thinking they are horrible when they're really not? Why is my life so shitty? I wish I had a life like hers," She cried around the spoon, before laughing sadly at a joke made on the show. She laughed to the point where tears fell down her caramel cheeks again, but she couldn't figure out whether they were tears of happinesses or sadness. It was the latter of course, but Vic wanted to believe it was the former.

"Meow." She purred in her mind, imagining Cosmo responding to her words. He was the best listener and the greatest companion. The cat was her only living source of home and was her true best friend. Sure, Amelia was her best friend and all, but Cosmo was there when Vic needed him. He was there when she'd wake up in the middle of the night sad and alone. He was there when she first started to drink and fell asleep in her own vomit. He was there when she lost both of her parents and when life became hard. Thinking about his soft purring was useless anyways. Victoria became sadder when she realized it was just a figment of her imagination.

To others, her heartbreak over the disappearance would seem foolish or exaggeratory, but they didn't understand how it felt to lose another. Cosmo was hers, and she was set on the fact that he would never get up and leave her when things got tough. All Vic ever dreamed of since she was eighteen was for someone to be hers forever; someone who would never let her down when all else fails. Was she asking for too much?

"It's a hard knock life, for me..." she sang softly, licking the spoon tediously.

•••••

There are going to be a lot of Annie references in this book, because I am fetus child in the body of a teenager and I love the movies/play with my whole heart.

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