"Hurry up melody you're going to be late!"
Struggling to keep up with her friend Linoa, Melody tries to pick up the pace,
along with carrying her backpack and 4 books in her hands.
"You know Mel, NO one in high school carries a bag anymore, let alone does
homework."
Melody, gasping for air, yells as she runs after Linoa. "Yeah well, I really don't
care."
That is her outlook on life: attempt to get through high school and ignore the
people who try to bring you down.
The year was going like every other year, and the school, just like every other
school. High School, especially. It's funny when people say high school is easy.
As Melody runs from hallway to hallway, dodging Freshman almost half her size,
she makes her way to her next class, history. "*Groan*, it's only 9 in the morning?" she
says as she mopes around, searching for a way to get into the classroom without
disrupting the heard of people. She finally gets in, and quietly takes her seat.
"Hello everyone," the teacher says. "Let's start the quiz."
"QUIZ!? What!!? Now!?" Melody says as she frantically searches through papers
and notebooks and drawings to find the weekly assignments and notes. As she tries to
read her outlines in the 5 minutes she has to refresh her memory, one girl, Harmony,
interrupts her.
"Um, Melody? Studying is for HOME. If you got all 100's like ME, you wouldn't
have this problem."
Rolling her eyes, Melody ignores it and just keeps reading. "Okay, so, Jeffer..no..
Jackson and Clay go for election and ...electoral college....Alamo....ugh!!!"
"Put you're notes away, Melody," says the teacher, as he looks straight down at
her. Blushing, she quickly puts her notes away and grabs a pen. "Okay everyone, you have
45 minutes to finish this quiz. Good luck."
Yep, this is high school, where personality and way of life mean nothing, only
grades. "If I only get straight A's this quarter, maybe my mom will finally accept me as a
daughter," Melody says in her mind. "She thinks I'm a genius, someone different...yeah I'm
different all right."
Looking down at herself, she sees what she's wearing: a tight pink tee shirt, blue
jeans and a matching pink elastic. As she gazes around the room, she looks at each person.
Harmony, who sits right across from her, is already done with the quiz, and is starting the
assignment that is due next Tuesday. Linoa, who is sitting at the table in the far right, is
randomly scratching letters onto her paper, she glances at Melody and waves. The rest are
basically phonies. They all are trying to be people they aren't, anyone other than
themselves, and they're only fooling themselves. "If I could only picture my dream guy..."
Melody dazes in her mind. "He'd be....cute....of course....he'd have a great sense of
humor...and he would appreciate who I am...hmm...*sigh*."
"Time's up! Put your pens down and pass your quiz forward."
Of course, the only thing that she has on the paper are her name, and numbers 1-20
on the left hand side. "Oh well." she shrugs, and crumples up her paper, knowing no one is
watching her anyway.
As the teacher discusses the next chapter with the class, Melody thinks again about
her dream guy. She begins with a rough sketch on her black spiral drawing pad, slowly
making shadows and details. By the time she finished sketching the outline of the face, it
was the end of the period, and almost the end of the day. Five minutes before the last bell
to go home rang, the supervisor came on the intercom.
"All students please report to your designated homerooms to receive your report
card."
"I hope I get all A's, I tried really hard," Melody says to herself, squinting her eyes
hoping to have the report card almost pop into her hands with all solid A's. When she got
to her homeroom, it wasn't what she planned for.
"A 'C'?!!? How did I get a C!! In HISTORY?!?! Ugh, that man!"
She got a couple A-'s, B's, B+'s and that one C that kept her off the honor roll.
"...My mom's going to kill me.."
Overhearing this was a friend of hers, Carinth, who used to be her best friend.
"Sorry. Hey I ALMOST got a C in English and Trig!".
Looking up from her report card, Melody asks, "Well, what did you get?"
"B+ and A-."
Melody sinks even lower into her chair. "As if it cant get any worse."
As she steps out of the school with her backpack slung high on her shoulder and 6
books this time in her hands, she walks with her head low towards her mother's car. Her
sister, Alina, is already in the car showing off her report card. As Melody slams the car
door after sitting down, Alina starts her snobby tone.
"And MOMMY, I got ALL A's, but ONE B!!"
Alina is a Freshman that goes to the same school as Melody, and even though
Melody is a Junior now, an upperclassmen, she still feels inferior to everyone.
