Faded Rainbows
Elizabeth Davis

My life is made up of a series of mediocre attempts to be witty and appear attractive to anyone within a ten year span of my own age. So far all I've accomplished is learning a thousand ways to fail miserably. I suppose my playing field is kind of limited though. I've had the same job since I got out of college; I majored in accounting. I guess I had always figured I would go back and get a degree as a tax attorney or become an accountant for a large corporation, but those sorts of dreams never work out. I got an entry level position working as a data entry assistant to a statistical clerk in the Department of Labor. I punch numbers into a computer all day with no idea what they are or what they may mean to some factory worker or cashier that I'll never meet.

My boss drops a stack of papers on my desk every morning for me to file. He used to ask me how I was or if I'd had a good night, now he doesn't even look at me. I've become invisible, blending into the beige color of my "Lined with Synthetic Fibers" cubicle in the basement of a cold granite federal building. I start the day off on three cups of coffee and an average of 80 keystrokes a minute. After about two and a half hours my vision begins to become hazy then clear again, 60 keystrokes. After lunch and four more cups of coffee I begin to watch the clock more closely, 50 keystrokes. When I get down to one hour before I go home I average around 40 keystrokes a minute. About one fifth of this is me hitting the back space key to compensate for the mistakes I've made while being drowned by the monotonous ticking of the white clock on the wall above my cubicle. Two pots of generic coffee and about 21,000 keystrokes later, I go home.

This is not what I wanted to do with my life when I was a kid. I wanted to be an astronaut or go on safaris in Africa. Now I've surrendered to a void of existence. Everything around me is the color of the DMV. It's like my world and my dreams have followed the same road as the baby blanket I had when I was a kid. It had rainbows all over it and a bright red border. I would carry it around with me and dream about adventures I would have when I got older as the rainbows danced around me. By the time I was in college and studying to be an accountant the rainbows had dulled to a blurry pastel, now I can hardly make out the shapes that were once the fuel of my dreams and the blanket stays on the top shelf of a closet in my one bedroom apartment.

When I was sixteen my parents separated. No fighting or great catastrophe occurred, they just stopped loving each other. My dad left about two weeks before my mom's fortieth birthday. She just kind of went numb when it happened. She didn't really miss him, but she wanted to know where he was and what he was doing. I guess when you're with someone for so long and then they leave it's like having a limb amputated. You know you can't have it back but you can still feel it itch sometimes. Anyway, my dad hadn't gotten hold of either of us, so one day I went by the apartment that he was renting and looked in. Just a few of his items were scattered over the apartment. I checked back a few times over the next two weeks, he was the only one who was ever there. He hadn't even left to be with someone else. I think that's the worst feeling I ever had, realizing that he would rather be alone than with us. That's when I snapped, when I decided that I needed something more.

I started sneaking out nights and roaming the neighborhood. I suppose it made me feel powerful to be able to look into the houses of all the happy families as they slept, knowing that they were totally unaware of my presence. I felt like a wolf stalking the perimeter of a village. I don't think that it ever occurred to me to enter the houses until the first time I was in. It was a hot night and the family had just shut the screen door to their house. I was able to cut the screen and unlock the door. I didn't actually know what I wanted to do in the house until I looked at the table in the living room, there was a camera sitting on it. I already had a camera and this one wasn't any nicer than mine, but I felt compelled to take it anyway. The pictures hanging on the walls had obviously been taken by the family, probably with the same camera I held in my hands; pictures of a smiling father and mother, kids playing with the dog, the cabin by the lake, probably in Minnesota or Wisconsin. This family had all of these things that I'd never had, and now knew I never would, so why did they need this camera? They would still have those memories, but I would have the camera. Without the camera there would be no new memories, not captured in the same way with that same family camera taken on so many excursions, with the flash that always worked for mom but never for dad. That camera was mine now.

