Alison shakes out two of the extended-release pills from the bottle marked do not crush, drops them into her mortar, and crushes them with the pestle. Ha. That'll show everyone.
She knows her dosages. She's not a fool; she's done this plenty of times before. The only problem is picking the right thing to be doing when the drive comes on.
And when it does come on, she knows, it will be like a barrier of light between herself and Daniel, herself and her memories, herself and Daria, the memory of exactly how much force it had taken to hold Daria not quite at arms' length as she had looked up, tearstruck and drunk and the hottest Alison had ever seen her and all but screaming out the question of what it had all meant.
Alison forgoes the pastels and raids her cabinet of acrylics, goes for the greens and browns and everything closest to black.
What had it all meant? Surely that was obvious. She had met a bite-sized girl with hair down past her shoulders and glasses to see and/or block off the world, a girl who played Chopin to lighten up the workday. And then, on their second meeting, she'd mortified herself and left the girl unbothered, while the soul of a tormented lover crackled around them—a tune, it was now obvious, she had been playing for someone else. Because she hadn't yet figured out what was best for her and left that hurt behind. Left it behind to be Alison's.
Simple, really.
Daria had been observant and honest and darkly funny. Daria had broadsided her with jokes, now and then, that threw her for a loop and made her wonder, head to heart, whether they were only jokes or if this was how a strange creature like Daria did flirtation. She had bit back her feelings every single time, kept herself as studiously blank as she could. In one moment, the confusion left her five years younger, swimming in the syrup of being in love with love again. In the next, she wanted Daria to be the love such that she had never known before, the one who read poetry and felt not just its imagery but the strands of artistic history linking here to there and in between.
So very simple, really.
None of it had been right.
None of it, perhaps, at the end, with a void in her eyes and allusive French instead of a scream of pain on her lips.
The first twinges of the drive are coming on now.
The edges of her leaves are sharp and jagged now, rather than contours that flow into one another. The animal organs that are suggested in their arrangements have become eyes, open and unblinking. Some with hints of tears, some—as she feels it will be today, as the drive grows stronger—opening onto nothing.
None of it had been right. All of it could have been right, if Daria hadn't broken through her pretenses so quickly. Couldn't it? Hadn't Daria's problems been with her insensitive boyfriend and that give-dykes-a-bad-name artist "friend" of hers, the one who had left town for Daria to stew in the guilt she did not deserve? Hadn't they? Wouldn't another year have put distance between her and all that pain, and then she could have been Alison's Tigerlily without reserve?
(Another year of pretenses.)
Another year of Chopin.
(Another year of flirtations-and-not.)
Another year of Kurosawa.
(Another year of getting her more drunk than she had planned for.)
The leaves and the vines and the thorns will be detailed today, she knows, and the eye will open onto nothing, onto the void she had seen in her Tigerlily, the void she would have filled, not one she had made, no, not that.