Chapter 10
Thank you Candy-Apple14 for reviewing
Thank you Shine-Of-A-Star for reviewing – I loved the Rainbow Magic books too, but I didn't like sharing the name with a main character (Rachel) because at school they would always make me be Rachel and I wanted to be a fairy.
Thank you Cookie05 for reviewing, yeah I agree Kitty is very OOC, but bitchy Kitty is kind of necessary, I would say this is probably because the specialist care home has boosted her confidence, but made her more protective and in a way almost sorry for herself, or possibly believes that you can't a past worse than hers. Also chapter 36 of Not Alone Anymore from Kitty's point of view, so I recommend you read it.
Also I recommend reading the story What If by Sophie and Maddie and Jess, and not just because I am the Beta from chapter 4 onwards.
Arietta Tara Rosenberg was many things – brave, bitchy, brilliant, crazy but most of all she was a dedicated. She would work and work for hours, days, months, years to perfect something to her liking.
When she was 2 years old her big sister Jing Yi (aka Symphony) had given her her old violin and tried to teach Ari (though at this point she was known as Daiyu) how to play. She gave up after half an hour unable to bare the screeching of the violin, Daiyu hadn't. During the day when her parents released her to the mercy of the Beijing streets she would hide out in her den and play. She knew how the violin was meant to sound, she shared a bedroom with a professional violinist (and 7 other older sisters plus her younger sister,) so she kept playing, until the notes started sounding right, not like a cat being strangled.
She learnt how each note was written down, she learnt to read music, every day her fingers were able to move a tiny bit faster, her sound sounded better and she was flying through books of violin music.
Years later she found herself doing the same thing, learning to read English, she had learnt Chinese when she lived in China but never had had the time to learn to read in English. All the books she had ever needed to read had Chinese translations so it had never bothered her but she couldn't write in Chinese in her GCSEs.
So she started reading, Ari spent every free moment with her head in a book, she finished all the fairy books on the shelf, then moved onto some books written about animals, but the happy dribble of the stories was turning her brain to mush so she fortunately discovered Jaqueline Wilson, whose stories actually had real life situations, admittedly not rape, but stuff such as abusive parents, divorced parents, the death of your best friend. All written with a certain level of simplicity that Arietta could understand.
"I can't believe in less than a week," Sam said looking up from her homework, "that in a week you have gone from reading Rainbow Magic to Jacqueline Wilson, you've probably increased your reading age by 5 years."
"Mr Priestley was very impressed," Ari replied, "especially since I now can spell basic words, and even some non-basic words. Luckily I am a quick learner and I'm dedicated, to be a professional musician you have to be."
"How is science going?" Sam asked,
"badly, I am already 2 modules behind in all 3 and I have to learn them all for Summer," Arietta groaned, "and music isn't even good, I've been doing that stuff for years and we don't even study Vivaldi! What kind of a course is this?! They don't even ask us to mildly challenging stuff..."
"Cariad, you are exceptionally talented at music, the rest of us find it hard and you really need to stop complaining in class, people will start to think you are big headed and... yeah."
"I know, I just hate seeing the most important thing in my life being destroyed by a load of brainless children,"
"thank you for that lovely compliment," Sam snapped,
"I wasn't talking about you, you can sing and play guitar, I'm talking about the ones who reckon they are Joan Sutherland,"
"Joan Sutherland?"
"How do you not know who she is?! She is only like the best opera singer of all time,"
"most people in our music class would laugh at opera singers, they believe the highest level of musician is Beyoncé,"
"uneducated twats," Ari muttered, "have you ever tried singing opera?"
"Me. An opera singer?" Sam asked incredulously,
"you have a strong voice, with an amazing tone, what's your range?"
"Ari, bit busy, this maths won't get itself down," Sam returned her attention to the book, which Ari unhelpfully snatched,
"what even is this?" she asked, turning the book round and round, "and which way up is it meant to be?"
"Solving equations with unknowns in the denominator," Sam told her, grabbing the book back.
"En Anglais s'il vous plaît," Ari replied,
"you speak French?"
"I can ask people to speak in English, not my definition of speaking a language but you're English, and English are notoriously lazy at learning languages and use the fact that the majority of people of the world speak English to justify their own laziness."
"How about you try being a tiny bit less prejudice," Sam suggested,
"I feel the need to declare my hatred of French old people,"
"What?!" Sam stared at the Chinese girl,
"haven't you seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer?" Sam shook her head, "I don't know you any more," Ari told her walking out the room.
