90s Girl

by Mia Archer

  90s Girl

  Mia Archer

  Contents

  1. New Old Hangout

  2. Admission

  3. Retro

  4. Skater Girl

  5. Woman Down

  6. Skate, Skate, Baby

  7. Retro

  8. Old Timey

  9. Consolation

  10. All A Dream

  11. Couple’s Skate

  12. Heavy Petting

  13. Back to the… Y’know

  14. Back Home

  15. Research

  16. Back to the Rink

  17. The Time Warp, Again

  18. Reunion

  19. Mean Girls

  20. Acting Weird

  21. Back to the Past

  22. Ancient Relic

  23. VHS and Chill

  24. Back to the Rink

  25. Family Bonding

  26. Family History

  27. Back to the Rink

  28. Bullies

  29. Big Reveal

  30. Proof

  31. Going Home?

  32. Bigger Reveal

  33. Decisions

  34. After

  35. Winding Down

  Also by Mia Archer

  90s Girl

  By Mia Archer

  Copyright 2018 Mia Archer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

  First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, January 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  New Old Hangout

  “The mall? Are you serious?” Candace said. “Who hangs out at the mall these days?”

  “I know,” Felicity replied. “The mall around here is gross. They don’t even have many good stores, and the ones they do have are all overpriced.”

  “Come on girls,” aunt Olivia said from the kitchen. “Malls used to be the thing! I have a lot of good memories hanging out in that place.”

  “That might be the case for you,” Candace said. “But that’s not the case for people who weren’t born in the stone age. The place is sad, and the only people who go there are creepy old guys who want to creep on teenage girls who don’t hang out there anymore.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The place has a certain charm to it.”

  “Seriously Liv?” Candace said. “The place still has a bunch of old ash trays hanging over the edge of the second floor balcony, and people haven’t been able to smoke within like fifteen feet of the mall entrance for a decade now.”

  “You girls have no idea how good you have it with all the no smoking stuff that’s become so popular these days,” aunt Olivia chimed in. “This is done, by the way.”

  We dutifully filed into the kitchen where a large pizza was hanging out looking better than the kind of stuff we would’ve been able to get if we ordered out. I didn’t know how aunt Olivia, the lady I was named after and the woman who’d taken me in after mom died, did it.

  She could whip up anything in the oven and have it look perfect on her first try. I was the kind of person who couldn’t cook toast without setting the toaster on fire.

  Oh well. I guess everyone has their strengths. Cooking wasn’t one of mine, and I didn’t see that ever being the case.

  After the pizza was ready there wasn’t much conversation for a little while. Everyone was too busy stuffing their faces with cheesy pepperoni deliciousness.

  “Damn Aunt O,” Felicity said, using their nickname that’d sort of stuck. “You really know how to cook.”

  “Seriously,” Candace said, turning to me. “How have you never managed to pick up on any of these mad cooking skills?”

  “I guess I’m just busy with school,” I said, hunching my shoulders and trying not to think about how I took after my mom more than aunt Olivia when it came to cooking skills.

  Mom had always been the type to order takeout. Said she didn’t have time for cooking. Not that I was complaining now that I was looking back on those days. The extra time we spent with each other because she didn’t cook had been precious.

  I hadn’t even realized that our days with each other were numbered. It was sad, but it’d happened a few years ago now so it’s not like it was too much of a gnawing pit in my stomach these days.

  Just a little pain, but I figured something like that was never going away entirely.

  “Y’know where I have some of the best memories of my life?” aunt Olivia asked.

  I rolled my eyes as I took another bite of pizza. I had a pretty good feeling I knew where she was going with this, and it was a speech I’d heard a few times over the years.

  Unfortunately I had a mouthful of pizza as she started her trip down nostalgia creek, so it was impossible for me to stop the canoe before it headed into the water.

  Not that I really minded. Aunt Olivia was pretty cool, and hearing about old stuff from when she was young was also pretty cool. It reminded me of my mom and all the fun we used to have watching her favorite movies and playing her favorite games.

  Even though there were times when I felt like I was the only person in my generation who cared about cool old stuff from the ‘90s.

  “What’s that?” Candace asked.

  “The roller rink!” Aunt Olivia said, though there was a touch of sadness to her voice as she said it.

  She glanced at me, and that sadness only seemed to multiply. Yeah, I’m sure she was thinking about my mom and all the good times they had together at that place. I’d been there a few times when I was younger, I think she’d invested in the place or something because she loved it so much, but it’d been a long time.