"Hi Melody...how did you do on your report card?" With a sad expression on her
face, Melody looks away. "You got honor roll right?" Still no answer. "OH FOR CHRIST
SAKES!!!!!" Her mother continues to ramble on and on about how Melody is a slacker
and doesn't study, and all the while Alina is in the back, huddling to her mother and joining
the dissing fun, and Melody is just staring out the window, counting the drops of rain
splashing on the glass.
"Are you paying attention young lady?!" Her mother doesn't seem to understand
that Melody is trying her hardest, and all these years of torture with pressure haven't done
anything, and now that Melody has realized this, she has finally made the decision to stop
it altogether.
The car ride home was the longest trip she has ever encountered, and she wasted
no time to get out of the car to see her dad. Her father is sometimes a pretty cool guy, he
at least had a couple C's in his day.
"Daddy..." Melody tries to tell him about her report card, when Alina butts in and
spilt it.
"Daddy guess what! Melody got a C!!! I always do better than her!!" She leaves
with a silly grin on her face.
"Yep, that's basically it dad," Melody says.
"I'm disappointed. You're doing too many things at once. You're doing marching
band, wind ensemble,...all your other bands. You're working. If you don't do better, we're
going to drop this band shit." Just when she thought he was the one person who would
understand, he doesn't at all.
Melody is, as one would obviously state, a band geek. The reason why she is doing
this is because it is the one thing, besides science, that she is doing for herself. Alina was in
band too, but only for symphony.
The whole week was awful for Melody, especially at home. Her mother wouldn't
talk to her, her sister, whom she didn't want to talk to anyway, would always remind her
of her shitty report card, and even though her father was partially cool about it, he was
still disappointed.
"I wish I can just take a break from all this," Melody says out loud in her room as
she dove into her bed. While fishing for the remote to her TV, she came across her cell
phone. "Hmm, I wonder if anyone left messages."
Dialing her number and password, her heart started to race with anticipation of
getting at least one message.
"I'm sorry no messages in your voicebox."
"Dammit..." She doesn't even shut the phone off; she just chucks it towards the
other side of the room hoping it would break.
Staring up into the ceiling, she closed her eyes and reflected on what has happened
throughout the week: she took SAT IIs, she took at least 40 quizzes and tests at school,
had to play a piece for some music honor society in front of the band, got the C, her
parents aren't talking to her the same, and her boyfriend of 3 months just broke up with
her a day before.
"Darien, why do we have to be so different?!" Melody screamed into her pillow.
Last night, while they were on the phone, they got into an argument, when Darien,
fed up, just said "look, we're totally different. I don't think we should see each other
anymore."
It's not like she's never heard it before, especially from him. They went out last
year for the same amount of time, and the same thing happened. It was always a
rollercoaster with her: she'd be mad at him, then she'd love him, then she'd love him more,
then they'd hate each other. And all that time she kept feeling that there's no one out there
for her but him. He was the type of guy that all you had to do was look into his eyes and
you'd just know everything would be all right. The way he use to make her feel when they
were together was something she never wanted to forget. Regardless if he was her first
boyfriend, she still was stubborn and narrow-minded in staying with Darien, in the back of
her mind.
"Maybe I'll write him a letter...nah...I did that last year and he laughed in my
face...the bastard...why do I like him so much!?! We haven't even...."
She kept picturing the time when, on Valentines Day, he told her had to work the
whole night so he couldn't even call her, but when she got home, there were a dozen roses
in her room. (Thank goodness she cleaned her room).
"How could he say "I love you" and then 2 weeks later break up?" The thoughts of
him kept rolling in her head. "Why does he keep doing this to me? I try to be strong but..."
"Melody! Come and eat!"
Surprised that her mother actually spoke to her, she gets out of bed and runs
downstairs to eat dinner. The dinner is even more silent than when she was alone in her
room upstairs.
After she ate, she took a bag of candy and headed back to her room, where she felt
like no one could get to her. Her bedroom is a little smaller than the rest of the house: it
was transformed from the attic and it had a seafoam green carpet. Her favorite color use
to be a soft seafoam green, just like Carinth. Her closet was full of clothes, tall shoes and
skirts. As she walks around her room, she gazes at all the pictures she has: of her and her
friends, her dog, her family, her in marching band uniforms, and her and Darien.
"*sigh*, I wonder what he's doing...probably boozing with his stupid friends and
being stupid like usual...that stupid...".
