Isabella Bonifacio-Sudnik First Homecoming

Isabella Bonifacio-Sudnik I wake up to the morning fog pressing into the windows. The smell of fading incense and coffee drifts through the air. The house is cold and dark, but the setting being my mom’s house, the lack of warmth and light doesn’t affect the comforting welcoming feel. The rooms are a friend who, even when cold, will give me a loving embrace. Tonight I will leave my home and dance in neon lights with girls I barely know, thinking of it all, excitement fills me. I lounge about in my pajamas reading and watching TV until late in the day when the sun covers the banana tree leaves and they glow gold, and yet a vibrant green. I get dressed up hours before my leaving time. I put on my mom’s dress and jewelry that she gives me. A black shiny dress, with hints of red and white. I like it because it looks fun and formal enough. I wear a prism cut crystal necklace with the opacity of snow, one I wear frequently, and red-droppedshaped earrings of bloody pearl shine. I clip my dark hair with plastic teeth. My eyes are outlined with fully black powder. I look pretty, but I wonder how long my youthful beauty will last. I do all this, only to revert to my pajamas and flat hair. I should have prepared later and saved myself the trouble of dressing up twice, always too captivated with the future to live in the present as usual. I leave at four and drive to drivers ed for my in-person driver training. We practice parking, which I’m not great at, sadly. I drive around a neighborhood near the driver’s ed building. Fiery leaves drift down from autumn trees, the falling silhouettes switch shapes with masses of crows. Plastic ghosts and inflated black cats watch as I steer. The spherical moon stands still in the darkening blue sky as the hours tick, always ticking and never stopping for me to pause in the moments I want to live in. When I met my mom at 6:30 pm the sky is black as rich velvet. I drive down the 205, or rather up for north. The video game-like dancing lights of hurrying cars stretch on for miles.

My stomach coils like a snake out of a tinge of fear from the intimidating luminescent flow of traffic that swallows you like a leaf in a stream. When the novelty ceases, will my fear of new driving situations cease? When I’m old and mundane and my skin has started to crinkle, will I be able to drive down the highways in darkness without anxiety? Through the rural pines climbing around the road, I park in front of my friend Mahalia’s house. We met when we were seventh-graders, through karate class, and here we are sophomores together. She’s the longest friendship I’ve had and she hasn’t faded away or abandoned me like all my other temporary friendships. We are both half Filipina, my other half white and hers black. We joke that we are the yin and yang of Filipinas, and yin and yang cannot renounce the other. I bid farewell to my mom and she leaves as I enter the large house. Mahalia’s mom greets me with youthful excitement. I walk down the stairs to see Mahalia with two other girls. They are wearing jumpsuits and dresses covered in glimmering sequins, glitter uniformity. Mahalia wears a short, tight dress with her voluminous curls as a large crown. She looks gorgeous and like she’s about to get wasted at a club, so red and vibrant. Ava, a girl I’ve never met, looks just like Arianna Grande, with a brunette high ponytail and a shining jumpsuit like white champagne. Serena, a girl I saw with Mahalia at a football game, looks like a curvy mermaid with hair of blonde curling ironed twists. Her jumpsuit doesn’t have sleeves like Ava’s but still long pants, but colored a rich teal. They all make enthusiastic music with their conversation. I try on dresses covered in sequins like theirs, but they are too loose in the waist and too short. I’ll stick with my mom’s dress. So I pop out against their collectivist glamour. When they finish their makeup we sit in the car and Mahalia’s cool mom drives us. I hope when I’m middle-aged I’ll stay alluring like her. The three other girls wear high heels, Mahalia black stilettos, Ava square white heels, and Serena low black wedges. I hear shoes are what people take notice of first. Do shoes define a person? I wear the black Vans that I wear daily, so their complaints about their painful feet all night do not correlate with

me. Street shoes and basketball shorts under my knee-length dress, wow me, so casual among the gems. Believe me, I’m the type of girl who’d be overjoyed to wear small flashy dresses and pumps, but I didn’t get the memo in time. However, I still look good for homecoming, and I’m comfortable. Homecoming at her high school is loud and colorful. Inside the gymnasium, walls are lined with paper photo drops following the 70’s disco theme. A swarm of bouncing teenagers, who I think should be dancing, pulse where the powerful pop songs burst out of a DJ’s black speakers, each beat like a wave. The rhythm of their flow is in tune with the masses like they are each bacteria in a sole organism. The smell of artificially sweet perfume sprays and sweat make their way up my nose through my cloth mask. Many more girls wear glittery tight dresses showing their skinny waist above their high heels. All of our immodestly shown skin is exposed to the autumn frigid breeze. Lights of seizing rainbows dance along with me as I copy the movements of my group. I enjoy dancing with them, and even though we are virtually strangers, I don’t feel uncomfortable moving brushing against their sides and all of them against mine. People are abundant, which is a bit daunting after the covid-19 outbreak, but it was super fun to just be with so many others in a carefree environment. I started the day with anxiousness gnawing in my stomach over fear from an intimidating social gathering. My figure felt weak as if my body was rotting fruit and one hard push would puncture me. But now, any feeling of nervousness thawed out into excitement, my heartbeat still quickened and my senses alert. I felt alive, and I felt loud like the music in the breeze, and I felt like I still could be louder. It’s all so spirited. I want to live a life filled with bright lights and firm skin forever, but things always end, don’t they? When a line of cars came for their kids in the curving parking lot, Myla’s mom picked us, four girls, up and took us to briefly examine the aisles of Fred Meyer. They got snacks, and I got kimchi ramen. A sweet crinkled woman with a voice of oversmoked cigarettes complimented us at checkout. She saw that

we’re young and beautiful, and I know I should enjoy it while it lasts.

At Mahalia’s house, we escape the cold by sitting in the relaxing hot tub, lighting our bodies with a northern light gradient. All three of them talked about their complicated and melancholic relationships with boys. I listened for hours, I had nothing to contribute besides bewildered inhales. Young love is like candy, a lot of people like it, but it sickens me and gives me a headache. Save the romanticizing brought to me by fictional movies and books, convincing me that to truly enjoy high school, I have to have a lover to entertain me. My older relatives tell me that teenage years are the best part of life, old enough to be free, but cared for enough to not be weighed down by responsibility. Too bad I spend most of my days in my room completing my homework assignments to get those straight A’s I’m convinced I need for success in life. But when the heat seeps far into our flesh and feels like we’re dripping and melting, we get into pajamas and eat dinner. Mahalia cooked kimchi ramen for the two of us, as we are both connoisseurs of vegan Asian food. The noodles tasted heavenly as I was so hungry from the energetic evening. Then we go downstairs and hang out. Instead of watching TV, we sit on the mattresses and talk. They eat candy and chips, I eat carrots and low sugar, protein cookies. I’m healthy, aren’t I? I’ll stay healthy, right?

Ava was the first to sleep at 2 AM. Mahalia, Serena, and I stayed up until 4 AM singing soft karaoke. Mahalia sang Foreigner’s songs while I hummed background vocals. I’ll remember the melodies and smile each time I look back on this moment.

I sleep and the two talk longer I think. I arise at 8, the earliest to get up. When we make our way upstairs at 11, there are so many breakfast items. Their house is so accommodating, like a hotel. I just eat bread and vegan butter. We go downstairs again and sing loud and raspy and from the unchained hearts. The rare pure fun night is over, and we try to revive it with laughing choruses. But we have to say goodbye.