Xxx
Kitty and Tyler sprinted into the living room both shouting, everyone stared at them unable to work out what they were saying.
"Guys calm down, we can't understand what you're saying," Sam told them, laughing. Kitty paused, before screaming,
"They found Tee didn't they, they're all coming home, they'll be back today!"
Johnny's face lit up and started hugging Kitty, while declaring their love to each other in the very teenagerish way. The way that would usually make Arietta roll her eyes, she had witnessed over and over these declarations of love, and a few months later the relationship was over. She may have been terrible at science but knew that teenage love was generally a case of extremely heightened hormones.
But today wasn't a day for eye-rolling, and feeling sick at the mushy heterosexual teenage couple.
She was scared, "They're all going to hate me," Ari whispered to a grinning Sam, Sam paused and put her arm round the older girl and pulled her close,
"They're not, Erin isn't like that don't worry she'll understand, Tee's a sweetie as for Rick, I'm not saying he won't be annoyed but he'll get over it I promise," Arietta nodded and hugged Samantha, her gorgeous blonde.
Wait.
Her gorgeous blonde.
Ari didn't own Sam but Ari's thoughts were silenced by her best friend's voice.
"I don't know how you could think anyone could ever hate you anyway," Sam exclaimed, Ari looked away smiling and blushing.
And blushing.
No, Ari told herself, I do not think of Sam like that, she's my favourite girl and yes she's a lesbian. But we're are just friends, nothing more, nothing less. Yes she is gorgeous but that is beside the point, she...
"What are you even thinking about?" Sam asked, "you look like you're in pain."
"Oh, thanks," Ari replied, grinning like an idiot, "I was just... thinking,"
"about?"
You, Arietta thought.
"Oh just have a mental debate whether the Autumn or Winter movement in Le Quattro Stagioni is better," she lied,
"do you ever think of anything other than music?" Sam asked amused.
Yes. You.
"Sometimes," Ari replied grinning.
"Come on," Sam said grabbing her hand and pulling her up, "let's give those two some space," Ari looked across, Johnny and Kitty were curled up together on the sofa, looking very couple-y.
"Can't believe I've only been here for 10 days," Arietta commented, "feels like I've been here forever,"
"here most people fit in straight away," Sam told her, "Kitty only arrived in mid-September,"
"so she's been here what... 6 weeks?" Ari asked,
"something like that,"
"she seems like she has been here forever,"
"tell me about it, but we all feel the same way, I mean I joined in July and Erin joined in June, it would be weird having the Dumping Ground without one of us."
"They would manage pretty well without me," Ari told her truthfully, "you would miss me, I hope, and I get on with Faith, also Frank doesn't mind me but the others... they reckon I'm trying to replace Erin and I... I just can't do anything right. I don't want people to hate me but they still do, it's like I'm a politician or something."
Sam squeezed her hand, then the both looked at their hands, neither girl had realised they were still holding hands. They both awkwardly stepped apart, looking around to see if anyone had seen. They looked at each other,
"um..." Ari mumbled,
"so... what were you saying about Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" Sam asked awkwardly,
"would you like to watch some?"
"yes, that would be.. good, that would be..." both girls avoided each others gaze,
"um... ok."
Xxx
"Why do you hate Oz so much?" Sam asked,
"series 4, just... you'll understand when we watch it,"
"any reason why we started on series 3 instead of 1?"
"The series get better as you go along, this way we get to the brilliance of series 6 faster," Ari told her. They both paused,
"You know your name?" Sam asked,
"I should hope I know my own name," Ari grinned,
"yeah, why did you choose it, out of every name in the entire universe."
"Well I thought Arietta sounded pretty and it's a musical name, I was originally going to call myself Allegretta but I decided Arietta was a better name."
"I agree with that,"
"Symphony and I chose the surname Rosenberg, because when she went on a orchestra tour she had gone to America and had gotten obsessed with Buffy, it was 2002, the year series 6 aired, so she would have been 15 and she fell in love with the show. She managed to bring back the videos, not that we had video player or even a television, but in 2007 when I was 8 and Symph was 20 she had a friend, probably her girlfriend from her music college, the girl was an only child and was definitely richer, she had a television in her room with a video player. My parents were convinced at the time Symph had a secret boyfriend so they wouldn't let her out by herself so she started taking me to places, including Yao Niang's house. There they would watch the Buffy videos, though they often got bored and went upstairs and... wow, how did I never realise my sister was having sex as I watching Buffy and Spike have sex."
