The lyrics used in this story are original lyrics that I wrote myself. They won't be at a professional level.


Is this everything we ever will be?

Is this everything we are?

My first thought when I enter the house is that it was way too bright. My second thought is that it was way too big.

The walls of the house Reggie chose are more window than wall, and are covered in nothing but gauzy white curtains that block almost no light.

The house is also way too big. It would be too big for a family of four, let alone just me. It has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and three floors and a basement. It's also designed to look bigger than it is. The ceiling in the living room is vaulted and goes all the way to the roof. The other floors wrap around the living room, making the space feel open, bright, and big.

Ha. As if it's not already too bright and too big.

It's the smallest house in this neighborhood of big, fancy, houses, apparently. It was also the most expensive house in the whole town. Perhaps that's why Reggie chose this house. Money stopped being an issue about ten months ago. How ironic.

If it was anyone else, I would have violently protested. I hate large amounts of light the same way most hate the dark. I also hate fancy, big houses. But I owed Reggie way too much, so I didn't protest too much.

After examining the house, I go out to collect my boxes, which were brought over by a moving company an hour ago.

As I pick up the first box, a boy with green hair who appears to be close to my age walks by. He's walking a small brown dog and wearing headphones.

He stops in front of my house, probably because of the collection of boxes littering my driveway.

He takes off his headphones.

"Hey, did you just move in?" he asks.

I immediately dislike him. Who randomly stops to talk to strangers and asks them if they've just moved in?

I snatch up some smaller boxes and pile them on top of the box I'm holding before turning and going back inside, pointedly ignoring the irritating stranger standing in front of my driveway.

"Ok. That's not rude at all," he mutters, before putting his headphones back on and entering the house beside mine.

Ah. So he's my next door neighbor. Lovely.

Coming back to public school will be strange after the past year. I was so busy writing and recording songs, working on contracts, and dealing with media outlets to have time for public school, so I was privately tutored by a licensed educator.

This year, I'm focusing less on my career. Maybe that way, my manager might finally take a hint and stop trying to shove interviews, endorsement offers, collaborations, and tours on me.

Still, I'm starting to regret my choice. Rejecting interviews, endorsements, and other stupid offers, although bothersome, is probably easier and infinitely less painful than having to socially associate with the foreign species that is the high school student, which I will subject to starting tomorrow, the first day of this school year. The green haired idiot serves as the perfect example of why associating with high school students is so painful.

At the same time, though, I crave the normality of just being a normal high school student, which is ironic, because I've never just been a normal high school student. Even before I became famous, I was anything but normal, in perhaps one of the worst possible ways.

It's been a long time since I've really felt anything, but right now, I'm feeling a little excited, because tomorrow, I'll feel the abnormal feeling of normality.


Belleview Heights Secondary School is amazing in that it's completely lackluster. It manages to be neither clean, shiny, and new, or old, rundown, and broken. The once-red roof is now a faded brownish pink, the flower beds in front of the school are surrounded in cracked bricks and filled with small, slightly drooping flowers, and the letters on a sign with the school's name are slightly chipped, with the second H in "Heights" missing.

Students mill around the doors and in the entry aimlessly.

I'm half and hour early, but the halls already seem crowded. It's likely a side effect of this high school being the only one in town, and being below average in size.

Through the glass panels in the main doors, I can see the office. It would be hard not to; "School Office" is written in big, black letters on the door,

That's where I'm supposed to go. Apparently, I need to pick up an orientation package.

I manage to slip through the crowd and get to the office quickly.

A secretary behind a large desk directs me to a side room, where a man is sitting at a desk.

"Hello. You're a new student, right?" he asks.

"Yes," I say.

"What's your name?" he asks, turning to his computer.

"Paul Black."

My birth name sounds foreign now, after going by my stage name, Paul Shinji, for the past year.

He types my name into the computer, clicks a few buttons, and the printer comes to life, spitting out a small pile of paper.

He picks them all up, staples them, and then slides them towards me.

"Nice to meet you, Paul. I'm Mr. Blakeway. I'm here to make sure all our new students get settled in, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask me," he says.

I thank him, and exit the office.

I examine my time table. All my academic classes are advanced placement, which is a testament to how effective private education can be.

Apparently, many elective classes were too full, so not everyone got into the electives they wanted.

I scan my timetable. Out of my four first choice electives, which were French, Spanish, psychology and business, I got none of them. How nice.

