It is quite easy to run around laughing hysterically, making a scene, but it is quite another to pull this "freedom" off with class. I most certainly don't. I confuse immature and happy and random with distracted. I'm not five. I'm twenty. I have a lot of serious responsibilities, and I just make myself look (and feel bad) whenever I am not serious and focued on the task on hand.
So I'm going to try something new: mastering the art of dignity and self-respect. That is not 1. not putting myself down 2. staying focused when I need to 3. listening to others and not saying what I want because I can
Gotta work now. Hopefully I don't fall asleep at the job because I'm tired from not falling sleep at night due to over-stimulation.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Solid Ground!
I'm going to use this post to post fanfiction now! Fanfiction about real people too. Yip, I remember when I was opposed to this, BUT this story helped me see that I could write again so I am NOT opposed to this story.
Title: Solid Ground
Simone arrived at the library about a half an hour after the final school bell rang. A conversation with her best friend and some loitering at her locker while she searched for a journal she thought she threw in there a few weeks ago but couldn’t seem to find prevented her from arriving sooner. Simone stomped up the metal stairs. She wanted to visit her friends at the café and discuss new music, singing and everything else she loved, but instead homework forced her into a secluded corner of the library. Simone slid behind a desk facing the window and pulled out her notebook. She opened it to a clean page, folded her fingers together and stretched them toward the window pane, grey clouds and barren trees outside. The assignment she needed to complete was a memoir, which she hoped wouldn’t present much of a challenge because it didn’t require research or reading any long books. She snatched a pencil from another pocket of her bag and pressed it to the notebook. That family vacation when she was 10 would make an interesting story if she remembered any details more specific than lying on the beach drawing lines and circles in the sand with the stick that had been in arm’s range as she bask. A picture of that memory decorated one of the window ledges in her living room back home. Simone blinked; she had been pressing the pencil on the paper hard enough to leave a centimeter wide, shiny layer of lead. She erased it, but the excess lead smudged staining the pink eraser and clouding up the blue lines that cut across the page. The camping trip she went on with her aunt, mother and sister seemed like a valid topic too, but the story wouldn’t contain much intrigue since she got sick the first night they slept in their rickety, semi-moldy tent under the half barren boughs of old evergreens and had to go home with her father in the morning. She nibbled on the eraser, which still radiated heat from the fast rubbing. Nothing essay worthy happened to her in the fifteen years she had been alive. She tapped pencil on the paper and watched the eraser flop. It hung from the metal by a few white, rubbery strands. She had thought a memoir would require much less work than a research paper so she had slipped the assignment underneath some other papers in her folder and didn’t return her focus to it until now. She wouldn’t have had remembered even to attempt the work if she hadn’t made a point of telling her mother she would come home late that night since she wanted to hang-out with friends after school. The conversation hung in the emptiness of her mind now and Simone wondered if she dared write it into her essay.
“I won’t be home right after school today, alright? I’m going to the café…” Simone stood in front of the screen door chewing on a granola bar.
“What, honey?” Her mother scribbled on a stack of papers in the kitchen. The morning had been quite typical for mother and daughter: Simone woke up to the screeching of her alarm clock, knocked over a glass of water on her bedside table before hitting the sleep button and then finally burrowed back under her down comforter. The alarm clock blared again, but Simone had safely escaped back into her world of dreams. There she stood under a spot light on a stage staring over the heads of row after row of cheering fans. Her hair glistened in the blinding artificial light and her voice carried through-out the entire room. She heard her voice over the screaming people, over the banging of drums. She wasn’t attached to any microphone cords or stuck in a single spot on stage. She drifted on the rise and fall of her voice, the glistening eyes of her adoring fans and the energy—the electricity that sparked between her, the song and every other person in the room. The scene was a drug to the sleeping Simone; it pulsed through her veins as she slept and during the day while she sat idle in class watching nothingness in the distance while she daydreamed.
“Does the alarm clock mean nothing to you, Simone!” Simone twitched; she grabbed at the pillow and rolled onto her stomach, but her mother flipped the alarm off and janked the blanket off her.
“No, one more song, please…I practiced so hard for this moment…”
“Simone! Seriously wake up now. Why must we go through this same laziness every morning?”
“Because…you…because you insist on waking me up. I’m happy in my dreams…” She rubbed her eyes. Her face was sticky. She felt around the pillow for something sticky, but found a few wet spots instead.
“Ewww!” Simone shot into a sitting position and shuddered. Her arms went limp at her side and slowly she let her gaze wander from the drool marks to her mother’s face. The woman crossed her arms at her chest and glared at her daughter, but as Simone met her eyes, a faint smile pinched the end of her scowl.
“I’m coming. I’m coming. I’ll be downstairs in a moment…” Simone tossed her comforter back into a pile on her bed and stretched. The time was a little before 7:30. She had about a half an hour to wash-up, get dressed and arrive in her seat at school. She grabbed a plain cream long-sleeve shirt and a pair of green kakis from atop her over-flowing drawer and scurried into the bathroom.
Downstairs Simone’s mother busily searched through her pile of papers. Simone hurried past her to grab a snack before leaving. Stacks of paper cluttered the table and her mother rifled through these. She rose her eyebrow as she left, pretending the screen door was a stage curtain and she about to make her debut.
“Aren’t you even going to say goodbye, honey?”
“Hmmm?” Simone chewed a month full of almonds and cereal flakes. In her mind, song lyrics filled her month instead of the quick breakfast. She pressed her palm to the door wanting to at least get a breath of fresh air.
“Simone, are you even listening to me?” Her mother tapped a vase on the table. Simone snapped around to face her mother who was barely visible behind the clutter.
“Yeah, sorry…I’m just daydreaming. I love you, mom. I’ll see you later. Oh wait…” Simone explained her plan to visit the café after school.
“As long as you finish your homework, Simone.” Mrs. Simons stuck a paper clip over the pile of pages.
“Of course!” Simone smirked. She didn’t have any homework, and if she did, she could finish it in another class. The only class she had trouble multi-tasking in was English because the teacher kept a sharp eye on her. She froze. Yesterday the teacher mentioned something about an essay’s due date approaching soon.
Simone stared at the still blank paper. If she had been writing that mental tangent down, she would have almost completed her essay, but embarrassment would have prevented her from handing it in anyway. The English teacher already thought she was slightly flakey—admitting to drooling in her sleep would seal her into a semester of strange look and silent judgments that would probably affect her grade. Maybe she should cut her loses and play the crazy card…
Simone massaged her temples. Pretending to have forgotten the essay and meeting up with her friends at the cafe would have caused her less pain, but the nagging face her mother always gave her when she said she had no homework haunted Simone’s mind. By early evening, such worries and feelings of inferiority plagued her mind. Why couldn’t morning last all day? Or better yet, why couldn’t she sleep, dream, all day?
Through the window in front of her, Simone saw the sun setting. The horizon glowed goldenrod behind the budding trees. If she wasn’t sitting here not working on homework, she could be perched on a low hanging limb singing to the wispy clouds and the birds. She closed her notebook. It looked like she would fail despite the sacrifice of the afternoon. Maybe if she left now and hurried she could make it home in time for dinner.
As Simone trudged down the street, she decided she didn’t want to make it home for dinner. The conversation would resemble that morning’s in predictability and nagging expect now her father would join in and she wouldn’t have the recent memory of her dreams to save her. She stopped on the sidewalk and watched a squirrel run over the light-green grass that still had not yet fully recovered from the cold freezing and ice smothering it. She sighed. Why was it too much to ask to simply run free? Why did she have to wake up when the clock buzzed, go from class to class when the bells rang and then return home to her parents commanding her to either do homework or chores? She thought of her friends at the café. They sat up in the loft smoking and playing burnt CDs on a portable CD-player whose volume went up high enough to be audible to the entire room through headphones. Simone placed her backpack on the ground and sat on it leaning back against the tree the squirrel had scurried up. If she rested here until nightfall, no one would notice her immediate absence. Her parents would take the silence at home to mean that she went wandering in her mind again and by the time they did come looking, the tree would have absorbed her. Her body would spiral down with the roots into the moist soil where she could soak up the nutrients, the wisdom left by generations of trees. She envied the tree; as wind rustled through its blossoming branches above, it sang and it possessed a beautiful voice. The birds flocked to perch on the branches, to listen to the evening lullaby.
Simone opened her mouth then quickly shut it. What would she sing about? That afternoon more than proved she had nothing to say. She looked at the grey sky; even the vibrant blue went dark eventually. Tears pricked at her drooping eyes. She wanted to leap to her feet and run home, run to her mother, bury her head in her shoulder and through her sobs explain that she was a failure. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. The image, the comfort was another fantasy.
When she eventually did return home, her mother was once again in the kitchen—clattering pots and pans this time. Simone sulked past hoping to make it upstairs without an interrogation, but she heard the stove click on and her mother’s footstep following her. Simone smiled before letting her mother see her face.
“Did you have a good day at school, Simone dear?”
“Yeah, I guess. It wasn’t awful…just school…” Simone fidgeted with a keychain hanging from the strap of her bag. Her head really hurt now.
“You seem sad. Are you sad?” Her mother placed her hands on her hips and Simone looked away, let her eyes move toward her room where she could at least listen to music and forget about the horrors of the day. Her mother insisted on hugging her now. Simone stood in the same place arms at her side and blinked back tears. Yesterday she had felt better; she had come home after spending the afternoon at her best friend’s house and sang the rest of the night away. She had sung under the music the radio played until her throat hurt, until opening her mouth again burned as if she drank acidic orange juice with a raw throat. Then she collapsed into bed early and fell right to sleep warm and comfort from spending so much time in her happy place. Two nights ago had been happier still. She had her singing lesson that night—a whole hour where the teacher encouraged her to sing, taught her how to raise her voice without causing great pain.
But for now, she stood in the hallway on the plush white carpeting in her orange polka-dot socks. Her mother held her tightly as if the embrace could take Simone’s supposed pain away, but it didn’t; it couldn’t. Her mother didn’t know she was a failure. She would yell at Simone and lecture her from behind disappointed eyes when she found out Simone hadn’t done her homework again.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess it has been a long day..”
“But you were with your friends, weren’t you? And those people, your music always make you happy, right?”
“Oh…right…” Simone’s vision clouded. She had told her mother she was going to the café before she remembered she had work to finish. “Yeah!”
“Simone, you aren’t lying to me are you? Have you finished your homework?” Her mother loosened her grip, pulled away and looked Simone up and down.
“Yeah, Mom. I didn’t have any homework so don’t worry…” She bit her lip. She faded deeper into the ground with every word; her mind lingered with the tree roots winding around until they knotted and made no sense. Since it lied beneath the surface, her mother couldn’t see her heart. She imagined her mother saw her semi-lifeless form and the weak smile. Maybe she could feign illness and avoid the shame of another missed assignment…
“Do you feel alright, honey? I’m getting worried…”
“Yes…no! Uhhhh…don’t worry, I’m fine. Maybe I’ll just go lie down.”
“That’s not reassuring. We’re going to eat soon so get ready, okay?”
Simone nodded and went upstairs to her room where she left her bag on the bed and flopped down next to it. The light wasn’t on shadows draped the room. With her eyes shut, her head almost didn’t hurt; she could almost picture herself singing again. But this time as the curtains rose, her voice cracked and her voice was little more than a whistle. People booed; her sister knocked on the door and yelled at her.
“Come on, Simone!”
Simone wanted to punch the door and hold it closed. Then she wanted to collapse against it and cry, but the idea made her throat hurt, a lot more than she could bear so she hung her head and followed her sister to the dining room. Dinner didn’t hurt as much as she feared. Actually the family ignored her for the most part. Her mother dominated the conversation with talk of her quest to finish grading the work she assigned her third year students over spring break two weeks ago. Simone smirked a bit; she was thankful she went to another school than her mother taught at. Otherwise she’s have twice the work and the entire faculty breathing down her neck to excel when all she wanted to flee the classroom and sit under the stairs listening to her CD player.