It went on like this for a while, high school by day, wolf by night. Anything small and personal that I could find in houses like cameras, watches, anything little, easily overlooked, displayed on a mantle or a coffee table, I took them all. I would never be greedy or take excess; I didn't need these things for money, I needed to feel satisfied that this happy family was slightly less blessed when I left than when I had entered. I never took money, anything too easily replaced or too rare to be forgotten, just something small and personal. Getting into the houses was easy. I lived in a nice neighborhood and no one ever locked all their windows or the door leading to the house from the garage. Most of the time the people I took from thought they had simply lost their watch or that sea shell that little Jodie picked up off the beach in Hawaii, merely misplaced, to be found again. I was content with the knowledge that they would never see those mementos again. If the symbol is gone, the memory fades. Like my parent's marriage, my symbol of a happy time.

Then one day it happened. I was actually happy. School had always seemed like a real waste of time to me. "Subjects I don't care about that I have to endure with people I don't like." This was my mantra, or vendetta, it's often hard to tell the difference. Then, there was her. This girl named Stacie from my science class smiled at me one day. I had never noticed her before, not any more than I noticed the poster behind her on the wall. But that smile stuck with me. It was the sort of smile that just… glistened. It glistened with a quiet confidence, a knowledge that teases you and was almost sympathetic in its delivery. It shyly said, "I know something you don't know." And she did. She knew that a smile like that will kill a guy who's not watching the road. I fell and I fell hard. We started going to movies, basketball games, listening to records. She thought I was deep because I didn't say much, I thought she was cute for thinking I was deep. The innocent little dates eventually progressed to sweaty fumblings in the backseat of my beat up old Buick. We had fun; I think we even fell in love. But, of course, it fell out. I had struggled with opening up and letting someone in. When she finally did get in, she took a look around and headed back for the door. After the mandatory speech about "not being ready" and "needing to experience more of life before settling down" she walked away from me. So, just like when my dad left, I did the only thing I knew to do with my frustration, anger, and overwhelming sense of rejection: I went back to stalking the villagers.

When I was with Stacie I hadn't needed the reassurance that others would wake up less happy than they had been before going to sleep because of me. I was satisfied with myself, my life, but she was gone now, and so were my amended views of love. My assault on the memories of those around me continued, or began again I should say. I started to take real time in choosing what I would take. Something chosen by a child, or something so simple that it must hold profound meaning, such as a stone or a skeleton leaf carefully displayed for all to see, these were the things I began to search for, the things I still search for when I go out now. These are the things that truly matter. To take is to deprive, and over time those who are deprived learned to live without, as I had to live without my dad, my happy family, Stacie.

My memories have faded, everything representing them is gone. My mother died, my father lives in another state, I rarely receive a card, even on holidays, and I sold that old Buick where I discovered the purity, and ultimate treachery, of love. I am aware of these memories, though they seem more like ideas to me know. I am aware of how my father looked, much like myself, but I can no longer conjure his laugh, or the rough of his stubble when he kissed my forehead as I was shuffled out the door in the morning to school. I know that I felt Stacie; I kissed, breathed, experienced her being in accord with my own, but I am no longer able to taste that confused adolescent flavor of alcohol, toothpaste, and bubblegum. That flavor of an emerging maturity, bold and adventurous, but secretly careful and clean. I can no longer smell her, sweat mingled with a flowery and bold perfume, bought and shared by all the girls of our age at the local drugstore. These details are absent from me, as the texture of the sand under Jodie's feet must be absent now without that little shell as a reminder; fading like my dreams and hopes with the brilliance of those little rainbows. These things are what I consider during those long mundane hours in the basement, locked within the fragile walls of my cubicle. These are the things I consider as a prowl the now unfamiliar neighborhoods surrounding my apartment, searching for an unlocked window or garage-to-kitchen door, locked inside the fragile walls of my disconcerted self-awareness. My disappointment is my life; my revenge is seashells, cameras, postcards, the lives of others; my memories, desires, and aspirations: faded rainbows.