Instead, I was stuck with foods, drama, art, and music. Music. How lovely. As if I need to take a class to learn about that.

It's kind of sickening. Everywhere around me, friends are reuniting after three months of being apart. They're hugging each other, exchanging gifts and souvenirs, and saying things like, "I missed you so much!", "I love you so much, girl!" and "It wasn't the same without my bestie!"

Don't they realize that in two or three years, after we've all gone our own ways to colleges, universities, and careers, they probably will barely remember each other? And even if by some miracle, they manage to keep in touch, some day, death will part them? And all of that's considering that they're reasonable enough to not let selfishness, stupidity, or emotion tear them apart before they finish high school.

I never believed in friends. At least, friends like this, when there was nothing significant holding them together. I have three friends. One of them is my brother, and all three of them have saved my life in some way. I know them all like I know myself, and they probably know me better than I know myself. That's the sort of friendship that means something, not some person you barely know beyond whatever shallow conversations you have and that you meaninglessly say "I love you" to. I've always hated it when "friends" say I love you to each other. It destroys the significance of significant words, in a way that seems as sacrilegious as translating a holy book into text speak.

Maybe normality isn't a good thing, but so far, it's not bad. Not worse than the abnormality I've faced, anyhow, but that means barely anything.


I have a very deep hate for gym class. Not because I'm bad at it, or because I disagree with physical activity, but because it's pointless. Most of the time, it's just an hour wasted on sending projectiles at each other. It epitomizes an exercise in futility. There are plenty of better ways to exercise, like running and martial arts, which both have some sort of importance. But really, what does smacking stuff at people teach you? Nothing good.

Furthermore, only about half the class really does anything in gym. The other half spends gym texting, talking to friends, standing around, and attempting to conceal their lack of effort.

I'm also decent at gym. Being athletic, or at least being able to defend yourself and to run quickly, were essential skills where I grew up. I'm well versed in... contemporary martial arts. After I started earning a decent income, I trained in more traditional martial arts as well. Often times, it's hard to find a partner or team who can keep up with me. I hate having to work with people who can't keep up with me, because no matter what they say about teams, I know better than anyone that life is mainly a battle royale.

"Because today is our first day, we'll start with something easy," my gym teacher, Mrs. Coghart, announces, "I'll put everyone in random partners, and we'll play a badminton doubles tournament. Each team is going to find another team to play against, and we'll play for five minutes. After, the winning team will find another team to play against, and the losing team will be eliminated. We'll keep going until one team wins."

The phrase "random partners" makes me internally groan. When things happen arbitrarily, things go wrong. That's how it's always been. And it likely wouldn't change this time. With my luck, I'd get paired with some airhead who couldn't hit the birdie for their life.

My luck has apparently taken a turn for the better, because I get put with Gary, a guy with spiky, auburn hair who can actually play.

We win the tournament easily. Admittedly, the exercise in futility that is gym class is marginally better when you get a decent partner.

"Wow man, you can really play," Gary tells me at the end of the block.

"Thanks. You're not so bad yourself," I say, pulling out my schedule to check what course I have after lunch, which is next.

"Whoa, you're taking all advanced placement courses?" he asks, looking at my schedule with me, "I'm only taking basic courses because I still have some grade 11 stuff to finish."

Gary isn't completely awful, which is why I don't protest too much when he insists on joining me for lunch.

"My friends are distracting, and I really need to do some work," he admits, "Also, you seem really smart, so I was hoping you could help me a little."

In the end, I agree to help him. We look at functions together.

"You're a good teacher. It's too bad I already have a tutor," Gary says near the end of lunch, "Her name's Leaf, and she's an old friend of mine. Actually, she's sitting over there."

He points to a table across the cafeteria. Four girls are sitting there, giggling and talking discourteously loudly. There are two brunettes, a redhead, and, strangely enough, a girl with dark blue hair. A strange choice of color, but I can't say much. My hair is currently purple. I have a good reason, though. I'm trying to go unnoticed, so I dyed my normally-black hair a strange color to draw attention away from my face, to avoid being recognized.

"She's wearing the green shirt," he explains.

The four girls are seriously annoying me, even from a distance. They're acting like a typical, mindless gaggle of popular girls.

My distaste for them deepens exponentially when one of them, the blue haired girl, pulls a CD out of her handbag.

It's a very familiar CD. It is a simple white background, with a shattered glass vase. "What They Say" is printed on in all capitals. The font is simple, neat, and black.

It's one of my CDs.


