It wasn't that Lola hated dirt. That wasn't why she went to the Laundromat as many as four times a week. And it wasn't the fantasy of a love affair, of some robust man whose whiskers felt coarse against the back of her hand as his laundry spun beside hers. It wasn't that she was obsessive-compulsive or a hypochondriac. It wasn't even about hygiene. Stains made Lola's clothes a reminder of past experiences, of something changed and she often washed them without detergent. If you asked Lola about it, she would shrug, saying simply that she had a fascination with laundry machines and that they had a fascination with her.

It started a year ago. Lola was your typical nineteen-year-old, dragging her laundry bag to the mat only after all her underwear had been worn inside and out. After all her shirts were splattered with remnants of hamburgers and ranch salad dressing from her job at the University cafeteria. There was no avoiding it. Lola bit down on her bottom lip, stomped her feet twice and racked her brain for anyone she could cajole into doing her laundry. Her mother lived too far away and Lola didn't have many friends. She found most people at her college exhaustingly self-involved and if she had to constantly compete with someone to talk about herself, well, she might as well just be by herself and do something. Lola didn't even consider asking her roommate Jean who was a women's studies major and found any excuse to lecture on gender roles and the traditional feminine domain. So, after a brief but thorough search, Lola realized that there was no one and that she would have to do it herself. She packed a lunch of chocolate pudding and a juice box, borrowed one of Jean's motorcycle repair magazines, popped a mix tape into her barely functional walkman and lugged every speck of clothing two blocks to the mat.

It started innocently enough, one pair of pale pink socks. Lola despised pink. She only noticed it because that day she stayed to fold her laundry. Normally, she stuffed everything into her laundry bag and was out the door before her clothes had cooled down. But today was the season finale of Days of Our Lives, a show Lola hated. She found her eyes drifting from photographs of engines and brake peddles to images of fake kisses by fake lovers. Lola didn't want to watch the smooches, the punches, the tears but she had to; it was the only way to tame her curiosity. So she stayed and folded and watched that damn soap opera until she became drunk from it.

She found only one at first. All of Lola's socks were cotton and white, except for the pair her mother sent her for her birthday. And they all had an elastic band around the top that indented her calf, creating a deep and perfect cut. She wore them with pale denim shorts that exposed the beautiful tight line. Lola imagined her legs turning blue from the perfect pair of socks. Jean told Lola that she ought to dress more sophisticated, and Lola responded that there was nothing more sophisticated than being yourself.

They were red, the ones her mother sent her. Silk and the color of blood and they terrified Lola. When she opened the box she thought it was a cruel joke. And she didn't know how to respond when her mother answered the phone saying, Lola darling, aren't the socks fabulous. It seemed to Lola that this happened every year. Last year it was a stuffed animal unicorn with itchy fur and a plastic horn. The year before it had been four iridescent seashells. And the very worst was her freshman year of high school when her mother bought her a jean skirt with embroidered daisies around the bottom seam. Her mother always tried, Lola knew that, but it also became increasingly clear that she didn't understand Lola at all. It was Lola's guilt that saved the socks from life in the dumpster. She had that trait, that chemical imbalance that prevented her from giving anything away. Her mother's attic was still filled with ceramic dolls Lola had received at ages four, seven and eight. She could have tossed the socks. That could have been it. The end. None of this would have happened. But she kept them and stuffed them in the drawer, certain that they had found their eternal home.

But in times of desperation, Lola would wear anything. And so yesterday had been a red day. People noticed. They said great socks Lola. Lola didn't know what it meant. She couldn't decide if she should burn the socks or incorporate the whole spectrum of color into her ankle protectors.

She tossed the pink one aside at first, assuming it was someone else's. When she found the second she tied them in a bow, hoping to return them to their owner as the perfect little present. Lola held the socks up. Excuse me. The two women with swollen ankles watching the tube and the man sitting in his undershirt turned to stare at the lanky girl and her socks. Excuse me, but did any of you lose your socks. You see, I found these in my laundry and I know that they're not mine because I never wear pink. I don't like pink. I mean it isn't that pink isn't a nice color. It's just...it's just...They looked away, and Lola's voice faded from a shout to no sound at all. It's just that I don't wear pink.

