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flamencodiva · 3 years ago

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Bottom of the Bottle 2 - Sneaking Back on Stage

Description: Dean was at the peak of stardom until his world came crashing down. Can he find his way back to the top?

Word Count: 5340

Warnings for entire series: Smut (oral female and male receiving, P in V, Threesomes, Fingering, Orgies) Fluff, Angst, Violence, Language, Mentions of Drug use, Drinking, Mentions of Death.

Songs in this chapter: Partial Lyrics of Brother's Osbourn Ain't My Fault and Full lyrics of Down don't Bother Me by The Derek Truck Band

Beta'd by: @wonder-cole

Aesthetic by: @firefly-graphics

Dividers by: @talesmaniac89

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

<< Chapter 1

Dean pulled the bike up on the driveway and parked her next to his father’s truck. Then, killing the engine, he hopped off with a smile. Finally, Dean found a place where he could start over, a place he could play and live again. He found a small spring in his step and ran his fingers through his short hair. He was glad it was quick. His years with Purgatory had the band growing out his hair long. He hated it, but it was for the image. At the time, he would do anything just to be able to be involved in music and if growing his hair long was the worst of it, it was worth it to him.

But the minute that he was put in jail and kicked out of the band for something he didn’t do, he was glad to be rid of it. He was happy to cut off the long hair and return to his short locks. Turning the key to unlock the door, he let himself in to find his father sitting at the dining room table, hands folded on top of it.

“You could have gone to bed, you know,” Dean muttered as he placed the helmet on the table in the foyer and shrugged off his jacket to put it on the hook, “I told you I was going to be back.”

“Where did you go?” John asked as he looked up at Dean.

“Out,” Dean huffed, “I’m not a kid anymore, dad. So I went out, the bike had a wire come loose, I was close to a place, got help, came back.”

“You can’t do that again, Dean,” John said as he got up from the table.

“Do what? Go out and have fun? Go out and try to find some friends?” Dean asked, “I’m confused as to what you want from me here. I’m already working at the garage. I’m living under your thumb. I have a damn motorcycle instead of Baby.”

“I just wanted you to think before you went out,” John said as he walked to Dean, “I know you love to sing, and you love music, but it isn’t everything.”

“It’s all I have!” Dean practically yelled. “You know you started spewing all this bullshit about how I abandoned this family and ran away and couldn’t wait to leave,” Dean ran a hand across his face. “I wanted to go out and explore and find myself. You want to know the fucked up thing?” he walked up to his father, “I came back when Sam called me about mom. Not you,” he poked at John’s chest, “Sam, he called me to tell me mom was sick. You were the coward who couldn’t even face me to tell me my mother was dying!”

“Would you have answered the phone if it was me?” John muttered. “You have to admit, the minute you signed that contract, you wanted to high tail it out of here faster than a damn wolf chasing its prey.”

Dean looked down at the floor and licked his lips, “I wanted to get away from you. Not mom, not Sam, you. Because I was so mad and disappointed that my own father didn’t want me to follow something I was good at, something that gave me life.” Dean walked over to a picture of his mother and let his fingers graze over it, “I came every chance I could. I was in that hospital by her side when you didn't know it. I always waited for you and Sam to leave because I didn’t want to fight you while she was fighting Cancer.”

Dean wiped the stray tear that was falling down his cheek and shook his head.

“But it doesn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not that money I gave for the treatments or the fact that I tried to get Mom one of the best specialists I could find.” he turned to face his dad. “Music is in me, and I can feel it. What hurt me wasn’t mom dying. It was the fact that my own father thought of me as a disappointment when I made it big.”

John let his son’s words sink in before heading to the stairs, “A lot of good that fame and fortune did. You became part of a group that, in the end, it brought you back down to zero.” John was halfway up the stairs before he stopped, “you called me a coward for not calling you, but you’re a coward for not manning up to face me at that hospital.”

John’s footsteps began to fade as he ascended the staircase and retreated to his bedroom, leaving Dean to stew in his anger. Dean let out a frustrated growl with his jaw clenched and stomped up the stairs towards his old room. Why was his dad so adamant about keeping him locked up in a cage? He was already in a cell for six months, and he hated every minute of it. Apart from the fact that he could write a few lyrics, he hated being in that damn jail. He didn’t do anything wrong, and everyone tried to fight him for being a damn rock star.

Entering his room, he could see the boxes from his old home scattered around. Some boxes labeled clothing, some marked notebooks, and a few just miscellaneous. Walking to the box labeled notebooks, Dean tore the tape out and pulled out one of his more recently used ones. His fingers grazed over the pages before he turned to his bag full of his things from jail. Reaching inside, he pulled out a small booklet he had filled with some lyrics he had.

Dean didn’t go to bed right away that night. Instead, he took that time to filter through the small notebook and transferred his lyrics to his larger notebook. The memory of Y/N on stage seemed to haunt him. She looked at peace being up on that stage, almost ethereal, an angel ready to spread her wings and fly. Putting down his pen, his eyes roamed his room before settling on the silhouette of his guitar case. Sure, Dean had plenty of guitars, but this one, this one was special, and he was surprised to see it propped up in the familiar corner of his room.

Getting up from his chair, he walked over towards it, pulled the hard case out, and placed it on his bed. Opening up the latches, he lifted the lid and smiled. There nestled nice and snug was a Fender FA-100 Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar. He loved this guitar and hadn't been able to play it for years. He felt almost sad that he had it with him but could never really pull it out to play often. It was a birthday gift for his 17th birthday from his mother. Sure, she said it was from both her and his father, but Dean had a feeling it was more his mother than his old man.

Gently pulling it out of the case, Dean sat on his bed and placed the guitar on his right thigh, the fingers on his left hand holding down a chord on the fret before he strummed it. He winced at the awful sound that came out. It needed tuning. He looked around his room using the tiny light from his desk lamp and smiled when his eyes landed on the corkboard above his headboard. There, pinned to it, was his favorite pick. It was one of the few things his father did give him that he loved, a pick that he had seen in the music store that he had to have.

Taking a deep breath, Dean began to pluck at the strings and turn on the knobs to find the right notes. There was something about the way he felt holding his guitar that sent a shiver down his spine. Dean missed this feeling, and he kicked himself for letting the image geniuses at the label dictate that he should only be the voice of the band. Focusing on his tuning, he continued to play with the knobs until he was sure the guitar had the right notes to play.

With one last strum, he hummed in satisfaction at the sweet sound. He moved his fingers along the fret, strumming at the strings when a melody came to mind. He wasn't sure of the tempo, but he knew the notes he wanted to play. Adjusting himself and the guitar, he cleared his throat and let the music flow through him.

“Blame the whiskey on the beer, blame the beer on the whiskey,” he let out and smiled, “I like the sound of that,” he chuckled before grabbing his notebook and scribbling it down.

He continued to find the melody, and he figured a slow rhythm was a good fit for the song. At least that’s what he felt.

“Blame the bar for the band, blame the band for the--” he paused as he tried to find the right word, “song? Yeah, that works,” he wrote it down and shook his head gently.

His mind began to fill with doubt as he looked down at the lyrics. Was he really going to try to get back into music? Could he really deal with being a label stooge? He wanted to make music, sure, but it needed to be his music.

“You got this, Winchester,” he calmed himself, “You’ve been playing music for a long time. This is a good song.” he licked his lips and looked down at his fingers, “you had these lyrics in your head for a while, you just gotta get them out.

He continued to strum on his guitar and progressed as much as he could. He had gotten to the first round of the bridge before yawning. But, looking over at the clock, it was well past two in the morning, and he had to try to get as much sleep as he could.

The following day, Dean woke up to his father banging on his door.

“Wake up,” John called through the door, “I’m headed to the garage. You should head out soon. Coffee is already brewed.”

Dean let out a groan and ran a hand across his face to try and wake up fully. He stretched his body before forcing himself to get up. Dean looked at the open notebook on the floor and sighed. He had to finish the lyrics and try to memorize the song by tonight if he wanted to show Benny up. He didn’t like that Benny thought he would use Y/N for his own personal gain. That wasn’t in Dean’s nature at all. Besides, if the song was a hit, he could perform the other songs he had lying around, but he had to find a way to hide it from his dad.

Walking to his window, he looked outside and sighed. The sun was just rising, and he could hear the birds chirping on the nearby tree. Opening the window, he leaned on the windowsill when something caught his peripheral vision. He turned his head slightly to see the trellis that ran up the side of the house by his window. Reaching over, he pulled on it and gave a pouted shrug.

“Still feels sturdy,” he muttered to himself before looking down and feeling his pulse race. “You can do this,” he said, looking at the height, “you did it back in high school to go sneak over to ‘easy’ Gracie's house.” he reminded himself. “That and all of Mullet’s parties to play a gig.”

With a nod, he began formulating his plan. He spared no time in grabbing his clothes and getting dressed. His notebook was tight under the crook of his arm as he made his way downstairs to grab a coffee. His father had already left, leaving him alone. With a coffee mug in his hand, he used his free hand to write out the rest of his lyrics before looking at the time and dashing towards the front door. He made sure he kept the notebook close to him as he got ready for his bike ride to the garage.

He kept to himself as he placed certain things in his locker before grabbing his coveralls and put them on over his clothes. Then, his notebook in hand, he walked over to the work orders board and picked a clipboard to work on for the day. In between changing the oil on a few cars, replacing brake pads, and rotating tires, Dean had finished writing and found himself memorizing the lyrics he wrote out.

“I got my hand’s up. I need an alibi,” Dean muttered, “find me a witness who can testify.”

The melody was slow and funeral-like, and for the most part, it worked. What mattered to him right now was memorizing the damn words so he could get them out. He was sure the melody would change later, as he kept bouncing from uptempo to slow funeral march. It was hard trying to find a good beat, but he wasn’t sure what direction he was going. Was he going to stick to the complex rock rhythm he got used to with purgatory? Or was he going to go to his country roots?

He didn’t notice his father looking at him closely, the sad look on John's face as he recognized that Dean was writing lyrics. The old man could always tell when Dean was working on a song. Dean could never sit still when he was inspired, and the fact that Dean kept tapping different rhythms during the day wasn’t helping him hide it. But John was out of ideas, and the last thing he needed was to find his son on the news where they were announcing his death. It was bad enough seeing his son being arrested on the news, but to have his death broadcasted would absolutely shatter him. John had tried so hard to shelter Dean from getting the performance bug, but it seemed like the tighter John held on, the more Dean slipped through his fingers.

The rest of the day, Dean had played with a few different melodies in his head, but nothing seemed to stick. By the time he had memorized the song, it was time to close the garage. Dean had put his coverall back in his locker and walked over to his bike.

“Dean?” John called.

“Yeah,” Dean answered, turning to face his father.

“What do you think about heading over to the diner we always used to go to for dinner?”

Dean looked at his watch and then back up to his Dad. He still had some time to head home and grab his guitar and sneak out, “yeah, sounds good. Need to have that famous burger of theirs. I missed it when I was up in KC,” Dean said with a tight-lipped smile.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there,” John nodded his head as he let Dean go before him, “I gotta lock up, so you go ahead and see if they can get us in a booth.”

“Sure,” Dean called out before putting his helmet on and zipping up his jacket.

The ride to the dinner wasn’t too bad. It was short. To begin with and Dean made it with perfect time to grab the last available booth. Dean ordered a burger for himself along with a beer and a slice of pie for after. The waitress was about to leave when John appeared and slid in.

“I’ll have the meatloaf and a water, Jenny, thanks,” he said to the young waitress.

“You got it, John, coming right up,” she smiled at the elder Winchester before turning to Dean and winking, “I get off at 8.”

Dean offered her a smile before turning to his father, “you come here a lot then?”

“Haven’t really cooked since your mother died,” John muttered as he looked at Dean. “You did good work today,” he changed the subject, “I was thinking about showing you how to run the books and showing you all the accounts, you know, get you ready to take over.”

“Dad--” Dean sighed, “I love working at the garage, I do, but it won’t make me happy.”

“Because music makes you happy,” John scoffed, “look what music did to you!” he pointed out.

“You know as well as I do that it was the industry, not the music. Those are two different things!” Dean argued.

John shook his head before running a hand across his face, “look, you need a backup, and I need someone I can trust to take over.”

“You planning on retiring soon?” Dean let out as he leaned back in his seat.

“Maybe,” John sighed, “I can’t run the garage forever, and I don’t want to sell it.”

Dean looked at his father’s face and could see the hurt in his eyes, “you really love that garage.”

“It’s my second love to my family,” John said as he folded his hands together over the table. “Just think about it?”

“I guess I can do that,” Dean muttered as their waitress, Jenny, came by with their food.

“You know she’s single,” John commented as he grabbed his fork to dig into his meatloaf.

“I don’t need dating help,” Dean let out as he grabbed his burger in his hands, “besides, I’m not looking for attachments.”

“Sometimes they’re a good thing, though,” his father commented after swallowing his food.

Dean rolled his eyes, “after the fiasco with Lisa, no thanks.”

“You’ll find someone,” John chuckled, “I don’t think I ever met Lisa.”

“Thank your lucky stars for that,” Dean huffed. “All she cared about was the fame and notoriety. Then I caught her with some publicist screwing in my bed,” he shook his head, “then again, I was nailing two, maybe three girls at a time so… no skin off my back when I cut her loose.”

John stayed silent for a minute, digesting what his son was saying, “so you went for the sex god approach then.”

“Better than being the drug addict,” Dean shook his head and took a bite of one of his fries, “the alcohol helped to just dull the senses anyways. I was a pretty face and a voice for the band, that’s it.”

John could hear the unhappiness in his voice and see the pain radiating in his son’s eyes over not making the music he wanted. It hurt John for a bit, but it also had him thinking about how it might help keep Dean home and safe.

“The business can chew you up and spit you out pretty easily.”

Dean watched as his father continued to eat his meatloaf, letting the conversation die. Yet, he knew where it would lead if he kept the conversation going.

Finishing his meal, Dean cleaned up his face and reached for his wallet before John stopped him.

“I got this son, you go on home, or are you going back out for a ride?” John asked.

“I need to rest, so I’ll be up in my room,” Dean lied as he slid out of the booth. “So I’ll be in bed by the time you get home, maybe.”

“Okay, I’ll be up watching some tv, so I’ll try not to make too much noise,” John pulled out his wallet and a few bills to place on the table.

Dean walked out and towards his bike just as John got into his truck.

On the ride home, Dean was thinking of what his escape plan would be. He already knew he would climb down the trellis, but his guitar had to come with him. Reaching the house, both men stayed in silence as they went their separate ways. Dean closed his door and put the lock on for good measure. He felt like a teenager hiding from his parents, but he knew his father would never understand. And honestly, Dean really had no place to go, and if he had to keep his musical exploits a secret, then so be it. One could say he wanted to try to impress a particular bartender he met last night, also wondering if he would hear her sweet voice again. Grabbing his case, he looked around for something he could use to strap it to his back, finding a rope he could use on the fly.

Once he was sure that the case was secured to his back, Dean carefully climbed out of the window to sit on the windowsill. He moved as carefully as he could, making sure to avoid making too much noise with his guitar case and getting it out of the window. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he reached the trellis and slowly began to climb down.

“You got this, Dean,” he said to himself as he made sure to place his foot on the holes as he climbed down. “Just like that time you snuck out to head over to the bonfire,” he took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in his throat, “granted you also missed a small hole and fell when you reached the last foot off the ground, but you did it.”

Finally reaching the bottom of the trellis, Dean gave a small jump and smiled in satisfaction. Heading to his bike and rolling it away from the house to not make any noise when he started the engine. Once he was a block away, at least, his night began. The ride to Rusty’s was smooth, and Dean could see it already start to fill with patrons. Parking his bike, he adjusted his guitar and made his way inside. His smile grew when he saw Y/N at the bar already taking orders.

“You know we really do have to stop meeting like this,” he called out with a smile when she turned to him.

“Does that line work? I mean, right now, it just seems like you’re trying too hard,” she let out as she walked over to him, “going to drink, perform, or both?”

“Both,” he answered, “know where I can find Jo?”

“She’s over by the stage taking names for tonight,” she pointed over to the blond who was talking to a few groups.

“Wait,” Dean squinted a bit, “That’s Jo Harvelle? I know Jo,” Dean smiled and turned to face Y/N, “Will you be performing tonight?”

“Nope,” she sighed, popping the ‘p.’ “Yesterday was a fluke. I was filling in for someone.”

“I’m going to go talk to Jo,” Dean said before leaning over and taking Y/N’s arm gently before she could leave. “Whoever told you that you weren’t amazing last night was lying to you, sweetheart.” He let her go before she could give him a counterargument and made his way to the stage with his guitar strapped to his back.

As he approached the stage, he could feel a hand pull him back, and a person walked past him.

“Hey,” he called out, “do you mind?”

“Why yez, ah do mind,” the familiar Cajun voice said, “didn’ tink youz goin’ tah show up.”

Dean gave Benny a cocky smile before huffing, “I did tell you I would see you. Let me guess you have a song to sing tonight too?”

“Betta’ than what chu have to play i’m zure,” Benny chuckled, “I didn’ tink dat dey let chu play an inztrumentz.”