She takes out her purple covered journal, sits in the corner of the room, and opens
it. Inside are lyrics she wrote about the first break up of her and Darien last February. It
was most intense song she has ever written. As she takes out her pen, the same one she
used on that "quiz", and starts thinking of a new song, upon completing her first verse.
She sighs. "I can't think of him anymore, it's over. I'm sick of waiting around for
him and giving him chances." She threw the book across the room, landing right next to
the cell phone.
She gets up, stretches, and goes to her computer to check her mail. Melody knew
her way around the computer; she had one since she was 10 years old, so programming it
has been a breeze.
"*sigh* What now?", she asks as she sees the "you've got mail" sign on her
welcome page. A couple are junk mail, some are jokes from friends, some more are
forwards about "if you're my friend, email me back" and one is from someone she didn't
know, with the subject titled: "Melody Please Read".
"Hmm it could be...Harmony? Probably.....hmm.."
She opens it, and to her surprise, it isn't Harmony at all. It's a letter from Darien.
As she began to read the email, she couldn't help but burst out into tears. The message
said: "Melody, I...I don't know why this is happening to us. I've loved you for SO long
and I wish there was a better way to explain how I feel. We have had the best times and
we've gone through the worst together. We've had so many fights and even though
sometimes we just fight for no reason, we've both tried to go our separate ways. Maybe
it's just me...maybe it's just you, but...we're totally different people, Melody, inside and
out. You're a beautiful, nice girl, Melody...sorry...always, Darien"
"Oh, that's just FANTASTIC!!" Melody screams at her computer monitor, "you
ALWAYS do this to me! You tell me you want to be friends, and then...what...what about
when you told me you LOVED ME!?! HUH?!?!?!".
Panting from exhaustion, she goes through her dresser to take out a little envelope
and attempts to tear it into pieces and throw it into the trash. In it was a set of pictures
Darien and Melody took together at a carnival. As she stared deeply into his eyes, she
couldn't help but gaze in awe. "Why are you so difficult...if you just...loved me like you
did before.....Darien...I would have given you everything..."
Written by Alex (a.k.a. Sailor Drum Major)
Edited by Chibi Lina Inverse (a.k.a. Tuba-san's bakahead)
Struggling to keep up with her friend Linoa, Melody tries to pick up the pace,
along with carrying her backpack and 4 books in her hands.
"You know Mel, NO one in high school carries a bag anymore, let alone does
homework."
Melody, gasping for air, yells as she runs after Linoa. "Yeah well, I really don't
care."
That is her outlook on life: attempt to get through high school and ignore the
people who try to bring you down.
The year was going like every other year, and the school, just like every other
school. High School, especially. It's funny when people say high school is easy.
As Melody runs from hallway to hallway, dodging Freshman almost half her size,
she makes her way to her next class, history. "*Groan*, it's only 9 in the morning?" she
says as she mopes around, searching for a way to get into the classroom without
disrupting the heard of people. She finally gets in, and quietly takes her seat.
"Hello everyone," the teacher says. "Let's start the quiz."
"QUIZ!? What!!? Now!?" Melody says as she frantically searches through papers
and notebooks and drawings to find the weekly assignments and notes. As she tries to
read her outlines in the 5 minutes she has to refresh her memory, one girl, Harmony,
interrupts her.
"Um, Melody? Studying is for HOME. If you got all 100's like ME, you wouldn't
have this problem."
Rolling her eyes, Melody ignores it and just keeps reading. "Okay, so, Jeffer..no..
Jackson and Clay go for election and ...electoral college....Alamo....ugh!!!"
"Put you're notes away, Melody," says the teacher, as he looks straight down at
her. Blushing, she quickly puts her notes away and grabs a pen. "Okay everyone, you have
45 minutes to finish this quiz. Good luck."
Yep, this is high school, where personality and way of life mean nothing, only
grades. "If I only get straight A's this quarter, maybe my mom will finally accept me as a
daughter," Melody says in her mind. "She thinks I'm a genius, someone different...yeah I'm
different all right."
Looking down at herself, she sees what she's wearing: a tight pink tee shirt, blue
jeans and a matching pink elastic. As she gazes around the room, she looks at each person.