Last block comes quickly. Despite it being the first day, I've been assigned plenty of homework. Aside from gym, all three of the other classes I've attended so far - AP Physics, AP Chemistry, and AP History - have all left me with substantial amounts of homework. Luckily, it's all very easy, because I know all the concepts already. Another testament to the virtues of private education.

My last class is AP English, which is one of my best subjects. I've always liked writing, even before I developed a multi-million dollar career from my writing.

My English teacher, Mr. Connolly, is similar to Mrs. Coghart in that he likes to put us in random pairs for projects.

He demonstrates that by announcing that an important part of learning is understanding why we learn, so we'd be put in pairs, and had to write an essay about why we learn English, to be handed in tomorrow.

Like in gym, I hate partner projects, because I'm, in Reggie's words, "a pedantic overachiever and perfectionist who unreasonably refuses anything short of perfection". Personally, I prefer to say that I'm dedicated and ambitious.

I get paired up with "Drew Hayden".

"Hey partner," Drew says behind me. I turn around to see who my partner is.

Officially, normality sucks. Drew Hayden turns out to be a code name for the annoying green haired idiot who doesn't understand the concept of "don't talk to strangers". Ha. Look who's talking. I'm being a major hypocrite.

"Oh. It's you," he says dismissively. He pulls in a pair of green ear buds, which discreetly blend in with his green hair, preventing Mr. Connolly, who's still calling out partners, from noticing what he's doing..

The funny thing is that he goes from ignoring me straight to listening to my voice blasted straight into his ears through mini green speakers. I see him select "Everything We Are" off his phone's music library.

After Mr. Connolly finishes calling out the partners, he gives us time to work. Drew sighs and grudgingly takes out his earbuds.

"If we don't want to fail, I guess we're going to have to be civil to each other," he admits reluctantly.

He makes a good point.

"Fine," I reply curtly.

"It's a good thing we're next door neighbors; we can work on this after school," Drew points out, "I'm free all afternoon, so if you're free too, who's house do you want to work at, and when?"

"We can work at my house. How does 4:30 sound?" I ask, trying to be diplomatic.

"That's fine," he agrees.

For the rest of the block, we individually brainstorm, which is our covert way of ignoring each other.


I have work to do before Drew gets here. I've already unpacked a few things, and among them are some rather incriminating pieces of evidence. There's a couple pictures in small frames of Reggie, my two other friends, and me. In these pictures, I look identical to how I look on stage, with my hair its natural color and my eyes green, instead of the grey color they are now, thanks to tinted contact lenses.

Dying and trimming my hair, using a little bit of stage make up, and wearing contact lenses have somehow made me look like a different person. If you look closely, you can still see a slight resemblance, but nothing striking enough to recognize me.

I slide the generic sample pictures of sunflowers that came in the frames in front of my pictures. I move my hair dye and make up off the bathroom counter.

In the office that has become my studio, I've already unpacked some recording equipment, so I put it back in the boxes, except for my guitar and a single microphone on a stand. My book of all the songs I've written is gracefully crammed behind the dishwasher, and some contract papers are stashed inside a box of random trinkets Reggie insisted that I bring. I don't get why; they're all gimmicky pieces of junk with little use other than to take up space. Among them are a fish shaped cutting board and a toaster with flashing lights that looks like a really cheap prop from a really cheap sci-fi movie.

By the time the doorbell rings, it is nearly impossible to tell that a famous musician lives in this house.

Drew arrives at exactly 4:30, which, I have to admit, displays impressive punctuality.

"Wow. I forgot how big the houses on this street look when they're new and empty," he remarks, looking around.

"Yeah, that was one of the first things I noticed too. It's way too big for two people, but my brother chose it," I say. None of it's a lie, but it's more than a little misguiding. My brother won't be living with me here, except, perhaps, for the occasional visit. He knows that I need a little time alone to find myself again.

"You live with just your brother? What about your parents?" he asks.

"Yeah, my brother is thirteen years older than me. Both my parents died when I was six. Our house burned down," I say, my voice distant and apathetic, as if pretending that their strange death doesn't haunt me to this day might make me believe it. It doesn't work.

"Um, let's work on the essay," Drew suggests, looking slightly uneasy.

He pulls out his laptop, and opens up a document full of his notes.

"So, here's what I have. I think we learn English so that we can communicate with each other, and because it's an important skill to have when we grow up, and in post secondary education," he says.

How trite.

