“Papa-paparazzi!”

The one line of the song I know is replaying itself in my head again and again. I sing it, and get a few stares, then shut my yap and sink down a little bit lower in my chair. Suddenly I just can’t contain myself and I start to sing it aloud.

Soon enough a few of the girls recognize the song and turn towards me.

“Baby you’ll be famous chase you down until you love me…” They sing, laughing. My cheeks flush red as I stand up from the chair and move to the back of the room.

The water washes over my face as I come up for air.

The liquid is cool and refreshing, though my body aches with the intensity of the race. I move my arms back and forth as fast as I possibly can, and keep pushing forward even though I feel as if my lungs will explode.

I hold my breath a bit longer, make a flip on the side of the pool, and am finally able to come up for a short breath. I kick my legs frantically behind me and keep my arms moving.

It’s worth it when I win.

My mind races.

I hold the pencil unsteadily in my hand, shaking it with the rhythm of my foot swinging under the desk. Crap! I think, as the teacher walks menacingly around the classroom and the clock ticks above the door.

The answers escape me, and I gnaw at the eraser end of my pencil until I come up with a guess that sound at least a forth of the way sophisticated.

The teacher sighs as she walks up to the front of the class, and I stare down at my almost-blank SAT.

The teacher smiles. “Hand in your tests.”

I take a step farther from the house and exhale. My breath comes out foggy, the slight puff of oxygen from my lungs slipping into a cloud of smoke. I wrap the jacket tighter around me and rub my gloved hands together, breathing into them.

The white snow still falls from above, blanketing the city.

I assume this town needed some redemption, some new life. And what not to bring that then snow? Silently I plead to God for rain when the cold weather clears up… if it ever does. This season’s been rough.

I trudge back to the house.

She pokes her small head in the crack between the door and the wall and I laugh.

“Grandpa….” She says with two sparkling, innocent eyes. Eyes that have not yet seen the darkness of the real world.

“Yes, Sweetie?” I say as I pick her up and hold her on my hip. She giggles and looks back at me.

I hold for who-knows-why. Maybe I’m only aging.  Or maybe… before I finish my though, she says, “Can we get…”She is broken off by a clash in the kitchen.

I turn to investigate, and see her mother collapsed on the floor.

I hold the bundle of cloth and blankets carefully, and stare down at the object beneath them.

“Hello!” I say in a tiny voice, almost a whisper. Smiling, I turn to her and laugh. “This is great.” She nods her head.

“I know.” She lays her head back, obviously weak, and closes her eyes ever so slowly.

The thin, diamond pattern on her gown twists and bends with her movement, deforming the perfect crystal like shapes. She opens her eyes and sighs.

“We did good, huh?”

“No, you did good.”

I smile again as I look down at the baby.

The cashier smiles at me from across the corner. “Have a nice day,” She says in a cheery voice, though I can tell it’s all an act.

I grumble back a forced, “Thanks,” and keep on my way. As I step out the door a bell dings and I curse at it, holding the brown paper sack in my right hand. I get back to my truck and smoothen the top of my hair.

I take out the Coke and open the can, then bring it to my lips. I try to forget the world and just enjoy my drink.

I extend my hand to meet his, though my spirit is nowhere in it. I move my wrist up and down with the pattern of his wrist after he clutches my hand, but feel nothing. My mind is elsewhere, in some foreign land compared to where it should be now.

I turn my body to glance around the room, filled with ladies in black dresses and men in suits. I smoothen my suit out and take a few steps toward the door when an old friend catches me. Just suddenly, a man yells out.

“Nobody move!” He holds a gun.

I pick up the fluffy white jacket and stick one arm in, then the other. She takes the sunglasses and slips them over my eyes, the large rims even covering my eyebrows. I turn around, strike a pose, and strut down the little hallway of the vintage shop.

“Oh, you’re so Elton John!” She says as I put all my weight on my right and my left hand on my hip. She snaps a picture with her phone, and we both start laughing. Suddenly, a woman with her hair piled in a bun comes and shushes us.

We don’t care.

