Free This Is My Life by Meg Wolitzer

room, or in any light other than black light. Nothing was purple now, or covered in space-lint. Erica and Jordan observed each other and sighed at the same time, acknowledging what they saw and somehow accepting it.
    They hailed a taxi then and rode all the way down to the East Village. During the ride, Erica was finally able to sit back and close her eyes. Small paisley objects floated across a dark field, then vanished. It was an unobtrusive hallucination—not really a hallucination at all, she thought; more like a memory. Then she remembered what it was: the pattern on a jumper she had worn almost every day in fifth grade. She felt embarrassed that the only visions she had were
fabric
patterns; it seemed such a parody of what a girl would hallucinate while doing drugs. Jordan, on the other hand, was probably seeing pictograms drawn by ancient Yaqui tribesmen.
    When they got out of the cab on St. Marks Place, two men were playing guitars and singing a medley of Bob Dylan songs.
    â€œLet’s listen,” Jordan said, and they stopped for a few minutes on the sidewalk. Jordan took out a dollar and ostentatiously fluttered it down into the open guitar case. When the songs were over, and Jordan and Erica were walking farther east, he shook his head and said, “I wish I had been conscious of that music the first time around. I missed it all; it just kills me. Myparents were sort of leftist back then; they liked Bobby Kennedy, and they had this group of endocrinologists that used to get together every month and have political meetings. But I was just a little kid; I didn’t pay attention. I played Candyland in my room all day, and I didn’t have a thought in my head.” He paused, squinting. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with us,” he said. “We were born too late. Kind of like those men who think they were supposed to have been women. Maybe I was supposed to have been born a few years earlier, but something went wrong. Maybe my parents were supposed to have fucked one night a few years before, but my mother said, ‘Not tonight, Jack, I have to look at a few more thyroid levels,’ and that was that.”
    They walked for an hour, making a big circle around the East Village. Since it was so cold, most of the streets were empty except for a few stray people dozing on stoops, and a gathering of Hell’s Angels and their girlfriends building a bonfire in a garbage can on East Fourth Street. On Second Avenue two old women wheeled luggage carts overspilling with laundry.
    â€œThat’s what’s on the street now,” Jordan said. “All the hippie freaks went to business school and got married, or joined EST. There’s no community at all. Just bag ladies and a few girls from New Jersey. Six years ago, this street was hopping. Music playing, dope in the air.
And I was too young for any of it
. Now look at it—it’s like death.”
    Erica didn’t know how to answer him, but it didn’t matter; he didn’t really want a response from her. He just wanted her to walk with him, to keep up with him as best she could. She was relieved when he finally wanted to sit down. They went into the Kiev on Second Avenue and sat at a table in the back, drinking coffee, which they both loaded up with sugar. Under theunnatural light she noticed how sickly Jordan looked, and it shocked her.
I touch him
, she thought.
I kiss him and do other things
. The thought repelled her for just a moment, then was gone, like one of her little paisley hallucinations. All thoughts, all visions, got absorbed right back into the atmosphere. She could take note that Jordan looked sickly now, but when she lay in his bed on Monday after school, under his
Hobbit
poster, she would forget that she had ever thought this. Somehow she would welcome his arms and legs, taking pleasure in the way they swung open and closed on their hinges. In his bed everything smelled sweet: a combination of