This is the first chapter to the short biography of my life that I am writing to basically keep track of things. It's called "Get It" and the first chapter is called "Get Old". Enjoy and please comment!
Rays of heat blistered down on her paled skin, even in this sunny summer her back only turned red for a few hours and then would shudder away to the colour of paper. The slight breeze shifted the smoke exhaled from small, painted red lips as she took long drags out of a Belmont cigarette. Her deep blue eyes scanned the scorched grass below her as she felt an itch from the bark of the tree she leaned nonchalantly upon; fish netted legs crossed at the tall pleather boots. "Little Myst, what's happening?" A voice alerted the petit girl and she turned to face her new company. A tall, lanky teenage boy sauntered towards her with bobbing black hair sporting a Marilyn Manson t-shirt and too many chains to count.
"Mike, do you know that you're fifteen-fucking-minutes late?" She snapped quietly before their eyes met and then those lips perked up slowly into a smile, somewhat forced.
"Sorry, little chicky, had to pick up a friend on the way." Mike stepped aside. A shorter brunette haired guy that seemed about the same age as Mike, sixteen, came into view and raised his pierced eyebrow in the girls direction.
"And you say she's down?" The stranger asked in disbelief, becoming hesitant at the obvious pubescent age of this girl. "What, is little Miss Manson wannabe in grade three here?" He did not approve of meeting her, at all.
Mike awkwardly laughed as the girl seemed to ignore these comments and scan the park they stood in. It was Riverdale Park, the first place she had ever gone to the first time she had ever left the hospital when she was born, the Stevenson Memorial Hospital being right beside the park. So many memories, most of which she could barely recall anymore at the age of only thirteen. "Listen, can we get out of here? All these little kiddies creep me out." She spoke with a high-pitched voice which most found annoying, but for some reason guys like Mike found it soothing and sexy at the same time.
The three of them climbed into Mike's beaten up 1993 Honda Accord and were soon driving down an empty country side road with the windows down and a new Death Metal mix blaring off the stereo speakers. "I'm Kaena, sorry about being apprehensive, but how old are you exactly?" He sat in the back seat and leaned forward to make sure his words reached her ears. She sat leaning against the door in the passenger seat as Mike smoked and absently drove.
"I'm Mysty, if you didn't already know that." She stopped before continuing, biting her lip in a nervous fashion and then swallowing it all quickly to keep her front. "I'm thirteen, but that doesn't really matter, now does it Mike?" Mysty turned towards the grinning driver who reached out and pet the side of her face. Their eyes locked for just a moment’s time, both of them heavily lined with black make-up to resemble the artists they so lovingly adored. "Where are we going anyway, guys? Mike just told me I had to come." She directed this question more to the loner in the backseat; he sat there fiddling with a Celtic cross necklace that sat heavily on his scrawny chest.
"We're going to my house, there are some people already there and we're having a little party tonight and Mike here wanted to bring his girly." Kaena replied and suddenly his sombre face burst into a smile, causing the girl to raise a questioning eye. "You two are like, together right?" He always loved to poke fun at Mike and his girls, always switching from them so fast and finding the strangest of hook-ups...but a thirteen year old? That was just weird.
"No." Mysty was quick to answer and then the two accused giggled and turned down the knob on the volume of the stereo. "We are, just friends..."
"That party together a lot, hang out, kiss, and..." Mike cut in with a sideways smile.
"...and I am so totally taken, but he lives out near Cookstown so he's never really around..."
"...catch our drift?" Mike finished and saw from the corner of his eye Mysty smirking into the car's overhead mirror, making sure her gothic look was up to date enough. For a girl of thirteen, he had to hand it to her style-wise, he had never met somebody he could never not pinpoint their style, but she was different. One day she looked preppy, the next gothic, and then she somehow also hit the hippie mark too, it really did amaze him sometimes. One thing that never faltered about the girl was her taste in music, heavily devoted to the tunes of the 1960s and all of the metallic bands one could think of. "You wait," He spoke loudly to Kaena who sat with his legs now crossed up on the seat. "This girl will drink you under, over, around, and on top of the table. Hell, she'll just make your fucking night." Mike sent his cigarette flying through the open window as they zoomed a third over the speed limit, he barely had a license.
"This little girl? Oh, but she looks so harmless, quiet, sweet, a little pixie!" Kaena joked and pulled himself close to her seat in a teasing manner.
Mysty turned around to face him and quickly caught his lips with hers, violently kissing him as he had no time to respond as she pulled back again. "You should really reconsider that judgement, and I'm not a slut either." Her words contradicted her actions but Kaena did nothing to point this out as he sat befuddled in the backseat.
Once they reared into his driveway far outside of the small town of Alliston where the other two lived, Kaena spoke quietly as his blackened nails brushed his once-kissed-lips. "I'm gay." He muttered before getting out of the car and slamming the door.
"I know. Good job." Mysty replied with a smile before inviting herself into the boy’s house.
*
It was so typical.
"So, bloody-fucking-typical!"