“I’m going to go upstairs now…” Simone dropped her fork and stood up. She had taken only a few fork loads of food and she had eaten less than half, but now she imagined herself crawling up in a ball with music soothing her. She left her dish in the sink. The clatter of metal on ceramic covered her parent’s answer, if they offered one at all. She didn’t look back. They’d talk once they knew she shut her door.
The walls of her room were painted a vibrant orange—a color she chose because the tulips that bloomed beneath her window, along their driveway and in the park by the birdbath this time of year burst with that same orange. She smiled when she saw the flowers, and she tried to smile when she entered her room. Today despite the warm-colored walls, she shivered and had to slink under her blanket to get warm. She fumbled through her bag until her hand hit her CD player, pulled it out and put on the headphones. The CD that played her friend Billy, who worked at the café, burned for her. It was a mix of radio edits of popular songs and demos of unknown bands. Maybe she really did live under the tree roots because none of these songs sounded familiar; none summoned a name or picture into her mind. The songs blended together, sounded the same. She had heard them all a million times before; she had to have, but the voices sounded generic to her…or something like that. She practiced her own singing under these voices; her teacher used these songs as examples for how to properly or not properly sing. But the music failed in becoming anything more than voices and melodies. She pulled her knees to her chest. Her thoughts twirled through the dark again like the roots in the soil. It hurt. She pressed stop and rolled onto her back. The ceiling was white—white like the clouds and her neighbor’s fence. She moaned. If her mother crept into the room now, she would tell her everything, but would blame her failure on the boredom of her life. She couldn’t help if everything around her was white and lacking in originality. She pulled a corner of blanket closer; even she could see the holes in that excuse.
Simone drifted through her mind, floating along on the current of her memory. Memories flooded this dream world and crashed into her, eroding her will to stay above the surface. Simone lay still. Movement wore her out so she watched the past she had attempted to fish through earlier stream past her. She sat on the beach with bare-feet, wearing a shiny orange swimsuit and a towel hanging over her shoulders. She wrote her name in the sand with a piece of driftwood the tide had brought in. Since she had been sitting there since lunch, she had seen the tide rise and fall, had seen her sister frolic in the water as the waves splashed her, but Simone stayed where she sat. She heard her parents call out to her, but she focused instead on the voice of the ocean—the lapping of the waves on the grainy sand particles, the hollow whooshing that came from all directions. Birds flew across the sun cawing to each other, sharing their happy songs that sunny afternoon. She brought her knees closer to her body so she could sing into her skin so no one would hear her soft voice. She sang words that flowed through her heart and the song took the form of the birds, the tiny shells that submerged almost entirely in the sand, the laughter of her family, the waves glistening the in the hot sun, the driftwood she loosely grasped and herself sitting in the sand with a brave smile.
Then Simone saw the memory of the camping trip. She saw herself carrying a bag that was nearly as tall as her on her back. It held the tent. She had insisted upon carrying it to prove her strength, but as they approached the camp ground, the weight and the smell of camp fires in the distance struck her head hurting it, making her dizzy. She remembered lying down and resting her head on her mother’s rolled up sleeping bag. She saw the sky turn to twilight through the layers of pine tree branches and watched a hawk fly from its nest. She thought she was dreaming as an owl hooted, her aunt threw logs onto a crackling blaze some feet from where she lay and her sister pranced around showing off the flowers she had picked. Maybe she was delirious because she saw herself and an owl in a tree singing to the setting sun. Their song described the shadows these trees cast in the dim light, their dark pinecones that hung still in the light breeze and the people below roasting marshmallows or heating cans of beans. When she tuned back into reality, her mother poured water into her mouth from a metal cup and sweat coated her skin. She wanted to sit up, but her body felt heavier than the trees she watched. She knew she had been singing because her throat ached. It burned the way it did to this day when she sang too high or for too long and when she attempted to control her voice.
Simone heard her mother scream at her; she felt the blanket tugged off of her. Morning couldn’t have come. She didn’t hear the screeching alarm; she didn’t feel awake.
“Simone! Why must be go through this every day?
Simone didn’t answer. She rolled out of bed and grabbed a red sweater and jeans from her drawer. Her mother watched her silent motions, but didn’t say anything else.
In the bathroom, Simone stared at her reflection. Strands of hair stuck out in all directions. She felt waves disturbing the desired straightness of the back of her head. When had she last washed her hair? She sighed. Forget her hair; her head wasn’t even on straight. She had slept in her clothes, but she couldn’t remember why she had been so tired that she couldn’t change. Maybe she was sick or delirious. Maybe she shouldn’t go to school, but she heard she mother breathing in the other room. As she changed, she thought of her mother grading papers in the morning before going to work and working on her lesson plans while sitting in the arm chair and listening to classical music in the evening. Her mother knew dedication and she knew when Simone lacked it. She pulled her jeans on without unbuttoning them; that habit she had developed about the same time, she had become so unfocused she forgot to eat. Yet as she looked in the mirror, she didn’t think she lost any weight. She still noticed how fat her face was—the puffiness that bulged right below her eyes and the way her chin blended into her neck so they both resembled a blob. The sweater clung to her upper arms, and Simone had to look away. With a hung head and another sigh, she left the bathroom and went downstairs.
Her mother sat at her usual spot at the table behind her daily planner. Simone gave her a slight smile and sat down across the table.
“How do you feel this morning?” Her mother smiled back closing the book and picking up a knife. Simone shrugged. Her eyes roamed around the kitchen to the toaster. The room smelled of toast, which made her stomach growl and her head hurt. When was the last time she had eaten? She asked herself and was food worth walking across the kitchen for?
“You must have been tired to have fallen asleep so early. I’ll take that as a good sign that you at working hard…at something.” Mrs. Simons spread butter on the toast. When Simone didn’t answer, she looked up to see Simone eyeing the bread. “You want it?” Simone nodded quickly. Left to her own devices, she might not have gotten up to toast bread.
“Yeah…sorry…” She took the bread from her mother and bite into it.
“Don’t worry about it. That’s what I’m here for…I’m a bit worried about you though. You look so pale.”
Simone took another bite before swallowing. Her mother’s eyes burned into her. They shouldn’t burn like they did. Love and concern filled her gaze, but to Simone, they were sharpened knives slicing her open and making her inner’s burn with the truth that each day she let her mother down more and more.
“I’m sorry. I’m going to leave now. I’ll see you later. Thanks for the toast.”
“Alright, sweetie. Be good.”
Simone put her hand to her forehead as she left. What was this good her mother spoke of?
In her English class, Simone sat in the back row resting her head on her desk while the other students chattered and passed around their essays. Her earlier classes had cheered her up a bit. Literature had been her favorite since she first learned to read. Too bad it was her first class that year and thus over quickly giving her nothing to look forward to during the day. Worry controlled her mind while she tried to keep up with the steps her math teacher wrote on the board and while she jogged around the gym during physical education. All the dread came to a head in this classroom, in this class that she considered pointless. She felt fluent in English. The school system forced them to start learning the other language about the same time native English speakers learned to read. She saw it as an extra burden especially since her mother who had taught English for a few years in a grade school spoke the language to her at home for as long as she could remember. Anyway she spoke English with a couple of the guys at the café who were native to Sweden and Spain and didn’t quite have a great mastery of Dutch. She would benefit much more if the school focused on other things than writing essays and reading classic English novels.
“Hey, Simone! You look tired. Were you up all night finishing your homework again?” Her best friend Sara sat in the seat next to her.
“Nope, didn’t even try this time.” Simone clutched the side of her desk bracing herself for Sara’s reply. Sara scored high grades, was a model student and mostly considered perfect except for her friendship with Simone who all the teachers beside the music teacher saw as a slacker. Simone actually paid attention in her music class. Although they discussed mostly theory and dead composers, Simone cared because the subject at least struck a chord of relevance to her. As she sat in the class, which was after lunch so she was usually kind of drowsy, Simone composed words to the melodies the teachers played and imagined herself singing her invented lyrics to the whole class who clapped and praised her until her face went red and her whole body went limp with joy.
“What?” Sara slammed her book on the desk.
“Yeah. I have a normal life. No one wants to read a memoir about it.”
“Make something up? You are always scribbling down lyrics so don’t give me the excuse that you don’t have an imagination. Or why didn’t you just write about how much you want to be a singer?”
Simone winced. That would have been a brave essay to write. She liked to avoid using the words “singer” and “want” in the same sentence. That simple sentence Sara just said seemed so binding. She wanted to be a singer. No, she wanted to dream about singing and sing in her dreams.
“Don’t be silly. I don’t want to be a singer. I just…I just like music. It’s a good distraction…”
“But you take singing lessons, don’t you? Don’t you sing under the radio, sing under your breath in music class?” Sara grinned and folded her hands on her desk.
“I like singing, okay? But I could never be a singer!” Simone said louder than their previous conversation. A few other students turned around and stared. Simone flushed; her voice sounded shrill and gravely when she spoke. She could never be a singer; everyone would be laugh like they were now, and she would be a disgrace to herself…to her mother.
When the teacher collected their homework, Simone didn’t pass an essay up. She hadn’t completed the reading assignment either so she sat there staring at the words on the page willing her mind back to her last singing lesson so she could remember if the teacher had praised or just patronized her.
She had arrived at the little storefront studio about five minutes before her scheduled lesson. She walked the kilometer between her house and there briskly while listening the CD that had the songs she was practicing on it. The radio frequently played the songs, and she had no idea why she sought to imitate these singers, but she did. Maybe she just didn’t have anything better to give her teacher as an example of music she liked when she asked. The problem remained that she liked all music; she could listen to any CD her friends burned her endlessly as long as she could feel the power of guitars and drums, feel the emotion seeping from the singer’s heart. She wanted to explode, to run in circles when she heard singing and the bombastic melodies.
“Hello, Simone.” The teacher said as she opened the door to let the student in the lesson before her out. Simone fell too deep in her thoughts to notice the cold outside as walked or the voice of this other young singer. She hopped up and ran into the room. As the teacher shut the door, she nibbled at her nails.
“I’ve been practicing! But my throat still hurts when I sing…”
The teacher chuckled. “Let’s not get a head of ourselves. Why don’t you warm up a bit and show me how you’re doing?”
Simone sang up the scales vocalizing the sounds in the lower range comfortably, but feeling the stretch in her vocal cords as she climbed higher. She could stand there—back straight with her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her for a long time—as long as her attention span and lung capacity would allow without feeling much pain as long as she stayed within a certain range. This exercise resembled weight training: the weight lifter could lift light weights until boredom and fatigue set in, but he’d have a much longer window to lift than if he trained with weights out of his comfort range. Simone pictured him huffing and groaning as he benched twice his normal amount; his muscles bulged and sweat rippled along his skin. Her voice cracked as she went higher. The singers on the radio rarely sang high, and they were all in excellent shape. Why sweat like that? Why push herself? Her throat burned. Somewhere down there, her vocal cords stretched like a rubber band. She feared the rubber band would snap so she let her voice came down and ran back into her comfort zone.
“You’ve been practicing? The songs we listened to last week or something else?” The teacher made no further comment on Simone’s warm-up. The last few lessons played out the same way, and when at first the teacher suggested Simone reach for that next step, Simone’s face went white and fear flooded her eyes so the teacher dropped the subject.
“Yeah, the ones on that CD. I can make it through most of the songs now without losing my breath or coughing.”
“Let’s hear.”
Simone sang for the teacher whose face didn’t change from her blank expression through-out the whole song. Her eyes studied Simone, but didn’t glisten the way Simone’s did when she finished.
