Her memory is notoriously poor, but her glazed eyes, scored with dark blue bags and rushed brown eyeliner, tell the world all the things that she forgot it has done to her. They're the first thing anyone notices about her. Before they see the protruding ribs on her emaciated frame that fail to hide behind the small bikini top she's worn for five days in a row, and before they see the not-quite-fresh lines of red that decorate her forearms that a rusty boxcutter imprinted on her a few mornings ago. Her beautiful indifferent eyes. Even if a lighthouse's lamp were to shine directly into her skull and part the thick fog that hangs over her brain, bringing back all her lost memories, Paige wouldn't be able to keep track of the number of times they've gotten her into some or other trouble.
She sits on the curb by the bus stop, watching cars burn dangerously close across the asphalt in front of her. A boy, her age or slightly older, walks on unpaved ground across the street. He's mumbling some lyric to a hypothetical song he'll never write, but Paige can't hear what he's saying to himself over the roar of the traffic between them, so she assumes he's schizophrenic or high. Either one works for her. Eventually, he looks up from his internal world, noticing the two empty blue-grey orbs that seem to stare right through him. He waves at the girl they belong to, who returns his greeting with a disdainful pout that accompanies her penetrating gaze. Paige watches as he narrowly avoids getting hit by a passing car as he tries to cross the road without checking for traffic first.
Reaching her, his mouth starts moving again, this time though, the words are directed at Paige.
"Hey pretty girl, my name's-"
His voice bores her so she keeps her inattentive mind occupied by assessing his body instead, treating it like a sculpture to be valued based on its aesthetic appeal, the artist's technical skill, and whatever meaning they ascribed to their work. It was clear that the aesthetic appeal was sorely lacking. Similar to Paige, he was sorely emaciated, seemingly drowning in the clothing, three sizes too large, that drape over his body. The only notable features were a distinctly angular mandible that seemed to want to free itself from the skin and flesh it protruded from, and a crooked nose, broken one too many times, with one nostril flapping open and closed as he breathed. The artist that sculpted him appeared to be proficient with their craft however, his proportions collapse and contradict one another so perfectly, and the haphazard lines that form his long dirty matted hair were clearly placed by someone who is skilled enough to not have to care too much about their final product. The meaning of this boy escapes Paige for now though, as does the context in which he appeared in her life. She'll get to the bottom of it eventually. Or not.
"-watcha doin' in tha rain?"
She catches the tail-end of a rambling sentence as she finishes her visual analysis of the unnamed boy, and infers the rest of what he said to give a satisfactory answer to whatever questions he intended to probe her with.
"Fine I guess, Paige, nothing in particular, alone, waiting for a bus."
"Yea, cool... cool."
Silence follows. Paige unfocuses her eyes, staring once again in the same direction she was looking before she noticed him meandering across her field of view. She feels him trying unsuccessfully to analyse her in return now, instead repeatedly getting caught, hypnotised by the cold eyes that, despite her apparent disinterest, seem to be begging for him on their own accord. In his mind, he's running barely legible calculations, trying to come up with a way to see her again. A bus rounds the corner. His. It pulls to an abrupt stop, the driver barely able to wrangle the huge metal beast he operates.
"This is me."
Paige looks up. She doesn't recognise the bus's number, but catches a glimpse of it's advertised destination and concludes it'd spit her out about three suburbs in the opposite direction from her home, but decides she won't be missed if she catches it anyway.
"me too."
The boy flashes her a smile, takes a few steps into the open doorway of the bus, turns his neck back, and realises she's still sitting on the curb.
"You comin'?"
she blinks into the distance, feigning the thought process she imagined whatever other person would have in this scenario, rolls her eyes. "I'm disinterested." They say. "Yea, sure." She mutters. Paige slings her heavy bag over her back and follows the boy onto the bus. He doesn't tap on, and Paige follows suit. She sits next to him. Another soft smile creeps over his face.
The pair sit in silence for the rest of the bus ride, disrupted only by the boy's soft humming and when he reaches across her to signal the bus to stop. He squeezes past her and walks to the door of the bus, but hesitates when it opens.
"Would ya like to come over?"
"Sure."
The walk to his house is short and uneventful. Paige keeps herself busy by counting the number of light poles they pass. Only seven, before they arrive at a small single story home. It's part of the old guard of households. Double brick walls and an overgrown garden insulate a decrepit interior. Nothing like the homogenous lineage of synthetic cookiecutters that her house belongs to. It's sleeping, but it's alive.
Paige sits cross-legged on the boy's bed. His room smells of musk that has seeped into the walls and furniture. It hasn't breathed fresh air since he moved into the house as a child. A time capsule preserving years of sweat and sex. He reaches into a small fridge by the side of his bed, grabs two beers, and hands her one. She cracks it, and sips down the stale piss taste she has never learned to like, but pretends she does anyway. They exchange meaningless small talk for a while as they sip their respective beers. Paige mainly stairs off into the distance, but on occasion she glances at the boy, catching him staring straight into her eyes before quickly blinking away. Weird, she thinks.
