Words can't express how much I fail. I haven't updated in liek a year. I would beg forgiveness of my beautiful readers and reviewers, and ask that you not judge me too harshly. Amor, amor, amor *hearts*.
I don't own People, or Montrio Bistro or Mazda. But I do love to use them.
Monday September 3, 4:45 PM, Malon's 3rd floor bedroom, writing in her blog "Diary of a Cowgirl"
Mood: Happy
Song: Sunshine and Summertime, Faith Hill
Howdy hoes and pimps! First day of school. Let me tell you: It was just boring old school. The usual boredom and trauma. We already have Math homework! Overall, though, I'd say the day went by amazingly well, for all the torture that the students of America are fortunate to endure.
List of classes:
1st hour: World History with Mr. Gaebora
2nd hour: English with Ms. Daltus
3rd hour: Study Hall
4th hour: Chemistry with Mr. Dodongo
5th hour: Creative Writing/ Journalism with Mr. Ezlo
6th hour: French with Mdme. Aroma
7th hour: Pre-Calc (cue evil music) with Mr. Dragmire
So, those are my classes and in between 4th and 5th hour, I have lunch. Fun, huh?
Well, Orange Valley High is about two miles away from The Hylias in Monterey and it's right on this nice little hill, so it overlooks the ocean. The view is beautiful, but there are no windows, so it was a relief when the 3:15 bell finally rang.
I met a lot of really wicked awesome people, and Link showed me around to my classes. All the girls like him. I can see why, I mean - he's gorgeous. Apparently, he and Zelda sort of have a thing going on, according to school gossip Ashley Mendoza. I don't get it. She's such a bitch. Why do the assholes always grab the hot guys? Zelda hangs out with the rest of the gorgeous school 'royalty', of course (the head of which, she is the queen); Lizzy Kennedy (a Kennedy), Ruto Bazzi (her mother is the chief fashion designer for Gnirih Won, an up and coming brand that Stephaney ADORES), Midnight Blossom (No kidding, that's her real name), Rafton Kolmes (is it bad that I want to do him?) and Jimmy Fandor (PERV PERV PERV).
Speaking of the school royalty, Link's been introducing me to some of his gang - a less airbrushed-Barbie-doll version of Zelda's little clique. The people Link hangs out with are the people everyone gets along with. His ex, Tetra, is a gorgeous American beauty – tall, tan, blonde – with charisma like no other. She's real easy-going most of the time though. Despite their history, Tetra and Link get along very well. Oh and did I mention that Tetra is Zelda's cousin? Yeah, I don't know why I've never heard of her until now. Hmmm… Tetra and Link along with Tott Presley (a distant relative of Elvis, I am so sure), Marin Akido (the cutest girl I've ever met in my entire life), Fado Rah (he's really into great music), Jake Hamilton (really cocky, really funny) and Carlina Faust (Link's cousin, who is going out with Jake) all make up the people I will probably end up hanging out with for the rest of my time at Orange.
Anyways. Not much new here besides the fact that a guy asked me out today. Yeah. I've never had a guy my age ask me out before. I'm not ugly or anything, but it's about damn time. But, anyway, his name is Mikau and he's gorgeous. He sings in a local band called Indigo Maze. I'm surprised Zelda and her crew haven't scooped him up. Well, anyways, of course, I said yes and we're going to Montrio Bistro just off of East Franklin and Calle Principal on Saturday. Then, he's going to take me to one of his shows.
I really hope they're good, I mean, I've never heard of them, but apparently, they've had a few record companies seem interested in signing them. Who knows? Maybe the band will become famous.
This is all completely new to me.
Lots of lovexoxo
-Malon
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Comments:
PiLaTeS_4_lYfE
Woah girl, idk who u r but ur lyfe is interesting! Dude man u got asked out by mikau wallar!!!??? Thts so kool! I go 2 the indigo maze shows like all th time! And they rokkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!111 Oh btw I g2 northern springs high so we r basicly rivals.