“You sound flat. You have the melody and the energy down, but you aren’t hitting the full range of notes. You’re not stretching your voice; you’re not pushing yourself to your limit.”
“Simone, are you listening?”
Simone blinked. The voice in her heard blurred with her English teacher’s voice. She stared harder at the page—harder than the teacher, probably the whole class stared at her. She wanted to say “no, I’m not listening. I don’t care. I only care about why my voice isn’t improving,” but she didn’t.
“I didn’t think so. I’m sorry my lesson isn’t exciting enough for you and I can only hope it will hold your attention better in detention than does it now.”
Simone read a sentence on the page she had been staring at. The teacher kept her after so much she had become almost thankful since detention forced Simone to read or complete work, and this time when she had to study saved her from actually failing.
“Would it be so hard to focus just for a few hours every day to appease teachers?” Sara asked as they walked toward the cafeteria.
Simone stopped. “Yes, it would! It would, Sara. What does everyone want from me? I’m happy where I am.”
“Are you really happy now, Simone?”
After school Simone walked to the café. She had to forget her life for a few hours. The café sat in the middle of a crowded street in a row of brightly painted orange, yellow and red buildings. The building she entered was brick and should have stuck out more, but most eyes passed over it since strange smells and sounds wafted through the continually opened windows. The chef enjoyed burning food, but it still tasted great, and at least three different songs played at a time. A stay here tested one’s selective attention and courage to look past the surface. Simone first discovered the place last fall while roaming around the streets to calm down after another fight with her mother about her grades. It was a Saturday afternoon and Simone didn’t get a chance to eat before running off so she was quite hungry when she walked by. She heard music through the dancing curtains so she walked in and ordered something only to find the workers more interested in interrogating her about her favorite musicians than serving her. She had been fairly ignorant when it came to popular music than so listened intently to the intense debates between the various characters sitting at the bar.
Today Simone, who was now a regular, was greeted by Billy, the bartender who leaned against a wooden beam polishes glasses. “Howdy!” He said nodding toward her.
“Hey.” Simone slumped onto a stool.
“Rough day, kid?”
“Always is…” Simone put her elbows on the tables and looked at to Billy. He was the café owner’s little brother who worked here since his own high school days. He tried going to college for music but claimed to not have had it in him so he worked her and taught guitar on the side.
“Life sucks, but hell, we still have music.” He pushed the joint he was smoking to the side of his mouth and blew smoke into the air around him.
“Yeah…it does…” Dusty bottles lines the shelves behind the bar. Billy once said they served merely as decorations and anything really valuable they stored under the counter. She thought about asking…
“Don’t be so gloom. Here!” He offered the joint with raised eyebrows and a grin.
Simone shook her head. “If I came home high, my mother would kill me, guaranteed. It’s bad enough I smell like smoke…”
“They that hard on you?” He took another puff and rubbed his thumb over his goatee.
“Not really, I guess. She loves me fine and all, but I’m a screw-up, and everyone wants to correct me.”
Billy rolled his eyes and offered the joint again. “You sure? You wouldn’t be getting high—just going back to normal.”
“When I came home wasted over winter break, mom grounded me for a month. I couldn’t survive sitting in my house for a month now-a-days…”
“And here I was at least going to give you a drink.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know if I could keep anything down. I feel sick. I want to be sick. Maybe that would explain what is wrong with me…”
Another costumer walked into the café. The door swung behind him a few times before coming to a halt. The man sat a few stools from Simone; he smoke too and asked for the usual. Simone turned around. The café was mostly empty; it was too early for the real patrons who worked during the afternoon. Battered green chairs surrounded pine tables and abstract paintings hung on the walls. She felt like those paintings—every color, emotion within her streaked across the canvas for everyone to judge. She rubbed her eyes. Haze blurred her vision. If she wasn’t in the mood for her favorite stool at her favorite café with Billy, she wasn’t in the mood for anything so she stood up and went to leave.
“Hey, Simone?” Billy called. His voice echoed through the room—less gruff than previously. “It’ll get better. I promise.”
Simone smiled. “Better is sitting here, but my head hurts. My stomach feels like it is rejecting the nothingness I ate at lunch. Better is singing, but hell if-”
“Oh that reminds me! I got a new CD for you. Hopefully, it’ll help you chill out cuz you’re more restless than a dog in heat.” Billy tosses Simone a CD.
“Who is it?” Simone caught it and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.
“Nightwish, you’ll like them. They have a chick singer.” Billy then turned to refill his costumer’s glass so Simone left. The clean air outside hit her hard like a sponge trying to cleanse away all the dirt that caught in all the cracks in Simone’s surface. Even Billy couldn’t cheer her up; she thought of chucking the CD. Music would bring her more insult and inferiority.
When Simone walked through her front door, silence pervaded the home. She stopped to take her shoes off and look around. The clock struck 6:30; Simone heard it tick. Slowly the second hand moved around past the twelve heading toward the three. No one told her anything about not coming home that evening, but then she remembered she hadn’t told her mother she wouldn’t come home directly after class either. She might have headed straight home if the day hadn’t made her want to run away, to do anything but see her bedroom walls or her mother.
“There you are.”
Simone tensed. Her mother came from the back room carrying a stack of towels. She paused in front of Simone and frowned. “We need to talk, Simone.”
“I haven’t done anything! I’m tired. I’m going upstairs so well, I’ll see you later…”
Mrs. Simons shook her head. “No, Simone. No more excuses. I’ll give you five minutes to put your stuff away, but after that you better be sitting down here ready to explain yourself.”
Simone kept her gaze on the carpeting as she climbed the stairs. At times like these, the stairs were more of a walk of shame than anything. She remembered all the times she had been exiled to her room for talking back or fighting with her sister. Those times she never wanted to go back downstairs. Maybe her mother would kick her out and she would finally have the freedom she sought—if freedom was that illusive thing she desired these days. Even if she had a whole lot of time to practice singing, she’d still be running in place, running on some flat surface that never rose above the fog or the winding roads. Above the chaos, she could trace a pattern in her life, but here—here she spiraled farther and farther from peace, farther from beauty. Simone tossed her bag on the floor and dropped her jacket over it. She walked to the window and looked at the home next door and the little patch of sky through the glass. If a tree grew within range, she would have jumped free and ran into the woods or to the park so wouldn’t have to face her mother. But she had no such luck and she knew her mother would follow her up if she didn’t obey so she flipped the light off and once again took the walk of shame.
“I forgot to tell you I was going to stay-” Simone started.
“I don’t understand, Simone. What is going through your mind right now?”
“Nothing.” She fell into the sofa preparing herself to stay awhile.
“Really?”
“What do you want me to say? I hate you? I wish you would leave me alone?”
“Well, is that how you feel?”
Simone put her head back against the cushion and squinted at the track lighting on the ceiling. She didn’t know where to begin explaining her thoughts. They’d come out a torrential downpour bleeding the clarity from the situation like rain on ink—leaving her mind blank, but the air between them a mess. “Not really…I don’t know.”
“Simone, have I not told you enough times that education is important, that is does matter whether you sit in class twiddling your thumbs or actively listening?”
“You have. It’s not your fault I’m a failure, alright so never mind me.”
Mrs. Simons sat next to her daughter and took her hand. “You are not a failure, honey. It’s rough, I know. I work with teenagers all day. I see what you go through.” She smiled at her daughter, but Simone didn’t meet her eyes.
“Why aren’t you mad at me? I’m going to fail English, you know, because I haven’t turned in most of the assignments especially not the important ones. I get written up at least once a week for sleeping. Did you know that?”
“Yes, your teacher called me this afternoon and told me you weren’t paying attention and then didn’t hand in a memoir, but I do appreciate your honesty all the same.” She squeezed Simone’s shoulder, but Simone pulled away.
“Are we done?” Simone stood up and took notice of the blinds behind fulfilling their purpose by hanging in front of the window. She yawned.
“Go, but I’m here if you need something, if there is anything I could help you with.”
Simone fled. She closed her eyes as she lay under the sheets on her bed curled up in a tight ball. Why must her mother be so nice? She deserved to be yelled at, to be told to work harder, to figure what she wanted and work toward it instead of imagining she had an enchanting voice like the birds or the wind. Warm tears welled in her eyes, and they streamed down her face and puddled on the pillow where she had drooled last night. She saw herself sitting in a rainstorm with sheet after sheet of water drowning her, and she melted into the mud and dripped down into the ditch.
In her dreams, Simone quivered behind the curtain. Beyond it, people cheered waiting to see her face, to hear her voice. But she had no voice. She had rehearsed in the changing room that had her name on scribbled on the door and discovered only whimpers escaped her throat. She drank bottle after bottle of water, but her voice was still rough and scratchy like the towel she tried to wipe her eyes with. Her lungs were a cyclone sucking in all the air and excitement around her. Soon like the cyclone she would bring destruction and disappointment to the fans who came to watch her perform. Slowly the curtain crept up. The crowd could see her shoes now; they knew she existed. She tossed her head from side to side searching for an exit. Billy stood under an exit sign giving her a thumbs-up. Her throat burned like an angry wildfire burning the homes people spent so long to build and the dreams they had always labored toward. The curtain revealed her upper body and she heard the crashing of the drums and the swift guitar riffs that cued her to strut on stage and sing. She did sing, but she heard nothing. She heard booing and screaming, and the world shook. The black spots consumed her vision.
Simone slapped her hand over her mouth so her mother wouldn’t hear her screaming and come running. The sheets clung to her sweaty body and followed her as she rolled over to see the clock. It was 10:47 now. They didn’t wake her to eat; she slept two evenings away. She wondered if any sanity existed within her at all anymore.
She cast the blanket aside and tried to fall asleep lying on her back. She couldn’t so her flipped onto her stomach. It ached to lie on in that position. She ate only toast that morning. Soon she would shrivel away and would no longer have to worry about not having a voice because she wouldn’t have any psychical form either. Billy gave her a new CD that afternoon. Music was a relentless jabbing now, but he said she would like it. She claimed to like all music, but only music with some memorial trait stuck out in her mind. Every band, every voice she heard in the last week blurred into one, and she couldn’t imitate even that. Simone dragged herself out of bed to dig the CD from her jacket pocket.
The CD player beeped and hummed as it prepared to play the CD. She watched the word “loading” flash on the screen. Then she jumped because the volume blared too loud; the headphones weren’t in her ears, and she could hear the melody bouncing back and forth from the keyboards to the drums, from the guitar back to the drums. She grabbed the earphones so she could pop them into her ears, but the song’s vocal part started first. Her hand hovered inches from her ears, and she didn’t move another muscle. She gaped—the air caught mid-breath. Then Simone crumpled onto her bed. She sank down into the comforter listening to the woman singing. She lay still on her side as the song changed. Her pulse slowed down again and a cool breeze washed over her.
In this music, she heard her fantasies. They floated along with the crashing drums and the energetic keyboard ready for the singer to pluck and actualize with her angelic voice that soared above the world like bird that saw the treetops and the silver clouds. Those forces blended together to create this haunting song. The singer’s voice represented a world Simone never dreamed existed, or if it did, only a select few could enter. Her vocal cords didn’t snap as she sang higher. She could her voice, pilot the vessel that glided above the thunderous melodies the band played. She had no idea what lyrics the singer sang, but they seemed to patch Simone’s cracked surface. She felt wide awake like she could actually think—maybe even practice singing or study again. But she wouldn’t waste this moment on either of those things; she planned on lying here until she passed out listening to Nightwish and imagining she had a voice half as wonderful as their singer’s. She hit the ‘repeat all’ button and crawled under her blanket.
