Quiet
The first thing you learn when you get out of nappies is that fairytales are all lies. 'Cause in reality, there are no handsome princes waiting on gleaming white horses to rescue damsels in distress. In reality, there are no heroes ready to give up their lives defending the ones they love. In reality, no one's a princess. In reality, there's no one who'll save her from this never ending nightmare. Of course, she's hardly a princess herself. Far from it. She looks in the cracked mirror, smashed since her older brother chucked a football at it after telling her she was too vain. She still looks anyway, surveys her 5 foot 4 inch figure. She doesn't think that anyone could ever mistake her for a princess. Her hair is a dull brown, cut to jagged, unflattering spikes, framing her pale face. Freckles dot her nose and cheeks. The only remarkable thing someone might be able to pick out are her grey eyes, but even they stare out from behind cropped lashes with a disdainful glare. She doesn't say much. Words are a waste of space, in her opinion. There's nobody around to listen anyway.
She's alone in the house again. The silence will hang round the four-floored mansion like a dust sheet until her brothers arrive home. And then it will be too loud, the air thrumming with chords and rhythms. 'Music' they call it. She disagrees, but the million screaming fans will beg to differ. After grabbing whatever's on the kitchen side for dinner, it'll be off out again, to an interview, a meeting with the record company, a concert. Finally, everything will be quiet again. She'll wander round the house aimlessly, flitting from room to empty room. Maybe she'll pick up one of the many guitars lying forgotten on the floor, strum it a little, let her fingers fly over the frets. And she'll smile for a little while, lost in her own world of make-believe.
But then they'll be back, and she'll drop the guitar hastily, hurrying out of the room before they catch her. They'd seen her before, she'd gotten up too late, and they'd come into the room, caught her with her mouth still open in a melody, her fingers still hanging over the strings. That was when they'd broken her mirror. They can't see her again.
They'll be back in the home studio for a while longer, giving her moments longer of peace. She spends these precious few sitting on the well-worn window seat in her room, the one that overlooks the expanse of fifteen acres her family owns. She can still remember when she was smaller, when she would play out there, the sun shining down on her smiling face. She would join hands with her brothers, and they would swing her around until she could imagine she was flying, swooping through the air up with the birds. But then they had become famous, shot to stardom with that one song. And everything had changed. And she had been alone.
Of course, there had been other people as well, but nothing had ever seemed to work out in the end, as much as she had hoped otherwise. Sure, it would be nice to start with, but it wouldn't last. She'd figure out soon enough that there was only one reason someone could be bothered with a person like her. Her whole life seems to revolve around them, every little thing she does, every little thing she asks for, every little aspect of her life hanging in the balance of her brothers' fickle whims. The people she hates the most. But the feeling's mutual. Because, after all, what will she ever be but the forgotten sister? What will she ever be than Kayla Gray, the one no one ever remembers? She shrugs when they shout this at her, leaning in so close she can feel the spit fly from their snarling mouths. Because she doesn't know who she is. All she knows is that she'll never be good enough for them.