Free The Lonely by Ainslie Hogarth

pitied.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI don’t really know, but I know that you don’t want it. No one ever wants anyone else’s pity. In movies anyway.”
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t mind being pitied.”
    â€œThat’s because you don’t know anything yet, Easter. You’re still just a kid. You’ve got to either be a pod or get a baby some other kind of way, otherwise you’re a social reject.”
    â€œHow are you going to get one?”
    â€œI’ll just acquire one somehow. In the comical way that hard-working career women accidentally acquire them in movies. That way it won’t be my fault. I’ll have really tried to have a career, but by some hilarious turn of events I get stuck with a baby and eventually fall in love with it, and change my name to Mommy and get married to a husband who loves the baby.”
    â€œWell, I want that too.”
    â€œYou can’t. I’m already doing it.”
    â€œI can do it too.”
    â€œFine, Easter, do whatever you want.”
    Julia pulled her head up and sat backward on the couch, letting her brain readjust to right-side-up reality. She stood up and staggered a bit to the bathroom. I lay on my stomach on the carpet, still staring at the spot on the couch where Julia’s face had been. If I closed my eyes the shape of her head remained, seared onto my eyelids, skin glowing.
    When I opened my eyes her face was right-side-up in front of me and she was holding a gold tube of lipstick in front of my face. She had fetched The Mother’s bag of lipsticks from the bathroom: an ancient, filthy, black-and-white-checkered bag that contained every lipstick The Mother had ever purchased in her entire life. Literally. And she was very proud of that accomplishment. The Mother was as proud of her mangy bag of lipsticks as some people are of their stamp collections or rare comic books. Evidence, to herself and others, of her immovable motivation, her ability to commit to and complete tasks, her passion about things outside of her family. Because apparently that’s what a giant bag of lipsticks says about a person.
    Julia plucked a gooey Pink Rose Petal to apply to her lips and I picked up an orangey red called Autumn Rust. Lipstick was an easy answer to boredom. It was the most exciting thing you could do in the shortest amount of time because for a second, you got to convince yourself that you were the kind of gal who wears lipstick every day. You got to pout to yourself, and trick yourself that you were glamorous. Then in a second it was over, time to wipe it off and start again.
    Sometimes when I was in the bath or on the toilet and The Mother was folding laundry in our room we would read the colors out to her and she would reply with the corresponding number code or vice versa. It was actually quite fun.
    â€œ4207,” I would squeal.
    â€œSugar Plum Fairy. Sparkly purple. I wore it in 1989 to a friend’s birthday party. We went to a club called Wavelength. Isn’t that an awful name? Sounds like a Barbie Nightclub. Next!”
    â€œ6399,” I hollered.
    â€œFire Engine Red.”
    â€œYeah, that’s right! You’re amazing.”
    â€œThat’s my sixth tube of that stuff, thanks to you.”
    We had destroyed many a tube of that particular color over the years, on account of a game that Julia made up.
    It went like this:
    She would drag the Fire Engine Red across her wrists and mock a very dramatic suicide. Then, when I would pretend to investigate the scene, she would leap up and slit my throat with it, at which point I would attempt to perform an even more realistic death than she had because in the game, this one was real. We were practicing this scenario, among others, with some frequency for a while, seeing how long we could lie still, how discreetly we could move our chests as we breathed. A few times I walked in on Julia lying in front of the tall bathroom mirror, watching