Bye dude
What the hell. I looked at the comment on my latest post and laughed. Oh, the illiterate people of the world...
It was now Tuesday morning and I was getting ready for the second week of school. I had pulled on my favorite jeans and a cobalt blue v-neck shirt. My red hair was brushed and hanging loose around my shoulders. No need to do any styling, it was just school. Still, I checked myself out in the full-length mirror in my new, gigantic closet.
"Mm-hmm, I look good." My skin was peachy, hair: brilliant, nails: polished. My confidence was a little overboard, too. I am normally a pretty confident girl, I've even been accused of being cocky. I wonder why.
Anyways. I grabbed my black Mario Brothers messenger bag (Yeah. I roll that way.), along with my books and headed downstairs. I could hear the faint sounds of Stephaney doing her yoga DVD in the 'morning room' (The damn house has so many useless rooms! And why didn't she use the gym room? That's what it's for!).
"'Breathe in, breathe out. Don't forget to flex those abdominal muscles and relax!'"
I say, how is one supposed to relax while flexing all these various muscles? I rolled my eyes and meandered into the kitchen where I grabbed a cinnamon pop tart and headed to the front door from which I would make my leave.
My leave was, however, interrupted by the doorbell just as I opened one of the massive wooden front doors of our house, pop tart in mouth.
Link was standing there, looking amazingly sexy. His golden hair was still wet from his morning shower and he was wearing a slightly wrinkled almost-see-through white oxford – sleeves rolled to show his tanned forearms, a leather string bracelet and a silver ring on the thumb of his right hand. A few buttons on his shirt had been undone, exposing his tan, muscular chest, now no longer covered in grease and…
"Is that a tattoo?" I stared at a dark mark on his chest, half hidden under his shirt.
"What? Oh… uh yeah just some stick on thing I got at the renaissance fair." He buttoned the shirt so that the tattoo was no longer visible and changed the subject.
"I thought I'd be a good Samaritan and take to you school. Zelda's riding with Tetra, it seems." We started walking to his car.
I remembered the mysterious woman I had seen getting into the car with Link and - apparently - Tetra the other day, and wondered about her. Was she in highschool? Was she one of William Harkinian's concubines? Was she famous? ... Who cares?
"Oh. Are they pretty good friends? Zelda and Tet?"
He opened my door for me and went around to his side.
"They're alright. They don't get along very well most of the time, but uh, they can get pretty chummy. When the time calls for it."
I looked at his thoughtful face, puzzled. I didn't know why I was puzzled. Maybe it was the wistful way he spoke or the pensiveness of his stare. Maybe I was just confused because now, what I wanted most had suddenly changed: I did not want most to talk to Epona and the other animals. I wanted to figure out what the hell Link was being so damn weird about.
#
School was uneventful until 4th period after lunch. Mikau had wanted to take me to get Subway so we went and discussed intellectual things like art and culture. It was fun, for the most part, me playing the part of the mini intellectual, him actually being a rather hot intellectual from halfway around the world (he moved to Cali from France a couple years ago).
After lunch, he kissed me on the cheek and left for his class. I was left wandering the hallways even after bell rang, lost in thought. I had really no intention of going anywhere, I just wandered, I didn't even know where I was in this massive school. Most likely some part of the abandoned south wing.
I don't know what possessed me to wander into the old auditorium. Curiosity, perhaps. Privacy, maybe, though it was private enough in the south wing – no one came back here from what I knew. Apparently, there was a fire some years ago that killed a whole bunch of students and they decided to just close the wing in honor of them. I hoped I wasn't desecrating their memories by trespassing.
The auditorium was dark. Pitch black. So I cracked the door open and let a stream of afternoon light bring the red velvet seats out of the shadows. They were covered in dust, but I chose a partially obscure seat in the back to sit down in anyways. I decided to skip fifth period and just relax. Ditching on the second week of classes probably wasn't the best decision, but I had a lot on my mind.
