Young Writers Society

She likes the music. Likes the angry words spattered with blasting blass instruments and frenetic electric guitars punctuated by hoarse vocalists spilling their inward thoughts to anyone who'll take the time to listen. She's heard it called angry music, but she doesn't think of it like that. She labels it unconventional, emotionally condensed, liquid, and raw all at the same time.

But mostly, it's good.

Her coffee singes her throat on its way down. Somehow the coffee feels like the music streaming through her headphones, simultaneously hot and bitter and heavenly. She knows it's ridiculous to think of music in beverage form, but that's how she feels about it. It's unpretensive, unabashedly harsh, unapologetic. Like the music. And she admires it for that, feels drawn to it, feels it sinking into her bones.

She's in her corner, tucked into a table meant for two, beanie slouched halfway back over her head, switching between taking sips from her paper-encased coffee cup and scribbling in a battered spiral notebook. Her pen scratches over college-ruled sheets, leaving spindling catscratch paragraphs in its wake. Stories form, speckled with poems lasting a few lines at most; muddled paragraphs combine fictional sentiments with heartfelt emotion, forming gateways to a place that is a mixture of what is outside of her and what's living in her mind.

The coffee disappears quickly, her cup growing increasingly lighter. She feels the emptiness more than the weight of what's left inside. Once the coffee's gone, it'll be time to leave. And compared to her favorite haunt, her corner that smells pleasantly of roasted coffee beans and doughnuts, what's outside of the coffee shop doesn't sound pleasant at all.

But the coffee does disappear, the last lukewarm swig pouring over her teeth; she gathers her belongings in a hasty rush, slinging her satchel over one shoulder, shoving her music player deep into one of her back pockets, and tosses the paper cup into a trash receptacle.

Outside hurts. A car in desperate need of a muffler grinds past, grating sound shoveling into her eardurms; she shrinks away inwardly. Her ears have been sensitive lately, or she's beginning to notice how sensitive they've always been. They're touchy like her feet are in the morning when their soles first collide with chilled hardwood, skin tingling with bloodlessness. Rain speckles down, splashes against the hood of her car as she fumbles with her key ring. The door opens with a creak; she flings it aside and swings into the car, elbow kissing the steering wheel. She inserts the key into the ignition, turning it too far. The car objects before sputtering to life.

"Good morning, fans," the radio barks. She flinches, damp hand flying to the volume knob and turning down a few notches.

"And it's a chilly spring morning, isn't it?" the announcer speaks, masculine voice polished, forming well-practiced syllables. She imagines him reclining behind a table in a radio station, microphone held close to his lips, hair streaked with gel. "Temperatures in the mid forties, high chances of rain all day long. Look to be about the same throughout tomorrow as well. If you have an umbrella, ladies and gents, keep it with you."

Her lips twist into an ironic smile. She never uses an umbrella, is strongly prejudiced against them. She's seen people use them, holding them obsessively over their bodies like medieval shields designed to ward off precipitation. But she does nothing of the sort. She likes to let the rain slam into her in sheets, doesn't even mind the the muffled sounds the raindrops make against her damp clothing. She likes feeling the rain and knowing as each raindrop collides with her skin that the world has touched her, has made its mark on her in a way she is able to comprehend completely.

Rain is visible, understandable. Other things affect her in ways she can't see. She prefers the rain over the other things.

"And in the news, the search continues for Missy Hartwood, the seventeen-year-old who disappeared at a rural gas station last week. Authorities say they've continued investigating and are doing everything in their power to find the missing girl. Ms. Hartwood's parents have issued a press release offering a reward to anyone with information leading to Ms. Hartwood's whereabouts. If you have any information concerning Missy, please notify the authorities immediately."

The girl's face doesn't change. Her muddy eyes remain directed towards the road, unaffected. People go missing. People go missing because some people are good and others are bad, and the good ones don't always know how to handle the bad ones. She dislikes the way the announcer's voice changed from carefree to intense as soon as the missing girl was brought up, then changed back to careless again as soon as the announcement was over, hates how he tried to make it seem like he genuinely cared about the missing person. Because that's what good radio hosts do. They care.

"And now, time for some tunes." The announcer's voice dances over the final word, savoring it as if saying it makes him some sort of radio god, like it's better than bluntly ceasing to talk and allowing the station to return to broadcasting what radio stations are meant for in the first place: music.

"Shut up," she mumbles when the radio announcer launces into a rushed story about his life that's probably intended to be comedic. "Shut up and play the music. No one cares about what you ate for breakfast this morning."

At last, the radio gets down to business. The girl dissolves into music-induced thoughts, steady guitars thrumming like heartbeats, falsettos carving clean lines through fields of distended logic. Her left foot taps the floor absentmindedly. She switches between stolid, slouch-backed listening and semi-maniacal spurts of dashboard drumming. Not becauise she's happy, but because it's what the music does to her. Not because she's interested in what the drivers on either side of her think of her, but because she can't suppress what the music does to her body.