Simone awoke without an alarm or her mother yelling at her in the morning. Light streamed through the curtains and hit her face. She popped up feeling the heaviness of the CD player tug her back down. The music had stopped; the batteries must have died. She jumped out of bed and ran to her desk to get new batteries from the drawer. She had to know if she dreamed that music. Even if it wasn’t real, it would mark a record wonderful for her dreams. She tore the old batteries from the battery holder and shoved two new ones into the slots. After pressing play, her heart stopped again. In a way, she wasn’t that surprised. Her mind couldn’t invent something this magical.
As Simone showered she hummed the tune in her head. She heard it clearly, as if she brought the CD player into the shower. Since she listened to the CD all night, Simone decided the repetition had engrained it into her mind and thus made it apart of her brain. She scrubbed at her scalp trying to rub away three days of grime. The hot water opened her pores, left her skin a light pink. The flowery smell of her shampoo soothed her senses as if she was frolicking in a field of daisies, rolling around and feeling the dew on her exposed flesh. The flow of water that rinsed the soap and dirt from Simone carried her off like that singer’s voice, and she couldn’t help but smile.
Simone dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and wrapped her long, wet hair in the towel after drying her body off. She hopped down the stairs feeling the carpet through her bare toes. Her mother sat in the kitchen as always sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. She peeked over the top of the paper as Simone entered.
“Hey!” Simone waved.
Mrs. Simons frowned and folded the paper. “Are you feeling better?”
“I wasn’t feeling well? Oh…Yeah, I think…sorry…” Simone opened the cabinet door and took out a box of cereal.
“Simone, this is serious. I’m worried about you.”
“I know.” Simone poured the cereal into a bowl and grabbed the milk carton from the fridge.
“I want you to come home after school today. I have some tests to grade so I’m going to go sit at the library for awhile after picking up your sister. You should come. It’ll give you a chance to get some school work done.” Mrs. Simons stood up as Simone’s sister skipped in reading aloud from a battered chapter book. Simone crunched on the cereal. She wanted to ask “do I have to?” but decided her mother’s distraction meant “yes, you don’t have a choice, Simone.” Simone listened to her sister laugh. Back when she was twelve, she didn’t laugh like that, or when she did, she was hanging-out with Sara mocking anything and everything they passed. A few years before she was twelve, she first fell in love with music. She joined the school band, but wasn’t the best so she quit and became a spectator in the world of music. But it haunted her to see woman singing—especially those who she thought didn’t have a great voice. She felt she could do better so she started singing in the shower, as she listened to the radio and when she stood alone watching the world go by. She begged her parents to let her take singing lessons because her throat ached after singing, but the lessons only brought more pain. Simone took a last bite of cereal. She had to find out more about Nightwish. She dumped the dirty bowl in the sink and ran upstairs to finish getting ready for school.
Simone had run down the street to school so she arrivde twenty minutes early—early enough to slip into the computer lab and Google search “Nightwish.” She tapped her fingers on the desk as the page loaded. She felt a great force building up behind her ready to charge forward and wash the remaining dirt from her mind. Once she knew this band’s story she could truly call herself a fan, and then she could relax under the stairs and listen to their CD all day.
Simone decided to go to her literature class instead of retreating to the stairs first thing. She could pretend to be in attendance and still dream of Tarja and Nightwish while she sat in class. Another student read aloud and all Simone heard was Tarja’s voice rising above the sorrow of life. How many hours of painful practice did it take Tarja to sing like that? How many times did she want to surrender? The thoughts seeped from Simone’s mind like a waterfall cascading into a spring. Simone closed her mouth in fear that she would drool again if she daydreamed too much.
“Simone, you’re drooling!” Sara poked her.
“What!” Simone put her hand to her mouth, but she didn’t feel the dreaded wet spots.
“Hah, I knew that would get your attention.” Sara smiled and put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Actually you seem better…but a bit more distracted, which I’ll take as a good sign.”
“Oh Sara, I have the best news! I found the greatest band ever! They’re Finnish and they’re singer is an angel, I swear. It changed my life.” Simone squealed throwing her arms up in the air. Some guys walked by trying to hold in laughter. Sara glared. “Those guys are just jealous because their hair is greasy and mine is shiny.” Simone said.
Sara raised an eyebrow. “They changed your life over night?”
“It wasn’t just a night. It was an emotional voyage over a harsh river with sharks that would devour-”
“Oh Simone…with that imagination, I don’t know what you could do, but you could definitely be a singer and write your own lyrics.”
Simone stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Me? A singer?”
Sara yanked her out of the way of the hordes of students who shoved their way to their next class. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“I don’t know.” Simone’s head droped like a plant’s wilting leaf.
“If you didn’t why would you suddenly love Tarja so much?” Sara tilted her head.
“Wait, you know about Nightwish?” Simone snapped back to full attention.
“Uh huh, I’m actually surprised you only stumbled upon them last night. They’re cool. They have potential—like you!” She slapped Simone’s back. “Come on, we gotta go to English now. You don’t want to get another detention for being late, do you?”
“Did we have homework?” Simone asked through her teeth as they started walking again.
“We always do!”
“Better yet, I’m cutting class! I’ll see you later.” Simone skipped off pulling her CD player out as she fled.
Simone sat under a stair in an under populated corner of the school. Even if a teacher walked by, she could stand up and make it look like she was just heading from class to the bathroom. She put on her headphones and turned on the music. She crossed her legs and rested her head against the white wall. This was heaven; she could almost imagine herself floating through the sky on a cloud with angels singing beside her. So the teacher gave her detention yesterday; a detention she had to attend this afternoon, but since she promised her mother she’d go to the library with her, she couldn’t make the detention. Anyway if the teacher really wanted her to stay after, she would have mentioned it to her mother while she complained about her attention span and work ethic.
On her way home, Simone hurried—partially because she feared her English teacher would chase after her, lock her up with an English novel and force her to read until her mother came to yell at her for not coming right home and going to the library. The other part felt Nightwish’s energy leaking into her body through her ears and pumping through her veins into her entire body. A damp wind hit her face. Rain would come that night. She wondered if she could sneak out and sing in the rain as droplets smacked into her face. That is if she wasn’t grounded for the something or other she did between now and then…
“Hey, Mom!” Simone tossed her bag on the sofa next to her mother. “Are we going? We better be going because I’m supposed to be in detention right now.”
Mrs. Simons looked at her daughter. “What? Simone!”
“But you told me to come home-” Simone shrugged. “I’m going to grab a snack and then I’ll let you drag me wherever you want.”
“We’re going to the library so you can study…but go eat. You need to eat, Simone.”
Simone took a bite out of an apple and reentered the living room. “I think I want to be a singer, Mom.”
Mrs. Simons stuffed a stack of papers and a notebook into her purse. “You put a lot of thought into this?”
“Listen!” Simone held the apple between teeth and retrieved her CD player from the pile on the couch. “Billy gave me this CD yesterday, and it blew my mind! I mean seriously, I want to sing like this woman!” She thrust the CD player to her mother. Mrs. Simons took it with a slight smile and put on the headphones. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Mrs. Simons pinched her lips and looked from the CD player to her daughter’s glistening eyes. Simone clasped her hands at her chest, and she rocked from foot to foot. “It’s…different.”
“Exactly! That is why I love them. If I heard them next to a million other bands, I could pick them out!”
“Oh Simone if you really want to be a singer you have to see the subtle differences…”
Simone rolled her eyes and took another bite of apple. Was it too much to ask for a single day where she didn’t have to think about reality? She knew just because she said she wanted to sing like Tarja it wasn’t enough to make it come true. She saw less gleam in her mother’s eyes because her mother remembered all the other dreams she started off passionate about but then lost interest in as time passed. Maybe her mother thought the same thing would happen with singing, and that was why she pushed her hard in school.
“I’m serious. I know I don’t have the best attention-”
“Just stop, Simone. I understand you want to sing. I’ve known it since I walked by your room late in the evening and heard you sing—not the radio that you tried to cover your voice with but you.”
Simone blushed. She should have turned the volume higher, but at the time she couldn’t bring herself to do it; she liked hearing her voice more than the screechy, pop-voices on the radio. She thought about herself sitting on the carpeting in her bedroom close to the radio and singing along even if she didn’t know the words. If she listened long enough, she would know the words eventually. She remembered singing until her throat hurt, and then lying on her back staring at the cycling pretending it was an audience who wanted to hear her sing. When she drifted into sleep, the imagine became real and for that moment, she was a star. Reality interrupted though and left Simone with a painful throat and a million unreached desires. Why was she able to push herself when it was only her listening? Simone swallowed; she felt a lump in her throat.
Simone imagined sitting in a grassy field leaning back and watching clouds float above. They passed out of her arm’s reach—white cottony patches gliding over the smooth blue sky. She wanted to float beside them; she wanted others to watch her from the ground and point up because the sight of her marveled them. In her reoccurring dream, people praised her voice; people loved her. Right now, she couldn’t praise her own voice; she couldn’t be certain that she even liked herself. But she still looked up because she knew she had to go there—to the serene sky. She would practice so she could sing higher, ascend to angelic heights.
Title: Solid Ground
Simone arrived at the library about a half an hour after the final school bell rang. A conversation with her best friend and some loitering at her locker while she searched for a journal she thought she threw in there a few weeks ago but couldn’t seem to find prevented her from arriving sooner. Simone stomped up the metal stairs. She wanted to visit her friends at the café and discuss new music, singing and everything else she loved, but instead homework forced her into a secluded corner of the library. Simone slid behind a desk facing the window and pulled out her notebook. She opened it to a clean page, folded her fingers together and stretched them toward the window pane, grey clouds and barren trees outside. The assignment she needed to complete was a memoir, which she hoped wouldn’t present much of a challenge because it didn’t require research or reading any long books. She snatched a pencil from another pocket of her bag and pressed it to the notebook. That family vacation when she was 10 would make an interesting story if she remembered any details more specific than lying on the beach drawing lines and circles in the sand with the stick that had been in arm’s range as she bask. A picture of that memory decorated one of the window ledges in her living room back home. Simone blinked; she had been pressing the pencil on the paper hard enough to leave a centimeter wide, shiny layer of lead. She erased it, but the excess lead smudged staining the pink eraser and clouding up the blue lines that cut across the page. The camping trip she went on with her aunt, mother and sister seemed like a valid topic too, but the story wouldn’t contain much intrigue since she got sick the first night they slept in their rickety, semi-moldy tent under the half barren boughs of old evergreens and had to go home with her father in the morning. She nibbled on the eraser, which still radiated heat from the fast rubbing. Nothing essay worthy happened to her in the fifteen years she had been alive. She tapped pencil on the paper and watched the eraser flop. It hung from the metal by a few white, rubbery strands. She had thought a memoir would require much less work than a research paper so she had slipped the assignment underneath some other papers in her folder and didn’t return her focus to it until now. She wouldn’t have had remembered even to attempt the work if she hadn’t made a point of telling her mother she would come home late that night since she wanted to hang-out with friends after school. The conversation hung in the emptiness of her mind now and Simone wondered if she dared write it into her essay.
“I won’t be home right after school today, alright? I’m going to the café…” Simone stood in front of the screen door chewing on a granola bar.
“What, honey?” Her mother scribbled on a stack of papers in the kitchen. The morning had been quite typical for mother and daughter: Simone woke up to the screeching of her alarm clock, knocked over a glass of water on her bedside table before hitting the sleep button and then finally burrowed back under her down comforter. The alarm clock blared again, but Simone had safely escaped back into her world of dreams. There she stood under a spot light on a stage staring over the heads of row after row of cheering fans. Her hair glistened in the blinding artificial light and her voice carried through-out the entire room. She heard her voice over the screaming people, over the banging of drums. She wasn’t attached to any microphone cords or stuck in a single spot on stage. She drifted on the rise and fall of her voice, the glistening eyes of her adoring fans and the energy—the electricity that sparked between her, the song and every other person in the room. The scene was a drug to the sleeping Simone; it pulsed through her veins as she slept and during the day while she sat idle in class watching nothingness in the distance while she daydreamed.