“I was playing the guitar before I ever joined that group,” Dean said with a low growl, “how the hell did you recognize me anyway.”

“The long lockz don’ matta to me brotha,” Benny sighed, “but da eyez are da windows to da soul.”

“You and everyone else seem to recognize me,” Dean muttered, “well, you can go ahead and sing your song before me,” Dean offered him a sly smile, “I’m sure I can bring the house down.”

Benny let out a scoff before turning away to walk towards Jo, “good luck wit dat brotha.”

Dean watched as Benny talked to Jo, who gave him a quick nod while jotting down a note. Once she was done, the Cajun turned around and checked Dean on the shoulder.

“Good luck up, der,” he chuckled at Dean, “you lookz like you need it.”

Dean clenched his jaw as Benny walked away. The guy really didn’t like him. Dean didn’t do anything. Hell, most people’s assumptions of him now have to do with the damn drug charge. Shaking his head, he walked up to Jo and adjusted the guitar strapped to his back. As he walked up to the young blond, he couldn’t help but smile as a memory of a young girl in pigtails flashed before him.

“Never thought you’d grow out of the pigtail stage,” he said as he stood in front of her.

“Well, well, well,” she said, chuckling before pulling him into a tight hug, “never thought the infamous Dean Winchester would grace us with his presence. I thought this place would be too. country for you?”

“I want to sign up to perform,’ he let out with a deep breath.

“Fees $20 to perform,’ she sighed.

“Performance fee?” Dean scoffed, “Really, Jo? Who the hell came up with that?”

“Look,” Jo sighed, “The $20 goes for every and all performers. It’s a small fee for renting out the stage. Besides, you get more in tips if people really like you.”

Dean grumbled as he fished in his pockets for a twenty-dollar bill. He handed it to Jo and shook his head, “I’m only going to be singing the one song.”

“Okay,” Jo wrote down his name and smiled, “You can wait by the bar and order some food. I’ll have someone pull you to the back about three performers before you.” She reached over and pulled him into a hug, “Welcome home, Dean. I have a feeling this is going to be a fresh start for you. You never looked right with that band.”

Dean smiled as he hugged her back, “Thanks, Jo.”

With that, Jo pulled away to let him walk towards the bar with his guitar still on his back. Approaching the bar, Dean smiled, seeing Y/N smile as she served customers. Her laugh reached his ears, and it pulled at him. There was a sense of comfort he felt from listening to Y/N’s laugh. Her laugh was very familiar to him. Walking to the bar, he pulled up a stool and sat down to wait for his turn. He wanted to try out his new song, but he wasn’t sure about the tempo yet. He continued playing around with different beats, but all he could come up with was a depressing march, but it didn’t seem to fit the song at all. With a groan, Dean decided to get something in his stomach while he waited.

“You look like you got something bothering you, Gringo.”

Dean snapped his head up from the menu to see Y/N leaning over the bar top towards him.

“Just trying to figure out what to eat before I have to head up on stage,” He chuckled, trying to shrug off the nervous feeling he had on him. “Besides, Benny’s gonna get mad if he sees you talking to me.”

“I can handle Benny,” Y/N offered him a smile, “besides, I’m the only bartender here, so I’m doing my job.”

“What do you recommend from the kitchen?” Dean asked as he licked his lips. There was something alluring about Y/N, but at the same time, he felt as though he had known her from before their encounter in the coffee shop.

“Honestly? The ultimate bacon burger,” Y/N answered. “It’s got premium Angus beef, with nice crispy bacon, a chipotle aioli, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles. Not to mention you can have it with steak fries or onion rings.”

“That actually sounds good. I’ll have that and a bottle of Margiekugels,” Dean closed up the menu and sighed, “So is there ever a chance I’m going to see you on stage again?”

Y/N looked over at him as she put in his order on the digital register, “I don’t know,” she sighed, “it was just a one-time thing being up there.”

“Well, if you ever want to go up there again,” Dean said before taking a sip of his beer, “I could always be your backup.”

“Look,” Y/N shook her head with a slight huff. “I know all about you. Just because you cut your hair doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to recognize those big green eyes of yours,” she gave him a soft glare. “I’m not into rock stars, so do me a favor and just find someone else to play with, okay?”

Dean let out a small huff with a smirk, “well, screw you then, sweetheart.”

He took another sip of his beer and shook his head.

“You think you know me because of what the media says about things I didn’t even do? Then fine, you know me. But in reality, you’re just a scared little bitch who wants to stay behind the bar counter.” he grabbed his guitar as he got off the stool. “You can have them send my burger to the table in the corner over there,” he pointed towards the back of the saloon and slapped some money on the counter, “keep the change.”

He stalked off with his beer and guitar, chest full of anger as he looked up to see Benny had already gone on stage and was singing a song. The people were cheering and hollering for him.

Goin' 'round in circles

Pickin' out a cue

Travelin' with no memory

Ow, in my shoe

Down don't bother me.

If the music say

You can take a picture baby

Time won't care

And you're my second nature

A-coming over me

And though I might be shakin'

Down don't bother me no more.

Down don't bother me no more

As Benny finished his song, Dean rolled his eyes as everyone in the crowd cheered and whistled. Seemed like Benny has a crew of regulars that come to see him. He took a swig of his beer, smacking his lips and smiling at the waitress who brought his burger to him. Dean could feel Y/N staring, but he didn’t care. She had made up her mind, and he was done trying to prove to people that he wasn’t an asshole.

Finishing up his burger, he watched as Benny made his way over and rolled his eyes. He should have known that the seat he picked was closest to the kitchen.

“I’ze hope chu enjoyed dat performaze brotha,” Benny chuckled, “chu look like you could yuz da luck.”

“I don’t need luck,” Dean grumbled, “I know my skills, so why don’t you go back to yours and leave me and mine alone.”

Benny lifted his hands in surrender and let out a laugh, “didn’t mean ta hit a sore spot witch you. Enjoy da burga.”

Dean shook his head as Benny walked into the kitchen. His nerves were starting to get the best of him as he could feel his hands shake. Looking at his guitar propped up in the chair, his mind began to spin with thoughts.

‘What the fuck am I doing?’ his mind shouted. ‘People are going to hate this song. I don’t even have a tempo yet!’

He could feel his heart race. Nothing could get him to snap out of it. At least, not until Jo came up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, making him jerk.

“Hey,” she gave him a warm smile. “You got two performers before you. You should head backstage. I’ll show you the way.”

Dean nodded numbly as he followed her, not noticing an old friend watching him as he disappeared behind a black curtain.

Chapter 3

Tags in the Reblog

#Bottom of the Bottle #Rockstar!Dean Winchester #Rockstar AU #Dean Winchester Fic #Dean Winchester Fan Fiction #Supernatural AU #Supernatural Fiction #Rockstar!Dean Winchester x Reader #Angst #Fluff #Smut #mentions of orgies #Mentions of drug abuse #Alcoholism #violence #fake dating #language

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bluejeanlouis · 5 years ago

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COMING SOON: The Yellow Roof, 1970s AU by kiddle

Louis is a gifted musician spending his days on the wrong side of a drive-thru window. Harry is the lead singer of a band in need of a little talent. Their big break is a thousand miles away.

Preview under the cut:

With a deep sigh, Louis leaned his chair on its back two legs, propping one of his feet up next to the till in front of him. The sun was blinding between the trees of the neighbourhood across the street, striking his eyes through the drive-thru window. He yanked the blind closed even though he wasn’t supposed to when the Fotomat was open. But there was no one around and his ability to give a shit had decreased significantly today. Slurping on the can of Coke he brought with him, he pulled out his lyric book.

Louis was not a poet. In fact, the pretentious and dull poetry class he took in his second semester at college was detrimental in his decision to drop out a year later. He didn’t like the confusion of poetry and the rules despite being an art form that claimed to be free of them. Don’t get him wrong, he was confident in his own writing, he just didn’t want to be taught how to do it.

But one look under the cover of that notebook would reveal pages and pages of poetic garbage. Some of it was great, and a couple had even ended up as actual songs back when Louis was performing solo at bars before he gave up on that too. Most of it was scribbled chicken scratch. That was just his process.

He held the notebook against his knees, tracing dark lines across the last words he wrote last night with his pen. It was some bullshit angsty heartbreak harnessed from his high school first love mixed with the anger of being sacked from a band that he was the best instrumentalist in. Sometimes that kind of emotion makes for a perfect writing session, and sometimes it’s a diary entry you never want to see the light of day.

Louis bit the end of his pen, rereading the words on his page. ‘Heart’ had to be the most overused word in love songs, and he had it down in every verse and the chorus. Love songs weren’t even what he wanted to write about. It wasn’t the only feeling out there. It sure as hell wasn’t the most predominant one in his mind.

A loud and abrupt knock on the window made Louis nearly leap out of his seat. His notebook and pen tumbled to the ground as he dropped his feet from the desk. He yanked on the string to make the blind spring back up, knocking his Coke over in the process. He picked it up just as quick, groaning at the mess it made. All the commotion caused the stack of pickup envelopes next to the widow to splay out over the desk in front of him. Now that the customer could see him, he tried to push him all out of the way before he slid the window open.

“Hi, welcome to— Shit!”

One of the envelopes had landed in the small puddle of spilled Coke. He tried to wipe it off on his jeans as quickly as he could before returning it to the scattered pile with the others. Once he finally composed himself, he tried to greet the customer properly.

But then his face fell to disgust.

“What are you doing here?”

“You left so quickly yesterday, we didn’t have the chance to talk,” said Harry, the lead singer of Louis’ former going-nowhere band. Harry had one hand casually rested on the steering wheel, the other elbow poking out the window, and sunglasses sitting low on his nose. Louis hated how effortlessly cool he could always look. It made him the perfect goddamn lead singer.

Louis rolled his eyes. “What did you want me to do? Beg for you to let me stay? ‘You’re out of the band’ was pretty loud and clear.”

“I mean, I thought we could have a discussion about it.”

“So you showed up to my work to have a discussion about it?” He hunched over so just his head was sticking out the window, his fist squished into his cheek to hold his head up.

“You wouldn’t answer the phone last night.”

“Take a hint,” he snapped, then slid the window shut with enough force to make it bounce halfway open again. He pushed it the rest of the way closed in a huff.

But Harry hadn’t driven away yet, so Louis slumped over in his chair and refused to look in his direction. Why the hell would he show up here? Just to rub it in his face? The new guy always loses the band argument. Louis was over it, and he had the faint remnants of a hangover to prove it.

He took a swig of his Coke that was now almost empty. No one ever left any napkins around here, but a few tissues seemed to do the trick to sop up that puddle. As he tried to avoid getting sticky hands, Louis could see Harry getting out of his car in the bottom corner of his eye. Then he heard the window opening again.

“Louis, listen to me,” Harry pressed. He had his hand in the way so Louis couldn’t shut it, but it did cross Louis’ mind to crush his fingers just to get him out of here.

“Go away,” he stated, pulling the roller blind between them. If only it was soundproof.

The blind sprung up again, revealing a wildly frustrated Harry on one side and an indifferent Louis on the other. He was pretending to read a copy of Vogue that one of the girls from the after-school shift left behind last night.

“We have a meeting with a record company in L.A. and they’re expecting a four-piece to show up. There’s no time to find a new bassist, so you’re back in the band.”

Louis folded down one corner and peeked his eye over Carrie Fisher’s head.

“How’d you get a meeting? The band sucks.”

Harry stared at him, angrily chewing on his lip, then turned around with a huff. “Fuck you,” he muttered, opening his car door.

Louis waited for him to start the engine and leave, but then the words “L.A.” and “record company” flashed with lights and sirens in his mind, and he imagined this opportunity driving off and never looking back.

“Wait!” Louis called out, tossing the magazine to the side and launching himself out the back door. He ran across the front of the car and slammed his hands on the hood so Harry couldn’t move the car an inch further. They eyed each other, and when Louis trusted that Harry wouldn’t speed off the moment he moved, Louis ran around to the passenger seat and got in.

Harry shook his head, both hands gripped tight on the steering wheel. “I’ve been dealing with your bullshit for ten years, man,” he said.

So maybe Louis wasn’t being totally truthful about what happened with the band.

Louis met Harry in his first year of middle school. They ended up in the same gym class, which was hell for every twelve-year-old, but for people like Louis and Harry, it was just a little too much to bear. They found skillful ways to ditch whenever possible, especially when it came to running the mile. Sometimes they’d hang out near the back of the group when everyone was filling out the gym doors, then slip out the side and circle the building before the teacher saw. The equipment closet was full of plenty of hiding spaces that begged to be taken advantage of. The best days were when they had a substitute who wouldn’t even notice that they never came back from a bathroom break in the change room.

In high school, they drifted, hanging out in the same group of freaks and burnouts, but not often with each other. They’d find themselves at the same parties and bickering in the same cars full of friends, but that initial bond had faded. Once college rolled around, they weren’t surprised to find out they’d be going to the same state school, but discovering their dorms were across the hall from each other was quite the shock.

They had become inseparable again, except for the inevitable monthly fights that left them not speaking to each other for days at a time. That went on for about two years until Louis dropped out and Harry continued with his literature degree. During that time, they hardly saw each other at all. Louis began to wonder if their friendship had only ever been one of convenience. But just as the year of 1972 was beginning, Louis got a phone call from that on-and-off best friend of his asking if he wanted to join his band.

Harry and Louis fought from day one, but just as much as they hated each other’s guts, they loved each other too. Louis would still consider Harry his friend, but he would have no problem telling him what an insufferable bastard he was right to his face. It was a brotherly bond. Sort of.

“How’d you get the meeting?” Louis asked, turning sideways in his seat. “When is it?”

“We sent in our demo and they want to talk to us. That’s it,” he said. “The meeting is next week and they want all of us there.”

“Me included?”

“You’re on the demo.”

The demo was pretty shit if you asked Louis, but he decided to keep that to himself. They recorded it at their old college in the crummy basement studio run by students, and you could guess that by the first listen. Louis looked out at the empty parking lot ahead of them. He had memorized every detail of this parking lot. It had become the scenery for his life. He couldn’t wait until he never had to look at it again.

“Do you actually want me back in the band?” Louis wondered, sincerity in his voice for once.

“I—” Harry started, but didn’t look him in the eye. “I want to be at a place where you could be in the band without the two of us constantly at each other’s necks.”

“That would be nice, yeah,” Louis sighed.

They sat in silence, Louis weighing his options and Harry wondering if he really should’ve taken that ignored phone call as a hint.

“So, what, is this to discuss an album deal?” Louis asked, hoping more detail might help his decision.

“It’s to discuss our potential. They didn’t tell me a whole lot, but if they want to spend their time on us then they gotta have some hope.”

A car horn blared loudly behind them, an impatient customer waiting his turn to desperately develop the photos from his five-year-old’s birthday party, surely. It startled them, but that was Louis’ cue to get back to work, he supposed.

“Can I think about it?” Louis asked. He was already halfway out the door.

“Not for too long. We meet them next week.”

The horn blared again.

“One second!” Louis called out. The guy in the car flipped him the bird and Louis wasn’t hesitant to send him one right back.

“What’s the label?”

“CBS,” Harry said.

Shit, Louis thought. CBS was no joke.

“Move your fucking car!” the guy behind them hollered out his window.

Harry glanced at the angry face in his rear-view mirror, then ignored it completely. Louis looked like he was about to leave, but Harry grabbed his arm to stop him. “Before you go, take this.” He dropped a roll of film into Louis’ open palm.

Louis looked at it curiously, his other hand on the door handle. “What’s this?”

Harry laughed. “Photos I need to get developed. This is a Fotomat, is it not?”

“It is,” Louis said slowly.

“I’ll be back in twenty-four hours,” Harry said, plucking his sunglasses off the dash and sliding them onto his face. “For those photos and for an answer.”

#larry fanfiction #it should be completed this spring #i've never made one of these posts so i had a little fun with it #let me know what you think if you want!

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emotionsofthesoul · 6 years ago

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Chapter 21 _ Feliz Navidad

December felt like it flew by. Juliana was settled into her apartment. She had a queen sized bed in her room and very comfortable couches in the living room. She and Valentina painted the entire apartment white once she received permission from the management. The white allowed the lights to bounce off the wall creating a brighter effect to the usually dim rooms. The spare room was used as Juliana’s office for any and all of her fashion work.

Christmas season had arrived and the Valdes family was going to celebrate Christmas Eve together at Juliana’s apartment. The Carvajal family were going to celebrate in the Sacramento loft per Leon’s request. He said it would be easier for Valentina to get to Juliana’s before midnight and much safer to make the 15 minute drive than the hour drive.

Valentina had returned back to the Carvajal mansion officially but spent many nights with Juliana instead of heading home. Alirio takes ever December off so Valentina had been driving herself to and from Sacramento. Mid December was finals season and Valentina had been stressing about her general ed finals so Juliana volunteered to help her practice and memorize things before the finals. They would stay up studying after she got off work and if it was passed 10pm, Juliana didn’t allow Valentina to drive home so late so she convinced her multiple times to stay over. The first few nights Valentina protested but eventually it became their favorite routine. Valentina and Juliana were a great team especially in the art department. Their collaborative photos had come out amazing earning a spot on the RS Gallery at the University for the following semester. Once the semester was over Valentina spent many week nights at Juliana’s and went to work with her with Renata’s approval.