  “The what?” Felicity asked.

  “I’ve heard of those places,” Candace said. “People go and roller skate in a circle and it’s supposed to be fun.”

  “Weird,” Felicity said. “But it could be interesting.”

  “Not weird,” Aunt Olivia said. “Fun. There was a time not so long ago when teenagers went out into the real world to hang out with their friends instead of burying their noses in their phones and ignoring everyone.”

  “Yeah, but just skating in a circle?” Candace said. “What’s the point?”

  “You’ve done it before,” I said.

  “I what?” Candace said.

  “We had parties at the skating rink when we were really young. Like elementary school young,” Felicity said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Obviously it was a thrill a minute that stuck with me to this day,” Candace said with an eye roll and a flat tone that told us exactly what she thought of that memory.

  I remembered going there with my mom. I couldn’t remember much about it, but I knew aunt Olivia had been there there and they seemed to be having the time of their lives.

  Not that I’d paid all that much attention to what they were doing. I’d been a little too busy holding onto the edge for dear life, terrified to go out into the middle and actually skate despite my mom trying to coax me out there.

  The thought of doing a repeat of that didn’t exactly appeal to me, but I could see where it might be a good time. Besides, that place had a sort of retro feel to it which I remembered loving.

  Though now that I thought back on it I was pretty sure that retro feeling wasn’t any decor thing they were going for so much as it was simply that the place had been around long enough that the original decorations that’d been cool and contemporary when the place opened had since graduated to re
tro.

  “Well it’s something for you girls to think about, at least,” aunt Olivia said, again looking at me and seeming sad. No doubt she was remembering having the time of her life with her sister once upon a time while I was desperately clinging to the railing around the edge. “Be sure to lock up when you head out, whatever you decide to do.”

  I eyed her suspiciously. “Where are you going tonight?”

  “Nowhere important,” she said with a wink. “Just going out to do some errands and stuff. The usual.”

  I sighed. For a moment I’d hoped she might have a date or something. There were times when I was thankful I had aunt Olivia in my life to show me that someone could be out and live life normally. I couldn’t imagine growing up when she had, and it’s not like she’d grown up in the bad old days.

  Still, it’d be nice if she found a nice girl to settle down with. I always had this lingering guilty feeling that I was the reason she didn’t currently have anyone special in her life.

  “Have fun with your boring errands,” I said instead of bringing any of that heavy stuff up.

  “Oh I will,” she said, a grin splitting her face and a mischievous twinkle in her eye that said she was up to something.

  I knew better than to bother asking what that something was, though. Aunt Olivia had her secrets, and I’d learned long ago not to try and figure out what they were unless she was ready to tell me.

  “So are we doing this?” Felicity asked.

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “Going to the roller skating place!” she said. “It might be fun to check it out.”

  “It would be better than the mall,” Candace said. “Not a whole lot, but they probably don’t allow creepy old dudes in there.”

  “Yeah, I guess that would be better than nothing,” I said. “Not the kind of place I’d think about hanging out normally, but it might not be that bad.”

  “Besides,” Candace said. “There might be some cute guys there from other schools.”

  “Cute guys?” I asked.

  “Well guys and girls,” Candace amended.

  Felicity rolled her eyes. “Is that all you ever think about?”

  “Well no,” Candace said, tapping at her phone. “But that place is all the way on the other side of town. Which means there might be cute guys we’ve never seen before. It’s not something I think about all the time, but it’s something I’m thinking about on the weekend when we’re going out to have fun with those cute guys!”

  “And the cute girls, too,” Felicity said, elbowing me in the side.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not holding out too much hope.”

  “Oh come on,” Candace said. “You can get married now and everything!”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Means you might want to lock down forever or something.”

  “I might be gay, but I’m still a teenager,” I said. “Getting married young is just as stupid for me as it would be for you.”

  “Whatever,” Candace said.

  “Can you two stop with your sniping for five seconds?” Felicity said.

  “I’ll stop with the sniping and griping if Liv here agrees to go to the skating rink,” Candace said with a smirk. “There are going to be cute boys and cute girls there. Just you wait!”

  It was almost surprising how quickly she’d gone from not wanting anything to do with the concept of a skating rink to deciding it was our destination of choice for the night.

  I didn’t say anything though. That might get her second guessing her choice, and the last thing I wanted was another half hour of debate about where we were going tonight. It wasn’t my first choice, but more debate about where we were going was my last choice.