They were the same length as Lola's, the same shape. They would look good on her, even if they were…pink. So she decided to keep them. Maybe all those people who had loved her bloody socks were right. Maybe this was a sign that it was time for a change. So she kept them. It was innocent enough; one pair. They could have been abandoned socks that she rescued and supplied with life. It could have been that simple.

By the time she went back to the mat she had bought two new pairs. Lola had gotten such compliments on the pink ones that she decided to venture other colors, starting with sunshine yellow and aqua blue. Jean hated them. At least before they were white and I could ignore them. Lola never listened to Jean. That's why they got along. With Jean, most people didn't.

The yellow had quickly become her favorite. Jonathon, who sat next to her in sign language class, told her that the yellow complimented the radiance of her aura, which was now able to shine through her beautiful, beautiful socks. He had to say radiance and aura out loud, not knowing how to sign those words and was promptly asked to leave class. Spoken word was forbidden and Jonathon would be marked down for it, but it didn't matter. Jonathon would have gladly gotten kicked out of class everyday if it meant Lola would smile at him the way she did that day.

But that wasn't why Lola loved the yellow ones. And it wasn't because her mother hated them and said yellow in that tone. Or because her black chucks and yellow socks matched the University's colors. It wasn't because she realized that no one else wore socks that looked like their ankles were sweating gold. She liked the way the yellow looked against her legs. The way they made her skin the color of fried banana. She liked to think that people pitied her scrawny and neglected-looking legs. Really, no one noticed; the yellow overshadowed everything. Lola knew this. She liked the intimacy she had with her legs in response to those yellow socks.

Three weeks passed. The yellow and blue were several shades browner than they should have been. Lola was fired from her job at the school cafeteria. There were only so many times she could scoop mashed potatoes onto plates before the urge to throw potatoes into someone's face became overbearing. She didn't know him. It wasn't personal, but she was fired for it anyway. Lola didn't care; she had planned on quitting.

But it meant no extra money for socks, and barely enough coins for the Laundromat, which was becoming a matter of necessity. She went to the mat, same as always.

Lola had never seen a student there before, that was why she liked this particular mat. She thought of it as her secret society of clothes washers. No one acknowledged her, but she felt the closeness everyone shared by each pretending that the others did not exist. Today she couldn't play along because, after separating her whites and colors into two washing machines, she noticed a familiar cowlick sprouting from of a Dickens's novel.

Jonathon? Lola said to the book.

Jonathon put down the book and smiled up at Lola through his thick-rimmed glasses.

Hello L-O-L-A. He signed. How are you?

I'm fantastic. Jonathon, we're at the laundry mat, you don't have to sign.

Good practice. He signed back.

Suit yourself. Lola said but then saw Jonathon's frown and threw in a quick sign of How are you?

After an extended conversation of cordialities and the weather, their combined vocabulary was exhausted. Lola was relieved when Jonathon excused himself to move his clothes to the dryer. She lifted the newest edition of Jean's motorcycle maintenance magazine and flipped to the Ask Motoman section. Lola loved reading about the people's difficulties and the solutions Motoman offered.

She felt bad leaving before Jonathon; he had gotten there first. Also, he had offered her a ride home. She usually enjoyed the struggle of hauling heavy laundry up the hill to their University, but today she was tired. So she folded her laundry. It seemed wrong to sit there, having stuffed all her articles into a large canvas bag, and watch Jonathon fold his clothing into an aligned pile.

She didn't notice them at first. The white socks hid the blazed orange, sea green, and plum purple.

When she pulled out the first orange sock, she looked at it as though it were covered in maple syrup. She put it aside thinking how nice it would be to own socks that color. When she found the other orange and then a purple and finally a green, she knew something peculiar was going on.

Something peculiar's going on. Lola said to Jonathon.

What? Jonathon said, focusing on the microscopic pieces of lint he was removing from his blue cotton pants.

Lola looked under the folding table and then placed her head into the dryer, circling it around as though the machine were tossing her about.

