A Girl Named Jane

Foreword
Before you read ahead, here's something you ought to know. This story was written on the request of my friend, a friend who fell for a girl he liked to call Jane. And just for the record, I wrote it on 19 October 2012.

--

A voice. Someone's talking. It doesn't matter, doesn't register. Luckily I've snagged a window seat.
My bench-mate, someone I used to call a friend, tries to catch my attention. Probably to repeat some perverted joke the guy next to him thought up. I try not to notice, but give in when he starts to get persistent. I fake the obligatory snigger and he is satisfied.
Making the world a happier place. Yeah. That's part of my job description.
I stared out at the sky. I wish I could mention the fluffy clouds(if any) but I can't. The truth is, I can't remember.
Yeah. Girl trouble. The two words that can make any guy stare out at the sky and brood, make him punch walls, kick tables and sometimes maybe even cry.
She was the traditional perfect girl. Beautiful straight black hair, pretty eyes and all that. Just the right amount of shy. Perfect.
We met when I was trying to set her up with a friend. That friend disappeared, we still kept texting.
If someone asked me what I see in her, I don't think I would be able to stop talking. But if someone asked me when exactly I fell for her I wouldn't know. All I do know is that I had fallen headfirst into this... emptiness.
You probably classified me into the category of the fools who suffer from the widespread disease called unrequited love. Unrequited doesn't begin to cover my story.
She likes me back. She fell for me while she was dating another guy.
It just so happened that the time I texted her coincided with a bad time in their relationship. The rational part of my brain argues that the bitch was just using me for comfort. The stupid part says she really loves me. And she really loves him.
When I told her of my feelings for her, she hadn't tried to dissuade me. Instead she tells me she loves me too. And then the G word. Guilt.
Apparently she felt guilty that she liked me while she was dating him. She said she couldn't do this anymore.
Couldn't do what anymore? I doubt she was referring to texting me because when I tried to stop she kept sending me Good Mornings Good Evenings and Good Nights. For three days. Then I couldn't handle it anymore.
I can't say I know what love is. But I'm pretty sure that the feelings I have for her is the closest I will ever get to being in love.
Love. How it feels to be in 'love' with her is everything wonderful and terrible in the world put together and covered in chocolate.
My real friends, not the idiot sitting next to me, tell me to stop letting her hurt me.
They don't get it. She isn't making me upset. She makes me happy. When she texts I'm walking on clouds; when she calls, I'm dancing in the rain. She doesn't make me upset.
I do get messed up though. So messed up in the head that I just want to curl up into a ball in my comforter. Someone told me chocolates help. I eat chocolates by the boxful and it doesn't help. I get throbbing headaches because I think too much. But all that happens in my head. Its not fair that they blame her for it.
The bell rings. The sound pierces through the little world I had created in my corner. The other kids get out of their seats, I do too. Following them mechanically. Like a zombie. Brain dead.
Someone makes another perverted joke. I manage the obligatory snigger. Everyone's satisfied. Making the world a happier place.
--
Afterword
Cheaters make the world a little tougher to be in and it is possibly the most detrimental relationship experience you can have. To be cheated on, to be led on.
Anyway, when my friend asked me to write this story, he asked me to write about a guy who fell for a 'taken' girl. And I say I have written plenty about girls who've been cheated on.
Anyway, this story means something to me just because I saw this friend of mine hurt. And I wanted nothing better than to hurt her for hurting him. And that guy she was actually dating. But that's another story.
In case anyone wants to read the stories I mentioned about the girl being cheated on, I'll put up links in a while. Or you could head over to http://aimlessthreadz.blogspot.com and read 'Big Girls Don't Cry' and 'Pink Strawberry Ice Cream.'
Yeah. I'll just put up links later.
Love. xxx

Biscuits

Title: Biscuits
Word count: ~1k
Warnings: Not for the faint hearted.
Dedication: The girl in the room next to mine who threw a biscuit at me and told me to go write when I went begging for inspiration.
Summary: When you lose something that meant everything to you, what are you left with?

----

Chocolate biscuits were his favourite. The ones with the dark chocolate bits in them. Not everyone liked them, they left a bitter aftertaste. He liked bitter things, dark chocolate, dark coffee.