Harmony, who sits right across from her, is already done with the quiz, and is starting the
assignment that is due next Tuesday. Linoa, who is sitting at the table in the far right, is
randomly scratching letters onto her paper, she glances at Melody and waves. The rest are
basically phonies. They all are trying to be people they aren't, anyone other than
themselves, and they're only fooling themselves. "If I could only picture my dream guy..."
Melody dazes in her mind. "He'd be....cute....of course....he'd have a great sense of
humor...and he would appreciate who I am...hmm...*sigh*."
"Time's up! Put your pens down and pass your quiz forward."
Of course, the only thing that she has on the paper are her name, and numbers 1-20
on the left hand side. "Oh well." she shrugs, and crumples up her paper, knowing no one is
watching her anyway.
As the teacher discusses the next chapter with the class, Melody thinks again about
her dream guy. She begins with a rough sketch on her black spiral drawing pad, slowly
making shadows and details. By the time she finished sketching the outline of the face, it
was the end of the period, and almost the end of the day. Five minutes before the last bell
to go home rang, the supervisor came on the intercom.
"All students please report to your designated homerooms to receive your report
card."
"I hope I get all A's, I tried really hard," Melody says to herself, squinting her eyes
hoping to have the report card almost pop into her hands with all solid A's. When she got
to her homeroom, it wasn't what she planned for.
"A 'C'?!!? How did I get a C!! In HISTORY?!?! Ugh, that man!"
She got a couple A-'s, B's, B+'s and that one C that kept her off the honor roll.
"...My mom's going to kill me.."
Overhearing this was a friend of hers, Carinth, who used to be her best friend.
"Sorry. Hey I ALMOST got a C in English and Trig!".
Looking up from her report card, Melody asks, "Well, what did you get?"
"B+ and A-."
Melody sinks even lower into her chair. "As if it cant get any worse."
As she steps out of the school with her backpack slung high on her shoulder and 6
books this time in her hands, she walks with her head low towards her mother's car. Her
sister, Alina, is already in the car showing off her report card. As Melody slams the car
door after sitting down, Alina starts her snobby tone.
"And MOMMY, I got ALL A's, but ONE B!!"
Alina is a Freshman that goes to the same school as Melody, and even though
Melody is a Junior now, an upperclassmen, she still feels inferior to everyone.
"Hi Melody...how did you do on your report card?" With a sad expression on her
face, Melody looks away. "You got honor roll right?" Still no answer. "OH FOR CHRIST
SAKES!!!!!" Her mother continues to ramble on and on about how Melody is a slacker
and doesn't study, and all the while Alina is in the back, huddling to her mother and joining
the dissing fun, and Melody is just staring out the window, counting the drops of rain
splashing on the glass.
"Are you paying attention young lady?!" Her mother doesn't seem to understand
that Melody is trying her hardest, and all these years of torture with pressure haven't done
anything, and now that Melody has realized this, she has finally made the decision to stop
it altogether.
The car ride home was the longest trip she has ever encountered, and she wasted
no time to get out of the car to see her dad. Her father is sometimes a pretty cool guy, he
at least had a couple C's in his day.
"Daddy..." Melody tries to tell him about her report card, when Alina butts in and
spilt it.
"Daddy guess what! Melody got a C!!! I always do better than her!!" She leaves
with a silly grin on her face.
"Yep, that's basically it dad," Melody says.
"I'm disappointed. You're doing too many things at once. You're doing marching
band, wind ensemble,...all your other bands. You're working. If you don't do better, we're
going to drop this band shit." Just when she thought he was the one person who would
understand, he doesn't at all.
Melody is, as one would obviously state, a band geek. The reason why she is doing
this is because it is the one thing, besides science, that she is doing for herself. Alina was in
band too, but only for symphony.
The whole week was awful for Melody, especially at home. Her mother wouldn't
talk to her, her sister, whom she didn't want to talk to anyway, would always remind her
of her shitty report card, and even though her father was partially cool about it, he was
still disappointed.
"I wish I can just take a break from all this," Melody says out loud in her room as
she dove into her bed. While fishing for the remote to her TV, she came across her cell
phone. "Hmm, I wonder if anyone left messages."
Dialing her number and password, her heart started to race with anticipation of
getting at least one message.
"I'm sorry no messages in your voicebox."
"Dammit..." She doesn't even shut the phone off; she just chucks it towards the
other side of the room hoping it would break.