Like my new life and how quickly I was adjusting to it, for one. I came here not wanting to change, but already I've started to like it here. I live in a stick-up-their-asses neighborhood, but it's fun to watch the people and how they try to out-rich each other with their cars and their technology and their sports teams; I just got done eating lunch with one of the sexiest guys on campus, and I don't know where it is going to go; I have friends that aren't animals and - finally - Link. He is a strange one. Well, first he's hot. Then, he's got to act mysterious. I mean, what he does isn't even that weird, but there is just something about that boy.... And I know I'm right because Tetra keeps saying he has been acting strange lately too.
I heard something and shifted in the dark.
"… hear the way she said your name?" Voices from the hall. Coming closer. I remained where I was, hidden on a chair. Who was visiting the south wing besides me? It didn't sound like a teacher. The voice was familiar; resonating with regality, authority, confidence. Zelda's voice. She was angry.
"Does it matter?" Came the voice of a man. He was whispering and I couldn't tell if it was familiar or not, but their footsteps stopped right outside of the auditorium. I sank down into the chair. The door opened and light was spilled into the dark room as two figures walked in quickly. I squinted at the sudden, intense brightness and missed who the man was as the doors were quickly shut.
"Of course it matters!" Zelda practically shouted and I winced, feeling sorry for her companion. "She could snap you in half with her teeth if she wanted. You know how she gets when she wants something."
"Zelda," The man spoke her name so softly, I felt I was intruding on something private. "Zelda, don't be like this. I know how you get with her. You are both the same way. Don't worry. I know what I'm doing."
"Get off me." She barked. "I really hope you know what you're doing, because there will be hell to pay if you don't. You know what kind of power she has."
"Nothing your daddy can't buy his way out of."
"You bastard." Zelda breathed and there was a gasp as I heard the sound of flesh meeting flesh in a sharp slap and Zelda opened the door and walked away, leaving it to swing shut. Leaving me alone with the strange man. Not that he knew I was here, because I was sure I hadn't made a sound.
I quietly slunk further down in the seat, practically onto the floor, just to make sure. It obscured my view of the door, I knew, which was unfortunate because I really wanted to know who the guy was. He waited for a while, just breathing. And then he opened the door and left. I waited for a long time in that position, my heart beating fast. I heard the bell ring in the distance and got up, feeling my way to the door.
When I got to the senior wing, I was immediately assailed by bright-eyed, darling Marin, who was wearing a kigurumi Pikachu pajama suit.
"Malon! You're on page sixteen!"
I stared at her, wondering what she meant. Then, she handed me an issue of People opened to an article that read: "New Money Scandal! The newest edition to America's Elite acting less than dignified as she is pictured here, hung over from a night of wicked revelry in the L.A. club scene. Luckily for her, she made it home before daddy (Talon Rousseau, currently presiding over the throne of Rousseau, Inc.) could notice her absence.' There was a picture of me, looking rather haggard in my bed, then one of me flipping the camera off and another of what looked like a pale stick figure in a bright orange wig at a country club, riding a bull with the caption: 'Yee-haw! Maybe Malon Rousseau forgot that the isn't in Kansas anymore'. I'm not even from Kansas! And the wig on that skinny girl doesn't even look like my natural hair color!
"What the hell is this?" I shouted loud enough so that everyone in a thirty foot radius turned to look at me.
"Nice coverage, cowgirl." It was Zelda. She leered over my shoulder to gaze upon the miserable tabloid. "I'd just like to know how you made it from L.A. and back to Monterey in one night. And I know you don't have a jet, since your dad is always using ours."
"Shut up, Zelda, you know this is fake."
Zelda took a copy of the weekly one of her bitches handed to her and started flipping through its cheap, glossy pages. "You'd better watch yourself. Especially where the media is concerned. No one likes fakers who feed information to tabloids for fame. People don't like to be lied to. It would be pretty tragic if news got out about your dad..."
