The Glow

It was sometime after ten at night when Rina and I held out our hands to the club bouncer, accepting a stamp of red ink as proof.

Of what? That we were old enough to buy a drink? That we’d expelled some of our precious youth energy on frivol? Or just plain proof, for the following morning when daylight washed away the adrenaline of grazing pelvises in a crowd, that we’d been there at all?

When you’re young you hear so much criticism about it – the increasing degradation of society with every passing generation.

But if not for jumping around in glitter and miniskirts, what is all that energy – that stamina - for? If it’s not music so loud you can’t think and cutting holes in your jeans and pink hair and kissing your friends, then what is youth?

Youth well wasted.

Inside the club, we found Law and his group of friends. I threw my brown leather jacket (picked up from a driveway clothing rack of a yardsale the previous summer) down on one of the bar stools and looked around.

“Drink!” Rina explained over the roar of the speakers as she cocked her head at the bar.

Law’s band was up first. He had a lot of friends there to support him, including a few girls who gave off past-hookup vibes. Nothing to be jealous about, I thought, I barely know him. I said aloud to one of his pasts, “Hi, I’m Alex. Are you a musician too? I love this song! I’m going to dance.”

Someone on the dance floor was passing around sticks of glow-in-the-dark paint. Rina drew sun beams around one of my eyes and I gave her a flower on her cheek. Someone took my picture that night – a washed-out photo on a disposable film camera - I was dancing to Law’s band as they played some cover.

My hair was down, and I had these long feather earrings that tickled my shoulders. The glow paint around my eye was smudged but the blurred sunbeams caught in the camera flash and later I’d think that the girl in the photo looked like someone I didn’t recognize but also someone I knew far too well.

ALLIE MILSON is a writer from Montreal. Her work surrounds the concept of glamorized youth. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and she strongly maintains that the party never ends. You can find her on IG @alliemauthor

This excerpt is from Well Wasted, a novelette published in 2024.