I hug my books to my chest, and continue up.

“Hey! Can you be…” I turn around to face him. “Oh gosh… what’s wrong?” By this time most of the other students in the stairwell had cleared out.

I shake my head and look down. “Nothi… nothing.”

He grabs my shoulders. “Tell the truth.” I open my mouth and close it abruptly, holding tears behind my eyes. Slowly the tears start to fall, and he pulls me into a giant embrace.

“Shh…” He says soothingly. “Everything’s fine.”

The fifth period bell dings and the late students scurry through the stairwell.

 

I finally place my feet on the ground and stop myself. The swing rocks, then stills, and I stand up slowly.

I glance around at the lush landscape, with ivy growing around the house and a cream colored fence wrapping around it.

I hear a bird’s call somewhere far off in the shadowy distance.

I silently compare my life to this house; I have my fences, my ivy, making it impossible for anyone to really know me. I can hear the birds telling me to let loose, but I can’t do it.

This is the only life I’ll ever know.

I stand on the cold, metal steps, the rusty surface digging harshly into my bare feet. A smile forms on my face as I think about how good it is to be loved. To have someone care about you, worry about you… feel for you.

Tell you goodbye in the afternoon.

I sink down to where I’m sitting on the old staircase, barely illuminated in the dim moonlight.

Nothing feels the same anymore. Pain isn’t pain and I don’t seem to suffer… I lie awake at night dreaming of him and he has no idea.

Better keep it like that.

I stand outside the classroom, peering in through the little slit of a window that is cut into the door. I touch the handle and turn it halfway, then retreat and pull my hand back to my side.

Why is it so hard to talk to you?

Questions and emotions rage through my system, and it’s all I can do to not tell you how I really feel. You’d never like someone like me…

Sure, you’re not popular. Neither am I. Yes, we’re friends. But I have a feeling that’s all we’ll ever be.

But I want to be more.

I stand a statue on the cold cement. The pool in front of me never moves, but the shadowy reflection on the surface of the water sways with the rhythmatic movements of the trees, forced side to side by the impounding wind.

The Washington Monument rises tall and proud, it’s tip reaching out to break the azure sky overhead. Pervasive snowy white clouds drift past the broken city, smothered and oppressed by the fallen generations before us.

They came to this town and made something of it, then tore it down as quickly as it was built.

What a shame.

I tried not to look back.

Really, I did. It was just something about his eyes that was intriguing… intoxicating, to say the least. As his feminine lips screamed out the lines to a hard rock hit, then his deep brown eyes, surrounded by the long eyelashes that formed prisons around the outside of them, softened for a long-awaited ballad.

I know it wasn’t best for me, to not let go, but I couldn’t just leave him like that. I was determined to be his wife, and his wife I was.

Too bad I didn’t get more time with him.

I stare out at the vast crowd of people, each of them pushing and shoving themselves out of the auditorium, while I stand on the balcony snapping pictures of the human waves.

As the exodus continues, I frame a man wiping his bald head, a look of sheer panic plastered on his aged face.

I capture a woman, her skin long and sagging from years of oppression, exhaling as she pushes her child out the large, glass doors.

Soon, a security guard comes behind me and silences my photography.

He says I need to get away from the impending flames.

I stare out over the azure lake, hoping for even a glimmer of her face again.

If I had watched her... If I could have helped her… but I guess all the “ifs” are only lingering regrets.

I think back to the moment, only three days ago, and a tear falls silently down my face, making five perfect rings in the water below. The stars just don’t seem to shine as bright anymore, and the flowers seem to wither a lot sooner than they did.

I take one last look in the jar, then scatter the ashes over the lake.

Small stripes of pink and brown cover my oversized t-shirt. I was in a hurry, and grabbed it in a cursory manner out of my closet. It disgusts me.

Taking a quick glance around, I take a small nail file out of my purse and rub it harshly on the tips of my nails. A chirping sound comes from my Gucci purse and I take out the Blackberry and press send.

“Talk to me.” I say, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder.

A voice comes from the other end. “I’m gonna be a little late.”

My heart sinks.