“Does the alarm clock mean nothing to you, Simone!” Simone twitched; she grabbed at the pillow and rolled onto her stomach, but her mother flipped the alarm off and janked the blanket off her.
“No, one more song, please…I practiced so hard for this moment…”
“Simone! Seriously wake up now. Why must we go through this same laziness every morning?”
“Because…you…because you insist on waking me up. I’m happy in my dreams…” She rubbed her eyes. Her face was sticky. She felt around the pillow for something sticky, but found a few wet spots instead.
“Ewww!” Simone shot into a sitting position and shuddered. Her arms went limp at her side and slowly she let her gaze wander from the drool marks to her mother’s face. The woman crossed her arms at her chest and glared at her daughter, but as Simone met her eyes, a faint smile pinched the end of her scowl.
“I’m coming. I’m coming. I’ll be downstairs in a moment…” Simone tossed her comforter back into a pile on her bed and stretched. The time was a little before 7:30. She had about a half an hour to wash-up, get dressed and arrive in her seat at school. She grabbed a plain cream long-sleeve shirt and a pair of green kakis from atop her over-flowing drawer and scurried into the bathroom.
Downstairs Simone’s mother busily searched through her pile of papers. Simone hurried past her to grab a snack before leaving. Stacks of paper cluttered the table and her mother rifled through these. She rose her eyebrow as she left, pretending the screen door was a stage curtain and she about to make her debut.
“Aren’t you even going to say goodbye, honey?”
“Hmmm?” Simone chewed a month full of almonds and cereal flakes. In her mind, song lyrics filled her month instead of the quick breakfast. She pressed her palm to the door wanting to at least get a breath of fresh air.
“Simone, are you even listening to me?” Her mother tapped a vase on the table. Simone snapped around to face her mother who was barely visible behind the clutter.
“Yeah, sorry…I’m just daydreaming. I love you, mom. I’ll see you later. Oh wait…” Simone explained her plan to visit the café after school.
“As long as you finish your homework, Simone.” Mrs. Simons stuck a paper clip over the pile of pages.
“Of course!” Simone smirked. She didn’t have any homework, and if she did, she could finish it in another class. The only class she had trouble multi-tasking in was English because the teacher kept a sharp eye on her. She froze. Yesterday the teacher mentioned something about an essay’s due date approaching soon.
Simone stared at the still blank paper. If she had been writing that mental tangent down, she would have almost completed her essay, but embarrassment would have prevented her from handing it in anyway. The English teacher already thought she was slightly flakey—admitting to drooling in her sleep would seal her into a semester of strange look and silent judgments that would probably affect her grade. Maybe she should cut her loses and play the crazy card…
Simone massaged her temples. Pretending to have forgotten the essay and meeting up with her friends at the cafe would have caused her less pain, but the nagging face her mother always gave her when she said she had no homework haunted Simone’s mind. By early evening, such worries and feelings of inferiority plagued her mind. Why couldn’t morning last all day? Or better yet, why couldn’t she sleep, dream, all day?
Through the window in front of her, Simone saw the sun setting. The horizon glowed goldenrod behind the budding trees. If she wasn’t sitting here not working on homework, she could be perched on a low hanging limb singing to the wispy clouds and the birds. She closed her notebook. It looked like she would fail despite the sacrifice of the afternoon. Maybe if she left now and hurried she could make it home in time for dinner.
As Simone trudged down the street, she decided she didn’t want to make it home for dinner. The conversation would resemble that morning’s in predictability and nagging expect now her father would join in and she wouldn’t have the recent memory of her dreams to save her. She stopped on the sidewalk and watched a squirrel run over the light-green grass that still had not yet fully recovered from the cold freezing and ice smothering it. She sighed. Why was it too much to ask to simply run free? Why did she have to wake up when the clock buzzed, go from class to class when the bells rang and then return home to her parents commanding her to either do homework or chores? She thought of her friends at the café. They sat up in the loft smoking and playing burnt CDs on a portable CD-player whose volume went up high enough to be audible to the entire room through headphones. Simone placed her backpack on the ground and sat on it leaning back against the tree the squirrel had scurried up. If she rested here until nightfall, no one would notice her immediate absence. Her parents would take the silence at home to mean that she went wandering in her mind again and by the time they did come looking, the tree would have absorbed her. Her body would spiral down with the roots into the moist soil where she could soak up the nutrients, the wisdom left by generations of trees. She envied the tree; as wind rustled through its blossoming branches above, it sang and it possessed a beautiful voice. The birds flocked to perch on the branches, to listen to the evening lullaby.
Simone opened her mouth then quickly shut it. What would she sing about? That afternoon more than proved she had nothing to say. She looked at the grey sky; even the vibrant blue went dark eventually. Tears pricked at her drooping eyes. She wanted to leap to her feet and run home, run to her mother, bury her head in her shoulder and through her sobs explain that she was a failure. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. The image, the comfort was another fantasy.
When she eventually did return home, her mother was once again in the kitchen—clattering pots and pans this time. Simone sulked past hoping to make it upstairs without an interrogation, but she heard the stove click on and her mother’s footstep following her. Simone smiled before letting her mother see her face.
“Did you have a good day at school, Simone dear?”
“Yeah, I guess. It wasn’t awful…just school…” Simone fidgeted with a keychain hanging from the strap of her bag. Her head really hurt now.
“You seem sad. Are you sad?” Her mother placed her hands on her hips and Simone looked away, let her eyes move toward her room where she could at least listen to music and forget about the horrors of the day. Her mother insisted on hugging her now. Simone stood in the same place arms at her side and blinked back tears. Yesterday she had felt better; she had come home after spending the afternoon at her best friend’s house and sang the rest of the night away. She had sung under the music the radio played until her throat hurt, until opening her mouth again burned as if she drank acidic orange juice with a raw throat. Then she collapsed into bed early and fell right to sleep warm and comfort from spending so much time in her happy place. Two nights ago had been happier still. She had her singing lesson that night—a whole hour where the teacher encouraged her to sing, taught her how to raise her voice without causing great pain.
But for now, she stood in the hallway on the plush white carpeting in her orange polka-dot socks. Her mother held her tightly as if the embrace could take Simone’s supposed pain away, but it didn’t; it couldn’t. Her mother didn’t know she was a failure. She would yell at Simone and lecture her from behind disappointed eyes when she found out Simone hadn’t done her homework again.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess it has been a long day..”
“But you were with your friends, weren’t you? And those people, your music always make you happy, right?”
“Oh…right…” Simone’s vision clouded. She had told her mother she was going to the café before she remembered she had work to finish. “Yeah!”
“Simone, you aren’t lying to me are you? Have you finished your homework?” Her mother loosened her grip, pulled away and looked Simone up and down.
“Yeah, Mom. I didn’t have any homework so don’t worry…” She bit her lip. She faded deeper into the ground with every word; her mind lingered with the tree roots winding around until they knotted and made no sense. Since it lied beneath the surface, her mother couldn’t see her heart. She imagined her mother saw her semi-lifeless form and the weak smile. Maybe she could feign illness and avoid the shame of another missed assignment…
“Do you feel alright, honey? I’m getting worried…”
“Yes…no! Uhhhh…don’t worry, I’m fine. Maybe I’ll just go lie down.”
“That’s not reassuring. We’re going to eat soon so get ready, okay?”
Simone nodded and went upstairs to her room where she left her bag on the bed and flopped down next to it. The light wasn’t on shadows draped the room. With her eyes shut, her head almost didn’t hurt; she could almost picture herself singing again. But this time as the curtains rose, her voice cracked and her voice was little more than a whistle. People booed; her sister knocked on the door and yelled at her.
“Come on, Simone!”
Simone wanted to punch the door and hold it closed. Then she wanted to collapse against it and cry, but the idea made her throat hurt, a lot more than she could bear so she hung her head and followed her sister to the dining room. Dinner didn’t hurt as much as she feared. Actually the family ignored her for the most part. Her mother dominated the conversation with talk of her quest to finish grading the work she assigned her third year students over spring break two weeks ago. Simone smirked a bit; she was thankful she went to another school than her mother taught at. Otherwise she’s have twice the work and the entire faculty breathing down her neck to excel when all she wanted to flee the classroom and sit under the stairs listening to her CD player.
“I’m going to go upstairs now…” Simone dropped her fork and stood up. She had taken only a few fork loads of food and she had eaten less than half, but now she imagined herself crawling up in a ball with music soothing her. She left her dish in the sink. The clatter of metal on ceramic covered her parent’s answer, if they offered one at all. She didn’t look back. They’d talk once they knew she shut her door.
The walls of her room were painted a vibrant orange—a color she chose because the tulips that bloomed beneath her window, along their driveway and in the park by the birdbath this time of year burst with that same orange. She smiled when she saw the flowers, and she tried to smile when she entered her room. Today despite the warm-colored walls, she shivered and had to slink under her blanket to get warm. She fumbled through her bag until her hand hit her CD player, pulled it out and put on the headphones. The CD that played her friend Billy, who worked at the café, burned for her. It was a mix of radio edits of popular songs and demos of unknown bands. Maybe she really did live under the tree roots because none of these songs sounded familiar; none summoned a name or picture into her mind. The songs blended together, sounded the same. She had heard them all a million times before; she had to have, but the voices sounded generic to her…or something like that. She practiced her own singing under these voices; her teacher used these songs as examples for how to properly or not properly sing. But the music failed in becoming anything more than voices and melodies. She pulled her knees to her chest. Her thoughts twirled through the dark again like the roots in the soil. It hurt. She pressed stop and rolled onto her back. The ceiling was white—white like the clouds and her neighbor’s fence. She moaned. If her mother crept into the room now, she would tell her everything, but would blame her failure on the boredom of her life. She couldn’t help if everything around her was white and lacking in originality. She pulled a corner of blanket closer; even she could see the holes in that excuse.
Simone drifted through her mind, floating along on the current of her memory. Memories flooded this dream world and crashed into her, eroding her will to stay above the surface. Simone lay still. Movement wore her out so she watched the past she had attempted to fish through earlier stream past her. She sat on the beach with bare-feet, wearing a shiny orange swimsuit and a towel hanging over her shoulders. She wrote her name in the sand with a piece of driftwood the tide had brought in. Since she had been sitting there since lunch, she had seen the tide rise and fall, had seen her sister frolic in the water as the waves splashed her, but Simone stayed where she sat. She heard her parents call out to her, but she focused instead on the voice of the ocean—the lapping of the waves on the grainy sand particles, the hollow whooshing that came from all directions. Birds flew across the sun cawing to each other, sharing their happy songs that sunny afternoon. She brought her knees closer to her body so she could sing into her skin so no one would hear her soft voice. She sang words that flowed through her heart and the song took the form of the birds, the tiny shells that submerged almost entirely in the sand, the laughter of her family, the waves glistening the in the hot sun, the driftwood she loosely grasped and herself sitting in the sand with a brave smile.
Then Simone saw the memory of the camping trip. She saw herself carrying a bag that was nearly as tall as her on her back. It held the tent. She had insisted upon carrying it to prove her strength, but as they approached the camp ground, the weight and the smell of camp fires in the distance struck her head hurting it, making her dizzy. She remembered lying down and resting her head on her mother’s rolled up sleeping bag. She saw the sky turn to twilight through the layers of pine tree branches and watched a hawk fly from its nest. She thought she was dreaming as an owl hooted, her aunt threw logs onto a crackling blaze some feet from where she lay and her sister pranced around showing off the flowers she had picked. Maybe she was delirious because she saw herself and an owl in a tree singing to the setting sun. Their song described the shadows these trees cast in the dim light, their dark pinecones that hung still in the light breeze and the people below roasting marshmallows or heating cans of beans. When she tuned back into reality, her mother poured water into her mouth from a metal cup and sweat coated her skin. She wanted to sit up, but her body felt heavier than the trees she watched. She knew she had been singing because her throat ached. It burned the way it did to this day when she sang too high or for too long and when she attempted to control her voice.