Are you missing something? Jonathon asked, not diverting his attention from his faded and unfashionable pants.

The opposite I'm afraid. It appears that my socks have reproduced.

Jonathon laughed.

Only you would think socks could reproduce.

Laugh all you want, she said, waiting for him to quiet down which he did immediately. She held up the orange, green, and purple. They have.

It looks like your socks bled. No big deal.

It is a big deal. It's an enormous big deal. They didn't bleed Jonathon, trust me. I counted them. I have twelve white pairs, one red, one pink, one blue and one yellow. That's it Jonathon. Sixteen pairs. But now, now I have twelve whites, one red, one pink, one blue, one yellow, one purple, one orange, and one green. That makes nineteen. Nineteen, Jonathon.

Lola, they're socks. Someone probably just left them in the machine. It isn't a big deal. Take them if you want, leave them if you don't.

You aren't listening to me. I can't just leave them. They're mine. My socks. Babies of my socks.

So then take them. Jonathon put his pants in the basket on the floor. He looked at Lola. Her hazel eyes had become a pale orange and he knew he'd upset her. He hadn't meant to be curt. It was just that Lola frightened and excited Jonathon all at once and he never knew quite how to handle her.

I know what you're thinking but this isn't the first time. I didn't think much of it before because it was only one pair. But now I realize that it's so much more than that. It's...it's, well, I don't know what it is but somehow my socks are multiplying.

That's weird. Jonathon said, trying to be sympathetic but feeling in the back of his throat that he had gotten the tone wrong.

Jonathon and Lola drove back to school in silence. Jonathon kept opening and closing his mouth, but no noise would come out. It was like he had eaten a handful of peanut butter and all the words stuck to the massive clump clogging his throat. He tried, but nothing. But then that was always the problem with Lola; Jonathon always tried and it never amounted to anything.

The next time there was no denying it. It was two weeks later, and now Lola had twelve whites, a red, a light pink, a dark pink, a fuchsia, a plum purple, a lilac, a baby blue, a navy, a sunshine yellow, a mustard yellow, a turquoise, a sickly green, a sea green, a mud orange, an orange orange, and a metallic orange. The colors excited her; she felt them licking the arches of her flat feet and reaching their way up her calves to be closer to the sun. Some days she would wear one pair of socks on top of another and fold the outer pair down so both colors were visible. Other days she would run back to her dorm room between classes to change.

But enough was enough and it was time for her excitable socks to start settling down. She was running out of room. Lola decided to go to another Laundromat. One she had never been to before. One where nothing like this could ever happen.

She went to the mat at the edge of town. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the woman behind the counter was serving four shirtless men bourbon. They smiled at her and took off their cowboy hats. Lola thought her clothes couldn't possibly become clean in this room that smelled worse than her dirty laundry. But after lugging the heavy bag for twenty-five minutes, she would have washed her clothes anywhere.

This time it was worse. Much worse. Her collection went from twenty-eight to fifty-two pairs.

This is getting ridiculous, Lola said to the maroon sock entwined in a hunter green. What's next, polka dots?

But she spoke too soon, for the second the words dropped from her bottom lip, there they were. The most beautiful socks she had ever seen. White, with dollops of black. They couldn't have been better if she had skinned a cow.

And that was when it really began. The biweekly trips to the Laundromat. She borrowed Jean's car so she could expand her range. And it was the same everywhere. The mats a town over, the mats filled with housewives and the mats filled with tablecloths. It was always the same.

But, in some ways, it was different. Each mat seemed to have its own expression. After the first pair of black and white, other colors of polka dots started showing up. Purple on aqua and magenta on pale pink. Then there were stripes and stars and finally letters. It excited Lola; she couldn't wait to see what would turn up next.

But it was also becoming a problem.

The area under Lola's bed was now overstuffed. She threw out her underwear, realizing if she washed her clothes several times a week she didn't need more than three pairs. And she slimmed her collection of t-shirts to four. Her shorts to two pairs. But it didn't matter; the space would only last so long. Jean was finally fed up when the socks began taking over her side of the room. She told Lola that she had to do something about the socks and, if she didn't, Jean would take care of them herself.