Ashtrays were filled to their brim, broken bottles scattered the nearly empty driveway, socks and shoes were left unsorted at the front door as the rest of the house barely stirred in their drunken sleep. Mysty ran flustered around trying to collect her clothing, failing miserably as she ran about with a bed blanket wrapped around her skinny body barely developed. "Calm, down! You're going to wake up a bunch of seventeen year old hung-over pricks, who are not going to be to happy about it!" Mike whispered as he helped search for her belongings. They ran head-on into a wood paneled room that stank heavily of marijuana and found three guys and one girl passed out on the floor. Beneath the table that was covered with various amounts of questionable substances were her clothes from the previous day, she slipped them on as Mike watched batting his eyes hungrily.
"Oh, bugger off." Mysty was not in a good mood this morning as she had to get to work at Swiss Chalet for eleven o'clock to stand in a pantry for eight hours pretending she cared. "What the fuck did you feed me last night?" She asked, taking a brief glance at the 'table-o-drugs' before leaving the room and rustling through the shoes at the front door.
Mike grabbed his car keys off the foyer table and slipped on his own shoes, before they knew it they were back on the same country road speeding towards their town. "Did you have fun?" He asked, passing his lit cigarette over to her as she inhaled hastily.
"I don't remember, at all. Did I?" She bitched back at him before allowing her dry lips to suck the remainder of nicotine out of the stick that burned in between her fingers. There was something always calming to her about holding a cigarette, just holding it there squeezed between those two digits. It wasn't the inhaling, exhaling process but just the fact that she was sitting there in a sixteen year-old boy’s car simply holding a cigarette. It all seemed so cool to her. Cool? You are a fucking twerp.
"Sorry, kiddo." Mike apologized, squinting his eyes as he glanced at the clock and easing up on the gas a little bit. "You could have called in sick." He suggested, making a left turn as soon as they hit town and rolled on towards her house.
"I like going into work." She replied smugly, happy she even had a job whereas how he obtained funds was something that need not be addressed. "It gives me cash flow and sometime to think because outside of work I'm surrounded by idiots like you who only think with their penises." Mysty was especially feisty this morning, probably due to the fact she was upset with herself for having taken off her clothes in public again due to influences of substances. She had left her house yesterday afternoon promising herself she would not do that again, but now it just seems inevitable.
After retrieving her work clothes from her house they drove back to the other side of town to drop her off at Swiss Chalet where her older sister would have already begun her shift. "Listen, sorry about last night but make sure you give me a call tomorrow and we'll hang out." Mike sweetly kissed her cheek as Mysty climbed out of the passenger seat.
"Mike, what did I take?" Mysty asked curiously, noticing that thankfully her arms weren't prickled with needle marks. The day that happened she would seriously have to start rethinking herself.
He grinned and started the engine up and put his car into drive. "Only some E, just one pill. It was the alcohol that made you forget. Cya, kiddo." And with that Mike was gone. He seemed to step in and out of her life so simply, quickly, and somehow did so much damage in between. She barely blamed that on him, however. The only thing she ever truthfully blamed on him was the bad moods she got into whenever she took him calling her 'kiddo' seriously. She hated that nickname; it made her realize how young and insignificant she must seem to the people around her.
It was a Wednesday, and as usual the restaurant was dead. The fact that it was the middle of August meant that most people were probably out enjoying the sun whereas she was stuck her in a stupid looking white apron staring at bowls of salad toppings and pretending to be cleaning out the display. Being on pantry duty was actually her favourite part of working there because there was nothing much to it, just the odd order now and again. It gave her a lot of space to think, and especially the fact that her older sister always worked Drive Thru meant she would rarely run into her.
You always do this to yourself. Now you have a pounding headache, and you are at work, but where else would you be if you weren't here? Still sleeping in Kaena's basement? Get a fucking life, honestly. It's the same thing everyday. Work. Lie to your Mother about who's coming over and who you're going to see, get drunk or messed up on drugs that you hate in the first place just because you think you might have fun...or because you think it's COOL. It's not. Get over yourself. You are a good-for-nothing-stupid-lazy-idiotic...
"Jimmy called last night." A voice and person that sounded very much like herself came into view now in her small work area. "Courtney," Mysty cringed at hearing her real name that she was embarrassed of. "Did you have fun at Crystal's house?" Her sister, Brittany asked with a smile referring to the lie she had fed her family about where she was. Crystal was an old friend from elementary school, a place Mysty would thankful never has to see again.
"Did he say to call him back?" She asked, ignoring the second question.
"No, he said to tell you that he's picking you up from work." She replied and then a beeping from the headset she was wearing alerted her back to work and left Mysty there to her thoughts once again.