Raindrops race down her side windows. Her window wipers sweep water across her windshield out of her sight and down into the street. She's cold but considers rolling the windows down, loves feeling the air outside streaming over her, camoflauging everything in a relentless stream of white noise. Only air beating the sides of her face, scraping moisture from her cheekbones, standing her choppy brown her on end like an electrical pulse is surging through it.

But she keeps the window rolled up instead; it's raining steadily now and, though she doesn't mind getting her clothing wet, she knows it takes the interior of her car an uncomfortably long time to dry, and she'd rather not have the car smell musty.

She's in one of her moods where her day has the potential to turn utterly amazing or completely miserable in an instant. Both possibilities swelter beneath her knit cap, swimming in unsurety and doused in sleep deprivation. The coffee hasn't done its work yet. Once it spreads its sprawling caffeinated roots through her, she might feel better. But until that happens, she refuses to pull herself out of her music. There is stability inside of it, moods that only change when crescendos fade to static and new songs begin with a startling jolt.

"And wasn't that a rocking piece," the announcer grins, self-pride bleeding through the radio speakers. "I can dig it. And up next, a stellar jam by one of the most intense bands out there."

Seriously, how did this man make it on the air? He sounds like he should be on one of those old shows from the seventies. It isn't at all difficult for the girl to imagine Mr. Radio Host settling into a wood-paneled station wagon, carting a plethora of emotionally uninteresting children with the combined intelligence of a bowl of oatmeal off to a neon-splattered family outing at an amusement park.

The music resumes shortly afterwards, much to her relief. She stops swearing at the radio station under her breath and eases her foot onto the brake pedal. The car slows down; she rolls the wheel to the right and turns into the community college parking lot. The differences between this parking lot and the one she passed on her way here are clear. These cars are battered, scratched, old, for the most part. They're the opposite of the streamlined cars lined up beside each other at the high school. In this place, no one's parents pay for cars. Here, tuition and rent payments show themselves undeniably.

She sits in the parking lot for a moment, water pelting her vehicle; her hands silence the car engine, shoving her car keys deep into her satchel. She glances at the car door, making sure all of the buttons are pressed down. Reluctantly, she reaches for the door handle but stops herself just before her fingers touch it. She isn't ready to face school just yet, not prepared to settle into hours of staring at dry erase boards and informative powerpoints detailing general education study subjects, knowledge she and everyone in the classroom with her knows that they will probably never use unless it's to teach their children how to perform the same trivial routines in an effort to please colleges and obtain academic scholarships.

Raindrops bite into her face as soon as she steps out onto the asphalt. But she doesn't cringe, only arcs her face into them, enjoying their cold presence, their liquid sting. Water streams down her face, robs her hair of any remaining volume and flattens it to her skull, but she doesn't pull her hood up to ward it off. Because the rain is natural, nourishing, life giving. And a bit painful. Cold enough to make her body shudder, to make her forehead strangely sweaty and clammy at the same time.

Rain is necessary. The world needs it. It is drastically different from what's waiting for her inside of the classrooms, the rows of students who've managed to keep their clothing dry by one method or another. Where everyone will talk about how their weekends were either the best or worst in the class, and some will talk about the parties they went to while others tell people about their families and flash photos of their pets - some cute, some ugly - on smartphones.

Nothing will be real. Nothing will have sharp edges and no one will bleed; no one will be starved or well-fed; no one will stand out, not even her, because she'll be a part of it, too. She'll laugh when she's supposed to and be serious when it's appropriate. Her clothing will dry off until it's slightly warm and damp; she'll shiver every now and then, but not enough to make her wonder if she's caught a chill. And she'll complain a little bit about the weather even though she doesn't mind it, because complaining is a game that everyone in class likes to play and not playing it is what has the potential to make her a pariah.

But out here, she is cold. Rivulets of water stream down her throat, transparent atmospheric plasma being absorbed by her hooded jacket; gusts of frigid wind skim over her bare hands and up into her sleeves. She's not precisely sure why she's smiling, but she is, a slightly crooked grin resting on her chapped lips.

"Lyn!" a voice calls. The girl rips herself out of her thoughts and glances toward the sidewalk flanking the parking lot; a female figure in a lavender raincoat with the hood pulled all of the way up over its face stands, waiting.

"Hi!" The girl's voice changes, loses the growl it had in the car when it was protesting the announcer's mindless banter, becomes smooth, stonewashed and feminine, completely devoid of ferocity.

"I wish it'd stop raining," the female figure in the raincoat declares once Lyn is a few feet away. "I hate rain."

"Yeah, it's miserable out," Lyn replies evenly.

"Why don't you have your hood up?" the lavender raincoat girl asks. "You'll catch a chill!"

Lyn's hands reach for her hood. "Forgot. How was your weekend?"

"Wonderful. Yours?"