Now that it was Christmas time the girls decided they would spend the dinner with their respective families and once the clock struck 11 they would meet at Juliana’s to exchange their gifts.

The Valdes family did not usually do gifts for Christmas. It was just a family dinner and a movie marathon before midnight and once midnight arrived everyone called it a night. But tonight would be different. Juliana’s parents had been invited to the Grupo Carvajal company party so once the dinner ended they headed over to the party knowing Valentina would soon arrive to keep Juliana company.

The Carvajals on the other hand were used to having dinner, play board games afterwards and once the clock stuck 12 exchange half of their gifts. They were a very competitive family and always had intense game nights. This particular Christmas they decided to play Sequence with a twist, for every game Valentina won she would be able to open one of her gifts and for every game she lost she had to drink a shot of the eggnog that she hated. It would be the first Christmas Eve without her there to open gifts so they wanted to be together when she did open them and this was a fun way to do it.

While she waited for Valentina, Juliana started her own movie marathon, she started with Anastasia because that was always a must-watch since it was her favorite movie. Followed up by How The Grinch Stole Christmas and when Valentina finally arrived she was halfway through Home Alone.

“Wow. That top looks beautiful on you…” Juliana said as she opened the door and found Valentina in a blouse she made for her. “You look beautiful.”

Valentina let out a small giggle as her grin grew. “Can I come in? I come bearing gifts.” She said holding a few bags and gift boxes.

“That beautiful smile is the only gift I need tonight. You are breathtaking.” Juliana said opening the door wide enough to let Valentina through.

A blush began to spread across Valentina’s face at the way Juliana was looking at her. It was a look of love, adoration, and something else she wasn’t quite used to yet but loved nonetheless.

“So what are we watching, chiquita.” Valentina said sinking into the couch that she loved so much.

“You.” Juliana whispered before snapping out of her trance. “I mean, uh… I’m watching Home Alone but it’s basically over so we can watch whatever you want now.” She said handing Valentina the remote control.

Valentina smirked at Juliana’s ‘you’ and decided to see where that avenue could go. “I have a better idea.” She said as she bit her bottom lip knowing the effect it had on the girl next to her.

“Don’t do that, Val.” Juliana said closing her eyes for a quick second and opening them to see Valentina smirking. “What’s your idea?”

“It’s almost midnight, how about we exchange our gifts now?” Valentina said as a playful smile spread across her lips knowing full well what a tease she was being and liking having Juliana all flustered.

“Oh okay that sounds like… an idea. Then we’ll start with mine.” Juliana said as she walked over to the Christmas tree to grab Valentina’s gifts nodding her head trying to get her mind off Valentina’s beauty.

“Here, open this first.” Juliana handed a small box to Valentina.

Valentina carefully unwrapped the present and as she opened the box she found a beautiful gold necklace that had a small red wooden carved heart with a note that read, “Te entrego mi corazón, keep it safe.”

“Thank you Juls I love it!” Valentina said as she reached over to give Juliana a quick kiss and turning around so Juliana could put it around her neck. “Okay open this one now.” She said as she handed Juliana one of the gift bags.

It was a handmade notebook with the world map on the front cover and an phrase on the back cover that read, “YOU ARE MY WORLD” and on the first page Valentina wrote a note that said:

Juliana,

Gracias por ser mi mejor amiga. Por darme tu amor. Thank you for loving me the way that you do. I am the luckiest girl in the world. You make me the happiest I’ve ever been. I want to show you and give you the world. Forever. Te amo.

Yours Always,

Val

“Valentina thank you, I love you.” Juliana said placing the notebook on her coffee table as she leaned in to kiss Valentina. A kiss that made Valentina lose track of where or who she was. One hand was placed behind Valentina’s head and the other on her waist as Juliana leaned her back onto the couch.

After a while Juliana pulled away leaving the girl beneath her all flustered and told her, “I think we still have a few gifts to exchange.” She said as she sat back up with a smirk as she got another present to hand over to Valentina.

“Neta? You’re just gonna leave me like that?” Valentina said trying to catch her breath.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Juliana giggled as she looked away.

They continued exchanging gifts for another hour and eventually Juliana gave Valentina a custom made summer dress and Valentina gave her a framed picture of the two of them at the park.

“Okay babe that’s it, do you wanna watch a movie and eat Oreos with milk? We’ll make homemade cookies tomorrow with Guille & Natty so that’s why I didn’t bring any but you love Oreos so we can totally eat those.” Valentina said cuddling into Juliana.

Juliana looked down at Valentina with a sly smile. “I have a better idea.”

Valentina looked up at Juliana who got up and offered her a hand, which she took as Juliana walked the two of them towards the bedroom.

“Best. Christmas. Ever.” Valentina exhaled quietly as she followed Juliana.

The following morning the girls awoke to a knock on the door.

It was Renata and Guillermo. They were dressed up as Mr. & Mrs. Clause and had a red bag as a good Santa should. They had different ingredients and boxes to make their yearly Christmas cookies and cupcakes. This time it would only be the four of them preparing the cookies. Juliana had yet to use her oven so this was the perfect occasion.

“Here love birds, go get ready while we set up the mixers, we brought you elf costumes. Now go go cuties!” Renata smiled excitedly as she handed each girl their outfits.

“Es neta?” Juliana said letting out a chuckle.

“Babe, you better listen to Renata, homegirl is serious about her Christmas-cookie-making outfits. It’s actually pretty hilarious, but don’t try to fight her on it, just let it happen.” Valentina said laughing as she placed her arm around Juliana’s shoulders walking them back to the room.

They took turns taking a shower and getting ready. By the time they returned to the kitchen Guille had already set up all their equipment and Renata was connecting her phone to Juliana’s speakers in order to play her Christmas playlist.

“You weren’t kidding, this is serious business to her.” Juliana whispered at Valentina with a loving playful smile. She truly adored Renata like big sister; she has easily become one of her best friends and mentors.

“Oh good! You’re ready my little elves! We’re all set up. First competition will be the gingerbread. We can opt for cookies or cupcakes. I think for this first round it’ll be the designers against the siblings to make it fair.” Renata said cheerfully.

Valentina groaned. “Fair?! How is that fair! You two design for a living. I’m stuck with the lawyer! And you have my girlfriend. How dare you Renata Isabel Carvajal!”

Everyone laughed at Valentina’s complaints.

Juliana leaned over to give Valentina a quick kiss. “It’s okay babygirl. I’ll go easy on you.” She finished with a wink.

“Oh so it’s like that? Okay, I see you. May the best member of Juliantina win then!” Valentina said stretching out her pinky to make the bet official.

“Juliantina?” Guille asked confused.

“Yeah it’s what people have been calling us since they found out and it’s kinda cute.” Valentina said still challenging Juliana, who simply lifted her eyebrow and decided to take on the challenge by wrapping her pinky around Valentina’s.

“Oo I like this already! Good luck babe, we’re gonna kick your butts!” Renata told her husband while giving Juliana a high five.

Both teams chose to make gingerbread cookies. Once finished it was clear who the winners were, the designers. Guille and Val weren’t that great at decoration their cookies. The remainder of the afternoon they made and ate their baked goodies. By noon Juliana’s parents along with Leon & Lucia arrived at the apartment to have lunch and enjoy the baked goods. They spent the rest of the day dancing, playing boardgames, and watching movies. Valentina had Eva in the back of her mind but she knew not inviting her was for the best after how she’d treated Juliana at every chance she’d gotten. Little did she know her sister had been coming up with what she considered a definitive plan.

#juliantina #valentina carvajal #juliana valdes #juliantinafics #juliantina fics #Forever #forever ch21

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 6 years ago

Text

confessions and constellations [2/3]

Summary: AJ finds a crumpled up piece of paper with a poem on it. Not understanding what it means, he shows it to Clem. It seems that the two of them have a mystery on their hands. They know who wrote it, but… who is the poem about?

Preview:

Again and again, he tries to write, tries to push those negative thoughts away. Hell, he even takes a break from the poetry format and just jots down his feelings.

When it's just the two of us, you make me feel like I have a purpose here. Suddenly, survival isn't just the one and only goal day to day. Making you smile feels just as important as living does. I want to stay up late with you and talk and laugh and hold hands and look at the stars and make up stories about each of them. Give them all names and stupid voices until the sun comes up and they fade away.

I know I’ll never tell you any of this. I’ll never tell you how much you’ve grown to mean to me over all these years. You’ve always been there in the corner of my eyes and now you’re all I dream about.

I want

Aasim sighs.

I want you.

How pathetic.

Warnings: Aasim gets hurt in more ways than one. AJ’s an awful detective but he’s trying his best. Mitch pukes.

Author’s Note: This one’s pretty long. Thanks to everyone who read the first part! I really appreciate it! Maybe we’ll find out who the poem’s about. spoiler alert: we don’t not until the final part

Part I | Part II | Part III

---

The bright warmth shining in through his window is deceptive. When Aasim tugs the heavy blanket off himself and kicks it to the floor, the cool air immediately clings to any free skin. He feels goosebumps rise along his neck.

He had another dream last night.

In his mind, the images replay over and over again. He memorizes as much as he can. He flips over onto his side and yanks open his desk drawer to pull out one of his many notebooks. This one is red with a torn cover and some water damage on the bottom half. Drowsily, he flips to the next blank page and pulls the cap of his pen off with his teeth.

He jots down the little details before they flee his memory forever. They’re scattered, barely sentences.

the moon was enormous / not white? it was gold like the sun but cold gold/cold

fireflies instead of stars

in a city? we were on top of this huge building lots of windows

we kissed again

He fills up the page before tossing it onto his desk. He lays back to stare up at the ceiling.

It’s another day of survival. He’s to go check the traps and hunt after breakfast. Then, it’s back to work on his poetry...

Fuck.

Aasim groans, flinging his arm over his eyes.

He really thought he had something last night, he really did. But, after reading back what he wrote it just seemed so... bad? He could never read something like that out loud and expect to be taken seriously. No way in hell.

And, after he crumpled the paper up, it occurred to him once again that the whole poetry thing might be a huge waste of time and energy.

Being in love is a huge waste of time and energy.

It’s not something that’s going to help him survive day to day, it’s not going to feed him at night, and it’s not going to guarantee a roof over his head. Being in love, or rather, having this stupid, intense, mind-numbing crush wasn’t doing anything good for him. If anything, it’s just eating away at him, exhausting both his mind and his body, wasting his time.

And for what?

For some fantasy of love? Of being loved? Of not waking up alone and having someone there to kiss him and hold him and just... be there?

That’s all it is: a fantasy. A dream. Just like the ones he has almost every night.

He could continue with his plan, sure. Write the poem, write the note, confess with the poem, huge romantic moon, and...

... and have one of two outcomes:

Rejection. Eternal heartbreak. Death.

Acceptance. Temporary happiness... Death.

Because that’s all it ever ends with, right?

Aasim rises from the bed and moves about his room, continuing with his morning routine to distract himself with his thoughts.

He’d try his hand at poetry again.

But, he knows the truth.

Those poems will never be heard by anyone but him.

“Live in your fantasy,” he mumbles to the cold, empty room.

---

AJ wouldn’t stop talking about the poem.

“I like the part about the stars showering,” he says. “Like, they’re falling to the ground? Can you imagine if all the stars really fell like that?”

Clem smiles. “It’d be quite the sight, wouldn’t it?”

AJ nods. “But,” he holds up the paper, “it couldn’t compare to his crush?”

“So he says.”

Clem had read the poem out loud twice this morning, and each time it made her feel a little more guilty. And a little afraid. What if Aasim happened to walk by and hear them in their room? Not that Aasim ever comes this way, but still.

“So!” AJ rubs his hands together, “where should we start?”

Clem replies, “We should narrow down the suspects.”

“Sus... sussspects?”

“Like, who we think it could possibly be.”

“Well, it’s not me,” AJ says firmly.

“And it’s not me,” Clem agrees. “And, I think it’s safe to cross off Tenn and Willy, too.”

“And Rosie,” AJ adds.

Clem laughs. “Okay, so who do we have left?”

AJ starts counting on his fingers, “Marlon, Violet, Louis...”

“Mitch and Ruby.”

“Mitch, Ruby, um, Brody, Omar...”

Clem says, “I think that’s it.”

“Here,” AJ pulls a wrinkled piece of drawing paper off his desk and a crayon. “Write all the suspects down!”

Marlon Violet Louis Brody Ruby Omar Mitch

“There,” she says.

“So, we gotta see if any of them have freckles, right?”

Clem nods. “That’ll help narrow it down.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She hadn’t really paid much attention to the tiny details of anyone’s faces.

Well, with one exception-

AJ hurries to the door.

“Hold it, goofball!”

“Clem,” AJ pouts.

“What are the rules?” she says, holding out her hand. AJ reluctantly gives her back the poem.

“You keep the poem,” he mumbles.

“And?”

“And never ever tell Aasim.”

“Right, and don’t tell anyone else,” she pockets both the poem and the list of suspects and nudges him with a smirk, “think of it like we’re undercover detectives. No one can know what we’re investigating.”

AJ grins. “Got it!”

---

AJ’s... not very subtle.

At all.

The second they get outside, his narrowed eyes are darting from one person to the other. He’s tense, ready to strike at any moment.

It’s very obvious that something’s up.

Clem tries to act normal as the two approach Violet.

“Morning, Vi,” Clem greets.

Violet yawns, stretching her arms over her head. “Good morning, I guess. Little cold, though.”

“Seems like summer’s over.”

“Awesome,” Violet sighs. She turns to smile at AJ but is surprised by his overly intense stare.

“Um...?” she quirks a brow. “Are you alright, AJ?”

“Fine!” AJ takes a step towards her. “Hmmm...”

Clem forces an awkward laugh, placing her hand on AJ’s shoulder and pulling him back. He then relaxes, looking up at clem and shaking his head, mouthing quietly, “No freckles.”

Violet shoots Clem a puzzled look.

“AJ’s paranoid,” Clem lies. “Had a, uh, bad dream that one of us is... secretly a robot.”

“Huh?” AJ frowns. Clem pinches him. “Oh! Yeah! Right! Robots!”

“A robot?” Violet scoffs. “Well, hate to disappoint, but I’m human. Though, I’d check up on Marlon.” She smirks, leaning forward and whispering loudly, “Only a machine would think that hair looks cool.”

Clem let out a sigh of relief. Even if Violet doesn’t completely believe them, at least she’s playing along.

“Marlon...?” AJ whips around to search for Marlon. He spots him talking with Brody over by the gates. Before Clem can stop him, he’s wandering over to them.

When he’s out of earshot, Violet says, “Robots, hm?”

“Yeah,” Clem sighs. “Robots.”

“Where’d he learn about robots from?”

“An old book we used to read together.”

“Right...” Violet crosses her arms. “You know, you can talk to me if something’s going on, right?”

Shit.

“Are you sure?” Clem jokes. “You could be a robot trying to trick me into telling you all my secrets.”

“Could be.”

They both watch as AJ stands close to Marlon, pointing up at his face. Marlon’s expression is surprised, and, if Clem’s guessing right, a little offended. Brody chuckles beside them as AJ’s shoulders fall, disappointed.

“Well, guess I should go find Tenn,” Violet says. “Don’t want him to miss breakfast. Talk to you later?”

“Sure,” Clem smiles.

“Have fun finding your ‘robot.’“

Clem nervously waves as her friend walks off.

AJ sulks back over to her, staring down at his feet. “It’s not Marlon,” AJ sighs. “He doesn’t have freckles, he has pimples,” AJ looks away, a little embarrassed, “there’s a difference, I guess.”

“Big difference,” Clem chuckles. “What about Brody?”

“Nope.”

Clem pulls the list out of her pocket.

Marlon Violet Louis Brody Ruby Omar Mitch

“Three down.”

She was positive even before they made the list that Violet wasn’t the one. Sure, she and Aasim got along fine, from what she’s seen, but Clem couldn’t imagine Aasim falling for someone like Violet.

Or Marlon, for that matter. After all, the two of them were constantly fighting about the safe-zone, among other things.

And Brody, well, Clem couldn’t think of a time where she saw Aasim talking with her long enough for any real connection. So, that made sense.

“Look!” AJ points towards the doors where Mitch and Willy are coming out.

Immediately, Clem notices that something’s off with Mitch. He’s hunched over, hand on his stomach and his feet dragging in the dirt. Willy follows him close behind, clearly panicked.

“Suspect!” AJ whispers, already running over there.

“Wait, AJ- ugh!” Clem shoves the list into her jacket and follows.

Mitch seats himself at the table before flopping over, motionless.

“Mitch...?” Willy asks. He pokes the top of Mitch’s head. “Are you dying?”

“Probably,” groans Mitch.

AJ sits next to Willy. “What wrong with him?” he asks.

“I don’t know!” Willy cries. “I found him like this!”

AJ shakes Mitch’s shoulder. “Hey, let me see your face!”

So subtle.

Mitch yanks his head up to stare blankly at AJ, who begins inspecting ever part of Mitch’s face.

AJ pokes his cheek. “Your face is dirty.”

Mitch’s face meets the wooden table with a loud thud and a pained groan.

