Young Writers Society

i got alot of comments about how out of place my posting of Melancholy was, so i decided to put on the first section that leads up to the part i already posted.

alalala, here it goes. it's kind of long, but bear with me! i need help with this one...

Chapter One: Awake

Freshly awakened and aware that I had once again relocated myself in real time, I didn’t want to get out of bed, because I knew that when I did, I’d have to face the world. And the world wasn’t playing very nice. My eyes were still droopy and heavy as I tried to part them. I should just skip school, that’s more logical. Goodnight again, cruel cruel world. The inside of my eyelids were a welcomed sight, sight that actually wasn’t there.

But my brain wouldn’t fall asleep and I couldn’t figure out why. In my bed, dreams were created and fantasy somehow made itself real. My bed was safe, comfortable, and warm. Nestled between about 4000 pillows, I felt like no monster or boogie man could get me. I finally felt at ease, whether it was the penguins on my sheets protecting me from serial killers or the ninja poster on my wall. So falling asleep should be easy right now. But the happy penguins were staring at me with drilling, static intent.

The penguins on my flannel sheets have stayed with me every night for a couple of years and have been my constant companions. Through nightmares and some pretty exciting dreams about the guys I like (woohoo!), they have sat in the peanut gallery as a devoted audience. So naturally, I feel quite straightforward about trusting them. Falling asleep with them is easier than, oh let’s say, spending the night with a vampire. I just watched the movie Buffy; Vampire Slayer, I would know.

Looking up at my ceiling with various posters I scotch taped to it, I realize that life is a vicious cycle of getting up, working, getting beat up on, and then going to bed again just to repeat the cycle the next day, over and over. The Spiderman movie poster was my prime example. He got up, got dressed in red and blue spandex, fought the never-ending crime of New York. On top of that, he had to figure out a way to keep Mary Jane at bay. That would suck.

I looked at the nearest cartoon penguin dyed into my sheets. The penguins have it lucky, they get to sit in bed all day and take hot baths on Saturdays when I put them through the wash. God, how I wish I was a penguin.

Life’s been dealing a pretty crappy hand lately, and I just don’t want it to get worse. My logic is that because nothing ever goes terribly wrong when I’m asleep, so it must be an okay place. Between parents fighting, best friends leaving to other schools, dad planning to switch jobs and a total void of hot guys at Charter, my loneliness had reached rock bottom like a poker hand of 2 -7 .

Not that I play poker, and you don’t know about that if my mom asks.

But you know, I think I have to get out of bed because it is 6:17 and I’m going to be late. I shouldn’t have even slept until 6:15. Heck! I shouldn’t have been sitting in bed at 6:10. And now it’s 6:18.

So I get out of bed and stumble around to the light switch because even though it is early spring and gets lighter earlier, it isn’t that bright yet, and I don’t want to risk stubbing a toe or stepping on the cat or something else equally dangerous in this pathetically unhelpful morning sunlight. My coordination skills are not morning people. Either is my strength.

When I was little, I always woke up and climbed out of my bunk bed to go get ready for third grade or however far along I was in my schooling career. And climbing down that ladder, I always became slightly annoyed because my hands wouldn’t grip like they should have. In those elementary days, I first realized that it took a while for your muscles to warm up before you could demand anything and expect to get a response back. This was a stressful topic for me. Stressful enough to make it on the list of dentist office visits and show and tell.

Even today I struggle with the idea that I cannot immediately wake up and grip onto something with all my strength. I have come, though, to believe that this is a normal human ailment and also have put aside the worry that I am losing muscle mass or something.

And at 6:21 this morning, the mysterious grip-loss calamity has come to haunt me again as I picked up a hairbrush, ran it through my tangled hair and dropped it when the tangles gave more resistance than my hands had strength for. I sunk to the floor, searching for the hairbrush in the piles of clothes and CD’s. Wow, I found my history report. Wonder how that got there.

I became exceedingly worried when it was 6:25 and I still hadn’t found the hairbrush. Thoughts like how mad my mom would be and how late I am going to get passed through my mind as I shifted through yesterday’s Charter uniform and blue jeans from youth group. And then I found it. Or half of the device anyways.

The piece I found was the top half of the hair brush with the bristles that just wouldn’t go through my hair. The bottom half was still no where to be found, and I leaned up against the wall, looking at the broken hair piece, thinking about the time and effort my mom gave out for me to just break what she earned. I am such an inappreciative kid. Seriously. I need to get my act together and stop breaking hairbrushes.

My eyes teared up and I though to myself “Seriously? Are you crying about this? Buck up and get over it! It’s just a stupid hairbrush.” But my emotions were rushing through my veins like the angry ocean sea, tensing my muscles, and shaking my breathing into a whole bunch of hoarse pushes of air. I thought of waves overpowering lighthouses, the people looking like ants on the deck. Little kids squish ants like these into the hot summer asphalt during recess.

Now, these thoughts made me actually start crying because I realized how irrational and ridiculous I was being, because it was, in all truth, a hairbrush and it’s not like I couldn’t just use the top half to brush my hair.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that being a human with early morning muscle weakness ruined what I had tried so hard to keep together. The Hairbrush! So I sat against the wall in the bathroom, crying, looking at the clock that read 6:31.

And I wasn’t being hormonal, I knew that much. For crying out loud, I know that much. You can’t blame gender faultiness on me. Oh no, I’m not taking that from you. It’s just like life had just dealt me the wrong card in a gnarly game of pinnacle, and I had bet all I owned. And maybe an entire life of servitude on top of that.