"My dad? Excuse me?" But I took the threat for what it was: a warning. She didn't want me to tell the media anything about her, I get it.
Before I could say anything really nasty, however, Tetra came to my rescue.
"Zelda!" she yelled as she power-walked our way. "Zelda, stop it, you're not making things better for yourself. Malon, don't argue with her."
"Okay mom." I said sarcastically as Zelda tossed her golden hair and pranced off to last period with her cronies.
"Ugh, sorry." Tetra sighed and we started walking together to pre-calc, bidding adieu to Marin. "I don't know why she messes with you. She's really not like that to anyone else – I've never seen her be such a bitch."
"Really? She's always been like that with me. I'm surprised she does it in public what with her being like America's Sweetheart or whatever the hell. But how did you get her to calm down without her little posse eating you alive?"
"Well, I am her cousin. And I had something she doesn't and she respects me for it."
"Oh? What?"
"Link."
"Link? I thought they were basically together."
We sat in our seats at the back of the buzzing classroom.
"No. For one reason or another, they won't get together."
I pretended not to be interested. But I was dying for more information on the inside. Suddenly I remembered my afternoon.
"Oh!" I said, "So I went out to lunch with Mikau – "
"Lucky biyatch."
"- and when we came back, instead of going to class, I went into the abandoned south wing into the old auditorium –"
"Why?"
"Just to think, I guess, but when I was in there I saw-"
"Alright, class!" Madame Aroma strolled in dramatically, holding her signature controversial long cigarette holder, an unlit cigarette stuck right in there. The school board had quite a few complaints about this habit from students' parents, but they went mostly ignored since the board couldn't get Aroma to drop it anyways. She was wearing a faux-mink stole and a mustard-yellow tweed skirt suit with sheer black and white checked tights and brown shoes. Her satin undershirt was royal purple and she wore a ring on each of her fat fingers. I could smell her signature mix of Chanel No. 5 and White Diamonds the moment she stepped into the room. Disgusting. Another thing asthma-conscious parents worried about, not that she cared. I liked that part of the Aroma, at least. The not-caring attitude.
Whoever named her was spot-on with that whole "Aroma" thing, by the way.
As the Aroma (as I suddenly took to calling her, in my mind) rambled on about the swiftly approaching French Essay we were going to undertake, Tet passed me a hastily written note: Let's skip seventh and go to my place – I'm done with this hole.
I nodded at her and rolled my eyes towards the ceiling as if praying to any god, deity or spirit up there for release from our compulsory prison. Hah. As if.
#
Coincidentally, guess where Tetra lives? Yeah, right across from my house, in ZELDA'S house. At first I was like, whoa what are we doing here? She explained to me that her parents were completely MIA and William had taken her under his graceful, gilded wing after they skipped out on her about a year ago. Apparently, it wasn't a surprise when they did. William Harkinian has some flaky siblings. Tetra calls him Uncle H.
Fortunately for us, Uncle H is never home and even if he was, the likelihood of him even knowing we were here was pretty much one in however many rooms there are in the house (which happens to be one hundred and thirty two. I'm liking them odds). So ditching came an easy task. Unless Stephaney or my dad decide to look out the window. Unlikely.
Being inside my childhood tormentor's lair was not at all as I remembered it. Of course, the furnishings and the atmosphere was the same – gilded and oppressive. But the circumstances were different and I have come to find that circumstance is everything.
Tetra's room was on the second floor, a suite to herself - like mine - but facing the back lawn. It was decorated in all sorts of motley things – old vinyl records on the walls in the living room, which were splatter-painted in black and neon purple, a 50's jukebox in one corner. Her closet was Indian-inspired with golds and pinks, jades and purples, gold and orange silk cloth draped along the ceiling to make it look like a tent. The bed in her room was round and huge, made of down feathers with millions of pillows scattered across its surface. She had maps and antique cutlasses on her walls and globes on her floors and an Isfahan rug – very adventurey and explorery.
