So, it’s 4:45 am and I’m writing my first OP ever. I’m worried that it’s going to color everyone’s perception of me in ways that I don’t want, so I’m shaking. It may be best if everyone just pretends they never saw it.
I’m riding my unicycle home from church, wearing my suit, as I do every Sunday. (In real life, I don’t own a suit or a unicycle, nor do I go to church.) There are dozens of other people out, also riding unicycles and wearing fancy clothes.
I see two women playing in a vacant lot, chasing each other around and laughing. One of them has a certain bounce to her reddish-brown hair, and a certain smile, that makes me lose my balance. I spin around twice, and fall off my unicycle. I land on my feet, and yell to my fellow unicyclists, “I’m OK!”
“Woohoo!” they respond, and keep riding.
I walk over to the woman, and ask her, “Do you come from around here?”
“Yes, I’m from Portland,” she says.
“Oh, OK.”
“Why?”
I don’t know how to say it. I lean my forehead against the seat of my unicycle. Her friend speaks. There’s embarrassment in her voice.
“I know why. It’s because you look just like a fourteen-year-old girl who got murdered by a homeless guy.”
“No,” I say, “She wasn’t fourteen. And it wasn’t a homeless guy.”
And that’s the end. Because the rest is true in real life. She did look like Lacey, and Lacey was murdered (after she moved to Portland… was it fourteen years ago? I didn’t realize that until just now). And I do still sometimes see women that I think are her. Not as much as I used to. But it still makes me lose my balance.
There. Now maybe I can go back to sleep.