“Well, well...” Omar’s voice rings behind them. Mitch visibly tenses. “Mitch, what’s wrong?”

“You fuck off, right now.”

“Could it be that you have a stomach ache?”

“No-ugh!” Mitch curls up on himself some more.

Omar shakes his head, placing a hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Now, what could you have eaten that would make you sick like this?”

“I hate you,” snarls Mitch.

“Could it be, oh, I don’t know, that moldy chunk of beef jerky that I warned you repeatedly to not eat?”

Mitch snaps up, glaring at Omar’s smug face. “I don’t have a stomach ache!” he exclaims. “I feel fucking fantastic! Best I’ve felt in weeks!”

“Oh, really,” Omar says flatly.

“I feel so good I could fight a fucking bear.”

“A bear? Well, in that case,” Omar gestures over to where breakfast is cooking, “I guess you’ll need an extra helping of rabbit so you can be extra strong for that bear-”

Omar doesn’t get to finish. Mitch is up and running back towards the trees with a hand over his mouth. Clem doesn’t dare look, but oh, she can hear everything.

Omar cringes. “Told him not to eat it.”

“Man...” Willy frowns. “He gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” Omar smiles. “He’ll feel better once it’s all out. I brought out a water bottle for him, too. He’s gonna need to hydrate after all that.”

Willy leaves the table to run over to Mitch. They watch as Willy pats the vomiting boy’s back.

AJ leans over and whispers to Clem, “It’s not Mitch. No freckles, just dirt.”

Clem nods. She figured. Mitch doesn’t seem like Aasim’s type, anyway. Although, that would’ve been an interesting turn of events. What a couple they’d turn out to be.

Marlon Violet Louis Brody Ruby Omar Mitch

More disgusting dry heaving sounds can be heard.

Omar tsks before turning to Clem. “Breakfast’ll be done soon. Wanna do me a favor?”

“Uh, sure?” She really hopes it doesn’t involve cooking with him. She’d never do that again.

“I’m gonna make up a plate for Louis. When you’re done eating, wanna take it up to him?”

AJ jumps up. “Yes!”

“Great,” Omar seems pleased with AJ’s enthusiasm and doesn’t notice the boy’s inconspicuous inspection of his face. “Figured he’d want something. He didn’t look too good this morning.”

Clem’s brows furrow. “Like Mitch, or...?”

“Like he was sleep walkin’ with Marlon dragging him by his ear.”

“That good, huh?”

“Yeah,” Omar chuckles. “I made him some coffee. Hopefully, he’s perked up by now.”

Omar leaves them to check on the food.

Clem sighs. “It’s not Omar,” she whispers.

AJ shakes his head. “Not a single dot.”

Marlon Violet Louis Brody Ruby Omar Mitch

She frowns. “That leaves us with two suspects.”

“Louis and Ruby,” AJ says. He’s anxious, Clem can tell. “Which one do you think it is?”

“...I don’t know.”

They grab their breakfast and sit down. Clem has to tell him several times to slow down before he chokes, and that even if he does finish, he’d have to wait until she’s finished, as well.

While he wasn’t the most patient of them all, Clem couldn’t say she didn’t understand. Honestly, she was just as anxious to see Louis.

Though, that does bring up a problem, one that she’d been ignoring.

She knows for an absolute fact that Louis has freckles.

She knows this because she’s spent plenty of time staring at his face.

She also knows that Louis and Aasim are almost always paired up to go hunting.

Louis and Aasim talk.

A lot.

It’s not impossible that Aasim could have feelings for Louis, and it’s definitely not impossible that the poem could be about him.

But... it’s also totally possible for the poem to be about the other remaining person on her list.

Ruby.

Clem can’t remember if she has freckles or not. But, if she does...

This might mean they need to find a new clue.

---

He’s not hungry, he decides.

Aasim finds himself back in bed with his head tucked under the pillow and the blanket wrapped around his body.

He decides, for today, that he doesn’t want to exist.

He just wants to sleep.

He’ll exist again tomorrow.

But, not today.

He forces himself to count sheep. He pictures them jumping over a white picket fence. One, two, three...

He counts so that he doesn’t think of anything else.

Four, five, six...

Nothing but sheep.

And a knock on his door.

“Aasim?” Marlon’s voice calls. “You in there?”

He remains silent, unmoving.

“C’mon, dude! Breakfast’s ready!”

No.

“Remember, you and Louis got hunting duty today!”

No.

The doorknob wiggles and his stomach drops. He can hear Marlon step in.

“Aasim?”

“I’m sick,” he lies unconvincingly.

“Yeah, me too, buddy. Now, get your ass up.”

Ugh.

---

When Clem turns around with the food in her hand, she sees AJ already climbing up the ladder to meet Louis. She thanks Omar and quickly follows after him.

“Louis!” She hears AJ enthusiastically greet.

“Hm? Oh, hey, little dude.” Louis isn’t so excited. His voice is deeper than usual and weirdly muffled.

Clem balances the food in one hand and cautiously climbs the ladder.

She nearly snorts at the sight before her.

Louis is sitting on his chair wrapped with a heavy, tattered blanket over his head and shoulders, covering his mouth and nose, only revealing his eyes. Said eyes are half-lidded and unfocused. One hand with an empty cup sticks out from the mess of blanket.

Clearly, this is the perfect guy for lookout duty.

AJ takes the empty cup away from him and sets it aside. “You’re still tired?” he asks. “But, you had coffee. That always wakes me up.”

“Bean juice is just a big, fat lie,” Louis mumbles. “A conspiracy, I say.”

Clem approaches him with a smile and offers him the plate. It takes him a few blinks to register that it’s her.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she teases.

“And, suddenly, I don’t feel like death anymore.” Louis sits up and shrugs the blanket off down to his waist. He takes the plate offered to him and inhales the scent. “Never before has rabbit ever looked so divine,” he offers her a lazy grin, “thank you.” He scoots over, patting the place beside him.

Clem glances away as she feels her lips twitch and curl, but before she can move to sit, AJ lets out a huge gasp. When Clem looks back at them, AJ’s face is inches apart from Louis’. This seems to snap Louis awake as he nearly drops his plate at the sudden closeness.

“Well, uhm, hello, AJ?”

“You have freckles!” AJ points an accusatory finger in Louis’ face, nearly poking him in the eye. “Clem! Louis has freckles!”

Heat rushes through her body and pools in her cheeks.

“AJ!”

AJ pulls back, covering his mouth with both hands to hide his growing smile. He points at Louis again, bouncing with excitement.

Clem is left there, frozen, unsure of what to say. Louis’ wide eyes hold many questions.

“Uh, yes? I’m aware?" Louis says. "Am I missing something here? I think I’m missing something,” he says.

“It’s you! You’re-”

“The robot!” Clem blurts out. “Yep, Louis is the robot! Good job, AJ!”

“...What?” Poor Louis never looked so confused.

From the corner of her eye, she notices AJ’s expression drop, turning into something close to a mixture of embarrassment and guilt. He covers his mouth again. Clem can tell he’s mentally kicking himself for almost exposing their secret.

Louis eyes the two of them. “...I’m sorry, but I must be in a dream or something. Is that what this is? I fell asleep on watch and now I’m a robot? That’s the only explanation. Also, how are my freckles a sign of my being a robot?“

“Well, uh-” Clem bites her lip. “It’s just, AJ had a dream last night that one of us is secretly a robot, and that robot could've had freckles, so he’s a little paranoid,” she lies once again.

AJ’s arms fall loose at his sides. “Yeah.”

“One of us is actually a robot, huh?” Louis thinks about this as he chews his food. “My money’s on Omar. How else is he able to take a rabbit and make it taste good? Only a machine could do that. Except, I don't think Omar has freckles."

"He doesn't," AJ sighs.

"Then again...” Louis frowns, “what if I am the robot, but I just don’t know? Like, I’ve been programmed to think I’m human when really I’m just a bunch of wires and buttons.”

Clem didn’t know what she expected really, but she’s not at all surprised that Louis would be taking this idea personally.

“That would explain that charming sense of humor of yours,” she smirks.

“Hey!”

She takes a spot beside him, pushing aside the blankets. She tosses the binoculars over to AJ to keep him busy. “Anyway, never seen you like this before,” she changes the subject.

Louis readjusts the blanket so that it’s laying over both their laps. “Not exactly a morning person,” he admits. “Or a bean juice person.”

“You gonna be okay to go hunting?”

“Are you coming along?”

“I can.”

“Then I’m more than okay,” he grins, winking at her. She rolls her eyes and turns away to hide her own smile.

“Who’re you hunting with?” AJ asks.

“Who else?” Louis snorts. “Aasim and I are the dream team hunters.”

“Aasim,” AJ repeats slowly. “I like Aasim. He’s nice.”

Clem shoots him a warning look.

But, AJ ignores her. “You like Aasim, too, right Louis?”

Clem has to refrain from smacking her forehead.

“When he’s not being a sourpuss or a buzzkill, sure. Aasim can actually be really cool,” Louis replies, completely oblivious to what’s being insinuated. “And, believe it or not, he does have a sense of humor. Sometimes.”

“So, you guys are friends?” AJ pries.

And Clem hasn't felt this frustrated in a while.

Holy shit.

---

After Marlon barged into his room and forced him out of bed for a second time that morning, Aasim figured counting sheep wasn't written in his fate today. So, up he was and at his desk. His notebook lays open, almost mocking him with the number of scribbles and doodled hearts.

Again and again, he tries to write, tries to push those negative thoughts away. But still, more paper is wasted as he tears pages out and crumples them up.

Hell, he even takes a break from the poetry format and just jots down his feelings.

I want

Aasim sighs.

I want you.

How pathetic.

---

"Louis? You up there?"

Clem looks over the side to see Ruby standing there with her hands on her hips. She waves down at the redheaded girl. "Morning, Ruby!"

"Mornin' Clem! Lou with ya?"

"Doc! You've come to take my place!" Louis gleefully jumps up. He scarfs the last bite of his breakfast and gathers his blanket before motioning towards the ladder. "Ladies first-"

AJ hurries past them both and moves down the ladder.

"Or small child first, whatever."

Clem rolls her eyes, quickly going down to stop AJ from getting too close and personal with Ruby. She’s the only other person on their list, which meant that if she didn't have freckles, then the poem was definitely about Louis.

Mystery solved, she thought bitterly.

But, when she gets down there, she grows worried. AJ's staring up at Ruby.

"Uh-oh," AJ whispers.

"Somethin' wrong, AJ?" Ruby asks.

AJ shakes his head and turns around. He, not so subtly, points at Ruby with a panicked look.

She hears Louis huff from behind. “It’s super uneventful out there. Not a single member of the smelly patrol to report,” he says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear my bed calling-”

“No, you don’t!” Marlon calls over to them, shooting Louis a stern look. “You and Aasim are hunting today!”

“If that’s true then where is he?”

Marlon approaches them.

“He slept in this morning, he’ll be out soon.”

“Slept in?” asks Ruby. “Doesn’t sound like him. Is he sick, too?”

“No,” Marlon answers shortly. He turns back to Louis. “In the meantime, get ready. And,” Marlon points at him, “don’t be late.”

Louis holds his hands up, dropping the blanket as a result. “Excuse me? I’m ready to go, it’s Aasim who’s late. Guess I’ll just have to take Clem instead.”

“Nope,” Marlon shakes his head.

“Why?” Clem questions.

“Need’ja to help Violet and Brody today. They’ve, uh, kind of been on one lately. If you could try and keep the peace, then maybe they could get some actual fishing done, yeah?”

She’s not happy about it, but gathering from Marlon’s tired expression, it’s been a hell of a morning for him. Best not to argue.

“Alright, I’ll find Vi, then.”

“Thanks.”

Louis sighs, disappointed.

“Don’t look so down,” scolds Ruby. “Aasim can’t do all that on his own.”

“Yeah, I know-”

Clem feels AJ tug on her sleeve, pulling her aside.

“Clem,” he whispers, “Ruby has freckles, too!”

“I noticed.”

“So, which one is it?”

“I have no clue.”

AJ reaches into her jacket pocket. “Maybe we should read it again-”

“AJ!” She looks around and smacks his hand away. “Not here.”

“But, Clem!”

“I, ugh, I know you’re curious AJ, but now is not the time. We’ll talk about it later. Don’t let it bother you, and don’t say anything while I’m gone.”

“Okay...” AJ pouts. When Clem’s not looking, AJ sneaks the balled up paper in his fist into his pocket.

---

The air isn't as cold now as the two boys walk through the woods. Louis is close and unaware of how many times he keeps knocking shoulders with him, a stupid grin stuck on his face as he hums quietly to himself. He carries Chairles up on his shoulder and inhales the forest scent deeply. Since they left the gates, he hasn't shut up. Aasim's short with him, barely giving any real responses.

He can't help it, he just... feels so shitty.

He doesn't know why. He felt fine yesterday until bedtime came, and he had a pleasant dream, but... once his thoughts really get the best of him, it's like a switch is flipped and the floodgates of constant annoyance and agitation are opened.

They check the closest traps and find them untouched.

After the third trap, Aasim notices his hand starting to ache. His grip on the bow is tight, stiff. He shifts it to the other hand to stretch out his fingers.

His mind keeps wandering back to the page he wrote before they left, the one where he jotted down all his feelings then proceeded to rip it to shreds.

Because, lately, it seems like everything he writes is just absolute garbage.

"So," Louis starts, "if you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?"

Aasim frowns. He's not playing this game. “No.”

"The power of 'No,'" Louis thinks about this, "I wouldn't have picked it myself, but it does seem fitting to someone like you."

Aasim tries his best to ignore him.

"Me? I'd have the power to breathe underwater.” Louis sighs then. “I wish Clem could have come with us.”

Of course, he does.

“Yeah,” replies Aasim flatly. “She’d actually help out.”

“Hey, I help. I’m here, aren’t I? In fact, I was ready before you!” Louis protests. “I get things done. Just because I have a different way of doing things then you doesn't mean I'm the slacker here."

Aasim says nothing. He continues to walk until a hand rests on his shoulder, stopping him.

“Alright, grumpy pants, what’s up?”

Aasim shrugs out of his grip and keeps moving. This earns him an elbow to the arm.

“Yoo-hoo, Aasim?” Louis flashes a big grin. “You’ve been like this since we left. Seriously, you look down-”

“Can you just,” Aasim snaps, “shut up. Please.”

Louis stops. He cocks his head, studying Aasim’s disgruntled face with worry. “Dude, are you okay?” he asks. “You’re not usually-”

“No, I’m not okay." Aasim shoves him, hard. "I’m sick of hearing you talk. Just shut up and do what you’re supposed to.” Aasim turns and walks away, still fuming, without another word.

Louis watches him, stunned, hurt. He rubs at the freshly sore part of his chest where Aasim pushed him and follows at a distance.

There aren’t many walkers wandering about. Aasim manages to shoot two rabbits, and they find another one caught in a trap.

Louis says nothing the entire time.

Aasim can feel how heavy the air is between them, and he hates it.

Fucking hell, he hates it.

They come across a walker caught in a trap. It’s missing an arm and a jaw. There’s an arrow sticking out of its shoulder. Skin slides down its bones with every movement.

Louis makes no jokes. He doesn’t toy with the monster. He just takes Chairles, hits the walker twice, successfully killing it, and silently cuts it down while Aasim watches.

The body lands heavy in the dirt. Aasim sets his bow against the tree and grabs the walkers ankles and drags him away. Just as he’s about the reach some bushes, the body gets caught on something.

“Shit,” he mumbles. He hears the sounds of footsteps and Louis’ grunt as he resets the trap. He unhooks the walker's shirt from a rock protruding from the ground. His elbow brushes against the arrow, so he yanks it out. It wasn’t very deep with only the arrowhead being buried within the rotten flesh. Aasim uses his shirt to clean it off, spitting on it to help polish it. He hears a raspy growl from behind him.

Aasim whips around, losing his balance as the new walker stumbles towards him,

“Ah!” Aasim’s hands fly up to shove the walker away from him. The walker falls back, as does he. Immense pain pierces through his side and sends shocks throughout his body.

“Aasim!”

Louis is there, grabbing the back of the walker’s shirt when it tries to crawl towards him and forces the monster back. Aasim rolls onto his side, realizing that he’d fallen onto the arrow. Now, it sticks out of him loosely. “Fuck, fuck!”

The sound of the walker's skull being crushed echoes throughout the forest.

Aasim grinds his teeth together and squeezes his eyes shut. With shaking hands, he yanks the arrow out. “Argh! Fuck!”

Hands are all over him. “Aasim, don’t! Shit!” Louis hikes up Aasim’s jacket to inspect the damage. His flesh is torn, bleeding profusely. Louis, panicked, looks around for something to stop the bleeding before shrugging his jacket off and lifting Aasim up to tie it around his waist.

More horrifying shocks of pain. “Don’t-!” Aasim protests, trying to push Louis away. But, Louis holds his ground, double knotting the sleeves of the jacket around him.

“You’re not bit, right? It didn’t get you?”

“No, shit, it’s just the arrow.”

Aasim tries standing but stumbles. Louis catches him, carefully helping him to his feet.

“Fuck, that hurts,” Aasim groans. He feels tears sting his eyes at the throbbing heat but holds them back.