"So do more cousins live here or just you?"
"Well, some live here during the summer, but I'm a sort of permanent resident. Parents are dead to me, Old Man Harkinian took me in, you know the story. I mean, it's not like he doesn't have room, you know?"
"Yeah, well it's still nice of him."
Tetra looked funny for a moment. "Eh. I guess. Nice isn't usually a work associated with William Harkinian. Cross, edgy, paranoid… Now those are more him. I can only assume that he took me because he had no other option. I have no other family."
"What happened to make your rents leave you?"
"Who knows? They were sailors, you know? They liked to go places, do things. They went to Ireland, never heard from them again. Maybe they're dead. Most likely they just skipped out. They only ever took me sailing once and I loved it, but nope. And they were never around anyways, I've been living here more than I lived with them."
Her iPhone started to ring, 'Eels, Eels, Eels, give it up now'. She looked at the screen and quickly picked it up, "Hola?"
I heard a tinny man-voice on the other end, but couldn't make out what was said. I didn't want to intrude anyways, so I thought about Tetra's life. Why hadn't I ever met her until now? I suppose because she was with her real parents, who sound so awful. My own mom died or left when I was too young to remember her. Dad never talks about it and when I ask, he says, "That was along time ago, kiddo. She was a beautiful woman, just like you're gonna be. You look like her, Mal." And it makes me choke up, so I don't ask a lot. Maybe one day, I'll get the story of her out of him. Or maybe I don't want to know.
Maybe she's sailing the world too. That sounds boring and lonely to me. The ocean just seems like a vast, blue, watery desert. There's life underneath, where we can't live and there's water all around, that we can't drink. Drink. Think. Link. Ugh, stop.
"Hey Mal?"
I awoke from my reverie to see Tetra looking a little worried. Had I been that out of it?
"Oh, sorry I was just thinking."
"No, you're fine. But I have to go. I'm sorry, I'm a dick." She started to put things back in her purse and make for the door, me following.
"Oh, it's cool. I mean, I live like right there. So..."
"Yeah, we are definitely hanging out later."
We made our way down the stairs and into the garage, where Tetra's red Miata was parked. It was a brief skip and a hop over to my house that landed me on my front porch. I reached for the brass handle just as the door opened.
"Oh, hello." Said a very fit, very scantily clad, very attractive Middle Eastern woman who took my hand. "I'm Nabooru, call me Nabs. You must be Steph's kid. You are gorgeous, good for you. Mother's genes, eh?"
I grinned, a little stunned and she let go of my hand.
"I'll just be popping in and out of your house whenever Steph needs me, so don't crap yourself if you see me here at three AM."
I laughed now, genuinely, and my gaze shifted towards her sporty getup: black sports bra, black leggings, silver Nikes, silver hoops. Her long, auburn hair was in a ponytail.
"Nice. I like your tattoo, it's interesting." I noted that tattoo on her left breast, over her heart. It resembled Sierpinski's triangle. I had seen something like that earlier today. On Link. "Did you get that at the Renaissance fair?"
"What?" Nabs chuckled, noncomprehending, "No, hon, this is real as it gets. Well, if you ever feel the need to join me and Steph in a kickboxing pow wow, feel free to hop in. Free of charge. Because I like you."
And she jogged off. What an energetic lady.
What an interesting tattoo. It was probably nothing, but I couldn't help but wonder at the coincidence of Link having the same tattoo in the same place. Again, it was probably nothing.
So... There you are. The chapter I have been working on since... what...? Last year? Ha! Well, I've been utilizing the PostIt note lately (stuck to my computer screen, courageously prompting me to "WRITE!"), so hopefully this tragedy won't happen again. Peace, love and eggs.
R&R is good for the soul, so do it.
