alice in wonderland
April 15, 2023
“Asa!”
I finally released the chortle I had choked down as we flew through the streets, vacuuming the cool night air in heaving gulps and nonsense sounds. This was not the first time we had dined and dashed from Mr. Sawyer’s restaurant, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
There were no words that could sum up my time with Asa better than his name, spoken in shades of awe, disbelief, adrenaline, and bliss. Like a game of Roulette, I gambled the outcome each time, a series of highs and lows that always pulled me in for another round.
I fell into Asa the same way one falls asleep, a submission of sorts into uncertainty. He drew from me a side that was bold, one that made loud public confessions, that dyed her hair all colors of the rainbow on rotation and sometimes simultaneously, that chatted with strangers and pocket-picked them minutes later. I learned makeup to be more beautiful in his eyes, thrusting my new coat of confidence on him with ease. On days when the angst of my teenage years and crumbling family life became too much, I crawled back into his arms like a cold beaten puppy. And on Friday nights when we shared mangoes with tajin in the high school parking lot, it tasted something like love.
As the years flew by, things began shifting in my mental world. I started feeling like Alice in Wonderland, growing in the White Rabbit’s house after consuming some magic mushrooms, expanding until my limbs filled the crevices that were once hard to reach, my head bumping against the ceiling and still growing then, pushing against boundaries that crumbled at an alarming rate.
The next time Asa ran from Mr. Sawyer’s shop, I laid down $20 before chasing after him. We still laughed at the invincibility of “stealing” from our local mom-and-pop shop, and we still celebrated with 49¢ Coke cans from ARCO. But at the end of the night when I confessed my betrayal, his cheeks turned a rosy shade, jaw clenched and mouth foaming as he spat dirty insults at me. I recoiled in the face of our first fight, surprised at his tone and fearful of the rift it drove between us.
It didn’t take long for things to fall apart after that. Every childish thing we did together was a chapter already written and re-read in our worn-out book. When Asa challenged me again to be a daredevil and book it down Main Street at 90mph, I stood my ground and rose against his stream of taunts. I was Alice again. I grew until Asa, who had always towered over me, felt minuscule and insignificant, an outdated layer of skin that I quickly shed.
Courage and stupidity are just shades of each other. Courage is doing something even though you know it might hurt you—but so is stupidity. I realized that as I fell out of love with Asa, the first courageous thing I’d ever done.
I wanted to see beyond the same three places we always wrecked havoc on, to expand my horizons precisely because he didn’t care to. Asa was a spitting image of what stagnation would look like, a boy trapped in seven years of the same things on repeat. For all the mischiefs we used to giggle over, I had conflated the high of breaking rules with feeling alive. When his name slipped from my mouth now, it was almost always laced with exasperation. I didn’t want to play Roulette with him anymore. I saw my addiction for what it was, teetered precariously on the brink of too much and wanting more, chancing with a diminishing expected value.
The day I turned 18, I said goodbye to Asa, packed my bags, and left Campbell for the last time. No longer were our worlds the same size, and no longer did he feel like the bravest person in it. I couldn’t tell if I myself was being brave or stupid, leaving the only person and place I’d known for nowhere in particular. But as I rounded the corner on Main Street, slipping an extra $60 in Mr. Sawyer’s tip jar on my way out, I had a feeling I was finally on the right path.