“Here, let me-”

“I can walk,” snaps Aasim.

Louis takes Aasim’s back and his bow. He keeps a comforting hand on Aasim back as they walk back to the school.

And all Aasim can think is, you fucking idiot.

---

Ruby’s gentle with him.

His back’s to her as she works on stitching up his side. Louis is there, too, keeping a close eye on him and handing Ruby everything she needs.

When they first walked through the gates, Ruby was already grabbing him and chewing Louis out.

Louis tried to explain what had happened, but Ruby was too worried about getting him inside. Marlon and Omar had questioned what happened, but Ruby shooed them out the door. Aasim’s surprised she let Louis stay, though.

Shit.

It’s cold. There are goosebumps rising on his bare back and arms.

He buries his face in the pillow, wishing he could just sleep. But, every time that needle pierces his tender flesh, he’s reminded that sleep is currently just a fantasy.

“You two need to be more careful,” Ruby says.

“I know...” Louis says quietly. “The walker just appeared-”

“You need to be alert, always! What if one of you got bit?”

Aasim squeezes his eyes shut and says, “It’s not his fault.”

Ruby’s hands still.

He continues, “I wasn’t paying attention. He was fixing the trap like I told him to. I was stupid.”

Ruby sighs. “Well... like I said, you both need to be more careful.”

She finishes stitching him up and sits back. “Louis, could’ja fetch some more water, please?”

“Sure.”

He hears Louis leave and close the door. Ruby’s wiping the blood off his skin with a damped towel.

“How does that feel?”

“Fine.”

“Truly?”

“No, it hurts.”

Ruby gives a sympathetic smile. “Well, least yer honest, for the most part. It should start to feel better soon. Wasn’t really all that deep. Ya did do more damage by just yankin’ the arrow out, though. Shoulda left it.”

Aasim nods.

“Hey,” she nudges him. “Aside from the wound, you doin’ okay?”

“Fine,” he repeats.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to.”

Her fingers go to brush back the hair that’d fallen over his face. “Heard you slept in. Usually yer an early riser.”

He says nothing.

“I was thinkin’ about somethin’ today. It just occurred to me, really,” she says. “Do you remember that time we were in the green house and Mitch dared you to eat one of the mushrooms growing?”

A smile sneaks its way onto his lips. “But then I challenged him to a mushroom eating contest?”

“And he ate, like, six of ‘em while you didn’t eat any,” she giggles. “He certainly was a winner.”

“Was he, though?”

“Surprised he lived though that, honestly.”

“Some things never change.”

“No, not really...” Ruby sighs with a sweet smile. “Y’know, if ya ever wanna talk, I’m here.”

“...I know.”

Ruby stands. “You should be okay to walk around, jus’ don’t strain yerself, okay? Do ya need any help getting dressed?”

“No.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Just as she’s about to leave, she turns and says, “I’m glad yer alright, Aasim.”

He starts to count sheep.

---

Eventually, after a few hours or so, he does get up. After he’s dressed and heads outside, he’s greeted by almost everyone, checking up on him and making sure he’s okay. He doesn’t see Clem, Violet or Brody anywhere, or Mitch, for that matter. He does spot Louis on the couch by himself, shuffling a deck of cards with a faraway gaze.

He knows he should go over there and apologize, but fuck, he can’t bring himself to do it.

He sits on the steps in front of the entrance, wincing at the pain aching in his side. He huffs, rubbing at his tired eyes. He wished he’d just stayed in bed. What a shitty day.

“Hi, Aasim.”

He’s startled by AJ. “Oh, uh, hey.”

“How’s your side?”

“Hurts, but I’m fine.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

Aasim nods, not sure what else to say. He does notice that the child seems nervous. It’s likely that he doesn’t know what to say, either.

“Aasim?”

“Yeah?”

AJ looks away and starts fumbling with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says.

Aasim raises a brow. “Okay...?” he says. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you stabbed me.”

“No, not that.”

“Oh...” Aasim frowns. “What, then?”

AJ then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. “This is yours.” He moves up the stairs and hands Aasim the paper. Then, he begins to ramble. “I-I didn’t show anybody, and I really like it, you know. I don’t completely get it but I like the way some parts sound.”

“What are you-”

Aasim unfolds the paper.

a thousand stories I could write about us in the night sky

His heart plummets into his stomach.

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years ago

Text

By hand

If you want to remember something, write it down—by hand.

A new study from the University of Tokyo concludes that writing with a stylus or typing on a touchscreen keyboard just isn’t the same as handwriting. “Our take-home message is to use paper notebooks for information you need to learn or memorize,” noted coauthor Kuniyoshi Sakai, a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo.

Handwriting likely facilitates learning and memorization because of the numerous one-of-a-kind physical cues it provides: the shapes of your letters, the tactile feel of the paper and pen, the location of your words on the page, and details like folded corners, ink color, and other marks on the page. Your brain absorbs all of these pieces of information, which can later serve as triggers so that you more precisely pull the information from your memory.

By comparison, when you enter information into a phone or tablet, your words have no fixed position and then disappear when you close the app, leaving substantially less tactile and spatial information for your mind to absorb.

For the study, 48 participants were asked to take notes on a conversation about a student schedule, jotting down the discussed schedule (including 14 appointments, assignment due dates, and class times). Some participants wrote with pen and paper while others used a stylus on a tablet or a touchscreen keyboard on a large phone. An hour later, all were asked to recall the information while undergoing MRI scans.

The hand writers remembered the schedule more accurately, and their brains displayed far more brain activity in areas associated with language, memory, navigation, and visualization, the latter two of which indicate that the mind’s eye is recalling some of the information, say the researchers.

Notably, handwriting was also up to a third faster: The paper-and-pen writers averaged 11 minutes to take their notes, while stylus-on-a-tablet users took 14 minutes, and those who typed on the touchscreen of a large smart phone took 16 minutes.

The researchers suggest a few tips for better learning:

Write notes in books. This is far superior to trying to remember something you read on a webpage or Kindle book. For example, “if you remember a physical textbook printed on paper, you can close your eyes and visualize the photo one-third of the way down on the left-side page, as well as the notes you added in the bottom margin,” says Sakai.

Add unique visual notes to digital documents. When you must read or write digitally, add spatial cues like virtual sticky notes, colored handwriting, and other one-of-a-kind marks.

Stick with paper and pen for creative pursuits. “For art, composing music, or other creative works, I would emphasize the use of paper instead of digital methods,” says Sakai. “One’s creativity will likely become more fruitful if prior knowledge is stored with stronger learning.”

Just remember: Your memory loves one-of-a-kind spatial and tactile details, so when recall is the goal, you can’t go wrong with “spatial enrichment” like colors, arrows, and numbers, all created by your very own hand.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90618464/ditch-the-digital-notes-handwriting-is-way-better-for-memorization-and-speed?utm_source=Jocelyn+K.+Glei%27s+newsletter&utm_campaign=9c79a8beeb-Newsletter_12_07_17_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0d0c9bd4c2-9c79a8beeb-143326949&mc_cid=9c79a8beeb&mc_eid=1dbb9b3296

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nageki-yuki-blog · 7 years ago

Text

How I Learned Japanese

Since Anon asked how I learned, I decided to make a post about it in case anyone else was wondering or wanted to learn too~ This will sort of be a timeline of my journey, so I guess you could call it my Japanese journey, because that doesn’t sound weird at all. >w> It ended up being longer than I expected so if you don’t want to read everything, just skip to the bottom and I’ll put a short version with all the main stuff that helped me learn if you are interested in learning too. It’s under the cut~

-Exactly five years ago, I knew absolutely no Japanese. I didn’t even know sayonara was a Japanese word to be honest until I heard them say it in an anime XD To make a long story short, I got obsessed with anime when I was about 17, and that is around the time that I decided, maybe I should try learning the language. It was almost exactly 5 years ago this month.

-I looked up websites about how to learn and they all said learn the alphabets first, so that’s what I did. I made some charts of the kana and practiced with flash cards until I memorized them. I then took some song lyrics in romaji and copied them down in both hiragana and katakana, trying not to look at the charts. I think after about a month of practicing them, I decided to just move on and focus on the language.

-During that time, I also looked up and started watching some Japanese lesson videos on youtube ===> [Youtube Link Here] These were a great introduction to the language. I had a notebook and I would write down the lessons like I was taking a class. LOL I watched all the videos and memorized most of what I learned (there are probably way more videos on that channel now than there were back then).

-From that point I just started using a dictionary to learn words. I would watch an episode of anime and write down words I heard, along with the possible translation from the subtitles. Then I would look up all those words in the dictionary afterwards. For example, there was an episode of Karneval where they saw smoke and Tsukumo said “kemuri?” and I read the translation of smoke so I wrote it down. I looked it up in the dictionary afterwards to make sure it was right and then I would write all the new words I learned on another page that I would review later to memorize them all. Although there were a ton of words I misheard or couldn’t find in the dictionary, this method helped me memorize a LOT of words. I still remember the exact moments I first heard some words just like this example, which happened almost 5 years ago. That is probably because hearing and seeing what’s going on in the anime, plus being able to read it in English, plus writing it down at the exact moment and reminding yourself of it later all helps it stick in your mind.

-I would review these lists of new words every morning and every night. Studying in the morning helps you absorb it with a clear mind, and studying at night helps you memorize it because it will stay in your head all night.

-I did that and tried to memorize vocabulary lists for several months. Another thing I did during this time was write down song lyrics in kana, and then write the meaning of each word underneath it. This helped give me an idea of how Japanese grammar worked because I could visually see the set-up of each sentence along with the meanings.

-After those several months, I realized that I still couldn’t understand much because I didn’t really study much grammar, I only knew the meaning of nouns and some verbs, but didn’t know how to use them. I looked up Japanese grammar books online and found a free guide (or at least I think it was supposed to be free when I downloaded it, but now it looks like it’s for sale. You can still find the old version online if you look it up). It is called the “Japanese Grammar Guide” by Tae Kim. This guide actually helped me a lot so I need to mention it. It took me about a year to learn everything that was in this guide.

-While I was learning from that guide, and it was about a year since I started trying to seriously learn the language, I reached a point where I still couldn’t understand pretty much anything in Japanese without a translation. I got really upset and stopped learning for a week and wanted to give up because it was too confusing and too much work and I didn’t see any results. But then I thought, all of this time I spent studying will be wasted if I stop now and I will regret it forever if I continue watching anime, so I HAVE to keep going. So I forced myself to gain some motivation again and I kept going.

-After finishing the grammar guide, I decided I better learn some kanji too. I only knew a few kanji at that point and hadn’t been that interested in learning to read Japanese, until I decided that I really wanted to be able to play otome games too. I’m sure you’ve heard of “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig. I found a copy of it online (although I’m sure this book isn’t supposed to be free XD) and started using it. I would write down each kanji I learned along with the meanings and review them every day. DEFINITELY get this book if you want to learn kanji, it really helps and there are still kanji I remember learning from it that I rarely even use, so it does work. You shouldn’t need to use the second volume unless you really want to learn every single kanji, but many of them are rare so I never used the second one.

-There is also an app called “Kanji Stories” that gives stories for each kanji following that book, so this comes in handy when the book stops giving examples for you to use. I used this app a LOT and still sometimes use it to refresh myself when I forget a kanji. Although I downloaded it a long time ago on my old Iphone 4 which I pretty much just use as Japanese Dictionary/music player/camera at this point XD So I’m not sure if it’s still available in the app store.

-I also downloaded another app called “JEDict Lite” which lets you look up kanji by writing them or by using radicals. BUT you need to learn stroke order first otherwise it won’t work if you draw the kanji in the wrong order. I still use this app all the time because I still have problems remembering all those darn kanji. XD [Itunes Link Here]

-I should also mention that I use a Japanese dictionary app made by Bravolol. [Website Link Here]

-All of these apps were free when I downloaded them, and it looks like they still are, but my phone is super old so I don’t know if they would still work on newer phones.

-So after about 3 years of studying and memorizing stuff, and just getting bored of doing the same thing, I started trying to use the language. I started playing some visual novels and it was still very hard to read so I would measure how much time it took me to get through each chapter or section. It started out as taking about 3 hours for each part but after a couple of weeks it would take only 15 minutes to read through the same amount of text. It was the same thing when I first started listening to drama CDs. I would have to use my dictionary almost constantly while listening to them and would even have to pause the CD in parts so I could look up words I didn’t know. Now I still have to look up words once in a while but there are some CDs that I can understand completely without using my dictionary even once. It is extremely important to jump in and just start listening or watching things without subtitles or translations, because that is what will really help you learn. It may suck when you get to a part that you just can’t understand, because I know that happened to me a lot in the beginning, but you don’t have to fuss over it, just skip it for the moment and it might makes sense later.

-It’s important to also listen to non-anime/game stuff since normal Japanese doesn’t sound the same. I listened to some radio shows like DGS and watched videos of live events. I also got really into stage plays and musicals in the past year, which I had difficulty understanding at first too, but now I can understand them fine.

Short Version:

-I made kana charts and flash cards, then practiced writing song lyrics in both hiragana and katakana.

-I watched some lessons on youtube ===> [Youtube Link Here]

-I used a dictionary to learn and memorize words I heard in anime, games, etc.

-I reviewed the new words I learned every morning and night.

-I studied the “Japanese Grammar Guide” by Tae Kim.

-I read “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig and used the “Kanji Stories” app with it. (not sure if this app is still available)

-I use the “JEDict Lite” app to look up kanji, but you need to know stroke order for it to work. [Itunes Link Here]

-I use a Japanese dictionary app made by Bravolol. [Website Link Here]

-After about 3 years, I stopped studying and just started reading visual novels and listening to drama CDs.

-So that has led me to the point I’m at right now. My Japanese skills got better really fast after I started using the language and translating things myself. I am always still learning and wouldn’t say that I am fluent, but I also didn’t expect to be able to understand it this well, so that’s perfectly fine with me. Part of the reason I started doing these translations was because my reading and comprehension skills weren’t at the level that I wanted. It takes another type of skill to translate, so even though I know what they are saying, it is still hard to put it into English, but I’m getting better at it.

-If anyone wants to learn Japanese and wants some tips, I would recommend studying the grammar, vocab, and kanji all at once, rather than how I did it. My kanji skills are still lacking because I started studying it a whole year or two after I started learning the language.

-My other tip is…… Just have fun!! When I first started learning, I would get super happy whenever I heard a word I could understand in a song or anime. When I thought about giving up, it was mainly because I was too focused on trying to rush, but you need to remember that it is impossible to learn an entire language overnight.

-I have heard a lot of other people say they learned the language because they studied it in college or used a textbook, but you can definitely learn it through self-study so don’t give up hope! You just need to find what works for you. ^u^

-Just a random note, Tsukiuta is special to me because it is the very first drama series I started following each month. Although I couldn’t speak any Japanese back then, I followed it for the music. When I started listening to drama CDs, Tsukiuta was at the top of my list and I listened to all of them in the several months before the anime came out, so it was the first drama series I knew that got turned into an anime. It was a super weird feeling seeing the characters animated after only being able to hear them. The very first live stage I watched without subtitles was also the Tsukiuta stage, which got me obsessed with stage plays and musicals. Now it has become the first series that I have translated for other people. (Just my own thought here but I’ve slowly been working on some cosplays, maybe I should make my Rui cosplay first too so it will follow the pattern XD)

-Well that got long but I hope I have motivated someone else to learn the language too! It is still crazy for me to think that 5 years ago I knew absolutely nothing, but I’m translating stuff now. I love being able to give back and help other people, especially since I know how upsetting it is when you want to read or watch something, but there aren’t any subtitles. >x<

-If anyone else has any other questions, feel free to ask! ^u^

#Random #Japanese

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clarke-griffin-did-nothing-wrong · 7 years ago

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Netflix’s Death Note

About to beat this dead horse till it explodes.

First things first, so you know what you’re getting into: I loathed this movie. My very soul burned while watching it. It zipped past The Lightning Thief and The Last Airbender in terms of bad and now rests solely at the bottom with Riverdale.

Next, I’ll start with what I liked about the movie.

Ryuk’s design was phenomenal. I could understand why Light wanted to piss himself after seeing him. Top notch work.

Also, the first scene where Little Bit-- I mean, Light Turner tried to threaten a bully by claiming child abuse and gets punched in the face. Kenny was a dick but that made him my favorite character.

I’m going to judge the movie objectively though I will throw in references to the anime just as an example of how a thing could have been handled better.

The characters were all terrible. I don’ t care about the casting, that’s no excuse for how unlikeable I found everyone. Light was whiny and so SO annoying. He was also so SO stupid. He didn’t just leave breadcrumbs right to his doorstep, he left entire loaves! Mia was an obvious sociopath. I don’t think I was supposed to like her so that’s fine; just putting it out there. Also, can we agree how weird it was that they literally got off on using the notebook. Death Note and chill should not be a thing.

L was... different. I wanted to like him but I didn’t understand how he was supposed to be the world’s greatest detective. He was an emotional wreck. He felt more like if Near was merged with Mello, smart, yes, but to on edge to be of any professional use. Watari had no real presence. He felt like a prop that was just lying around waiting for his cue with Light. I really did not buy L’ s breakdown over him. They didn’t feel as close as the movie wanted me to think they were.