Staring up into the ceiling, she closed her eyes and reflected on what has happened
throughout the week: she took SAT IIs, she took at least 40 quizzes and tests at school,
had to play a piece for some music honor society in front of the band, got the C, her
parents aren't talking to her the same, and her boyfriend of 3 months just broke up with
her a day before.
"Darien, why do we have to be so different?!" Melody screamed into her pillow.
Last night, while they were on the phone, they got into an argument, when Darien,
fed up, just said "look, we're totally different. I don't think we should see each other
anymore."
It's not like she's never heard it before, especially from him. They went out last
year for the same amount of time, and the same thing happened. It was always a
rollercoaster with her: she'd be mad at him, then she'd love him, then she'd love him more,
then they'd hate each other. And all that time she kept feeling that there's no one out there
for her but him. He was the type of guy that all you had to do was look into his eyes and
you'd just know everything would be all right. The way he use to make her feel when they
were together was something she never wanted to forget. Regardless if he was her first
boyfriend, she still was stubborn and narrow-minded in staying with Darien, in the back of
her mind.
"Maybe I'll write him a letter...nah...I did that last year and he laughed in my
face...the bastard...why do I like him so much!?! We haven't even...."
She kept picturing the time when, on Valentines Day, he told her had to work the
whole night so he couldn't even call her, but when she got home, there were a dozen roses
in her room. (Thank goodness she cleaned her room).
"How could he say "I love you" and then 2 weeks later break up?" The thoughts of
him kept rolling in her head. "Why does he keep doing this to me? I try to be strong but..."
"Melody! Come and eat!"
Surprised that her mother actually spoke to her, she gets out of bed and runs
downstairs to eat dinner. The dinner is even more silent than when she was alone in her
room upstairs.
After she ate, she took a bag of candy and headed back to her room, where she felt
like no one could get to her. Her bedroom is a little smaller than the rest of the house: it
was transformed from the attic and it had a seafoam green carpet. Her favorite color use
to be a soft seafoam green, just like Carinth. Her closet was full of clothes, tall shoes and
skirts. As she walks around her room, she gazes at all the pictures she has: of her and her
friends, her dog, her family, her in marching band uniforms, and her and Darien.
"*sigh*, I wonder what he's doing...probably boozing with his stupid friends and
being stupid like usual...that stupid...".
She takes out her purple covered journal, sits in the corner of the room, and opens
it. Inside are lyrics she wrote about the first break up of her and Darien last February. It
was most intense song she has ever written. As she takes out her pen, the same one she
used on that "quiz", and starts thinking of a new song, upon completing her first verse.
She sighs. "I can't think of him anymore, it's over. I'm sick of waiting around for
him and giving him chances." She threw the book across the room, landing right next to
the cell phone.
She gets up, stretches, and goes to her computer to check her mail. Melody knew
her way around the computer; she had one since she was 10 years old, so programming it
has been a breeze.
"*sigh* What now?", she asks as she sees the "you've got mail" sign on her
welcome page. A couple are junk mail, some are jokes from friends, some more are
forwards about "if you're my friend, email me back" and one is from someone she didn't
know, with the subject titled: "Melody Please Read".
"Hmm it could be...Harmony? Probably.....hmm.."
She opens it, and to her surprise, it isn't Harmony at all. It's a letter from Darien.
As she began to read the email, she couldn't help but burst out into tears. The message
said: "Melody, I...I don't know why this is happening to us. I've loved you for SO long
and I wish there was a better way to explain how I feel. We have had the best times and
we've gone through the worst together. We've had so many fights and even though
sometimes we just fight for no reason, we've both tried to go our separate ways. Maybe
it's just me...maybe it's just you, but...we're totally different people, Melody, inside and
out. You're a beautiful, nice girl, Melody...sorry...always, Darien"
"Oh, that's just FANTASTIC!!" Melody screams at her computer monitor, "you
ALWAYS do this to me! You tell me you want to be friends, and then...what...what about
when you told me you LOVED ME!?! HUH?!?!?!".
Panting from exhaustion, she goes through her dresser to take out a little envelope
and attempts to tear it into pieces and throw it into the trash. In it was a set of pictures
Darien and Melody took together at a carnival. As she stared deeply into his eyes, she
couldn't help but gaze in awe. "Why are you so difficult...if you just...loved me like you
did before.....Darien...I would have given you everything..."
Written by Alex (a.k.a. Sailor Drum Major)
Edited by Chibi Lina Inverse (a.k.a. Tuba-san's bakahead)