Only If You're Lucky

by Stacy Willingham

That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.

And it had scared me for a while, realizing that any second could be the end of it: something as simple as a trip into traffic, a cramp while you’re swimming. That a life as bright as hers could be extinguished without even the courtesy of a heads-up. But at the same time, the abruptness of it all made me realize that she was right.

You’re only young once, and only if you’re lucky.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really: for someone to scoop me up and tell me what I’m supposed to be. My entire life, I’ve contorted so easily in the hands of others—my parents, Eliza—shape-shifting

at any given second to be the thing that everyone else wants. So maybe that’s who I am: a chameleon that can take on the appearance of its surroundings. A master of camouflage to stay invisible and safe. I need someone to mold me like putty; give me function and form.

I think I hurt her because I loved her—that’s what people do, after all. Destroy the very thing they desire the most.

“The only thing that makes bad things bad are the consequences, right? Think about it. The fact that we’re all here right now means we’re all a little morally loose.”

once you bend one rule without consequence, it feels a lot easier to break the others. “If we could indulge in life’s dirty deeds without the repercussions, we’d be animals,” she continues. “We are animals. All of us.”