No longer as shy as before, thanks to the alcohol finally working it's way through his body, the boy drunkenly reaches under Paige's shirt and feels plump breast. She tolerates him softly toying with her nipples. It feels good to be wanted, but she knows the alcohol won't be enough for her to withstand what she imagines he wants from her, so she reaches into her pocket and grabs one of the sheets of oxy she bought from a friend earlier that day. She washes the last 3 pills in the blister down her throat with the last droplets of beer in her can.
"Shiiit what's that?"
"Just some pills."
"Got any left I could steal?"
"No, sorry."
The next hour goes by slowly for Paige, as she waits for the oxy to hit and make it feel okay for her to seek affection from the boy in front of her. She finds herself shirtless, and he explores her mouth and body with his tongue, kissing up her chest and tasting sweaty nipples. Physically she feels good as he does so, but she struggles to contain the sick feeling that's been building in her stomach since she decided to catch the bus with the boy.
"You taste so good."
Eventually, she's so passively complacent that he could do pretty much anything he wants with her, without her giving it much of a thought, as long as it means she gets to be called pretty and gets to feel like he really truly wants her. The sickness in her stomach subsides to a dull ache. Deciding she's finally desperate enough for attention and sufficiently high enough that she doesn't care how she get's it, Paige climbs onto him, unbuckling his belt, and begins to lick at the head of his already hard dick. She tastes the same musk she smelled when she first walked into his room, only far more potent.
When she's gotten all she can out of soft licks, she lets it venture deeper into her mouth, savouring the quiet groans of enjoyment the boy lets out as tokens of appreciation. His dick catches in the back of her through and she gags, retching into her mouth and tasting bile on her tongue. She swallows it back down, feeling her throat burn as she does. The boy didn't notice. Instead, he found himself once again lost in her hazy far away eyes. She seemed to stare right through him, as if he was glass or maybe nothing at all. Paige continues to choke on his dick, working her way up and down it's shaft.
"Fuuuck, just like that, girl, that's so good."
Paige feels her mind begin to lose itself as she fades in and out of an already fragile consciousness. Nodding off onto the boy's dick, he first holds her by the hair and uses her mouth himself, but feels like a horrible person for doing so. Instead, he motions to her as if trying to turn her pliable body over, so she complies, making it easy enough for him. He imagines that she weighs about the same as a feather. Her face slumps into the pillow and her ass faces him now. His dick finds a hole to bury itself in and he begins to rut into her. Paige does her best to offer some resistance so he doesn't get turned off from having to fuck a dead body. His stomach tenses as sex envelopes him. She decides he must be enjoying himself, so she feels satisfied, but she can't get hard or cum from the drugs and so for her it's just a little uncomfortable and she feels gross, or at least she thinks she should feel gross, but the warm tingles of the crushed pills in her nose make it hard for her brain to articulate any coherent feelings to the rest of her body.
Sooner or later his cum pushes its way up into her colon and he collapses onto her, their sweaty bodies sticking together, not wanting to let go, like a couple hugging before having to go separate ways for a long while. Eventually he pulls out and rolls over beside her. Paige sits up, not even bothering to clean herself up before getting dressed again. She hasn't changed her clothes for a few days now, so she decides it wouldn't matter anyway.
"You alright, girl?"
"Yea."
She feels nothing, or maybe a little disgusted with herself. He clearly likes her, which she likes in return. Or at least, appreciates. She should be desired, at all costs. The affection she so desperately craves, satisfied for the night, at the cost of disinterested sex she's pretty sure she didn't really want. She's barely conscious of the true depths of her desire, but she let's it guide her through life without questioning it. Many years of maladaptations and alienation has led to a smouldering need to be wanted. The recesses of her brain scream: "Lovebomb me, use me, abuse me. Please I'll do absolutely fucking anything for even the smallest taste of someone desiring me." externalised only through the occasional seductive glint in her eye.
"Wanna stay the night? It's wet as fuck out there."
"I'll catch the bus home, I'm not too far."
"Aight.. yea, sure. If you're- sure." He pauses. "Wanna catch up again sometime? I had fun."
"Sure."
Paige grabs a loose pen she finds lying on the bedside table next to some poorly drawn comics, and scribbles a fake number onto the boy's forearm. Barely legible to start with, it smudges as she writes, smearing sweat and ink across the both of them.
"Text me."
"Aight."
"Bye."
"See ya. Get home safe."
He leans in for a hug or a kiss or some sort of physical affection, but she's already made it halfway to the door and doesn't look back. The last bus ran half an hour ago, so she begins her walk home through the rain. Paige feels the cool droplets soak her clothes and cleanse her body. Her brain similarly washes away the memories of the day once again, leaving her with a vague sense of being valued that, if she's lucky, will last until she falls asleep tonight.
The only parts of her that will remember what happened are her two glazed eyes, scored wth dark bluebags and tear-smudged brown eyeliner.