CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When Poppy wakes up the world feels different, somehow. She may still be a little high, but she can move freely and isn't as scared of freezing. Still, she keeps her fingers twiddling just in case. Tracy isn't in the bed anymore, it sounds like she's making breakfast in the other room. Poppy gets up to check, puts on a bathrobe over her clothes for dramatic effect and enters the main room. Tracy is cooking, and it smells good.

"Morning, stubs. Want some breakfast?"

"Breakfast sounds lovely after last night."

Tracy goes back to cooking, standing over the stove stirring some vegetables in a pan. Poppy notices her recorder on the table, at some point it must've fallen out of her bag. In the process of picking it up she hits play, and hears her own voice talking about how much she hated her life. Tracy looks back, she looks like she wants to say something but thinks better of it. It's all true, of course it is. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, but she wants to create. It's a selfish act, right? She apparently has so much talent and she doesn't want to share it with anyone. Obscurity is a fate, varying in its intensity by the person facing it. Some may see it as a curse, others may see it as a begrudging inevitability. Poppy sees it as an opportunity, to put something out into the world and not become somebody's idol. Fame is the enemy, and she was fighting it every day. Though being a nobody wasn't nice either.

"I don't want to be forgotten, but I don't want to be famous. What do I do?"

Tracy brings the pan over to the table and sets it down on a trivet. She goes back for plates and silverware and thinks of something to say along the way. "Your friends and family will remember you, won't they? I remember you."

"My cousins friends didn't. Half my childhood was spent with them but they didn't know me from Eve. Why is that?"

"Honestly? You were a depressed, self-centered brat who thought that any self expression would bring retaliation. You couldn't be yourself around them, you'd be too weird. Most of the people in your life, myself included, were like that. But most of us have learned to accept ourselves and live freely of judgement from imaginary forces. You haven't gotten there yet."

Poppy looks down at what she's been served, not just the Brussel spouts and potatoes but the life ahead of her. She's not a sad little boy anymore, she's a confident woman. Why isn't she acting like it?

"What if I'm still like that? It's possible."

"I can promise you're not, you're not self centered at all. You've spent the last half year giving every part of yourself to other people and asking for nothing in return but a small pay package. You're allowed to ask for things back in return, things more than money and accolades. Try it out for me."

And it all clicked. The clouds cleared around the jackalope, the world opened up to her. She ate her breakfast as fast as she could, grabbed her still mud-soaked coat and ewwww.

"When did this happen?"

"You finding meaning to your life or your coat getting so dirty? You fell down a hill yesterday and ate shit in a puddle." Poppy just now realizes she was wearing Tracys pajamas, she must've been last night too. "Oh also my washer and dryer are broken, I can give you change for the laundromat."

Poppy changed into clean clothes and ran to the nearest laundromat, a newfound sense of life flowing through her. She needed to make some calls.



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