winter #3

"He was playing at that record store that used to be on State Street. Me and Kara Egli went. We didn't think the music was that good but we talked to him afterward, and I made out with him for a couple of minutes while Kara was in the bathroom. Then the next day I found out I had mono, which I got from Scottie Straub, and then a week later I heard Pheasant had mono too and he was supposedly pissed at me about it. So like two years after that, his first record came out, and Kara texted me, 'You remember Derek DiTraglia who you gave mono to?' And the music was really good, much better than the shit he'd been playing at the record store. That was the summer my sister went to France for college. My dad was already living over there. My mom and I moved away from the Briar Road house and into this shitty little apartment near the hospital, and I was completely hating my life. Then that Pheasant album came out of the air and it was so real. It was, I don't know, the exact thing I needed. And this guy had made it, this random guy from town who wasn't that bright or good-looking, who tasted like cigarettes and wasn't even good at kissing, and I thought, oh, of course, Yana, beauty will find you wherever you are. I listened to it all that summer and a long time after, until one day I didn't need it anymore."