"Meanwhile in 2007 I would have been locked in my bedroom with Shine, reading every book we had over and over again, making up alternate endings, making up our own stories. Shine would have been 13, younger than I am now. She really had a shit life, she was born in 1994, Mum died when she was 9, then she was locked in her bedroom with only me for company till she was 16, then she was raped when she was 17, then she committed suicide."
"At least Symphony had freedom, she had a few girlfriends, she enjoyed her life, she just killed herself so she didn't have to go through the pain of the future,"
"but you had to go through it instead,"
"and I survived, I now have my entire life to live, I can do anything I want, I have freedom, total freedom, probably because my entire family thinks I'm dead."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"Not really, my parents don't really care, the only cared about Symphony's death because they lost out on a shit load of money. They can't even remember all of our names,"
"can you remember all your siblings names?"
"Probably if you gave me enough time," Arietta told her truthfully.
"Anyway back to me," Ari stated, "Symphony and I loved Buffy, our favourite character was Willow so we took her surname for our own, and I took the name of my other favourite character: Tara as my middle name."
"Which one was Tara?" Sam asked, trying to remember,
"she only comes in in Series 4, you will love her. Everyone does."
"I thought you would have named yourself something more musical, I mean I know Arietta is but..."
"you thought I would call myself Arietta Haydn Beethoven," the Chinese girl stated,
"something like that," Sam replied,
"I was thinking of it but I didn't want to get confused with the great composers, I did consider naming myself Summer, Summer Rosenberg, since Summer is my favourite movement of the four seasons to play but I had a feeling that musical reference would be lost on most people, who would probably question why a girl born on January the 1st was named Summer."
"Yeah..." Sam was cut off by a knock at the door,
"come in," Arietta called.
The door opened and Mo, Harry and Jody walked in,
"can you help us?" Mo asked pushing his glasses up,
"what for?" Sam asked smiling welcoming,
"chocolate biscuits," Jody exploded,
"we are cooking biscuits for Erin, Rick and Tee," Mo explained, "Gina is out, and..."
"it would pure insanity to ask either Tracy or Mike to help," Arietta finished, "since neither can cook to save their life."
"Neither can I," Sam warned, "set one of my old homes on fire when I tried to cook," she lowered her voice to a whisper so only Ari would hear, "that was only care home where I didn't try to get kicked out, I liked it there, they had nice soap."
"I'll help," Ari told them grinning, scraping her long hair back into a bun.
Xxx
Jeff sat on the worktop watching the events unfolding, he was wearing an apron that Harry had made him out of an old hair band he had found.
Ari found herself comfortably chatting to the younger kids, and thinking about it Jody was older than Tori, Mo was the same age and Harry was slightly younger. The main difference was Tori grew up happily in a house with her big brother, Mum and Dad, it honestly made a world of difference. Arietta was close friends with Tori, so why couldn't she be friends with the younger ones. They were less bitchy, less likely to hate her, less likely to judge. Anyway on the exterior levels she acted like a kid, it was only when you got deeper that you would see the scars, the pain, the fear, the hopelessness that she felt.
Sam looked deeper, past the fake smiles (some of which were becoming real smiles), past the crazy attitude, the obsession with postboxes, saw the girl broken by the events of her life still piecing herself back together. When Sam looked into her eyes she didn't see the childish delight that everyone else saw, she saw eyes that had seen too much, she had old eyes, but still in dark brown there was hope.
Mia may have faded from the world as quickly as she began, but she was still with Ari, still inside her, still giving her hope.
There were 3 people who owned Arietta's heart.
Symphony – her big sister who had showed her the world, and the good times of life.
Arietta – after all it belonged to her, she deserved to own some of it.
Mia – her baby girl, who had given hope, in the most impossible of times.
The biscuits had cooled, the 4 of them were icing. Mo, unsurprisingly, was brilliant at decorating. Jody tried to put as much icing as humanly possible onto the biscuit. Harry was trying, in vain, to draw a Giraffe. Ari had decorated her biscuits with musical notes, then when the others were talking she picked up another biscuit.
There was no way she could fit their full names onto the biscuit, she decided just to ice the the first letter of the name onto the biscuit.
Mo looked over at her biscuit,
"is that biscuit for Sam?" he asked,
"what?" Ari said, extremely confused. The names on her biscuit were the names of the people who meant everything to her, who would always have a place in her heart.
She looked down at her biscuit.
Symphony
Arietta
Mia
S
A
M
Arietta couldn't help but stare.