"Why do we need to learn English like this though? Does being able to define iambic pentameter and being able to identify a gerund really help us communicate? And what if one didn't go to post secondary education? Is learning all this English?" I point out.

"Well, um," he stammers a little. "Can you do any better?" he asks, irritated.

"I think we learn English people don't want the language to change. In the past, English has evolved so much; the vocabulary is completely different, and the grammar has changed majorly. They're scared that without hammering in lessons with fancy grammatical terms and very specific conventions, we'll evolve the language too. It will change into something completely different, and unless they keep up, it will leave them behind. People don't like change, but they do like to communicate. They want the English that we communicate in to be the same English they learned and they know. That's why we don't learn about text speak and slang in English, even though that's arguably more useful these days."

"Okay, that's pretty good, and actually really true," Drew admits, "But that's basically a critic of our education system. I don't think Mr. Connolly will like it much."

What a stupid sentiment.

"And so what? So what if he doesn't like it?" I ask, slightly annoyed.

"He might fail us," Drew explains.

That's his concern? Really? Well, easy for me to say. I don't need good marks to get into a good university; I already have a decent career.

"And so what if he fails us? I'd much rather fail on something I truly stand by than do well on complete lies," I snap back.

He shrugs. "Fine, whatever. If we fail, though, then-" he starts, but I cut him off.

"Then I'll take full responsibility," I finish.

"Deal," he agrees.

We draft our points and paragraph, and then write the essay. The essay we end with isn't bad, even though Drew's writing is inferior to mine.

Drew's opinion is much more positive.

"This is great. We might get a good mark after all," he says.

"It's acceptable," I mutter noncommittally, but Drew doesn't hear. He's walked into my office/studio.

"You play guitar?" he asks.

"A little. I sing a little too," I say. A blatant lie. There's nothing little about my singing and guitar playing, unless having multiple triple platinum records and winning eight major music awards in one year counts as little.

"Cool. My friend Ash does too," he says, inspecting my studio. He picks up a folder of sheet music off my music stand, and I realize too late that I forgot to hide something.

"Paul Shinji? You have good taste," he notes, pulling out the score for "Everything We Are".

"Play for me," he requests, handing me the score.

"No," I reply, putting the sheet music back on the stand.

"Fine. I'll play it. You asked for it," he warns, taking my guitar of the guitar stand. Before I can protest, he starts strumming random notes and glissandos, and wailing out the lyrics in an extremely obnoxious way.

I know they said that we control our own fates

But I don't think that I have what it takes

Are we stuck like this?

Can we not change?

Is this everything we ever will be?

Is this everything we are?

The only resemblance this mess has to my song is that it coincidentally has the same lyrics. It's extremely painful to listen to. I snatch my guitar back, and set it back on its stand. I take the sheet music too, smacking him on the head with it for good measure.

"You," I say, "are awful at playing guitar, and your singing is just as bad. Kindly never repeat that performance again."

"Harsh," he says, but he's laughing. I laugh a little too, because I never thought that my work could sound like that.

"You're a fan of Paul Shinji too?" he asks.

"No, I just have the sheet music," I say. Technically, it's true. I'm not a fan of myself. Knowing what I do about my past, it's hard to think anyone would be a fan of me.

"You should actually listen to his music. It's really good. Ash showed his music to me, actually," Drew says, pulling out his phone to play "Everything We Are".

It's strange. The voice is familiar, the words are familiar, and the guitar accompaniment is familiar, and yet it sounds foreign coming from Drew's phone.

For the chorus, Drew takes my guitar off the stand and joins in.

He sounds better when he isn't purposely trying to sound obnoxious, but only slightly. Also, his guitar playing still sucks.

"Any career that involves singing, guitar playing, or any form of music is officially out of the running for you," I remark as the song ends, taking my guitar back.

"Good thing that music was out of the running to begin with. My dad's forcing me into business," he says cheerily. He picks up the sheet music folder and takes out "Perpetual Pain". He reclaims my guitar, and treats me to another amazing performance.

We're trapped in a vicious cycle

Of hurt and hate and perpetual pain

And I just want to break away

But I'm trapped in my own mind

I've blocked off my own escape

At the hands of Drew, lyrics that were once so personal and meaningful have become noise that isn't even worthy of being called music.

"Stick with business," I tell him, taking back my guitar. I laugh a little, because he's so ridiculously bad.

"There goes my dream," he says in mock dejection, "But you're actually not that bad."

"You're not bad either," I reply.