The Call of Frozen Yogurt

            As I step through the front door, the air is eerily still. The sounds of my footfalls reverberate throughout the house as I make my routine trip into the study.

            I pause, and there is no sound, no indication of life, besides the shaking rhythm of my breath. My backpack lands with a thundering thud on the hardwood floor and I collapse into Clara’s armchair.

            Well, it was Clara’s armchair. I guess it’s mine now.

            How strange - I can almost sense her here. She’s blasting her dubstep, singing along with the most god-awful voice in the world. It’s hilariously nauseating, or perhaps better, nauseatingly hilarious. Her feet are propped up on the desk, and she glances at me, cracking her signature lopsided grin.

            And then, on a crisp, November school night, she offers to drive me out for frozen yogurt. I have to study, of course, and I really shouldn't go, but she convinces me that the call of frozen yogurt is to strong. Imagine raspberry and peach yogurt topped off with a downpour of M&Ms, coconut, almonds, and the star of the show, frozen peanut butter cups. “Everything in moderation,” we used to say, “but all at the same time.” Imagine the car ride, with two sugar-high teenagers trying and failing to sing along with electronic dance music.

            The pounding bass turns to an echo, and the echo fades into silence. A blink later, and I’m back in my chair, staring into my lap. The sweet taste of yogurt I had imagined then faded into a pungent metallic tang.

            With a sigh, I fumble for my math binder, hoping to find solace in algebraic tedium. But today, I just can’t put the xes and ys together.

            What is the equation of the tangent line to y = x^2 at (1,1)?

            I don’t care.

            I close the binder with a sigh, and make my way to Clara’s old bedroom.

            A neatly made bed sits in the center of the immaculate chamber. Her white, untainted chair is tucked in at her white, untainted desk, and upright books line her shelves in an orderly manner. Everything is in the right place, and for that very reason, everything is completely wrong. There are no t-shirts thrown in the corner, no eruption of papers on the floor, no smudges of oil paint. The pillows on her bed are far too symmetrical. At first glance, it seems like she’d just left for college, leaving no trace of herself behind. But this time, she was really gone.

            Apparently, last time she went on a frozen yogurt adventure, she was high on something other than sugar. I imagine her with the same laugh, same music, same fearless attitude, ready to take on the world. What she didn't know was that she was about to take on another one.