But my mom didn’t see the fact that I was having a mental breakdown. So naturally, she yelled up the stair for me to “Hurry up!” and “Are you ready yet?” And I picked up the scattered pieces of myself and calmed the stormy waters inside. After all, I just broke what hard-earned money had bought me and I should at least be on time. So I threw on the nearest Charter uniform at hand, pulled my hair into a pony tail, and ran out my bathroom door, remembering to close the closet door and get the cat.

I don’t even know why they call it a pony tail. If my hair looks like a horse’s ass, something is wrooong. I walked to the car, cursing the windshield for showing me how baggy and ugly those Charter uniforms look. Uniforms were bad. Everybody was unhappy with them because not one person looked good in them or actually wanted to be seen in public. Ewwww. But that’s hardly nice to say about our school’s one source of pride. So let me rephrase that. “I’m sorry, I mean, dressing in the morning is FUN! Which uniforms should I wear? The blue, blue, or blue! Oh let’s throw a curve ball and wear khaki pants! Ohhhh!”

That is my life. Oh Lordy.

Sorry, Jesus. I do feel guilty when I “taketh the Lord’s name in vain.” But that’s not my problem now. Jesus will forgive me. Currently, I am frustrated with the whole situation of hairbrushes and muscle weakness. I’ll become a body builder and fix this whole problem.

But somehow in the quite frustrating maze of my thoughts, we made it to school and my mom growled at me as I got out of the car, grabbed my overstuffed backpack, and slammed the door. I must not have been very hospitable in the car ride here. Walking into the building, I marched to my locker and pulled up my oversized uniform regulation pants that had forgotten a belt. Or maybe I had forgotten it. Grr.

The bell was ringing, I was running, and slipped into my seat front row art class before the teacher noticed I was flushed from the rush and had a brain still trying to catch up.

“We’re finishing up our studio project today” okay, got that much, Mrs. K “so get out your media and let’s get going!” She was dressed in bright complimentary colors and the false enthusiasm wasn’t going to cut it this morning, along with the bad perm and lack of color coordination. But I got out my ‘media’ and ‘got going!’ Mel sat down next to me with a jug of paint and blonde-perfectly curled hair.

Now, Mel is my best friend, and has earned the right to knowing everything about me. She is the pepper to my salt. She is the Bill Gates of my Microsoft corporation. She is the other half of my hairbrush. Ha.

Mel is also my complete opposite. Short, pretty and blonde, she fills the gap and also fills in for the typical “dumb blonde”. Sometimes, I think we should lock her up in a padded room so she doesn’t get into anymore car wrecks because she was looking at the hot guy on the side of the road. She wants to be a sex therapist when she gets older. Last year it was a film director, and the year before we were both nerds in P.E. who were just worried about passing volleyball.

But I guess Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft and salt is going to have to do without pepper. The other half of the hairbrush will never be recovered because Mel is leaving to join some other high school next year. I don’t look at her when she pulls out the metal fold up chair as she sits down, because she has torn my heart apart by being my best friend and leaving me alone. She is my only friend, after all.

“So Gordon talked to me today when I was bagging at work.” Mel works at Super 1. Hottie grocery-bagger boy named Gordon works with her. Enough said.

“That’s great. What happened?” She would see through my false façade of sincerity.

She narrows her sparkly, pink-eye-shadowed eyes at me when I don’t even look up at her. But I guess she decided to blow it off and talk anyways.

“Well he was filling in for the produce guy and I got a defective cantaloupe…” she hoped the irregularity of a screwed up melon would peak my interest “… and I took it to him. Then I asked him ‘What do I do with defective cantaloupes’ and he said ‘You give them to me’ and then he took it and chucked it in the garbage. He is totally hot.”

Mel was smiling now, and I couldn’t help but helping along her self confidence by going into an overanalyzed dialogue about how that must mean he likes you etc etc. I tried to sound like I wasn’t ticked. God, this is soo high school.

And then I thought about it, and I was only trying to feel ticked to cover up my true emotion; grief.

Because Mel was having a fantastic time with produce guys and the thought of new schools while I was stuck in hell, at Charter, with no guy(s) to catch my interest. My eyes burned again. My heart shrunk back at the emotion-juice my brain was pumping into my body. These sadness-juices burned like cheap whiskey and hurt my insides like drugs destroy your body. Sucking in a quick breathe to get myself back together, I looked at Mel. And she must have seen the emotion-liquor seeping out of the holes in my heart, because her eyes widened.

“Sarah, what’s wrong?” she was worried, and thank (God) someone noticed.

“Mel, I’m just so… I don’t know, never mind.” I looked back at my artwork and let my hair fall between me and my friend. The wall was comforting to me, safe, warm, a shield from the outside world. Hey, I should use this hair-barrier more often.

Mel let the topic drop.

Geometry, Spanish, Ancient History, Physical Science, and Ancient Literature didn’t go much better or any more eventfully either. And no one bothered to ask why I was almost breaking into tears throughout the day. Some non-friends they are.

The bell ringing.

Getting into the car.

Stopping at Super 1.

Driving towards home.

Up the driveway.

Home.

Penguins.

Sleep.

I dreamt of the ocean. Seattle Ocean, sitting on the windy beach, letting the sea breeze play with my hair and fill my lungs. I’m curled up on the damp sand, kelp next to me, the crashing of the ocean. White driftwood litters the beach like discarded twinky wrappers. Some are gnarled with roots and branches intact. Some are velvet smooth, as all of the tree-like characteristics have been washed away.

Someone is next to me. I cannot see them, but I am not threatened. I know that he is there for me. The tide rolls in onto the beach… and then back out. In and out. Back and forth. Full and empty. Alive and in deep slumber. Loved and then lost.

But then sleep takes that dream away like the tide, and I remember nothing else.