Simone heard her mother scream at her; she felt the blanket tugged off of her. Morning couldn’t have come. She didn’t hear the screeching alarm; she didn’t feel awake.
“Simone! Why must be go through this every day?
Simone didn’t answer. She rolled out of bed and grabbed a red sweater and jeans from her drawer. Her mother watched her silent motions, but didn’t say anything else.
In the bathroom, Simone stared at her reflection. Strands of hair stuck out in all directions. She felt waves disturbing the desired straightness of the back of her head. When had she last washed her hair? She sighed. Forget her hair; her head wasn’t even on straight. She had slept in her clothes, but she couldn’t remember why she had been so tired that she couldn’t change. Maybe she was sick or delirious. Maybe she shouldn’t go to school, but she heard she mother breathing in the other room. As she changed, she thought of her mother grading papers in the morning before going to work and working on her lesson plans while sitting in the arm chair and listening to classical music in the evening. Her mother knew dedication and she knew when Simone lacked it. She pulled her jeans on without unbuttoning them; that habit she had developed about the same time, she had become so unfocused she forgot to eat. Yet as she looked in the mirror, she didn’t think she lost any weight. She still noticed how fat her face was—the puffiness that bulged right below her eyes and the way her chin blended into her neck so they both resembled a blob. The sweater clung to her upper arms, and Simone had to look away. With a hung head and another sigh, she left the bathroom and went downstairs.
Her mother sat at her usual spot at the table behind her daily planner. Simone gave her a slight smile and sat down across the table.
“How do you feel this morning?” Her mother smiled back closing the book and picking up a knife. Simone shrugged. Her eyes roamed around the kitchen to the toaster. The room smelled of toast, which made her stomach growl and her head hurt. When was the last time she had eaten? She asked herself and was food worth walking across the kitchen for?
“You must have been tired to have fallen asleep so early. I’ll take that as a good sign that you at working hard…at something.” Mrs. Simons spread butter on the toast. When Simone didn’t answer, she looked up to see Simone eyeing the bread. “You want it?” Simone nodded quickly. Left to her own devices, she might not have gotten up to toast bread.
“Yeah…sorry…” She took the bread from her mother and bite into it.
“Don’t worry about it. That’s what I’m here for…I’m a bit worried about you though. You look so pale.”
Simone took another bite before swallowing. Her mother’s eyes burned into her. They shouldn’t burn like they did. Love and concern filled her gaze, but to Simone, they were sharpened knives slicing her open and making her inner’s burn with the truth that each day she let her mother down more and more.
“I’m sorry. I’m going to leave now. I’ll see you later. Thanks for the toast.”
“Alright, sweetie. Be good.”
Simone put her hand to her forehead as she left. What was this good her mother spoke of?
In her English class, Simone sat in the back row resting her head on her desk while the other students chattered and passed around their essays. Her earlier classes had cheered her up a bit. Literature had been her favorite since she first learned to read. Too bad it was her first class that year and thus over quickly giving her nothing to look forward to during the day. Worry controlled her mind while she tried to keep up with the steps her math teacher wrote on the board and while she jogged around the gym during physical education. All the dread came to a head in this classroom, in this class that she considered pointless. She felt fluent in English. The school system forced them to start learning the other language about the same time native English speakers learned to read. She saw it as an extra burden especially since her mother who had taught English for a few years in a grade school spoke the language to her at home for as long as she could remember. Anyway she spoke English with a couple of the guys at the café who were native to Sweden and Spain and didn’t quite have a great mastery of Dutch. She would benefit much more if the school focused on other things than writing essays and reading classic English novels.
“Hey, Simone! You look tired. Were you up all night finishing your homework again?” Her best friend Sara sat in the seat next to her.
“Nope, didn’t even try this time.” Simone clutched the side of her desk bracing herself for Sara’s reply. Sara scored high grades, was a model student and mostly considered perfect except for her friendship with Simone who all the teachers beside the music teacher saw as a slacker. Simone actually paid attention in her music class. Although they discussed mostly theory and dead composers, Simone cared because the subject at least struck a chord of relevance to her. As she sat in the class, which was after lunch so she was usually kind of drowsy, Simone composed words to the melodies the teachers played and imagined herself singing her invented lyrics to the whole class who clapped and praised her until her face went red and her whole body went limp with joy.
“What?” Sara slammed her book on the desk.
“Yeah. I have a normal life. No one wants to read a memoir about it.”
“Make something up? You are always scribbling down lyrics so don’t give me the excuse that you don’t have an imagination. Or why didn’t you just write about how much you want to be a singer?”
Simone winced. That would have been a brave essay to write. She liked to avoid using the words “singer” and “want” in the same sentence. That simple sentence Sara just said seemed so binding. She wanted to be a singer. No, she wanted to dream about singing and sing in her dreams.
“Don’t be silly. I don’t want to be a singer. I just…I just like music. It’s a good distraction…”
“But you take singing lessons, don’t you? Don’t you sing under the radio, sing under your breath in music class?” Sara grinned and folded her hands on her desk.
“I like singing, okay? But I could never be a singer!” Simone said louder than their previous conversation. A few other students turned around and stared. Simone flushed; her voice sounded shrill and gravely when she spoke. She could never be a singer; everyone would be laugh like they were now, and she would be a disgrace to herself…to her mother.
When the teacher collected their homework, Simone didn’t pass an essay up. She hadn’t completed the reading assignment either so she sat there staring at the words on the page willing her mind back to her last singing lesson so she could remember if the teacher had praised or just patronized her.
She had arrived at the little storefront studio about five minutes before her scheduled lesson. She walked the kilometer between her house and there briskly while listening the CD that had the songs she was practicing on it. The radio frequently played the songs, and she had no idea why she sought to imitate these singers, but she did. Maybe she just didn’t have anything better to give her teacher as an example of music she liked when she asked. The problem remained that she liked all music; she could listen to any CD her friends burned her endlessly as long as she could feel the power of guitars and drums, feel the emotion seeping from the singer’s heart. She wanted to explode, to run in circles when she heard singing and the bombastic melodies.
“Hello, Simone.” The teacher said as she opened the door to let the student in the lesson before her out. Simone fell too deep in her thoughts to notice the cold outside as walked or the voice of this other young singer. She hopped up and ran into the room. As the teacher shut the door, she nibbled at her nails.
“I’ve been practicing! But my throat still hurts when I sing…”
The teacher chuckled. “Let’s not get a head of ourselves. Why don’t you warm up a bit and show me how you’re doing?”
Simone sang up the scales vocalizing the sounds in the lower range comfortably, but feeling the stretch in her vocal cords as she climbed higher. She could stand there—back straight with her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her for a long time—as long as her attention span and lung capacity would allow without feeling much pain as long as she stayed within a certain range. This exercise resembled weight training: the weight lifter could lift light weights until boredom and fatigue set in, but he’d have a much longer window to lift than if he trained with weights out of his comfort range. Simone pictured him huffing and groaning as he benched twice his normal amount; his muscles bulged and sweat rippled along his skin. Her voice cracked as she went higher. The singers on the radio rarely sang high, and they were all in excellent shape. Why sweat like that? Why push herself? Her throat burned. Somewhere down there, her vocal cords stretched like a rubber band. She feared the rubber band would snap so she let her voice came down and ran back into her comfort zone.
“You’ve been practicing? The songs we listened to last week or something else?” The teacher made no further comment on Simone’s warm-up. The last few lessons played out the same way, and when at first the teacher suggested Simone reach for that next step, Simone’s face went white and fear flooded her eyes so the teacher dropped the subject.
“Yeah, the ones on that CD. I can make it through most of the songs now without losing my breath or coughing.”
“Let’s hear.”
Simone sang for the teacher whose face didn’t change from her blank expression through-out the whole song. Her eyes studied Simone, but didn’t glisten the way Simone’s did when she finished.
“You sound flat. You have the melody and the energy down, but you aren’t hitting the full range of notes. You’re not stretching your voice; you’re not pushing yourself to your limit.”
“Simone, are you listening?”
Simone blinked. The voice in her heard blurred with her English teacher’s voice. She stared harder at the page—harder than the teacher, probably the whole class stared at her. She wanted to say “no, I’m not listening. I don’t care. I only care about why my voice isn’t improving,” but she didn’t.
“I didn’t think so. I’m sorry my lesson isn’t exciting enough for you and I can only hope it will hold your attention better in detention than does it now.”
Simone read a sentence on the page she had been staring at. The teacher kept her after so much she had become almost thankful since detention forced Simone to read or complete work, and this time when she had to study saved her from actually failing.
“Would it be so hard to focus just for a few hours every day to appease teachers?” Sara asked as they walked toward the cafeteria.
Simone stopped. “Yes, it would! It would, Sara. What does everyone want from me? I’m happy where I am.”
“Are you really happy now, Simone?”
After school Simone walked to the café. She had to forget her life for a few hours. The café sat in the middle of a crowded street in a row of brightly painted orange, yellow and red buildings. The building she entered was brick and should have stuck out more, but most eyes passed over it since strange smells and sounds wafted through the continually opened windows. The chef enjoyed burning food, but it still tasted great, and at least three different songs played at a time. A stay here tested one’s selective attention and courage to look past the surface. Simone first discovered the place last fall while roaming around the streets to calm down after another fight with her mother about her grades. It was a Saturday afternoon and Simone didn’t get a chance to eat before running off so she was quite hungry when she walked by. She heard music through the dancing curtains so she walked in and ordered something only to find the workers more interested in interrogating her about her favorite musicians than serving her. She had been fairly ignorant when it came to popular music than so listened intently to the intense debates between the various characters sitting at the bar.
Today Simone, who was now a regular, was greeted by Billy, the bartender who leaned against a wooden beam polishes glasses. “Howdy!” He said nodding toward her.
“Hey.” Simone slumped onto a stool.
“Rough day, kid?”
“Always is…” Simone put her elbows on the tables and looked at to Billy. He was the café owner’s little brother who worked here since his own high school days. He tried going to college for music but claimed to not have had it in him so he worked her and taught guitar on the side.
“Life sucks, but hell, we still have music.” He pushed the joint he was smoking to the side of his mouth and blew smoke into the air around him.
“Yeah…it does…” Dusty bottles lines the shelves behind the bar. Billy once said they served merely as decorations and anything really valuable they stored under the counter. She thought about asking…
“Don’t be so gloom. Here!” He offered the joint with raised eyebrows and a grin.
Simone shook her head. “If I came home high, my mother would kill me, guaranteed. It’s bad enough I smell like smoke…”
“They that hard on you?” He took another puff and rubbed his thumb over his goatee.
“Not really, I guess. She loves me fine and all, but I’m a screw-up, and everyone wants to correct me.”
Billy rolled his eyes and offered the joint again. “You sure? You wouldn’t be getting high—just going back to normal.”
“When I came home wasted over winter break, mom grounded me for a month. I couldn’t survive sitting in my house for a month now-a-days…”
“And here I was at least going to give you a drink.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know if I could keep anything down. I feel sick. I want to be sick. Maybe that would explain what is wrong with me…”
Another costumer walked into the café. The door swung behind him a few times before coming to a halt. The man sat a few stools from Simone; he smoke too and asked for the usual. Simone turned around. The café was mostly empty; it was too early for the real patrons who worked during the afternoon. Battered green chairs surrounded pine tables and abstract paintings hung on the walls. She felt like those paintings—every color, emotion within her streaked across the canvas for everyone to judge. She rubbed her eyes. Haze blurred her vision. If she wasn’t in the mood for her favorite stool at her favorite café with Billy, she wasn’t in the mood for anything so she stood up and went to leave.