She preferred cream biscuits. The ones with strawberry cream were her favourite. She liked the taste of vanilla cream more than strawberry but she liked strawberry best, because it was pink.

So by the time he came home, it varied between once a week to once a few months, she stocked up on biscuits. Both kinds. That was their favourite way to spend time together, better than any evening spent playing ball in the park or eating icecream at the amusement park. Dipping biscuits in cold milk, sitting on the couch with their legs crossed.

The world could go do what it wanted and he wouldn't care, just as long as they were together. She would have said it too, if she were as articulate.

'You're my everything,' she once said. He'd ruffled her hair and pulled her onto his lap, holding her close. He felt the same way. All he needed was her. All he had was her.

She was three when everything became the way it now was. Now she's six. She doesn't remember much from then, but he does. He was sixteen then. Their parents had just gone through a messy divorce and mum had up and run away with some guy to France or Albania or someplace. Dad was given custody of both kids, not a responsibilty he particularly relished. It was when the man who called himself their father was seen to prefer doing anything, from reading the newspaper to doing the dishes, than pay attention to her that he decided how things were going to be. He confronted his father first, and found him trying to brainwash his son into believing that it was because she looked so much like her mother that dad didn't pay attention to her instead of the real reason, pure heartlessness.

That's when he decided he was going to be her family. Anyone she needed. Mother, father, brother, he'd be all three.

Three years since, she still lived with their old man and though he paid for her tuition, he didn't have much of an emotional connection with her. She didn't want it either. All she wanted was her elder brother. He was the world to her. And when she had the world she needed nothing else.

When he comes home, she runs towards him as soon as he steps inside the gate. He walks to her, sometimes running if it had been too long, and scoops her up in his arms and carries her in, listening to her chatter about the things he'd missed out on. That time she fell and scraped her knee, the other time her friends came over and they played with all her dolls.

As soon as he's removed his shoes, she asks him how long he is going to stay. When it is too short a time duration, she frowns, pouting cutely until he suggests an activity to compensate, like going to the amusement park twice or buying her another ice cream cone.

By then the maid (someone needs to take care of her) downstairs would have made dinner and they'd go down to dinner filled with her favourite food. He preferred it that way. Seeing her delight while she ate was better than all the steak in the world.

He'd take her to the amusement park one day, holding her hand, buying her ice cream that melted all over her fingers, spicy hot dogs and salty popcorn, laughing at the tiny people below while riding the ferris wheel.

He'd take her to the park, push her on the swing, they'd kick a ball around, have burgers and pink cotton candy that made her giggle when it melted in her mouth.

He takes her to places he'd known and loved at her age, she rediscovers them with him, and he finds things he never knew existed.

---

She used to mean everything to him. If she were still around, she still would.

A part of him, a very big part of him, stays with her, six feet under. It has been a few years now, he's not sure exactly how long, he still remembers it like it were yesterday. It has been a few years now but she still remains how she was back then, filled with the all innocence and curiosity of a six year old.

Conspiracy theorists say it was staged. You know, to accelerate the making of anti-small arms laws. Debates still go on, was that shooter, a boy of sixteen, insane? Or was he just sadistic?

He's not sure who to believe anymore. All he knows is he misses her everyday. That he imagines her voice in the other room and runs towards it only to find the room empty. Empty, like his heart. Empty, like his life. Meaningless.

He sees her on the street with hair tied up in pigtails and runs to her. It's not her.

Each cycle of hope and disappointment, slowly crushes him, part by agonizing part.

He goes to her grave every once in a while, when he fears he's completely lost his grip on reality. He sees her name engraved in stone but it means nothing. He falls at her little feet and cries. Cries for forgiveness.

Ever since the call, when his hysterical father told him in between huge sobs what happened to her, he can't help the 'what-ifs' that run through his mind. Day and fucking night.

What if he'd just let her come live with him? Another school, another neighbourhood. What if he'd insisted... He stops there. He knows the questions are pointless. They still drive him insane.

He still lives, even if only barely. He's not sure how much longer he can go on. He takes the pain as it comes, each day, every moment. Each time he sees a ferris wheel, each time he sees a pink that reminds him of cotton candy, each time he sees strawberry cream biscuits.