  “Fine,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “We can go to the skating rink. Just don’t come crying to me when you fall and bust your head open and we finish the night in the ER.”

  “Oh if I’m going to finish the night in the ER it’s going to be for elevated pulse because I went to the arcade and climbed into one of those roller coaster simulators with some pretty boy from another school,” Candace said.

  “Gross,” I said, though the idea of sneaking off someplace quiet with a pretty girl from another school did have its appeal.

  The only problem being that even in this day and age it’s not like every girl who was into girls was out about the fact that they were into girls. Which was a damn shame. Maybe I could find a straight or flexible girl who was up for a walk on the wild side at least.

  “Come on,” I said. “We might as well get out there and see what there is to see.”

  2

  Admission

  “This is the place?” Candace asked, sounding disappointed.

  “I tried to warn you,” I said. “This place is the same vintage as the malls you were ragging on, after all.”

  Though as I looked at the place I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia. Sure it’d been years since I’d been to this place, not since I was a little kid going here with my mom for that skating party, but it was still a place that brought back warm and fuzzy memories.

  My mom and aunt Olivia had brought it up plenty growing up, after all, even if I hadn’t been here in years. Which was weird now that I thought about it.

  Anything that was a connection to her was something I cherished, and I guess I didn’t realize just how overwhelming the feeling of “her” would be until I got here.

  After all. According to aunt Olivia this was the place they hung out at more than any other place. It’d been their hangout back before the Internet had destroyed the idea of teenagers getting together somewhere for the purpose of seeing and being seen.

  There was a part of me that felt a pang of longing for a time like that. Even though I knew it was ridiculous having those “born in the wrong time” sorts of thoughts. I was born in the time I was born in and that was that. It’s not like there was much I could do to change that.

  “The place is definitely retro,” Felicity said.

  I looked up and down the length of the front entrance. The whole thing definitely had an ‘80s retro feel to it. Bright neon pink lights danced along the front in vertical stripes. There were also neon roller skates that moved in a crude two or three frame animation.

  It wasn’t like the big screens you saw on businesses these days. No, it was neon lights that moved in a sequence, and the whole thing had the effect of looking like one of those ancient Tiger LCD games my mom had sitting around the house growing up.

  I usually liked old stuff, but even as a young kid I’d been able to recognize those weren’t that great. I felt sorry for a generation of kids raised when those things were considered the height of mobile gaming technology.

  “It’s not retro,” I said. “It’s like I said before The place always looked like this, and they never bothered to update it so it went from modern to outdated and then circled back around to retro.”

  “Huh,” Felicity said. “I guess that sort of makes sense. Leave something around long enough and it becomes retro.”

  “And leave it around longer than that and it becomes a memory of an ancient civilization that no one remembers!” I said. “That’s what we’re looking at here ladies. A relic of times gone by.”

  Though judging by the number of cars in the parking lot the place was still decently popular. Which would sort of have to be the case if the place was still in operation after all these years.

  I guess there were still teenagers who wanted to see and be seen in person rather than doing all their interacting through their phone screens. If that was the case then I figured they were my people.

  Thing I noticed upon stepping through the front entrance was the loud music thumping through a door on the other side. Some pretty girls stepped through an inner door after paying for their tickets and the thumping blasting wall of sound washed over us.

  It was like we were in
an airlock between the party inside and the boring world on the outside. A little flutter of excitement ran through meas I thought of all the fun that was probably going on in there.

  Not to mention if all the girls in there were as hot as the ones who’d just stepped through then tonight would be a good evening for eye candy, at the very least. If I could convince one of them to take that aforementioned walk on the wild side it might get even more interesting.

  Though the entrance room was impressive even without the eye candy. The place looked like someone had vomited up the ‘80s and ‘90s. Posters for oldies but goodies like Cyndi Lauper and Poison stood proudly next to posters for Nirvana and Alanis Morisette.

  This room was probably the only place in the whole world where wildly differing types of music like that had places of prominence in one spot.

  Those posters weren’t even the beginning of the ancient artifacts on display though. Some plastic California Raisins that I knew for a fact came as part of some fast food promotion back in the day because my mom had some sat next to old plastic Muppet toys of the same fast food vintage. Old plastic chicken nuggets made to look like various monsters that were part of another promotion sat on a shelf across from boxes for old school video games like Mario 3 or Earthbound. All proudly displayed in acrylic cases with locks on the side so opportunistic eBay hustlers couldn’t make a quick buck off of the ancient artifacts that belonged in a museum.