Lola decided to open a stand outside the cafeteria where she used to work. She called it Days of Our Socks, in memory of that first time. People looked at her and laughed. That crazy sock girl, she heard a few of them say. Jonathon bought a pair. They were brown with white stripes. Lola appreciated his support but knew he would never wear them.

When the sock store seemed unpromising, Lola explored other ideas. She tried to donate them, but socks were up there with used underwear as the undesired. And she tried to give them away. She went to the part of town she had never explored, that she never would have set foot in alone without an enormous trash bag of socks. She approached a balding man resting on a corner. You crazy girl? He said when she handed him a blue pair with yellow stars. Man, get the fuck out of here.

But the real problem was not all the socks Lola had, it was all the new ones she was accumulating. She couldn't tear herself away. After two days, she felt an itch behind the back of her left ear, like someone was taking a sewing needle to her skin and gently scratching. Her balance became weak and her knees wobbled. She knew this feeling would go away when she returned to the mat. But it always came back again.

Not knowing what else to do, Lola sent the socks home with instructions for her mother not to lay a finger on the boxes, except of course to put them in Lola's bedroom. After she sent seven boxes home, her mother began to have a few questions. She was worried about Lola. This seemed strange even for Lola, who always had a way of doing things her own way.

That was how it was with Lola; her mother didn't understand her; Jean thought she was nuts; Jonathon didn't know what to think. But she always came up with something, until now. Now her socks were in control and it was terrifying. She was so angry she wrote a story about it for her writing class. It was called Land of the Living Socks and focused on a tie-dyed sock that was leading a revolution against the supremacy of human rule. There was blood and lots of tattered cotton. Her class hated it. They called it a bad representation of race relations. And all Lola could think was, if they only knew.

But the class had also been right. This was becoming a problem. A problem that demanded a solution. She tried to stop frequenting the mat. It pained her joints and dulled her senses, but she tore herself away. It didn't make a bit of difference. After two weeks of avoiding laundry machines she went back. And she only brought two pairs of socks, but it didn't matter. The two became eighty-seven. It appeared that her socks were mocking her; that they were saying, Stupid Lola. You think you can get rid of us that easily?

She tried to discuss it with Jean. She tried to discuss it with her mother. She even went to the school psychologist and finally the Dean. But Jonathon was the only one who listened. The others all gave her that look, the same look. Mouth pursed, head tilted, eyes wide. With her mother it meant Lola's doing it again. With Jean it was stop fucking around and get rid of the socks before I get rid of you. At behavioral health the look was designed to appear sympathetic when really the psychologist was just searching for the right category of crazy. And with the Dean, well, Lola couldn't tell what it meant but she understood that she didn't want to know.

It wasn't that Jonathon believed Lola. It was that he liked seeing her like she was that morning when she knocked on his door at four a.m. Her hair was tossed about in a high ponytail and she hugged her arms, shivering even though it was well over seventy degrees. He noticed that her knees touched like they were kissing and wished that he could stick his own knee between those perfectly nuzzled caps.

Lola, Jonathon said, scratching at his cowlick and putting on his glasses.

It's terrible, just terrible. I just, I can't, Jonathon there's nothing left to do.

Lola, he reached out to touch her shoulder, but she swayed away from him as though she was dancing and Jonathon didn't mind at all. Lola never did what Jonathon hoped, yet she always found a way of doing something unexpected, something that made her even more radiant. It's four o'clock in the morning.

I know. What, you think I don't know what time it is? Of course I know it's four.

Her words could have been mean. But her voice was hushed and fast. She spoke without breathing. Jonathon hoped that she would go on whispering like that forever.

Well, out with it then. What's the matter? Whatever problem you're having, we'll fix it.

I seriously doubt that. I've tried everything.

Well, you haven't tried me yet.

Lola smiled when he said this. It sounded so confident and Lola knew that Jonathon was anything but confident. Still, he persuaded her; she told him everything, of his involvement in the beginning, about the boxes and Jean's motor magazines. Everything. And he stood there, nodding his head, his pajama-clad body hiding behind the door, and he didn't say anything. He was too tired to believe or to not believe. And he knew this was what Lola wanted.