Jimmy, he’s a good guy in most ways a fourteen year-old boy can be. I’ll keep him for a while, we have only been dating about a week now, after that horrible break-up with Dustin that ended in broken Cherry Cigars and tears. Don’t go there now, Mysty, not now. How much more time do you have to wait until your next break? Damn, fifteen minutes still. Was it not just fifteen minutes before Brittany came over and talked to you? Who knows. Time. What an odd thing, now that I really think about it. Is my whole entire existence thus far just been me counting down the seconds on my clock to the next big event? I counted for each school year to end, then summer to end and now it seems I’m counting in smaller intervals; when to meet-up with friends, when to eat, to sleep, to go on break, to workout, to breathe even, Jesus everything is just more build-ups to something bigger! What if there never is anything bigger? What happens when I’m all done my education…I sit in some stupid cubicle office looking back on my life as if it were a novel, that is such a ridiculous notion. Me - sitting inside a workplace that has latched so tightly onto conformity that its coffee machine’s are kosher? Hah. I can’t wait to see the fucking day.
It is all counting, that is what we humans do and intend to continue doing for the next few millennia as I see it. Goddamned more counting. Now, no need to use the lords name in vain here. I hate seeing the present as some small, insignificant footstool to the larger, ‘brighter’, future. Where is it really getting us humans as a species? We are all going in circles and no form of technological advances are going to save us. It’s the year 2005 and we are still acting like cavemen! Pathetic. But, I can hardly say I’m a misanthrope too much empathy driven into these bones, we can thank Sunday School for that! Or maybe it’s the masochism…
“One garden salad, you have like thirty seconds!” An incompetent, blonde, impatient waitress snapped at her while clicking the bottom of her heels on the fake stone floor.
After quickly assembling the salad Mysty decided she would clean up her station and then switch off for break, too exhausted from accomplishing nothing to do much more of anything. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts more often with less interruptions but it seemed that the more she tried for that, the less it happened. She had been excited for that evening because she had thought there would have been some alone thinking time but instead Jimmy was going to pick her up from work now and probably stay at her place until nearly midnight. Perfect.
Once her break started she had exactly thirteen and a half minutes until she was back on the floor. Mysty crossed her scrawny legs at the chair in the backroom and rested her head on her folded arms, blocking out the rest of the busy world around her. Run, run, run, run, run! Rush, rush, rush, rush, rush! Do we ever have any time for anything anymore? No. Great, time is back to haunt you! I really wish sometimes that I could just scream a message to every single living creature in the entire world that would say; STOP! I also wish that if I could do the first thing, that people would listen and obey. Both of which are highly unlikely.
A quick glance at her watch said that there were still ten minutes remaining, just enough time for a catnap to recover from last nights party. “Where do all these thoughts come from anyway?” Mysty ignored the looks that were received from talking aloud to herself and quickly drifted off into sleep making sure her wristwatch had its alarm set correctly for the exact end of her break.
She never quite knew the significance that watch could have in her life or the time displayed constantly upon it, but who could ever foresee little things like that?
A waitress flopped by with a mess of flustered hair that reeked of dreariness and nails that itched for a simple pause.
It was the last summer she would ever remember to have had at least a little ounce of innocence left in her, high school was fast approaching and the tides in life would increase to a rate almost unmanageable. Days passed by in drunken stupors, rustling around town with friends way too old for her own good. After many accounts of lying to her family of three older sisters and a mother she had rarely been caught on her renegades of drugs, sex and parties. It was a good way to end a summer, she bargained, the same way in which it had begun. Mysty still found herself thinking, This is so cool!, sometimes as her pubescent mind would sneak in and she would quickly swat it back out and punish herself for those thoughts. She was the girl everybody knew and loved, maybe a little too much.
The day finally came for her to catch the first bus from around the corner of her house to St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School about a fifteen minute drive away. Mysty kissed Mike goodbye at the bus stop as he had dropped her off after another night of fun, he drove off quickly to shower and get ready for his own school. A year ago Mike had been expelled from St. Thomas for reasons unknown to her, so now he attended the Public School in town, Banting Memorial.
At the bus stop stood one boy, Cory, who was a little ginger the same age as Mysty and also a girl, Alyssa, who was plump and a year older than the other two. All three had attended the same Elementary School and grew up playing together out on the street, for some odd reason neither of them saw it fit to speak to each other anymore. Their styles varied too much even as they all wore uniforms waiting in the morning sun for the bus to arrive. Alyssa stood with a pink tank top underneath her blouse, Cory adorned a baseball cap with dollar signs in glittery gold all over it. Then there was Mysty, her kilt spiced up with some expert stitching so that the rim was bright red, her pin had beads smashed onto it almost to the point of breaking. With her makeup down sloppily that morning in a hurry it perfectly matched her somewhat damaged fishnets beneath her kilt, the spiked collar was almost too much. Stepping onto the bus Mysty took the seat third from the front on the very righthand side and leaned her head against the window, popping in her MP3 player headphones as she did this. There were stares coming from various directions of the bus. Mysty knew all of these people and they knew her, but contact was not vital at this point and nobody seemed willing to come into contact with her in the first place. So she turned up the volume on one of her favourite Slayer songs and allowed the beat to carry her into sleep as the bus rattled along country roads for an hour. Mysty was never quite certain how much her summer experiences with Mike and other friends would have changed her, but as her life took a new turn it was time to find out.
