Chocolate Milk

Last night I mixed a glass of milk for myself and my good friend's younger brother.

"How many scoops of chocolate do you want, Justin?"
"Two please," he mumbled back, his eyes riveted to the video game he was playing.

I scooped two tablespoons of chocolate powder into his cup, which was adorned with Washington DC drawings. I picked up the glass and took it to him before returning to my own glass and scooping three scoops of chocolate into mine. I've recently become obsessed with chocolate milk. I lifted the glass, after having stirred the chocolate into the glass ever so carefully - so as to make sure the glass that was just too narrow for proper stirring wouldn't break - and paused it in front of my face.

My glass had "Hollywood" printed across it - the sign I could see from my balcony. It had a cartoon drawing of the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, a Sunset Blvd. street sign, Marilyn Monroe, a little derby hat, the Chinese Theatre.

"Aw," I said and laughed. "I lived there!"
"Why do you hate LA, Alli?" Justin asked, hardly breaking his video-game-playing momentum. "You speak so fondly of it."
"I do?" I chuckled and took a sip of my perfect chocolate milk.
"Yeah." he added.
"Huh." I said, and licked my lips.

I lifted the glass back to my lips and drank the whole cup straight down.
"What do you like better Cali boys or DC boys, Alli?" Justin asked.
"Cali boys, no doubt," I giggled.
"Really?"
"Absolutely."
"Why?"
"Ha. Well... I dunno..." I mumbled on about some thing or another.

Hardly anyone asks me about Los Angeles. It's really weird. Usually I get this question:
"Did you like LA?" to which I reply, "If I really liked LA I would have stayed there."
Most everyone goes on about their business around me, as if an entire year of my life didn't exist. Sometimes, very very rarely, someone - usually a friend of my parents - pulls me aside and looks me straight in the eyes and says, It must be really weird to be back.
"You have no idea," I tell them, and thank them for their sensitivity to my situation.

It's weird, in a good way, how sporatic my conversations are about Los Angeles. It's weird to be back here, in DC, which is a completely different world that I've had to readjust to even though I grew up here. Lots of people don't get that feeling. I don't mind so much. I kind of like drinking chocolate milk out of a glass adorned with pictures most people see as cartoons that I once saw as my home.