The Desperates

by fangirl.of.the.first.order

Lindsey Lee Wells had grown up, gone to college, and is living in New York City. She is trying to write a book but doesn't know what to write about. As she brainstorms ideas, she reflects on her past and all the adventures. Somewhere along there she met Pudge and their story had unfolded together.

The Desperates

Lindsey Lee Wells sat down at the rickety table at the cramped café in New York City. She had lived in the city for 5 years now but still had not adjusted to the crowds everywhere she went. The mix of the faux French music played through the speaker and the dimly lit room gave a retro feel to the place. It was her favorite café in New York because all around her were people so immersed in their writing that they did not interact with one another. There was a sense of community about sitting shoulder to shoulder with people also typing rapidly or scribbling in their notebook. This was the café of creators, a place of like souls, people who all had a project. This was her niche, the place where she didn't have to pretend to be someone else. After graduating from NYU with a Master's Degree in creative writing and feminist studies, she moved to the village and had stayed there ever since. She had written a few short stories and papers on feminist issues and the current political climate, but ideas for the book she needed to write to pay off her student debts were entirely lost on her. She had tried writing a fantasy book about elves and dragons and shit like that, but she never got invested in the story. She had tried write poetry, but that had also failed miserably, ending up with total crap like this:

The Moth

The moth stares while people write

She sees the world through her small eyes

And she knows that there is no getting out of this place

She flies to the sun then realizes it is a lamp

She lets go

Lindsey had even tried channeling her inner Hassan and writing comedy, but that too was a bust. Sitting at the small table, drinking overpriced colombian coffee, she looked back on her life. The road trip she and the boys took had been the best thing that had ever happened to her. The three of them just drove wherever the wind took them. They listened to shitty music and played car games. They got to "0 bottles of beer on the wall" at least 20 times. They laughed and let loose. One day while driving through a town called Dodge City in Kansas, they named their crew the "Desperates" and resolved to form a band that would play heavy metal.

"We'll fugging rule the world," Hassan had said with a laugh. They drove all over the country, from coast to coast, and when it was over, none of them wanted to go back to the real world. But they had to. She and Colin split up when he left for Harvard. It was a sad parting for they were still very much in love with each other, but they agreed that it would be best for both of them if they were just friends. Lindsey had found herself with the money that her mother had put away for her, in a world too big for her to comprehend. She never thought that she would go to college, but spending so much time with Colin had "corrupted her" as she said. When the Desperates had driven through New York City, the dirty nooks and crannies had enchanted her. The smells and sights of the east village and the strange subcultures and cults had opened up a part of her soul that she never thought existed. She decided to go to NYU.

During college she had met a boy named Miles Halter who went by the nickname "Pudge." He was skinny and reminded her a fair amount of Colin with his obsession over the last words of famous people. They became roommates and talked about their past lives, bands and books deep into the night. He had been friends with a girl named Alaska who had supposedly killed herself wanting to get out of the "Labyrinth of Life" as she called it. The two of them discussed the Labyrinth of Life frequently. They talked about what it meant and how to get out of it. They discussed the worth of mattering. They smoked and worked together. It was the life she had hoped for. Eventually they became romantically engaged and had dated ever since. The two of them went on adventures and experienced the world.

Hassan went to Loyola for college and actually ended up succeeding and getting a degree in acting. He landed a part in a movie that was now a cult-classic. Colin became an engineer. They still got together over the summers, but they had grown apart in the years. After driving away from Gutshot with Colin and Hassan, she went back only once for Mabel Bartrand's funeral. Too many memories and too many tears shed in that town. New York City was fully her own and she embraced the rarity of the city.

Lindsey thought about the Archduke Ferdinand. She remembered the day Colin realized that the Archduke's grave was a fake. It was the same day that they came to the conclusion that mattering is overrated. Du kannst die Zukunft nicht voraussagen, du kannst nur jetzt leben. (Roughly translates from German to "you cannot predict the future, you can only live in the now.") With that thought, Lindsey Lee Wells took a sip of her coffee, and began to write.

"The Desperates" by Lindsey Lee Wells.

This is a story about how a prodigy, a non-doer, and me, part southern belle, part bubbly ditz and part deep-thinking nerd, could end up lying under the milky way in the middle of nowhere, knowing that right then and there, we were infinite.