Hello Seattle, I am an old lighthouse
Throwing beams of bright lights
Red in the morning, blue in the evening sun
Taken heed from everyone
-Hello Seattle, Owl City
.
.
.
She likes California. Really, she does.
Quinn likes the idyllic palm trees that line the streets on the weekends she feels the need to drive into town with the new metallic blue 2009 Volkswagen Beetle she gets for her eighteenth birthday. She likes the constant sun because the weather patterns of the Santa Ana winds intrigue her and peak her curiosity that is still way too big for her eighteen years.
It's just the rush of studying weather patterns – that's all.
But really, Quinn Pensky likes California because she comes back to Pacific Coast Academy and it begins to feel like home.
--
She loves Seattle. And there are no possible adjectives to affirm this.
Quinn absolutely loves that that strong and sweet smell of hazelnut coffee that starts freshly brewed downstairs and wafts its way to her room through the bottom crack of her lavender bedroom door.
The pitter patter of rain and the occasional clap of thunder is so familial and second nature to her. She reads to Otis while her mother bakes her famous apple turnovers and her father does tax returns and listens to the Seahawks game playing in the living room.
"Dad!" she calls on one sleepy Sunday afternoon as she pulls her jacket off the coat hook. "I'm going to Tully's for some mocha cinnamon espresso!"
"Okay, baby!" Stephen yells from his upstairs.
She by-passes her practical California car and takes her father's Hybrid Prius instead because it handles the slickness of Seattle's freeways better.
(Seattle's coffee is the best kind and her taste buds are excited. Metaphorically, of course.)
Quinn Pensky loves Seattle because she comes back from school and it is home.
"Evanescence is actually a really good band especially since they did Lithium."
Lola looks up from her monologue. "Sounds kind of angry. No, thank you."
She sighs, typing in a photonic equation while trying to balance alpha rays. "I like Nirvana's Lithium slightly better - they're two different songs but I like Nirvana's."
The blonde absentmindedly doodles in the margin of her notebook, amused and kind of surprised.
Lola blinks at her best friend in confusion.
"You like Nirvana and angry rock bands?"
"The term is grunge, Lola," she corrects and directs her attention to her scientific endeavors, her voice masked and curt. "And I merely respect and Kurt Cobain's talent – that's all."
There's a different air in room one oh one now.
"Oh."
--
She lies about the reason. (Because they just don't…get it.)
Quinn aspires to have her scientific inventions recognized all over the world synonymous to Cobain's music because when she thinks about it, they're both unusual obscure kids with a central aspiration from Washington State.
But Quinn's worried because Cobain meets an untimely end and sometimes, she feels like that Nobel Peace Prize is out of reach when she can almost feels the cool gold texture of the medal underneath her delicate fingers.
It's upsetting. Only sometimes.
It's no secret that Quinn loves to dance.
She's not as passionate about it but yeah, she goes to dance and likes to let loose and feel the music twisting around her like an imaginary hula hoop.
For the next dance, she wears a sundress and slow dances with Logan under a multi-coloured sky, induced by a California sunset.
--
Seattle is home of grunge, Jimi Hendrix, Foo Fighters and Nirvana.
"Okay, dear cousin of mine – I'll cut you a deal," her older cousin by four years on her mother's half-Polish side, Pierce Kowalski says, bringing a mug of coffee to his lips.
"Which is?" Quinn looks up with a smile, her bespectacled gaze meeting mischievous dark brown eyes.
"Seattle Rockapalooza with me in exchange for an investigative expedition at Puget Sound."
"Pierce – "
"Quinn," he affectionately mimics before raising an eyebrow and a tempting and dimpled smile. "You know you've basically investigated all the sea-life there is near PCA. I'm not going to Seattle Rockapalooza all by myself. And I know I shortcut to Puget Sound," his tone is mock-serious. "I'll be thrust into a perpetual sense of melancholy if you refuse Seattle's annual music festival."
She ultimately accepts because she loves her cousin (protectiveolderbrother) because investigating new matter at Puget Sound is exciting.
There's something even more liberating about dancing in the rain with her cousin to all of those new homegrown bands in a yellow rain coat and matching galoshes under a tent, of course.
The fruit punch is tart.
She's in too many senior prom pictures already and Lola is so tagging her on FaceSpace.
And she feels incredibly pretty in this red, flowy dress with strappy heels so she has hike up to see.
"Hello Seattle – I am a mountaineer in the hills and the highlands. I fall asleep in hospital parking lots and awake in your mouth," the music plays and there's warm company, formality because everyone is all dressed up but more nostalgia of home.
Logan smirks at her, offering his hand to her.
"Come on, Pensky. This is totally your song. Let's dance and show them how's it's really done."
She rolls her eyes, letting a smile through and takes his hand because he's just being himself and she doesn't want him to change for anything.
--
"What are you doing here?"
He shrugs under his double wide umbrella, his fingers interlocked with hers and Quinn just likes the warm feeling against the somewhat cooler Seattle mist. It's been too long. "I wanted to see why you liked it so much so I tagged along with my mom. Something about the rain giving her inspiration to paint stuff and making more art. My dad's coming later to film."
"Oh."
He smiles at her genuinely as they walk along a pier. "And I'm going beat up those Seattle coffee boys for hitting on you."
"I would have refused their advances."
"Yeah," he draws her close, smirking against her hair before pressing a kiss to it. "You'd better."
"I love you, you know?"
"I happen to love me too," Logan says, smugly. "But I love you more, Quinn."
It's the best, simplicity-filled summer day ever.
(Just her, him and Seattle's Space Needle Tower peeking out from the fog.)
"You realize I'm going to basically going to pound those Stanford boys into the ground."
Quinn laughs, holding back a yawn because it's so like him to be jealous and really, she's an expert at decoding his 'Loganisms' so he's being affectionate in his own way.
She grins sleepily.
"Goodnight, Logan."
He says I love you, and she replies and then hangs up.
(Because she's working on a powerful itching agent for the way too pretty girls at UC Berkeley before bed.)
--
"I'm going to rip your boyfriend limb from limb if he hurts you, right?" Pierce says, wrapping her frame in a warm, tight hug on her last day in Seattle. It's sunny with a chance of clouds.
Quinn hugs her cousin back a little longer because a family reunion in Olympia seems too long.
"I'll miss you too, Pierce," she whispers, eyes misting over behind her glasses.
(Goodbye, Seattle.)
Quinn Pensky drives into Stanford University's main campus as a freshman on a September day.
Her car's windshield wipers are in use.
And she nostalgically smiles when the droplets lightly hit her skin.
(Hello, Seattle.)
A/N: Okay, I had to delete and re-post this because of one blunder in research. I thought Evanescence DID cover Nirvana when in actuality, they are two different songs with the same title so after looking into it after I was alerted to it, I came to the realization that they actually didn't. That was my own fault for not looking into it. I'm sorry for that - and have corrected it.
Re-read and review.
-Erika
PS. I've reworked and tweaked Between Black and White have re-named it.