She didn't deserve to die, he thinks. It should have been me instead. Then he thinks that she wouldn't have been able to live if he were gone. For a split second he thinks maybe it is better this way, if one of them had to die, it is better it was her. Not because he wanted to live, just because he would never have wanted her to deal with the pain he was feeling.

He curls up in his bed one night. He hugs his knees to his chest, his whole body shaking with the force of his sobs. Each burning tear rolling off his face and onto the bed eats away at his soul. For not the first time since her death, he prays. He prays with all his heart, that this time is the last time he'd have to do this. And slowly, the pain drifts away. Slowly, he falls asleep.

Morning Voice

Title: Morning Voice
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff
Word count: ~800
Summary: This is what happens when I try to divert my characters from finding their OTL.
A light hearted piece on adolescent crushes when you're too old for them.

---

Her phone rang sometime early in the morning. The first time, she thought it was her alarm and felt her way across the bed under her pillow and found the button to shut it up. When it began to ring again in the next three seconds, her sleep addled brain (somehow) realized that it probably wasn't her alarm. She fished her phone out of the sheets and almost jumped out of her skin seeing the name on the flashing screen. She sat up all of a sudden, scaring the pants off her roommate who by now knew only to expect her to be up ten minutes before her first class started.

She cleared her throat, smoothed down her hair(she wasn't quite sure why) and answered the call, "Hello?"

"Hello? Natalie?"

She tried to keep the butterflies in her stomach from flying out of her mouth as she said, "Yeah, hi."

"Were you sleeping? I'm sorry if I woke you-"

"You didn't. I was up anyway.."

Her roommate snorted at her obvious lie and Natalie shushed her with a wave of her arm as she focused her attention to more important matters - the call.

As she said bye and heard the click of the person on the other end of the line hanging up, she fell back onto her bed, a big goofy grin spreading across her face.

***

When she walked into class that morning, she couldn't help feeling silly. It actually was rather ridiculous, the way the air seemed sweeter and colours seemed brighter just because she spoke to him in the morning. She felt silly admitting it to herself.

He had already reached class, she walked up to her desk and sat down. She didn't bother to acknowledge him or mention their early morning conversation, she knew it didn't matter to him as much as it mattered to her.

She wasn't crushing on him, it was just an attraction. Maybe an infatuation. Or that he had a nice arse. Strike that last bit out.

She didn't think about him the first thing when she woke up in the morning or the last thing before she went to sleep. She didn't write Natalie+Michael in hearts all over her books. She hadn't even ever thought about how it would be to kiss him or even go out with him. All she knew, was that she liked watching him. Discreetly.

It was intrigue, maybe that drew her to him. The way he seemed perfect. Nobody was that perfect. He appeared to be. Near-perfect grades, tall, good looking, perfect in his personal relations too, everyone knew him, liked him. He was nice without getting too close, friendly but not invasive.

She wondered about his demons and where he hid them. Nowhere near the surface though, on the surface he was crack free, flawless.

The next morning she woke up early, went for a jog, came back, had a shower. Her roommate looked at her with an incredulous expression on her face when she saw her step out of the shower. Not because she was naked or anything, just that in the history of the universe, Natalie had never been up and showered so early in the morning, unless she had been up all night.

She had a paper to turn in first thing in the morning so she sat down at her table to finish what she had started last evening. It was pretty basic, so it didn't take very long. Until she reached this one question which had her stumped. Well, maybe she could have figured it out if she tried but it was the perfect opportunity. For what? Her roommate asked when Natalie voiced the thought.

Natalie wasn't sure what exactly her main objective was when he picked up her phone and dialled Michael's number, but she knew it was worth it as soon as he picked up the phone.

"'lo?"

Natalie fought to control her smile, "Hey I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

"No it's fine, I was up already."

His voice clearly said otherwise and Natalie felt a wonderful sense of deja vu, only the tables were turned this time.

After the call (she hung up first) she sat back in her chair and sighed. It was all worth it. The waking up at an unnatural hour, sitting down to write her paper instead of going back to sleep, waking the guy up so early in the morning. Not just as petty revenge for the previous morning. It was all worth it, worth hearing his groggy voice over the phone.

