You Think It's More Than Bad Luck

There once was a girl named Arielle, not Ariel like the mermaid although Alex and Jack are sure she would have loved to be a mermaid but like Ari and the letter L. And Arielle was made of flames and cigarettes and Valiums. She was never still and she was never in the same mood twice. She was whole but she was empty and broken and she was a strange sort of beautiful in the way of freckles and hipbones and ash blonde hair that meant you didn't tire of looking at her.

She never stopped; Arielle would tornado through life, passing you by and giving you that strange sense of freedom that comes with chaos.

Sometimes Alex wondered if she was ever in Baltimore at all, if it was possible for a girl like Arielle to exist: A girl made of flames and cigarettes and Valiums and coffee and hot breath in cold air.

Her fingertips looked so tiny and fragile, as though they would snap off at any moment. But she could snatch and scrape with an unpredictable ferocity at anyone who gave her the liberty. She would pick up a spider and tenderly place him outside but she would crush the fingers of anyone who got too close beneath her scruffy old riding boots without a second thought.

Her skin occasionally splashed crimson from spending days in the cold refuge of the woods, hunting and gathering her own food. And even though she could gut and drag an animal back home she couldn't stop crying if she mistakenly ran over a squirrel. Her hair twisted and curled around her face at the slightest wind, her eyes nestled behind the tangles like pearls protected by kings.

Sometimes she would spend all night outside sprawled out in the yard and would never tell anyone why. And if someone were to ask her what was on her kind she would merely smile her cunning, mysterious smile and turn away.

Arielle would scream out at the world at the very top of her nicotine blackened lungs. She would scream until her words came out as scratched up as her wrists and her tongue curled. She would scream all the things she thought the world ought to know and all the things she just wanted to scream.

But the world didn't listen.

And Arielle didn't care.

In the dark she would quietly stay up, drinking caffeine endlessly and slipping out for a midnight swim and laughing until she cried. And then she would lie down in the blanket fort she took two hours constructing with tears streaming down her face, and you couldn't be sure if she was happy or sad. But it didn't matter because Arielle didn't care.

And Arielle would sit on the porch and stare up at the sky and point out constellations to Alex and Jack, naming them after dreams she couldn't remember and lines she wished she'd had. She would whisper up to the man on the moon about anything that came mind, and she didn't care if the man on moon was listening because a lot of things came to mind.

See, there once was a girl named Arielle. And she was made of dreams and stardust and she tasted like freedom. And she was the strongest person Alex ever met. And she was the perfect example of what life could be if you just tried a little. And all of these words are insignificant because no one and nothing can compare to Arielle.

No one could ever pass along who she was once she was gone because there was no way to explain her. But there was once a girl named Arielle and although no one can tell you who she was, there will always be the story of the impact she had on Alex Gaskarth.

Notes

I have no idea where i'm going with this.
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xoxo, lovely..