The movie had zero interest in keeping its rules consistent. I pretty much have all the anime rules memorized but I decided that the movie could make up its own, I didn't care. They did, but they failed to enforce them properly.

For example, it’s clear that when a name is written in the note, the person dies, no ifs, buts or what ifs. Light himself goes through great pains to avoid writing his own name when describing an action using words like “her boyfriend” and “the Kira suspect”. Fine. But then it pulls conditional deaths out of its butthole and just plops it in the finale. No one said anything about that being possible, how are you going to hinge your entire finale on new rules?

We also have the note’s ability to control people being really arbitrary. Light wrote that Watari would be obsessed with finding out L’s true name and tell Light everything he knew, but this somehow translates into Light being able to dictate his every move down to telling him not to sleep.

Ryuk’s motivations, abilities and connection to the note are also really weird. At first you get the sense that he’s just a crazy sonuvabitch that wants to watch the world burn but you’re never really told why. The movie establishes him as an ancient being that’s been lurking around since ancient Japan but has no interest in explaining why he’s in America or why he suddenly has the need to watch humans mess with each other. The anime establishes him as a god that’s just bored so he drops his book and hopes for something fun. The movie purports that he has been passing the book around for a while. It also tries to have me believe that he is an agent of chaos (at one point he chides Light for worrying about rules) but then he was the one that wrote the rules in the book (he clearly states this when Light tries to use the rules against him: “. It just seems easier, to me, to control someone into using the book how you want to if they only know what you tell them. Seems stupid to write out all the rules in the book and then get upset when they read them.Who do you think wrote the rules”)

The book also seems to affect him... allegedly. It's never stated outright but when Light threatens to write his name, Ryuk threatens right back that no one has been able to write more than two letters of his name suggesting that he killed them before they could finish. This is weird on two fronts:

1: Ryuk’s name is already in the book. The only reason Light knew his name was because someone wrote a warning about him.

2: If Ryuk can kill the owner of the book, then why is it that he spent 90% of the movie trying to get Light to give the book to Mia?

And it isn’t clear if Ryuk can use the note himself! He wrote the rules himself, that is stated but he also said to Light that he would influence the next person to receive the note to write Light’s name. Why not do it himself?

It felt like Ryuk was just the genie to this oddly shaped lamp.

The ending was the worst part. It’s clever if you don’t think about it at all.

The idea was that Light thought up a clever plot in which he would escape his death that was plotted by Mia. This involves creating a conditional death for her as a bargaining chip so that she would only die IF she took the notebook. They would both fall and he would land safely in the water (physics disagrees but okay) and she would land on the shoreline. She would rip out the page that his name was written in out of the book while falling and this page would float into an open fire (physics still disagrees but okay). Light would be rescued by a paramedic that was also a criminal and the Death Note would be rescued by a pedophilic mailman and kept for two days before giving it back to Light and committing suicide.

It’s the first instance we see of Light being anything like the anime Light; cold, calculating and meticulously planning every detail so that he always survives and the Death Note is always returned to him. In fact, this might have been an origin story on how the whiny little teen became the god known as Kira.

But.

Analyzing his entire plan, it hinges on coincidences and rules that he probably just made up. Number one, he lucked out big time that there was a criminal paramedic in the police database and a mailman that would be around that area at that time to be in his plan. This whole thing wasn’t planned over the course of two days (the movie explains that the Death Note can control someone’s actions up to two days before the death) it was done in the span of about ten minutes maximum and had MAYBE half an hour to be carried out. The anime made time a huge factor with the note and so we were always on edge that Light’s plan would be carried out in time or what would happen if something happened too soon and he was caught and we were almost always in on the joke so we knew what would happen in how long. The movie has no presence of time and so we are just there to be strung along. In fact, Mia wrote that Light’s heart would stop at midnight but we have no idea when midnight is! Back to the plot, Light planned something based on new information in ten minutes and had thirty to have in come true, fine, whatever. L caught up with Light and chased him for a good while. It was a huge coincidence that he managed to get away and get to where he needed to go in the right amount of time. If he had done something smart then I’d give him points, but the only reason he managed to get away from L was because, a guy that just so happened to be a Kira follower, wandered out back. It wasn’t preordained, it was plot armor. Light wrote that all the shit would go down in Mia took the Death Note but what if their weak ass love story was real and she didn’t take the Note? would they just get caught by the police? Would they still fall? And Light’s name is still in the book and the conditions were carried out a few minutes after so would ha have died anyway? Finally, the movie never explained that the Note was able to control physics. He could control people and put them in the right place at the right time if possible (that’s what the anime handled much better too. It really hit home Light’s moral gray area because he couldn’t just find criminals lying around in a shed somewhere ready to be used, he had to kill innocent people to get what he wanted sometimes) but the fact that he wrote that the page with his name would fall into a fire and burn... for context, he was at the top of a Ferris Wheel in a park filled with people with a few open flames, on of which was near him. He didn’t say Mia fell with the page and it fell out of her hand into a fire, he said she rips it out and it fell from the top of the Ferris Wheel all the way down into a fire... and it works! With that kind of power, I fail to see why he hadn’t already won.

This movie was miserable from start to finish. One thing I will say is that it TRIED to make it on its own. It didn’t intentionally leave out explanations that only fans of the anime would get, it rebuilt the lore... somewhat and used that instead. Seriously, what is Ryuk’s purpose. We don’t even know if there are more death gods!)

You know, it really could have quenched half the hate against itself by being a sequel and not an adaptation. There were more Shinigami that could drop notebooks in America and there were more orphans at Whammy House to replace L. They could have just made it a sequel and, it would still be bad, but no one would be complaining that they butchered Light.

This movie was bullshit and I have more problems, particularly with L but I’ll put it in another post.

#Deathnote #netflix #soooo bad #light yagami #light turner #misa amane #mia sutton #l lawliet #not my l lawliet #unecessary #bad movie review #i'm good at complaining #not so much as explaining

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radioheadyaoi · 4 years ago

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of monsters and men

PART FOUR original writing. for @dreamypope. 25 720 words. (Told from the POV of Theodore, a young boy struggling with loss and love, is drafted into the war, where he meets James, a young and handsome solider with exciting stories, and over the years, the two form a powerful relationship.) eraless.

notes: feel free to reblog and/or let me know if you like this! this is the complete, polished version (the final draft) of this story.

It starts and ends with the train. I make my way home as you sink further into the earth. Home is not home without you, I learn soon enough. My bed, my soul feels empty without you.

I am still holding on to you. (I do not want to let go of you.)

The train ride is lonely and slow. I sit in silence, staring out the window as the landscape changes from rolling hills to green patches of land stretching far and wide. I keep a tight grip on my bag the whole time. Your sweater, your hat and a few letters, photos, small trinkets are the only thing inside.

I go home to nothing. I arrive home with nothing.

My pain drives deep, a rip in my heart. I am bleeding out. There is only an end when I see you again.

The sky is too dark and the ocean is too cold. Nothing feels right without you. My skin itches without your kisses.

I pray to ghosts and God, ask for you back. I do not run anymore, too empty to smile.

My house feels like Violet instead of you. She replaced the lilies with simple roses (I do not like them.), the cat is groomed instead of messy and slightly crazed, like how I left it. The swing is gone and I have China plates in the cupboard. My sweaters are hung. The floors are polished and flowers sit in vases on window sills. My pillow cases are gone, the blue ones I’d had since I was a boy and now there are only white ones. The quilt sits at the bottom of a heavy wooden chest. I have only one photograph of you, you smiling while lying on the grass. (Violet doesn’t put it in a frame. She doesn’t like it.)

I come home to nothing. Everyone I ever loved is gone now, no coming back. Poppy, red and green. Betty, who smelled like cookies and pine trees. You, who loved me too. You, whose soul was made of the universe. (You are only gone because they begged for their stars back.)

(I write to your mother. She does not write back.)

Anytime I close my eyes, I see you dying in my arms, words bubbling on your tongue. (I can still feel your kiss on my cheek.) I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

Your heart beats in mine, forever a part of me. We lived in wonderland for too long. The glass shattered and I could not save you. We were fools, you and I, for thinking life would treat us well. All I have known is loss. When that is all you know, it follows you everywhere, holds your hand.

Now I sleep longing for your touch. But you are gone, gone, gone and for that I will forever blame myself. (I am sorry for many things.)

I love you. I love you. I love you.

The air is soft and warm, curling around my body in a comforting embrace.

Violet is getting ready, avoiding me as she finishes up. I did not plan to marry her, I promise you. (I do not want to but this is what she wants.) I am doing this for her, my father, my mother, for Betty in the garden. As I stand and wait for the wedding to start, I think of you, of your smile and kind eyes and your lips on mine. Violet is not you; I only want you. Every I love you I choke out as I kiss her is a lie. I have only meant it for you, I have only loved you. But her eyes light up and she giggles and I don’t know what to say.

My father is dead, my mother is dead, my sister, my best friend, the love of my life, all dead. I am doing this for them, for you, because I know you would not want me to be alone.

I’m so sorry. (I cannot stop apologizing.)

The music swells and Violet walks towards me and I hope she can’t tell that my smile is fake. Everything feels too hot and close together. This is not what I want. Everything is empty. I do not want this.

I cannot go on without you. I can’t let go. It has been four months since I left you there on the beach but it feels like forever. (The world moves slower when we are not together.) I am still holding your hand on the beach. We could never marry but at least you’d wake up in my bed and fall asleep beside me under the stars. Our love could have lived on forever, melted into the ground and grown a daisy field.

You were my best four years.

But there is only Violet and I am stuck here, a fake smile plastered on my face. You are half of my soul, I cannot live without you.

I do not love you Violet. You are not him and I only love him, is what I wish to say. Violet, I love you now and forever, is what I say. I kiss her, drink apple wine. Everything is too loud.

The first year with Violet is fine, just fine. Nothing special. I still do not love her like I should but I introduce her as my wife and kiss her when she wants.

(I do not love her at all.)

She loves me. Truly. In a not faking, forever full kind of way. She wants everything for us to work and she tries, she tries so hard. I feel ever so sorry I don’t try as hard.

We don’t want the same things. It makes it hard, makes it difficult for me to want her the way she wants me. I don’t want a wife. I just want a friend. I just don’t want to be alone.

There is no child, we don’t have a child. It raises questions. She asks questions eventually. When are we going to have a child? When are we going to have a child? When are we going to have a child?

My life cannot go on like this.

You are still gone and I am here. There is whiskey on my tongue and I am slurring my words. I drank too much before she walked in the door. I am ready. I hope she is ready. Lights flicker in my mind. I am shouting at Violet but I can only think of you. (I am letting losing you destroy every okay thing I have but it doesn’t matter.)

It happens in stages.

First, she yells back. Spits hatred into my face like lava. So, was it all a lie, she shouts. Do you love another woman? Did you fuck the women in town? Why did you marry me if you were just going to do this? (No. No. I don’t know.)

Second, she packs. Grabs her belongings and shoves them into her bags. She takes all her dresses from the wardrobe and her shirts from the drawers by the bed and throws her books into a trunk. She tears the picture frames off the walls and smashes them on the ground. They break and the glass cracks and the photo is exposed but she doesn’t take them, clean it up. They are lying there, forever symbolizing how we ended up. She is angry and I am sorry because this is my fault. Not sorry enough to let her stay.

Three. She is gone and you are quickly filling up the empty spaces. I put up your picture in the cleared up wall space. and hang your blue sweater that she always hated, hated, hated. It still carries your scent. I am not sad she is gone, even though I should be so I try to. Try to let the sadness fill me up. But there is only you.

The world cries and we all start new. Violet is gone. You are here in the only way you can be.

The first night she’s gone, the first night I spent since the war without her in my bed next to me (which feels full and warm with her gone), I sleep well. There’s only minimal nightmares but not bad enough to wake me up. Peace.

In the morning, I dig through my nightstand drawer with the lamp still off, letting only the early light streaming in through the windows provide any sight. My fingers curl around a small, rectangular shaped thing. Your notebook. I haven’t looked it in since that day at the beach and even before then, I only knew what you shared with me. I turn the light on. There’s a dog ear folded page. I open the book to the marked page.

Teddy,

I’m hoping you’ll find this. I’m not sure when you’ll see it but I hope you do. Tomorrow, we will embark on a journey so different than any we’ve ever taken together, because, after, we will be free. I’m not going to lie to you; I am massively afraid. I don’t know how this will end but whatever the risk, however it ends, I’m glad to be doing it with you. I love you more than you’ll ever know.

James.

I trace over your handwriting, like soft snow rolling down mountains. Loopy and comforting, warm with your touch. It bends to take your hand and wraps itself around you. It still feels like you.

I want to read every page, taking in every unsent letter and every detail of me in your eyes.

I get out of bed, go down to the kitchen and start pulling cabinets open.

There’s one, dated from our first year together in the trenches, a first draft of a short letter to your mom.

Mum,

There’s a boy here, named Theodore with soft hands and pretty eyes. We��re friends and the times we talk are the best parts of my day, they make me feel as though we are not at war. His hair is longer now than it once was, brown waves that curl on his forehead and by his ears. His laugh is sweet, though rare, and some days all I do is think of ways to make him smile, laugh. He makes the days and nights more bearable because we are friends, he’s better than all the other men I’ve met so far combined.

I hope one day you can meet him.

James.

I have your home address memorized, your mom’s address, even two years after your death, it stays with me. She lives close, a few towns over. Close enough for me to see her and come back on a one day trip. It only seems right to go see her, since you wrote about me so many times.

I want to look at your notebook more but instead, I get up, leaving my now cold, half drunk coffee on the table, I didn’t want it anyways, I don’t know why I made it. There’s a half eaten slice of lightly toasted rye bread on the table next to the mug, smeared with cheap jam but I’m not hungry. I’m not sure why I made it. So, I leave it there. And I head up the stairs to pack for the bag, throwing random things, some of your things, some of mine, into a bag.

The train ride through the countryside is calm and smooth. My seat rattles under my legs and the tea is cold but nobody bothers me. It feels nice to be doing something.

I can’t help it when I fall asleep. I sleep for an hour and a half, longer than I’ve gotten in a long time. It feels nice, finally getting more than forty minutes at once.

(I always planned to meet your mother, but not like this.)

When I get off the train, there's only seven people waiting at the station. Two walk away with passengers and the others stay put, letting their bags lean against their legs as they wait. The air is sharp and cold and burns in my lungs. The sun leaves a cool glow on the grass. I walk away from the station, into the heart of town, down a long winding street and cut across a lawn to get to your mother’s house. She lives down at the end, just like you told me, the house right by the woods. It’s tucked into the trees, small and easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. There’s a little kid playing by the front door, no older than six, a pile of dirt in front of them. The door creaks, the hinges need to be oiled, opening to reveal an older woman with greying hair in a faded blue dress. The child shakes their head at the woman and she heads back inside. A moment later, another child, this one with two long ponytails on the sides of her head, in dark overalls and a striped shirt. They race down the front porch steps and to the swingset I didn’t see before. (They look to be five and three.) It creaks, just like the door. They are laughing, the noise filling the air and mixing with the wind. I walk up the path to the door and they notice me right before I knock. They scream, Mama, and a woman rushes out a moment later, into me.

I don’t have any money, she says. I shake my head. Did you know James Alwyn, I say. She nods and ushers me inside without any questions. I introduce myself as Theodore.

The house inside is nice. The hardwood floor stops at the stairs, which twist upwards to more rooms. Downstairs is the kitchen, spotted counters, large cabinets, the living room, brown couch, grey armchair, puzzles exploded half finished on the floor, the dining room, long table with seven chairs, three on each side, one at the end, a vase of half bloomed purple flowers in the center.

How did you know James, she asks. The older woman, the one with the blue dress that looks almost grey now, walks over and sits down at the table. I follow her and so does the other woman.

We were…

I pause, trying to frame our relationship in the right way.

Friends.

I’m Nora, the younger woman, Nora says. When did you meet him?

During the war, right at the beginning. He gave me an apple and bread when I was starving, even though I didn’t know him yet. Are you his sister?

No, Nora says, smiling slightly though I don’t know why. Cousin. His sister died years ago.

If I think back hard enough, I can remember that day. I say: I’m sorry.

The older woman says: It’s okay. I remember her name, Alice. It suits her. She gets up. Leaves the room, comes back a moment later with a box. I take your notebook out of my pocket. The box has your name on it, and in small print, the word letters. Everything you sent to your mother.

Nora takes the lid off and pulls out a letter. She reads it out loud.

Dear Maisie,

There’s a boy here. I met him months ago but we’re friends now, the kind that share a bunk and go on missions together and share food. He’s kind and has a pretty face, prettier than you can ever imagine. I feel less lonely now, and there’s a bit of hope.

She stops reading and pulls out another letter.

Dear Jamie,

What’s his name?

It’s not the full letter but she stops anyways.

Dear Mai,

Theodore, but he lets me call him Teddy.