Leave it up to me. I'll think of something.

That was what he said. But that was two weeks ago. And Lola had believed him, but now, fourteen days and one hundred, seventy-two socks later, there was a seed of doubt blossoming in her heart.

Jonathon stopped going to sign language class or anywhere that he might see Lola. It got to the point where he didn't leave his dorm room because it was the only place he knew she wouldn't go. He ordered takeout Chinese and pizza and read notes from missed classes online. He knew time was running out. He gave himself seventeen days. After seventeen days he would either uncover the perfect solution or Lola would have lost any confidence she may or may not have had in him. Either way, seventeen days and it would all be over.

It took eighteen and it hit Jonathon like a bat cracking his skull. It was painful and wildly exciting. At three a.m. Jonathon threw on a pair of jeans and a white undershirt and ran across campus to Lola's dorm room window.

Lola, Lola. I have it. It's brilliant. I've figured it out. He jumped up and down, hoping the movement would propel his words into her delicate and hairless ear. It's wonderful, perfect.

He saw the light turn on and stopped jumping. Jean looked out the window.

What the hell do you want? She was so calm it frightened Jonathon.

Is Lola there?

Listen, lover boy, we're sleeping. Well I'm not anymore but Lola's still snoring away and I'm not gonna wake her, so you can just wait 'til tomorrow to do whatever romantic thing you have planned, okay, stud muffin?

No, you don't understand it's important. It's the most important. It's a matter of life. Please.

Jean pouted but she walked away from the window and over to Lola's bed. Within seconds Lola was at the window looking down at him. Every time Jonathon saw her it was like he was seeing Lola for the first time, only this time he really was. Her face was small and her body was flimsy on its frame, as though she would melt off her bones if it were too hot. He witnessed now what everyone else saw when they looked at Lola. She smiled at him and he smiled back. Whatever it was that he had lost in this moment, it didn't matter.

Grab your socks and meet me downstairs.

He wanted it to be quick and devastatingly romantic. He wanted to whisk her away and be on the open road in seconds. It took them two hours to load the car with all the socks, and by the time they pulled out of the University property, the sun was beginning to rise.

They drove south. Jonathon didn't tell her where they were going and she didn't ask. She sat there silently, occasionally reaching over to turn on the radio, flipping the channels until she reached a song she liked. She would sing two lines and then turn off the radio mid-song, wait five minutes and then search again. When they were fifty miles south Jonathon pulled over and turned off the ignition. He explained.

Lola loved it. She said it was brilliant. Brill-yant. Jonathon. Brill-yant. He knew she would feel this way. She was so excited that she reached over and hugged him. He realized that this was the first time she had ever touched him.

Lola rolled down the window as they pulled back onto the road, heading north. She reached into the back, grabbed two handfuls of socks and lifted her torso out the window, shutting her eyes as the air scratched her face. Aqua, lavender, stars, circles, smiley faces and peace signs. She held them out so the wind could kiss their textured surface and then rubbed them against her own cheek so she could know what socks that were loved by the wind felt like. She let go. The air held them like they were filled with helium. They drifted up and Lola thought how wonderful it would be if they could become birds and fly away, filling the sky with polka dots and hearts and moons. She reached into the back seat and did it again, this time holding as many socks as she could. The socks encircled the car following it as it sailed north. They spun and scattered, taking on the formation of a hurricane. They were so beautiful she wanted to see them all at once. She reached for an entire bag of socks from the back. All those socks hanging in the air became something larger. They looked like a hot air balloon against the pale sky, each sock making a small piece of the intricate pattern. They floated off and became what Lola always knew socks could be. And after they were all gone, all traveling their own way, Lola reached over and held Jonathon's hand. He stopped the car and turned around to look back.

Jonathon, aren't they beautiful.

He smiled at Lola and then looked back at the socks, noticing the way they sat on the horizon like an Impressionist painting. He thought about how much he hated Impressionism, but how when it was a painting made of socks it could be beautiful. He looked back at Lola and smiled at her. She was looking ahead, watching, waiting until all the socks had landed and become someone else's.