Homeostasis

For the past two weeks, she has wanted a bottle of bright red nail polish, so, one rainy afternoon, she sets out to procure one.

"Want" is an odd word to use with her – when it comes to material things, she rarely wants. She is merely curious about them, as in, "I wonder what it would be like if I had this object." And, in her desire to discover, she will consent to obtaining it.

There is a drugstore within a seven-minute walk from her house, so she grabs ten dollars and a jacket and slips into her worn shoes. They are old, but she does not want to take the trouble of putting on socks.

She steps out into the rain, which is only slightly heavier than a drizzle, and soon decides that she should put her hood up. She tucks her hair into her jacket and does so, turning on her music player at the same time. Technically, she could drive, but since it is not far, she would rather walk.

She lives in a cluster of neighborhoods, so once she is out of her own, it is a mere matter of walking behind another one until she approaches the shopping center from behind.

While she is walking on a sidewalk next to someone's fence, hands buried in her pockets and stare directed at the ground because her headphones will yank if she looks up, she sees a man walking his dog coming toward her. Thus ensues a slight moment of indecision: should she greet him or simply ignore him?

By the time he approaches her, she still has not decided, so she looks away until she realizes that this is rude. Hastily, she looks at him. He is wearing a red windbreaker and also has his headphone cord tucked underneath it. He says, "Hello," but it is hard to hear it underneath her music.

She moves on, and she makes it to the backside of the shopping center, but not without first sending a long look after a maroon-red Jeep.

As she approaches the side of the building, she sees a small head pop out, then disappear around the corner. Moments later, two boys, no more than eleven years old, come around it. They are both wearing shorts, skateboard shoes, and mischievous grins. She instantly dislikes them.

Faintly, she hears them laugh. She shakes her head in derision and smiles a little. She glances back once more and sees the taller boy tapping a glass bottle against the curb.

The drugstore is on the far end of the shopping center, so now all she must do is walk past the other shops, underneath a canopy. As she passes a veterinary clinic, she smiles again when she realizes that she has never walked by when it is open, until now.

As she passes another shop window, she takes a look at herself. She wonders, vaguely, if she looks like the proverbial "troubled kid", with her hood drawn up, hand balled in her pockets, and the obvious presence of her music. The thought feels odd: she is not troubled at all, and yet she is. Her parents are good people, and yet they are not.

Her only obstacle, if one could even call it that, is the grocery store that protrudes through the sidewalk and straight up to the asphalt of the parking lot. To avoid walking in the street, behind the yellow line that is labeled "No parking", she goes inside and instantly feels conspicuous, as if every cashier is staring at her. As she walks behind the rows of registers, she lowers her hood and untucks her hair. She almost runs into a woman when she goes out the other door.

When she enters the near-empty drugstore, she glances at the sole cashier on duty, who is not paying attention. Still, she goes down the candy aisle, and spends thirty seconds changing the song she is listening to until she passes the man buying Easter candy and proceeds with her quest.

She spies a display of nail polish at the other end of the store and advances toward it, but she begins to hear voices and a banging noise, which unnerve her. She turns off her music and listens. The voices are coming from the radio station played throughout the store. The banging, however, seems to be an employee restocking on the aisle behind her desired one.

Not wishing to be too close to another person while she is shopping in such a deserted store, she decides to walk up another aisle to see if she can find out what is really making the noise. On the way, she sees a few more nail polish displays and chooses to look at them.

None of them have the right color. The ones that even have red are too dull. Not bright red. Not dangerous red.

She finally garners the nerve to go back to her original aisle. She kneels down, fingering the bottle as she goes. Finally, her eyes light upon one shade that she thinks will work. It is not too dull, not too orange or too pink. It looks perfect in the bottle, but what about on her hands?

The banging, clattering continues, and she thinks she hears footsteps, so she stands up and walks away a few paces. She stops and pulls a hand from her pocket, examining the bare nails to see if it's really worth putting red on them.

Suddenly, she looks up to see the cashier walking down the aisle perpendicular to the one that she is on. Their eyes meet so abruptly that the shock goes straight to her heart, and her mind is made up. She quickly exits the store.

A little ways off, she leans against a brick column supporting the canopy and rests her head against it, pondering what to do now. It would be awkward to return to the store, so perhaps she can drive somewhere else. Even as she thinks this, though, she knows that she will not. It is far less obtrusive to stay the same.

She looks at her reflection in another store window and wonders if she has what many writers have called a "hunted look" about her. She hopes not, because that would be a gross overstatement. She would hate to appear so weak. She is, in fact, afraid of people's opinions on her.

She forces herself to move on home, and this time she walks behind the yellow line in front of the grocery store. She does not want to almost collide with any more ladies.

She rounds the corner of the shopping center, and hops off the curb that the boy banged his bottle on. People probably think she is listening to death metal music, she muses, but she is only listening to a love song, experiencing such a foreign emotion secondhand.

Behind the neighborhood, she sees a short-haired woman with her dog and wonders why so many people walk their dogs in the rain. The woman is in front of her, and through she feels awkward, she passes her because she does not want to be near her.

Even so, she still feels uncomfortable because the two are so close, so she tries to speed up imperceptibly, still not wanting to come off as rude. She is relieved when she crosses the street into her own neighborhood.

Briefly, she thinks about all the plans she has for her future: universities and men across the sea, adventures and tattoos and nose piercings, the art of being absolutely fearless and telling her parents exactly where they went wrong.

She goes out to eat with her family thirty minutes later. As she waits for them to decide where to go, she slips on her still-damp jacket and wishes that it were not so cold.