There’s more written on the page but she stops and folds it back up. Are you this Teddy, Nora asks. Alice looks at me weirdly and I feel uncomfortable. I should have stayed at home. But I nod and Nora doesn’t say anything. She takes the notebook, your notebook, from my hand and opens it to the page I had left marked from this morning after I read it. I don’t look her in the eyes as she reads it, I avoid his mother’s eyes. She reads it, the whole thing. There’s another box on another shelf with your name on it, written in large square letters. Nora passes it to Alice. She reads it. It’s a short letter but the time feels so long, so stretched out. They both look at me. I am looking at my shoes.

Nora breaks the uncomfortable silence. She says: I always knew he would make friends but never like this. He has never loved anyone like this.

Did you love him, your mom, Alice, says. I nod, throat too closed up to speak. I swallow, try to get the words out.

I did, I say. I truly did. I liked lying next to him, I am saying. I don’t know why I am telling them all this but I continue. I liked having him there, with me, knowing he was there, because we both knew we could have it taken away from us anytime. Just gone. Like I would wake up and he wouldn’t be there and everything would be so cold. I really, truly loved him. And he, my voice breaks here. I am holding in tears as I think of you, he… saved me. From feeling unloved and unlovable, from a time all alone, from spending nights without anyone to keep me company. He carried me all through the war and helped me be better. I am worse without him. I was my best with him.

Nora is crying (I do not know why). Alice is teary eyed (I do not know why). I do not want people to cry for me.

I continue because they stay quiet. (I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, my hands are shaking, my leg is shaking.)

There are these moments, I say quietly, when he was so quiet, so quiet it worried me. He’d chew on his lip and not talk for hours. He’d write in his notebook, I never wrote, gave it up years ago, always to you. He spoke so highly of you. He loved everyone. He cared so deeply. He didn’t, will never, deserve what he got, and I just want you to know that he died coming back to you, to be here with you.

Nobody is talking now. (It’s a lie, sort of. We were going to come back to see his mother, to this house, one day. We were just leaving.)

Nobody is talking now, so I ask: Nora, are the children out front yours?

She laughs. A short, watery laugh. She answers: Yes. Stella and Caleb. My husband… was also in the war, a different part of the country, and died, right at the end. Mum is helping me raise them.

I want to hug her, but I do not know her. It feels wrong to, so instead, I nod, in a sorry kind of way. She smiles back, half of her lips curling up to meet the mole on her cheek.

Alice gets up and comes back with coffee, steamy black with white bubbles at the top in purple mugs. There’s a ‘J’ on mine, which I can only assume stands for your name.

I want to ask for the notebook back but I don’t want to be rude. I pray that they’ll hand it to me when I leave.

Caleb, Stella! Nora calls and they come running it, tripping over each other as they slam into their mother. Widetoothed smiles sweet like candy, smudges of dirt on their red stained cheeks. (it’s chilly out, chilly for March.) They wave to me and look back at Nora, and a second later, they are shouting: Hi hi hi! I wave to them, smile slightly. They pile into Nora’s lap, both of them at the same time, tugging at her shirt, tight ravioli fists clinging to the fabric.

Would you like to see James’ room, your mother asks. I nod. She points to the stairs and says: The last one on the right, it has his name on it. I’m sure you’d prefer to go alone. I nod in thanks.

The stairs creak, just like the door, just like the swings. Everything creaks. I walk down the hall, listening to the water drip from the bathroom sink, staring at all the paintings, all the photos on the walls. Your name is signed in the corner in your hand writing of one. I didn’t know you could paint. It’s a simple art piece, the ocean, with an armchair at the bottom, on the sand. I don’t know what it means so I don’t look too long.

I push the door open and the scent of you blows in my face. The bed is small, neatly done up, two pillows with checkered cases, a grey duvet with an outline of a small flower in the corner, hand stitched. There’s books stuffed on the shelf, too many for what it’s meant to hold, books of all kinds, old notebooks you filled up then put away. Your closet, left open. There’s a sweater, it’s so soft and reminds me of you. I shake it off the hanger and fold it into my bag at my feet. It doesn’t feel wrong taking it, instead, it feels like I was supposed to. I turn around and look out the window. I can see the forest, thick and lush, swelling with life. Right at the edge, there’s a path leading in, with a sign that’s too far away to read. I can hear birds. This room, your room, is surrounded by life.

On your nightstand, there’s a book I’ve never seen before by an author I’ve never heard of and a photo of you. You’re a young boy, by the sea, waves crashing over your shoeless feet. Your mother can be seen far away, right at the edge. It mirrors the picture of Poppy and I, of our last Good Day. I take it, shove it in my pocket. Under it, I see a picture of us. And I am remembering: you brought a camera and every little while, you’d write to your mother and ask for more film. I open the drawer of the nightstand and find the camera, the tiny little thing and a box that says, in your handwriting, photos and underneath, Teddy.

I look at the photo of us in my hand (one of our days off, the sun was shining, we spent the day in a flower field) and then open the box. There’s too many photos to look at now so I slip the box, and the photo in my hand, into my bag, with your sweater. I don’t want to go downstairs yet so I grab a notebook from the shelf and sit down on your bed.

James, ages fifteen to sixteen.

The first page reads:

I can’t wait to leave this town.

I flip to the halfway point and open it up, and start reading the top of the page.

October 10.

Ad astra per aspera. Reach for the stars and hold on tight. Don’t let go, don’t fall. Not even if your skin blisters and your fingers go white.

It ends but the next day is written under it.

October 11.

This is what it feels like to be human. Your heart ripped out and left on the frostbite ground. The blanket doesn’t curl around your toes the way you wish it would. His warmth is longer beside you and you must rely on the fire in your stomach so you don’t freeze. He pushes you away and you join the skeletons in your closet, in his closet. You ache, you long for him, for his radiating sunshine to thaw your pain, to end the winter, to release you from the ice blocks around your heart.

You are human. You thaw, soon enough. This is how it feels, to have your world, your sun, ripped from your fingers. It leaves a burn mark inside your fist.

He is gone and you are here, in your bed, pillow too soft, blanket tangled around your legs. You suffer and you will continue to suffer, right now, tomorrow, forever. He is not yours. He never will be. You don’t know this. But he does, and he is gone.

Were you ever friends?

You are reborn in his bed. He grows away from beside you, grows into a garden and you are not allowed in.

Summer mixes together in your glass and the air weaves its way through your hair.

You will start again. Tomorrow.

(He smells like Tuesdays and summer rain. The light dusting of desert sand and watermelon sodas rest in his hair. He eats strawberry and orange mini cakes. He is warm sunny days and shaking boardwalks and mint ice cream. He is day, tomorrow, yesterday. He is next to you and oh, God, he is so beautiful. The stars could not compare.)

You love too much and fall too hard. The pavement tears up the skin on your knees. You are bleeding on the sidewalk chalk drawings.

Swallow your pain. You are empty; one would not die for you. Especially not him. The stars will consume you until you are nothing.

It drops off after that, no clear ending.

It is better than anything I have ever put down on paper.

I grab this notebook and a few others and head down the stairs. Your mother hugs me, Nora hugs me, Caleb and Stella wrap their arms around my legs. Nobody says anything else. They don’t have to.

I will go back, I promise.

I go back to the old house, the one Mama left, the one Betty died in, the one that Pa almost sold before he, too, joined Betty in the garden. The house is still mine, in our family name, but I don’t go back.

Going back to the old house feels wrong somehow.

It’s strange going back to a place you used to love, a place where love and blood and loss ran so deep and so thick, veins in the ground. It’s strange when you realize that time doesn’t stop and wait for anybody and that change is permanent and forever there. The houses still look the same and the road curves the way it always did but the people and the stores and the feel and everything that isn’t glued down to the ground. The trees have grown thicker and taller and the sky’s a little darker, but it’s home and forever will be. And every time you go back to visit, you drink in every sight like a juice you love but is never served.

Betty died in this house. Pa died on this lawn. Mama left us in this house. Poppy fell asleep in her bed and didn’t wake up in time for dinner.

But, still, I am here.

I want to see Poppy’s poems. When I left, there were three round boxes buried by the garden and I want to see if she has more. (She never sent me any or wrote to me about them.)

The ground is wet from the rain. It’s getting later now, inching closer to dinner as I walk over to the flower beds. Poppy didn’t want to forget where they were, so she marked each spot with one flower, a poppy, bright red in the overcast sky. I force the rusted shovel into the ground where the first of five poppies are buried. The first box is round and yellow, with white stripes. The second is the same and so is the third. The fourth box is rectangular and pink with a chocolate company logo on the lid. The last one is cardboard, wrapped in clear tape but slightly damp from all the years in the ground. It has her name on it, then mine (I’m not sure why.)

I take the boxes, still unopened, home. I don’t want to have to stay there any longer. (I can see Betty’s gravestone, chipped and covered with vines sprouting leaves but still, there.)

I don’t make dinner, I’m not hungry.

Instead, I open the first box that’s labeled Poppy, age 15 - 16. I’ve read most of those, when I would sneak in when she wasn’t looking so I open the next box. (Poppy, 17.) The next (Poppy, 18. The poem she read to me at the beach, the one she wrote for me, is on the top.) I reach for the cardboard box, Poppy, 21. Right before she died. There’s only one piece of paper in it, with my name written on it, nice and small and neat in purple pen.

I open it. It says only one thing.

I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.

Not her name, not my name, not an I love you, nothing.

I remember it all now. She didn’t tell me she was sick, hurting sick, then, one day, she’s not sick anyone. Just gone. With the snap of her fingers. Violet wrote to me, to tell me what happened. That the temperature dipped and Poppy couldn’t keep herself warm. She said that they’ve moved all her stuff into the closet. Cleaned out her room. Buried her next to Betty.

The memories flood back, the memories I tried so hard to forget.

Nothing in this family, nothing in this house lasts. Not happiness, not love, not people.

vi.

I spent June in between the lines of pages in your notebook, drunk on all the things you said about me, full smiles and skin and blue hues matching your eyes and the ocean. I have drowned just to see, to feel you once more. Just yesterday, February kissed my skin and wrapped me in your honey breath. I spend sun drenched Saturdays looking for you, wading out into the golden salty water below the beach, walking out towards you. I echo like a ghost in my home. I am the ghost haunting my home. My cheekbones ache with the absence of your lips. Now I suffocate in July’s daisy winds, smelling of you, leading me down soaked paths with trees overhead. This love is an aching burn.

Nothing lasts anymore but it always lingers for too long.

There was a time, not long ago when December longed for us, sun and sand sticking to our coats, the bottom of our boots, weaving into our hair. We asked summer for too much luck and we stumbled blindly and fell into endless autumn. I will always remember August, it lives in my blood. (I hear you call to me, honey silk voice and candy skies, thick in April’s silence.) I dream of you and awake to October rains. The water slipped through my fingers and nothing survived the winter. November calls through the storm, overgrown grass stained bloody. I wait for the flowers to grow back and my heart wants more than the stars can give me.

Perhaps it was just a fever dream. There is stardust in my lungs. We lived like kings for those few years and now we must watch the tide roll out, face the changing of the seasons. Spring coats our breaths and winter leaves us to freeze up. Tuesday rains coat my lips and push me towards an ending without you.

Wednesday leaves me with nothing and Thursday fills me with you.

Friday comes and we go swimming one last time in the lake of longing and losing before the water freezes over and we are left with nothing.

War sucked us dry all week and by the time it’s Sunday, we try to start again. I keep your handkerchief in the pocket of my pants and I wear your sweater. It still smells like you, rough and like ink, like all the words you’ve written forming into the sweater. I watch the daytime shadows turn to monsters in the night, when I need you most. Bombs go off in my head all through the spring and turn to heavy rain as soon as May hits my small town and nothing feels the same anymore. I wanted you to touch everything.

I want to write my name on the moon. Maybe then you will see it and come back to me.

We did not deserve this. My wounds healed, my skin a bit thicker, scars becoming a map on my back but the whole in my heart shaped like you always stayed. There are bruises all down my legs that won’t go away, not even with the doctor and with the winter. I must figure out how to live with your absence. All the summer girls come and go but I do not love them, I do not want them. I dig graves in the ground, break through the frozen ground. I’ve been big and small and tiny, like the creatures under my feet and tall tall tall to try and reach out to you, to grab your hand.

Your love burns everywhere.

Winter sits on the windowsill, frosted glass and a blue glow. Summer, you, you are summer, walks in through the door and lays down in my bed, leaving pastel dust, glittering in the orange autumn sun. You linger under the floorboards, in the books and atop the stairs. Will you come back to me?

You were stardust, a sparkle in your eyes, freckled cheeks and on the bridge of your nose, old soul, in love with the moon. A thousand thoughts and thick emotions. Vibrant colours and the universe in your eyes. Open windows and doodles on skin; dancing without music, kissing in the rain. Glittery and golden. Smudged poetry written in ink under French literature. Strawberry patches and tulip fields stretching for miles. Dreamy evenings under the sky.

I was Saturn. Deep storms and the bottom of the ocean. Exploding land and enough tears to fill a sea. Sloshing snow and sticky sand. Nightmares made into movies, screams lodged from your throat. Cabins in the woods, vacations with no one to share it with. Ripped apart photos and messy hair. Supernatural blood. Black cherries and over baked pies. Birthdays with no one to celebrate with. Mismatched socks and odd buttons without a purpose. Alone.

You fit yourself into me and I can’t figure out how.

Betty. Poppy. You. Everything goes dark and I close my eyes. In the morning, I will awake and start again.

I lay myself out naked for your judgement. Was I enough. Did I hold you right. Snow falls and sticks to my eyelashes, to my overgrown hair. The answers are there if I look, carved into snow, into rocks, into the parting sea.

I kiss the winds of your existence.

We were not promised someday. I will never learn all your scars, trace them with my fingertips in the early mornings. I yawn, the breath mixing with the cool air, tired, but awake, hoping for a chance to see you. Your heartbeat forever pounds in my ears.

Rats nibble on the dead, the dead nibble on our souls. Bloodstained flowers are the only things that grow in the garden.

(I miss hearing you breath. I miss your breath.)

We are made of monsters and men. Our stitches are ripped out to make us bleed. They sew us back up and do it again. My body aches. There is no ending to our pain. We only say goodbye, blow kisses to the sky.

I go to the beach. I haven’t been in years.

I don’t go during the day, I want to avoid seeing anyone, I want to be alone when I do this.

A milky sleepiness has filled me up and clouded my eyes. My skin was itchy from the cheap apple soap from a store down at the end of the Main Street. My tongue is stained red from the cherry lollipops that I had grabbed a handful of from a jar in a cupboard in the kitchen. Ice cream dribbled down my fingers and left a sticky coating I will wash away in the salty waves. My jacket felt odd, like it didn’t fit anymore. My shorts clung to my legs. I wished I had anticipated the cold that swells around me and brought pants, something that hung past my knees. The grime and dirt and sand stained under my nails. My cheeks were soaked from the tears I had shed.

I can’t go to a beach without thinking of you. I’m here because I owe you this much. I owe it to you to try.

I am trying.

The beach is surrounded by cliffs, tall buildings of rock with patches of grass at the top, the waves bouncing off and back into the water. The stars, like rice spilled on a black surface, reflect from the sky on the waves.

The ocean breeze feels like sunrises and sleep deprived smiles.

This feels like a dream. But, darling, I am not a dreamer. It feels wrong to be here.

The sky is dark, a blue glow emitting from the ocean. I bite down on my bottom lip and chew it until it’s raw with blood. The salty air leaves a stinging feeling but I don’t mind. There is no one around so I say: I’m sorry. This is all my fault. The beach responds with washing up a seashell on the sand by my feet.

I have nothing, no one left. Everyone I ever cared about has left, died, all gone.

Suddenly, I am seven again. Drinking in your scent. Remembering Mama’s hair, her freckles. The birthmark on Betty’s knee. Eating banana bread for dinner and watching the sky fade to night. The purples and yellows and greens exploding in the garden, exploding into life. When home felt like home. When I didn’t feel like a stranger in my own bed. The cloudy cream and faded cream curtains in the living room serving as the backdrop for the photo albums on the shelf. My life captured in pictures, my smile wide across my face, my shirt stained with childhood joys. The sunset staining the hardwood floors and sinking into the living room carpet. The phone rings loud but Betty doesn’t get up to answer and I stay lying down next to her, the cards spilled out in between us. Mama is asleep and we giggle, and reset the game one more time.

When I was seven, I knew everything.

But now, I know nothing.

Everything reminds me of you.

I cannot live in memories anymore. Memories are the worst form of torture.

This is not our beach. The beach I left you one. But it is a beach and I hope that’s enough. I let you, you dying, consume me, consume my life. I pushed away any friends, any love because I could not deal with leaving you. I loved you until everything exploded and my life ended. I love you but I cannot let it destroy me any longer, that is not love.

I love you but I must let you go. I must live the life you cannot. (I am not doing this to hurt you, I am doing it because you would want me to.)

I am sorry we cannot live our lives together.

I can feel the scar on my leg, your lips on my cheek. I say goodbye and send a kiss to the sky. I walk away from the beach.

Goodbye, my love. I love you. I love you. I love you.

vii.

On the good days, you smelt like vanilla and warm autumn wind and pie crust. You kissed me lots and smiled against my lips. You’d let me have the bigger piece of the broken in half cookie and on the very best days, you’d let me have the whole thing. Your body is warmer when we sleep and it almost seems like the war isn’t there. You were the starlight on a cloudy night, the gold in a mountainside. I am so lucky you love me.