Michael had the sexiest morning voice in the world.

-end-

Note: If you didn't know what the genre 'fluff' meant, you probably are a little confused, maybe just a little annoyed with the utter pointlessness of the story. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you - FLUFF!

Writer's Block

Title: Writer's Block
Rating: G
Word count: ~850
Summary: A writer's block is said to be a psychological phenomenon which causes an inability to write.
Definition aside, this story is about me trying to write in spite of a writer's block, complete with the goodness of third person narration.

---
She feels empty. It has been a while since whe wrote but she feels like she really wants to. But it feels empty upstairs, she's got nothing to write about.
Asking people around her, she gets the usual suggestions, write about love, write about pain.
She's written plenty about pain, it was what she had started out with. Channeling the pain she saw around her through paper, or rather, in her case, a Nokia 5310 keypad and a digital screen. She's written plenty about love, so much that it has turned into a mental labyrinth. No matter where she turns, she ends up at love.
Drawing plotlines from experiences is something everyone (who writes) does. What's happened to her is that the imagination part of her brain has temporarily (or so she hopes) decided that all routes are to be redirected to a specific time slot in her past. A time she was happy. A time that she'd never regret, a time she doesn't want to relive because she is happy thinking about it as her past. 'Leave the past in the past, gonna find the future' and all that.
The problem is that each of her stories have started to get repetitive. It's all about finding that one right person, OTL or One True Love, if you prefer, and living happily ever after, with or without the OTL. And a battle with society. Cheesy, "true love" stories and she's sick of them.
She wants to expand her horizons, write about things that really matter, but the mental block is stubborn. She writes a story about true friendship and reads it out to her friend who tells her it reminds her of love.
Love. Bleargh. She treasures each of her previous trysts with love but she's tired. No more. Too much time and effort, she thinks, is required by relationships. Especially after they end.
Even friendships. She surrounds herself with the kind of people that wouldn't really care if she spoke to them everyday. They know she'd be there for them when they really need her, and she them. A complicated sort of simplicity.
Not everyone understands why it is necessary for her to build walls. She blames it on issues and inner demons. Deep inside she isn't quite sure. She might be a little afraid to search too deep within herself. 'Don't get too close/It's dark inside/It's where my demons hide/It's where my demons hide'
She pretends to be in control, intuitive and insightful. In reality, she isn't sure if she is any of those things. In any case, she knows she's easily distracted.
Her stories. They all lean heavily towards a certain experience in her past. That certain experience which pulled her out of her self-involved-pity-party and taught her how to smile again. That experience through which she met a friend, a friend who understood better than any other; a friend who knew when to console, when to give her space; a friend who only wanted to love and be loved in return; her OTL, you can say.
Human beings have a tendency to exaggerate. Happy memories become happier after a while. She doesn't want to gloss over the downs in the sine wave graph representing their relationship so she takes care to remember each of the negatives. She finds herself treasuring each of the memories, regardless of the emotion, positive or negative attached to it.
So there she has it. Each of her characters discovers and rediscovers her friend in various forms. A brother, a lover, a friend. They reproduce the relationship she had. She calls it love, but hell, what does she know about love?
She wants to overcome this writer's block, this black hole but then again, she doesn't try too hard. Who are we to interfere with the natural course of things she asks, and doesnt even try. When she writes, she doesn't plan. It may be just one character or one place that she knows at the beginning, a park bench say, or a girl named Jane. As she writes her story, she develops her main character and that main character goes on to explore their world, ie - the story. So when her main character finds that story's equivalent of her own OTL, she doesn't protest. She doesn't try to divert the character into getting a job or undergoing a surgery. She lets her characters experience the happiness and pain with their OTLs and she did with hers. She thinks maybe deep inside she is a sucker for love stories. Then her gag reflex acts up and she knows she probably isn't.
She also doesn't know how to end them, her stories. Maybe that is her real problem, that she doesn't see endings. Maybe she doesn't want endings. She probably needs to learn that everyhing has an end.
So, until then, until she gets to the end of her labyrinth, here's to inspiration.