“Hey, Simone?” Billy called. His voice echoed through the room—less gruff than previously. “It’ll get better. I promise.”
Simone smiled. “Better is sitting here, but my head hurts. My stomach feels like it is rejecting the nothingness I ate at lunch. Better is singing, but hell if-”
“Oh that reminds me! I got a new CD for you. Hopefully, it’ll help you chill out cuz you’re more restless than a dog in heat.” Billy tosses Simone a CD.
“Who is it?” Simone caught it and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.
“Nightwish, you’ll like them. They have a chick singer.” Billy then turned to refill his costumer’s glass so Simone left. The clean air outside hit her hard like a sponge trying to cleanse away all the dirt that caught in all the cracks in Simone’s surface. Even Billy couldn’t cheer her up; she thought of chucking the CD. Music would bring her more insult and inferiority.
When Simone walked through her front door, silence pervaded the home. She stopped to take her shoes off and look around. The clock struck 6:30; Simone heard it tick. Slowly the second hand moved around past the twelve heading toward the three. No one told her anything about not coming home that evening, but then she remembered she hadn’t told her mother she wouldn’t come home directly after class either. She might have headed straight home if the day hadn’t made her want to run away, to do anything but see her bedroom walls or her mother.
“There you are.”
Simone tensed. Her mother came from the back room carrying a stack of towels. She paused in front of Simone and frowned. “We need to talk, Simone.”
“I haven’t done anything! I’m tired. I’m going upstairs so well, I’ll see you later…”
Mrs. Simons shook her head. “No, Simone. No more excuses. I’ll give you five minutes to put your stuff away, but after that you better be sitting down here ready to explain yourself.”
Simone kept her gaze on the carpeting as she climbed the stairs. At times like these, the stairs were more of a walk of shame than anything. She remembered all the times she had been exiled to her room for talking back or fighting with her sister. Those times she never wanted to go back downstairs. Maybe her mother would kick her out and she would finally have the freedom she sought—if freedom was that illusive thing she desired these days. Even if she had a whole lot of time to practice singing, she’d still be running in place, running on some flat surface that never rose above the fog or the winding roads. Above the chaos, she could trace a pattern in her life, but here—here she spiraled farther and farther from peace, farther from beauty. Simone tossed her bag on the floor and dropped her jacket over it. She walked to the window and looked at the home next door and the little patch of sky through the glass. If a tree grew within range, she would have jumped free and ran into the woods or to the park so wouldn’t have to face her mother. But she had no such luck and she knew her mother would follow her up if she didn’t obey so she flipped the light off and once again took the walk of shame.
“I forgot to tell you I was going to stay-” Simone started.
“I don’t understand, Simone. What is going through your mind right now?”
“Nothing.” She fell into the sofa preparing herself to stay awhile.
“Really?”
“What do you want me to say? I hate you? I wish you would leave me alone?”
“Well, is that how you feel?”
Simone put her head back against the cushion and squinted at the track lighting on the ceiling. She didn’t know where to begin explaining her thoughts. They’d come out a torrential downpour bleeding the clarity from the situation like rain on ink—leaving her mind blank, but the air between them a mess. “Not really…I don’t know.”
“Simone, have I not told you enough times that education is important, that is does matter whether you sit in class twiddling your thumbs or actively listening?”
“You have. It’s not your fault I’m a failure, alright so never mind me.”
Mrs. Simons sat next to her daughter and took her hand. “You are not a failure, honey. It’s rough, I know. I work with teenagers all day. I see what you go through.” She smiled at her daughter, but Simone didn’t meet her eyes.
“Why aren’t you mad at me? I’m going to fail English, you know, because I haven’t turned in most of the assignments especially not the important ones. I get written up at least once a week for sleeping. Did you know that?”
“Yes, your teacher called me this afternoon and told me you weren’t paying attention and then didn’t hand in a memoir, but I do appreciate your honesty all the same.” She squeezed Simone’s shoulder, but Simone pulled away.
“Are we done?” Simone stood up and took notice of the blinds behind fulfilling their purpose by hanging in front of the window. She yawned.
“Go, but I’m here if you need something, if there is anything I could help you with.”
Simone fled. She closed her eyes as she lay under the sheets on her bed curled up in a tight ball. Why must her mother be so nice? She deserved to be yelled at, to be told to work harder, to figure what she wanted and work toward it instead of imagining she had an enchanting voice like the birds or the wind. Warm tears welled in her eyes, and they streamed down her face and puddled on the pillow where she had drooled last night. She saw herself sitting in a rainstorm with sheet after sheet of water drowning her, and she melted into the mud and dripped down into the ditch.
In her dreams, Simone quivered behind the curtain. Beyond it, people cheered waiting to see her face, to hear her voice. But she had no voice. She had rehearsed in the changing room that had her name on scribbled on the door and discovered only whimpers escaped her throat. She drank bottle after bottle of water, but her voice was still rough and scratchy like the towel she tried to wipe her eyes with. Her lungs were a cyclone sucking in all the air and excitement around her. Soon like the cyclone she would bring destruction and disappointment to the fans who came to watch her perform. Slowly the curtain crept up. The crowd could see her shoes now; they knew she existed. She tossed her head from side to side searching for an exit. Billy stood under an exit sign giving her a thumbs-up. Her throat burned like an angry wildfire burning the homes people spent so long to build and the dreams they had always labored toward. The curtain revealed her upper body and she heard the crashing of the drums and the swift guitar riffs that cued her to strut on stage and sing. She did sing, but she heard nothing. She heard booing and screaming, and the world shook. The black spots consumed her vision.
Simone slapped her hand over her mouth so her mother wouldn’t hear her screaming and come running. The sheets clung to her sweaty body and followed her as she rolled over to see the clock. It was 10:47 now. They didn’t wake her to eat; she slept two evenings away. She wondered if any sanity existed within her at all anymore.
She cast the blanket aside and tried to fall asleep lying on her back. She couldn’t so her flipped onto her stomach. It ached to lie on in that position. She ate only toast that morning. Soon she would shrivel away and would no longer have to worry about not having a voice because she wouldn’t have any psychical form either. Billy gave her a new CD that afternoon. Music was a relentless jabbing now, but he said she would like it. She claimed to like all music, but only music with some memorial trait stuck out in her mind. Every band, every voice she heard in the last week blurred into one, and she couldn’t imitate even that. Simone dragged herself out of bed to dig the CD from her jacket pocket.
The CD player beeped and hummed as it prepared to play the CD. She watched the word “loading” flash on the screen. Then she jumped because the volume blared too loud; the headphones weren’t in her ears, and she could hear the melody bouncing back and forth from the keyboards to the drums, from the guitar back to the drums. She grabbed the earphones so she could pop them into her ears, but the song’s vocal part started first. Her hand hovered inches from her ears, and she didn’t move another muscle. She gaped—the air caught mid-breath. Then Simone crumpled onto her bed. She sank down into the comforter listening to the woman singing. She lay still on her side as the song changed. Her pulse slowed down again and a cool breeze washed over her.
In this music, she heard her fantasies. They floated along with the crashing drums and the energetic keyboard ready for the singer to pluck and actualize with her angelic voice that soared above the world like bird that saw the treetops and the silver clouds. Those forces blended together to create this haunting song. The singer’s voice represented a world Simone never dreamed existed, or if it did, only a select few could enter. Her vocal cords didn’t snap as she sang higher. She could her voice, pilot the vessel that glided above the thunderous melodies the band played. She had no idea what lyrics the singer sang, but they seemed to patch Simone’s cracked surface. She felt wide awake like she could actually think—maybe even practice singing or study again. But she wouldn’t waste this moment on either of those things; she planned on lying here until she passed out listening to Nightwish and imagining she had a voice half as wonderful as their singer’s. She hit the ‘repeat all’ button and crawled under her blanket.
Simone awoke without an alarm or her mother yelling at her in the morning. Light streamed through the curtains and hit her face. She popped up feeling the heaviness of the CD player tug her back down. The music had stopped; the batteries must have died. She jumped out of bed and ran to her desk to get new batteries from the drawer. She had to know if she dreamed that music. Even if it wasn’t real, it would mark a record wonderful for her dreams. She tore the old batteries from the battery holder and shoved two new ones into the slots. After pressing play, her heart stopped again. In a way, she wasn’t that surprised. Her mind couldn’t invent something this magical.
As Simone showered she hummed the tune in her head. She heard it clearly, as if she brought the CD player into the shower. Since she listened to the CD all night, Simone decided the repetition had engrained it into her mind and thus made it apart of her brain. She scrubbed at her scalp trying to rub away three days of grime. The hot water opened her pores, left her skin a light pink. The flowery smell of her shampoo soothed her senses as if she was frolicking in a field of daisies, rolling around and feeling the dew on her exposed flesh. The flow of water that rinsed the soap and dirt from Simone carried her off like that singer’s voice, and she couldn’t help but smile.
Simone dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and wrapped her long, wet hair in the towel after drying her body off. She hopped down the stairs feeling the carpet through her bare toes. Her mother sat in the kitchen as always sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. She peeked over the top of the paper as Simone entered.
“Hey!” Simone waved.
Mrs. Simons frowned and folded the paper. “Are you feeling better?”
“I wasn’t feeling well? Oh…Yeah, I think…sorry…” Simone opened the cabinet door and took out a box of cereal.
“Simone, this is serious. I’m worried about you.”
“I know.” Simone poured the cereal into a bowl and grabbed the milk carton from the fridge.
“I want you to come home after school today. I have some tests to grade so I’m going to go sit at the library for awhile after picking up your sister. You should come. It’ll give you a chance to get some school work done.” Mrs. Simons stood up as Simone’s sister skipped in reading aloud from a battered chapter book. Simone crunched on the cereal. She wanted to ask “do I have to?” but decided her mother’s distraction meant “yes, you don’t have a choice, Simone.” Simone listened to her sister laugh. Back when she was twelve, she didn’t laugh like that, or when she did, she was hanging-out with Sara mocking anything and everything they passed. A few years before she was twelve, she first fell in love with music. She joined the school band, but wasn’t the best so she quit and became a spectator in the world of music. But it haunted her to see woman singing—especially those who she thought didn’t have a great voice. She felt she could do better so she started singing in the shower, as she listened to the radio and when she stood alone watching the world go by. She begged her parents to let her take singing lessons because her throat ached after singing, but the lessons only brought more pain. Simone took a last bite of cereal. She had to find out more about Nightwish. She dumped the dirty bowl in the sink and ran upstairs to finish getting ready for school.
Simone had run down the street to school so she arrivde twenty minutes early—early enough to slip into the computer lab and Google search “Nightwish.” She tapped her fingers on the desk as the page loaded. She felt a great force building up behind her ready to charge forward and wash the remaining dirt from her mind. Once she knew this band’s story she could truly call herself a fan, and then she could relax under the stairs and listen to their CD all day.
Simone decided to go to her literature class instead of retreating to the stairs first thing. She could pretend to be in attendance and still dream of Tarja and Nightwish while she sat in class. Another student read aloud and all Simone heard was Tarja’s voice rising above the sorrow of life. How many hours of painful practice did it take Tarja to sing like that? How many times did she want to surrender? The thoughts seeped from Simone’s mind like a waterfall cascading into a spring. Simone closed her mouth in fear that she would drool again if she daydreamed too much.
“Simone, you’re drooling!” Sara poked her.
“What!” Simone put her hand to her mouth, but she didn’t feel the dreaded wet spots.
“Hah, I knew that would get your attention.” Sara smiled and put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Actually you seem better…but a bit more distracted, which I’ll take as a good sign.”
“Oh Sara, I have the best news! I found the greatest band ever! They’re Finnish and they’re singer is an angel, I swear. It changed my life.” Simone squealed throwing her arms up in the air. Some guys walked by trying to hold in laughter. Sara glared. “Those guys are just jealous because their hair is greasy and mine is shiny.” Simone said.