You are my most important person.

On the worst days, you smelt like blood and war and sleepless nights. Those days are the days that follow long hours in the mud, carrying wounded soldiers to the medical tent, trying to stop their wound from killing them. You don't smile as often as you do on good days and you don’t talk, don’t tell stories to pass the time. You are not Gone, just… there. Beside me, and in war, that is enough.

We don’t ever stop hurting. We just build a room for it in our homes.

It becomes us. We become it. I cannot erase you from my bones. The pain is forever existing, tattooed on our hearts. The universe whispers to us.

You have struggled. Do not let go of your ability to keep moving. Let your pain surround you. This is not over.

We are being punished. (I try not to think of all the things we could have done.)

You are, you were, daydreams under the sun.

I was nothing. (I hope I was enough.)

When I was twelve, I loved a boy. Or maybe I didn’t because I have never loved anyone as truly as I have loved you.

War is war and I will always hate it for what it is, what it does, what it becomes but I will always thank it, again and again, for giving me you. For letting me love you, for even those few short years. It will never be enough, I will always wish we had a lifetime together. Those four years, even in the thick of battle, were something special and worth more than any lifetime with anybody else.

Pieces of you are pieces of me. You make up my soul.

War repeated itself. It was always the same. We eat the same food and wear the same clothes and wake up in beds that aren’t ours and go to sleep beside men we don’t know. We miss miss miss the life we had before, the life we took for granted before it was stripped away and we are left naked. They make up for this by giving us titles that mean nothing and medallions that change nothing. They send us home and throw us back into battle.

I used to wear Betty’s bracelet. The first time I fought in the mud, it snapped and the pieces fell to the ground, lost forever. I used to think about it everyday, how I lost that piece of her, and now, I don’t think about it at all.

Men drown in the rain. It stings their backs until the mud is washed off.

When we sleep, we look like boys. Awake, anyone is a man. With our eyes closed, we cannot hide how young we are. Eighteen is too young. Forty is too young to die in war. The salty air rests thick on our tongues as we swallow tears that stream down our cheeks. Tears wash away deep red blood. Boats explode and sink under the waves, trees fall and land in the dirt and shake up the earth. We are destroying ourselves, destroying each other and everything in our way. The boys of war are broken, bruises on the tops of their feet, scratched up legs, hips that don’t fight right anymore.

War is a game. We played and lost. All our chess pieces were knocked off the board. We ran out of cards.

Nightmares follow us like a plague. You never really leave war behind, never really say goodbye. It follows you around forever, does not let you forget.

My bed feels too large, the blankets forming waves in the vast sea of sleeplessness. I hate how something I once loved became something I feared.

I cannot sleep without you.

I cannot sleep without you because you were everything. You are everything. You were cold showers and warm drinks and lakes in the summer and long windy roads up snow capped mountains. You were the daydream inside of a nightmare, the good thing in a sea of bad. You were the garden of Eden. You were stomachaches and handprints pressed to the belly of a cave, forever there, heavy rains in the morning and light drizzles on lazy afternoons. You were bright yellow and deep purples that you can get lost in, and desert after large meals. You were shining skies and pale suns. You were garden paths and good news and little white lies.

You will always be everything.

I will always love you, because there is nothing else I can do.

viii.

I open your notebook to write one last letter.

Jamie,

I am not going to ask you how you are. Instead, I want to say, thank you. It feels wrong to be writing here, in your notebook, in between an unfinished letter to your mum and a flattened flower, but I think it may be the only way you will see it, if you see it at all.

Thank you for teaching me what love is. Thank you for loving me even when I believed I was unlovable. For giving me peace in war, when I thought I would spend all those years alone. We did not get as long as we should have, as long as we deserved but the years we did have together, all four of them, will forever be the best of my life.

I cannot truly say goodbye, because I will always love you. But, at least, with this, I can say what I wish I had said to you before you were gone.

I’m sorry I did not tell Poppy about you. She would have loved you. You wouldn’t be able to meet her, not then, not now, but maybe, you and she could have been friends. I’m sorry I was so careless, that I didn’t pay attention until it was too late. I’m sorry you do not get to grow up. I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry I can’t let you go.

We are forever sewed together.

I met your mum, and Nora, and her babies. (I’m sorry you won’t get to see them grow up.) They hugged me and told me to come visit more often (I plan to). I saw your room. I hope you don’t mind me taking all of the photos of me and of us that you sent home. It felt wrong leaving them there. As for your notebooks, the ones I took, I read them all. I didn’t know you were so talented at such young ages. It makes me wish I had kept writing, even after Betty died. My favourite story is the one about the farm, your aunt’s farm, that you would go visit in the summer. The fair sounds awfully nice. I just wonder, did you ever get revenge on the kid who pushed you off? Did you push me off the roof of his house, maybe? Your mother showed me a picture of you when you were sixteen, you were very handsome. I bet everyone swooned over you.

Did you ever date in school? Ever fancy anyone? I remember, this boy, Christopher. You couldn’t call him Chris, he was Christopher. I used to think he was so interesting. He wasn’t anything special, I now realize, but it was nice to be loved, even if it was only a little bit. You, of course, are much better than Christopher.

Do you like the beach? I used to love the beach? One time, on a school trip, we went down to the beach, and there was this girl, Sarah, I think her name was, wanted to impress a boy so she did this dance, I don’t know why, and ended up tripping on a rock and falling into this hole in the sand a bunch of other kids were digging for no reason. She made such a big fuss that we never went on another trip.

I’m sorry I married Violet. I did not love her, I can’t ever love her. She’s gone now, because I pushed her away (I just wanted a friend, not a wife) but even when she was here, I didn’t love her even though she loved me. I don’t really know why we married, maybe she thought I owed her this because she watched my house after all that time or because it was what I thought every- one else wanted to see. We didn’t have children, I could never raise children with her, I can’t imagine being a father. I’d probably be shit at it, I can barely take care of myself.

It’s raining hard as I write this, heavy drops soaking into the ground and watering the plants so I don’t have to. Did I mention? I’m selling this house, the cottage, and moving back into the old house. I’d sell both and move somewhere else but Betty and Poppy and Pa and Kitty are all buried in the garden and it seems unfair to sell someone a house where so many people are buried. I don’t have too much stuff to move but I feel so lazy all the time and I’m always tired that it just seems like so much work.

You know, I still have that stupid little stuffed bear toy that you won from Wilson when we played poker and gave to me? I keep it on the shelf in my room, the black one with all my books. I’d put it on a chair or something but it’s so gross and smells so bad it would probably disintegrate the cushion.

Seriously, I really want to thank you for the apple and the bread. I don’t think you realize how much it meant to me when you gave it to me. Or how much it meant to me when you said I was interesting. I don’t think you truly understand how much you meant to me. You loved me, truly loved me, like no one else had before. I had lived my life surrounded by loss, first with my mother, then Betty, Poppy, my father. I remember how angry I was at my father when he enlisted me as a surprise, but now when I look back, I would have never met you if he had just let me lie, or avoid it entirely. He was not the best father but I do have to give him that.

I think a lot about the story you read to me right before Christmas, I think it was. Who knew you imagining me dying would lead to it happening to you? In a lot of ways, I think, you were right. Death seems so appealing, especially when you are so tired. But, I think you were wrong when you said paradise is only in our minds only because we were together and that paradise to me.

I want write you a story, or a poem but I can only remember the one I wrote as a boy, when I was sixteen, maybe fifteen. It went: Dancing is for the dreamers / and darling, we are not dreamers. / the music swell and we are no longer alone. / It smells like apples and champagne and gold gone dull. / I do not want to dance. I cannot dance. / You take my hand and lead me onto the floor / I do not run. / I will love you until the maple trees run dry and the ocean’s tides stops climbing up the beach but I will not dance. / The music thumps in my ears / I will not cry / I can’t cry, I won’t / I will shake your hand, kiss your cheeks. / I have often dreamt of this day. I hoped I would dance. / But I can’t anymore. / My pain bleeds too deep. I have bled through my bandages, through my socks / I will bleed all over the floor.

That’s it, really, It’s not nearly as good as anything you have written but I try. I dug up the boxes of Poppy’s poems from the garden, the ones she didn’t let me read. There were four full boxes and then one that had only a small note in it for me. I’m not quite sure when she wrote it and buried the box but it was right before her death. And the box wasn’t nearly as nice as all the other ones so it must have been done in a rush. It was nice to finally read them after wanting to for so long but it would have been even nicer to do it with her still alive.

That’s just the thing about loss. There’s always something stopping you from being happy, from letting go and moving on. I’m upset because she wouldn’t let me see them when she was alive, I can’t just be happy that I got to see them at all!

People alway tell me “this loss will make you stronger.” I find, it doesn’t make you stronger, the more losses you suffer, the easier it is to hide your pain from everyone else, so you just appear strong, even if you are dying inside.

I promise I’m not dying, I’m just… sad.

I want to go see my mother’s grave. I finally figured out where it is but I don’t know if it seems right. She didn’t want us to go to her funeral or visit her when she was gone but still alive. Would she want flowers from me, her only living relative? Should I go?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, what else is there to do, and I was thinking about children. I can’t truly love someone enough to marry them but maybe if I could fake it well enough, I could start a family to keep my family tree going. So, at least, people will remember Poppy and Betty. I just don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want to be happy, even if it’s only a little bit.

And, maybe, I can try and make someone else happy.

I can’t love anyone as much as I loved you but maybe I can try.

I love you so much. More than I’ll ever get to tell you. I’ve loved you since you volunteered to help me when I got sick and when you took that bullet for me that day in the field. You are my favourite person, now and forever. I’m sorry we cannot be together and I hope you can forgive me for letting you go so I can live. We’ll meet again one day and I hope you can still love me then.

As I said in my poem, I will love you until the maple trees run dry and the ocean’s tide stops climbing up the beach.

My favourite part will always be you.

Love, Teddy

#of monsters and men #charlie writes #my writing #wip #creative writing

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how2to18 · 6 years ago

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“I HAVE SOME trepidation about bringing up those days. They are the last and most memorable days of a part of my youth,” writes Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature, in his latest novel. Why trepidation? Surely his place in society is now secure, having won such a prize. Yet, as Modiano surely knows, even a Nobel cannot prevent one from being arrested for past crimes. The atmosphere of anxiety that always pervades Modiano’s novels has not dissipated as a result of his recent accolades. As Modiano is surely aware, the law cares little for cultural achievements. If one is an accomplice to murder, one must be subject to punishment.

Despite an understandable hesitation, Modiano continues to force himself to write, to set down on paper crimes that the past has already covered over, possible consequences be damned.

Of course, the crimes recorded in his novels may or may not be autobiographical. But given Modiano’s past, as GD Dess has summarized in an excellent overview of his life and work, it is not unreasonable to suppose he has some personal involvement with crime, whatever that might be. It is not outside the realm of possibility that we could see Modiano on television someday, handcuffed and heading off to prison because one of his novels gave a clue to his past that was a touch too close to reality.

So why write about these things at all? Why risk it? Here, Modiano is often misunderstood. The Nobel committee wrote that he received the prize “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.” He is often spoken of this way, as someone operating contre l’oubli, dedicated to the task of retrieving and preserving memories of a world that is quickly slipping away. It is surely correct to see Modiano in that light, but it is only a partial truth. If one looks closely at his professed reasons for writing, Modiano remembers only to forget, or remembers only to enable forgetting.

This is to note a fact that has been written about, but not often enough: Modiano is an author marked by trauma. Memory is an ambiguous thing for such an author: it is both the vehicle for the continuation of the wounds past trauma has inflicted, and the only possible way to overcome the pain that has formed the traumatized self. For repressed memory shapes the self even if one wishes to deny its status as authentic memory. In the case of the traumatized subject, one writes in order to bring the repressed to the surface; and it is only when such surfacing occurs that one can move forward with life. The relation between trauma and writing has been the subject of exceptional studies by theorists such as Judith Herman, Cathy Caruth, and Shelly Rambo, and all of this material is relevant to understanding Modiano. He writes, perhaps at some risk to himself and those he once knew, in order to continue to live. It is only in the full remembering of such pasts that anything like forgetting can occur, and in this context “forgetting” would mean something like the lifting of the weight that a memory used to hold.

The title of the first novel Modiano has written post-Nobel victory is singularly apropos, Sleep of Memory, putting a memory that has agitated the self for too long to a final, authoritative rest. The author writes about such a purpose near the end of this brief, poignant volume:

Last year, at the bottom of a large envelope, among expired navy blue passports and report cards from a children’s home and a boarding school in the Haute-Savoie, I came upon some typed sheets.

At first, I hesitated to reread those few pages of onionskin held together by a rusty paperclip. I wanted to get rid of them right away, but that struck me as impossible, like radioactive waste that it’s no use burying hundreds of feet underground.

The only way to defuse this thin file once and for all was to copy out portions of it and blend them into the pages of a novel, as I did thirty years ago. That way, no one would know whether they belonged to reality or the realm of dreams. Today, March 10, 2017, I again opened the pale green folder, removed the paperclip that left rust stains on the first sheet and, before ripping the whole thing to shreds and leaving not a single material trace, I’ll copy over a few sentences and then be done with it.

To “be done with it”; such is the goal, anyway. The perpetual need to write another novel speaks to the impossibility of ever finally achieving this aim — a fact for which Modiano’s readers may feel grateful, if also a little guilty at the same time.

We continue to be the beneficiaries of Modiano’s pain with this new novel, which has many of the satisfactions typical of a Modiano novel: absent parents, chance encounters, disappearing women, dalliances in the occult, the mysteries of Paris charted via specific streets and the seasons. Above all is a mood that cannot be adequately described but is familiar to anyone who has read one of Modiano’s books, a mood ably conveyed by the sensitive and spare translation of Mark Polizzotti. Compared to recent works, however, Sleep of Memory does not have the formal purity of The Black Notebook or the humor of So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood. The disparate narrative of the former is brought into unity through the haunting of one female character, Dannie, and this lends an affecting singularity to the reading experience that Sleep of Memory does not have, haunted as it is by several women and not just the one. So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood is perhaps Modiano’s most humorous work since his first novel, La Place de l’Étoile. For example, it possesses the following delightful passage on the relation between a Modiano-esque detective and modern technology:

For the past few years, he hardly ever used this computer on which most of his research came to nothing. The rare people whom he would have liked to trace had succeeded in escaping the vigilance of this machine. They had slipped through the net because they belonged to another age and because they were not exactly saints. He remembered his father whom he hardly knew and who used to say to him in a soft voice: “I’d be a tough case for dozens of examining magistrates.” No trace of his father on the computer. Any more than of Torstel or Perrin de Lara whose names he had typed out on the keyboard the previous day, before Chantal Grippay arrived. In the case of Perrin de Lara, the usual phenomenon had occurred: a great many Perrins were displayed on the screen, and the night was not long enough to go through the entire list. Those whom he would have liked to hear from were often hidden among a crowd of anonymous people, or else behind a famous character who bore the same name. And when he typed out a direct question on the keyboard: “Is Jacques Perrin de Lara still alive? If so, give me his address”, the computer seemed incapable of replying and you could sense a certain hesitation and a certain embarrassment passing through the multiple wires that connected the machine to electrical sockets.

Sleep of Memory is missing these elements of formal purity and humor. Still, it has other virtues.

First, it has some of the best aphorisms one can find in Modiano. A brief sampling here: “For me, Paris is littered with ghosts”; “with a little effort they come back to you, those names that lie dormant beneath a thin coating of snow and neglect”; “Those people you often wonder about, whose disappearance is shrouded in mystery, a mystery you’ll never be able to solve — you’d be surprised to learn that they simply changed neighborhoods”; “quite simply, we live at the mercy of certain silences.” As always, with Modiano, melancholy is formulated with precision, and the enjoyment gained from reading a new text is seeing how he’s done it this time, how he has returned to the same themes, delighting us anew with yet a more perfect way of putting the matter.

Second, there is an unforgettable evocation of domestic space when the narrator goes to visit a friend of a friend named Madeleine Péraud, who teaches yoga and occult sciences. Péraud’s house is a realm of utter quiet in the midst of Paris, such that when one enters one feels one has left the city entirely. There are two windows that look out onto a garden, and Péraud speaks with a calm voice. The narrator and his friend are asked to sit on a red sofa that faces these windows. The room is lit by a floor lamp that stands between the two windows, giving off a soft light as Péraud asks questions of a gentle, non-interrogative nature. Modiano speaks frequently of the eternal return, but the peculiar way this scene is written, with its repetitive cadences and unhurried grace, brings the reader into his cyclical universe. Times stands still not just for Jean, the narrator, but for us as well.

The third and final virtue has to do with horror. Sleep of Memory manages to attach a feeling not just of unease but of genuine terror to the past. It seems the past may at any moment return to impound the present, making us pay an unredeemed debt that has been accruing interest for some time. We are the beneficiaries of Modiano’s pain, and the trauma rising to the surface (like a body floating in a river, the body of a certain Ludovic F.) feels exquisitely real.

Thomas J. Millay is a PhD student in Theology at Baylor University. His fiction has been published in the Blotter.

The post Remember to Forget: Patrick Modiano’s “Sleep of Memory” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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