Sara raised an eyebrow. “They changed your life over night?”
“It wasn’t just a night. It was an emotional voyage over a harsh river with sharks that would devour-”
“Oh Simone…with that imagination, I don’t know what you could do, but you could definitely be a singer and write your own lyrics.”
Simone stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Me? A singer?”
Sara yanked her out of the way of the hordes of students who shoved their way to their next class. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“I don’t know.” Simone’s head droped like a plant’s wilting leaf.
“If you didn’t why would you suddenly love Tarja so much?” Sara tilted her head.
“Wait, you know about Nightwish?” Simone snapped back to full attention.
“Uh huh, I’m actually surprised you only stumbled upon them last night. They’re cool. They have potential—like you!” She slapped Simone’s back. “Come on, we gotta go to English now. You don’t want to get another detention for being late, do you?”
“Did we have homework?” Simone asked through her teeth as they started walking again.
“We always do!”
“Better yet, I’m cutting class! I’ll see you later.” Simone skipped off pulling her CD player out as she fled.
Simone sat under a stair in an under populated corner of the school. Even if a teacher walked by, she could stand up and make it look like she was just heading from class to the bathroom. She put on her headphones and turned on the music. She crossed her legs and rested her head against the white wall. This was heaven; she could almost imagine herself floating through the sky on a cloud with angels singing beside her. So the teacher gave her detention yesterday; a detention she had to attend this afternoon, but since she promised her mother she’d go to the library with her, she couldn’t make the detention. Anyway if the teacher really wanted her to stay after, she would have mentioned it to her mother while she complained about her attention span and work ethic.
On her way home, Simone hurried—partially because she feared her English teacher would chase after her, lock her up with an English novel and force her to read until her mother came to yell at her for not coming right home and going to the library. The other part felt Nightwish’s energy leaking into her body through her ears and pumping through her veins into her entire body. A damp wind hit her face. Rain would come that night. She wondered if she could sneak out and sing in the rain as droplets smacked into her face. That is if she wasn’t grounded for the something or other she did between now and then…
“Hey, Mom!” Simone tossed her bag on the sofa next to her mother. “Are we going? We better be going because I’m supposed to be in detention right now.”
Mrs. Simons looked at her daughter. “What? Simone!”
“But you told me to come home-” Simone shrugged. “I’m going to grab a snack and then I’ll let you drag me wherever you want.”
“We’re going to the library so you can study…but go eat. You need to eat, Simone.”
Simone took a bite out of an apple and reentered the living room. “I think I want to be a singer, Mom.”
Mrs. Simons stuffed a stack of papers and a notebook into her purse. “You put a lot of thought into this?”
“Listen!” Simone held the apple between teeth and retrieved her CD player from the pile on the couch. “Billy gave me this CD yesterday, and it blew my mind! I mean seriously, I want to sing like this woman!” She thrust the CD player to her mother. Mrs. Simons took it with a slight smile and put on the headphones. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Mrs. Simons pinched her lips and looked from the CD player to her daughter’s glistening eyes. Simone clasped her hands at her chest, and she rocked from foot to foot. “It’s…different.”
“Exactly! That is why I love them. If I heard them next to a million other bands, I could pick them out!”
“Oh Simone if you really want to be a singer you have to see the subtle differences…”
Simone rolled her eyes and took another bite of apple. Was it too much to ask for a single day where she didn’t have to think about reality? She knew just because she said she wanted to sing like Tarja it wasn’t enough to make it come true. She saw less gleam in her mother’s eyes because her mother remembered all the other dreams she started off passionate about but then lost interest in as time passed. Maybe her mother thought the same thing would happen with singing, and that was why she pushed her hard in school.
“I’m serious. I know I don’t have the best attention-”
“Just stop, Simone. I understand you want to sing. I’ve known it since I walked by your room late in the evening and heard you sing—not the radio that you tried to cover your voice with but you.”
Simone blushed. She should have turned the volume higher, but at the time she couldn’t bring herself to do it; she liked hearing her voice more than the screechy, pop-voices on the radio. She thought about herself sitting on the carpeting in her bedroom close to the radio and singing along even if she didn’t know the words. If she listened long enough, she would know the words eventually. She remembered singing until her throat hurt, and then lying on her back staring at the cycling pretending it was an audience who wanted to hear her sing. When she drifted into sleep, the imagine became real and for that moment, she was a star. Reality interrupted though and left Simone with a painful throat and a million unreached desires. Why was she able to push herself when it was only her listening? Simone swallowed; she felt a lump in her throat.
Simone imagined sitting in a grassy field leaning back and watching clouds float above. They passed out of her arm’s reach—white cottony patches gliding over the smooth blue sky. She wanted to float beside them; she wanted others to watch her from the ground and point up because the sight of her marveled them. In her reoccurring dream, people praised her voice; people loved her. Right now, she couldn’t praise her own voice; she couldn’t be certain that she even liked herself. But she still looked up because she knew she had to go there—to the serene sky. She would practice so she could sing higher, ascend to angelic heights.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Second Semester
I'm back at school!!! Second semester brought some changes to my door step. Obviously I'm in new classes (no more statistics or biological pysch), which will hopefully go well. I'm more excited about these classes than the ones I took last semester so we'll see how this goes...
The dorm looked even more like an institute when I returned. Even worse the room across the hall from and next to me is empty. Creepy much? I told everyone we should stick a flag in the hallway and declare this land our own. Good times.
I'm adopting a new attitude now-a-days. One that doesn't promote me murdering every little action I take like I used to do. Really I'm going to see when trusting myself to do what I really want will get me. I'm not saying I'm going to slack off, just not going to push myself should false expectations because I feel like I'm not 'normal.' I'm on a journey and sometimes the only way to know if I'm on the right path is to test the water.
At first the new semester scared me. I was walking home from the bookstore carrying heavy bags in my frozen hands thinking about how much work I had to complete, how hard the work will be. I almost cried. But I can see why things go. I'm stronger now. I know how to handle bad situations better. I know I can overcome.
But most importantly I know I can right again. It might seem weird, but since last semester I was convinced I couldn't write anymore. I felt my writing was too choppy and didn't flow like it should. I didn't have the same insight I used to. I thought I lost a part of myself and changed beyond repair.
I think I tried to kill the 'weak' part of myself and thus eliminate the 'strong' part because those parts of me that make me flawed are what make me 'me.' I would love to deny it, but I am the sum of good and bad, failure and sucess. I'm not just the invented image I have of myself in my mind. Once I would love to see 'me' through someone else's eyes. Maybe not even a good friend's but perhaps an aquitance just so I could see me objectively...
"We've all been sorry. We've all been hurt. But it is how we survive that makes us who we are."
Or what the lyric to "Survive" is.
I've really come to love the band Rise Against. Their song "Audience of One" really spoke to me. Actually anything about moving on from the past and losing friends really speaks to me. I guess that is just where I am at in my life.
The dorm looked even more like an institute when I returned. Even worse the room across the hall from and next to me is empty. Creepy much? I told everyone we should stick a flag in the hallway and declare this land our own. Good times.
I'm adopting a new attitude now-a-days. One that doesn't promote me murdering every little action I take like I used to do. Really I'm going to see when trusting myself to do what I really want will get me. I'm not saying I'm going to slack off, just not going to push myself should false expectations because I feel like I'm not 'normal.' I'm on a journey and sometimes the only way to know if I'm on the right path is to test the water.
At first the new semester scared me. I was walking home from the bookstore carrying heavy bags in my frozen hands thinking about how much work I had to complete, how hard the work will be. I almost cried. But I can see why things go. I'm stronger now. I know how to handle bad situations better. I know I can overcome.
But most importantly I know I can right again. It might seem weird, but since last semester I was convinced I couldn't write anymore. I felt my writing was too choppy and didn't flow like it should. I didn't have the same insight I used to. I thought I lost a part of myself and changed beyond repair.
I think I tried to kill the 'weak' part of myself and thus eliminate the 'strong' part because those parts of me that make me flawed are what make me 'me.' I would love to deny it, but I am the sum of good and bad, failure and sucess. I'm not just the invented image I have of myself in my mind. Once I would love to see 'me' through someone else's eyes. Maybe not even a good friend's but perhaps an aquitance just so I could see me objectively...
"We've all been sorry. We've all been hurt. But it is how we survive that makes us who we are."
Or what the lyric to "Survive" is.
I've really come to love the band Rise Against. Their song "Audience of One" really spoke to me. Actually anything about moving on from the past and losing friends really speaks to me. I guess that is just where I am at in my life.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Life
When I think about all the things in the world that make me happy, the world doesn't seem like such an awful place anymore...
Maybe it is because these things I love are so simple. It's not the shiny new LCD tv that really gets me excited or the raw knowledge I posess that makes me feel accomplished, but the memories of creativity, of laughing free with only my heart to guide me that fill my heart with joy.
I'm trying to remember what my favorite band was back in 2007...back in time I am remembering and smiling about right now ^_^
I remember the pure feelings of excitment I had back in junior year...especially in the spring. I remember the way those puffy trees reached toward me and made me scream...
I guess WT wasn't that special to me yet. Wow. Random tangent.
I remember things just working out and feeling close to friends...I remember so much, but I am not crying. I'm happy. These are happy memories of joyous times.
I have so many good times in my heart. I would love to relive them all, but there is no time! I have to chase the future now. I always knew this day would come. I don't live in the same world I used to...not at all, but I'm not really a different person. I've grown up. I haven't 'changed.'
I would love to stay forever in a world of memory<3 But alas it is time to move on...I can only trust that these memories, the love I learned, the adventures, my insane schemes, the laughter, the embaressing moments and my entire past that I can never remember but now is there...reside in my heart and will fortify me for the coming struggles.
I bare everything I once was, everything I ever did and said, all the accidents and sorrow I caused, all the friends I once loved, teh stories I created and the identities I chose within my heart.
I realized a year ago that these things can never be my weapon...only armor.
Then what is weapon? What shall I fight?
Last year brought me many more questions, but it was also the beginning a journey--the journey I was meant to take, that my past prepared me for.
I'm smiling now...remembering....trying to make peace...I'm far from that point now really...but...I am not held down any longer.
Maybe it is because these things I love are so simple. It's not the shiny new LCD tv that really gets me excited or the raw knowledge I posess that makes me feel accomplished, but the memories of creativity, of laughing free with only my heart to guide me that fill my heart with joy.
I'm trying to remember what my favorite band was back in 2007...back in time I am remembering and smiling about right now ^_^
I remember the pure feelings of excitment I had back in junior year...especially in the spring. I remember the way those puffy trees reached toward me and made me scream...
I guess WT wasn't that special to me yet. Wow. Random tangent.
I remember things just working out and feeling close to friends...I remember so much, but I am not crying. I'm happy. These are happy memories of joyous times.
I have so many good times in my heart. I would love to relive them all, but there is no time! I have to chase the future now. I always knew this day would come. I don't live in the same world I used to...not at all, but I'm not really a different person. I've grown up. I haven't 'changed.'
I would love to stay forever in a world of memory<3 But alas it is time to move on...I can only trust that these memories, the love I learned, the adventures, my insane schemes, the laughter, the embaressing moments and my entire past that I can never remember but now is there...reside in my heart and will fortify me for the coming struggles.
I bare everything I once was, everything I ever did and said, all the accidents and sorrow I caused, all the friends I once loved, teh stories I created and the identities I chose within my heart.
I realized a year ago that these things can never be my weapon...only armor.
Then what is weapon? What shall I fight?
Last year brought me many more questions, but it was also the beginning a journey--the journey I was meant to take, that my past prepared me for.
I'm smiling now...remembering....trying to make peace...I'm far from that point now really...but...I am not held down any longer.
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