It's funny how after you drive by a milestone on the road of life, how you just keep on driving. Maybe what you thought was a milestone really wasn't a milestone in the first place. It didn't mean anything in the emotional sense. Besides, losing your virginity in the most romantic way possibility is sort of a lie. Romantic? More like painful, awkward, and self degrading. If I was some normal cute blonde high school girl, my world would be flipped upside down and I would be giggling to my friends about the experience. I would make it seem like a complete heaven and everyone would worship me and my bountiful knowledge I had acquired in the realm of sex. Of course, this is anything but normal so I'm not giggling with my friends. Instead, I'm walking into Hollywood video clad in purple and black, the standard uniform. It's the morning after and I'm wishing I could go back in a time machine and change what happened. I can't do that, so instead I'm going to block it out.
The place reminds me of an abandoned house with the furniture still inside. Rosie's arguing with some girl with tacky red hair as I walk by to clock in. There's absolutely no noise flowing through anyone's ears besides the arguing between Rosie and tacky red hair girl. I brush aside my bangs as I see Frank sitting on his ass and not exactly performing the duties of being a manager. Who am I kidding? The day Frank would act like a manager is the day Matt actually becomes a teacher. His long hair is a ruffled mess as he has a pair of headphones resting comfortably on his ears blaring thrashing music through them. Too early for heavy rock. I want to go back to bed because I got home at one in the morning last night. I'm on the verge of crumbling into pieces for an amount of reasons higher than I can count on both my fingers and toes. However, the cliff notes version of reasons contains sleeping with the teacher assistant who works with my dad and god…that's probably the hugest cloud that's about to rain insanity on my parade. Even if I got a lobotomy, the events of last night and my disgust towards them would not be erased. They always told us in health class that sex is something that should be planned and penciled into your schedule. Sorry to prove our lovely health class teacher wrong my sex isn't planning your great nana's one hundred and first birthday party. I don't know what the hell it is but I don't like it at all.
Finally, Frank recognizes my presence and realizes I'm actually an employee and not an angered customer who got Gigli instead of American Beauty because the previous renter accidentally switched them. Oh, the joys of working at a video store. Why am I here again? Oh right, I'm a money hungry almost sixteen year old who is asserting her independence by getting a job instead of whining and pleading for money from her parents. Hollywood Video is the collection site of skeeves, high school drop outs, people just out of rehab, and me. I don't really fit into that category so I sit in mine with a big neon sign. I'm Emma Nelson and I'm the most fucked up girl on the planet.
"Yo Emily," Frank greets me with the wrong name.
I groan, "It's Emma."
"Yeah, Ethel," Frank corrects himself with the wrong answer once again. "Heh, you should have a friend named Lucy. Anyway, the VCR is broken so Rosie went down to her pad and got some CDs to hold us over until the repair dude comes and fixes it."
"But the kids are going to whine and go crazy," I remind him because I'm going to be the one knee deep in screaming children and parents who are incredibly irritated with said children. My job is the ringmaster of the three ring circus known as Hollywood Video. I'm the only half way sane and non lethargic one there so I have to keep everything attached by the seams so it doesn't rip itself apart. I'm practically the manager but with a barely over minimum wage per hour cash flow. Maybe I should just quit and whine and beg for money from mom and Archie.
"Kids go crazy anyway," Frank says as if he's Albert Camus in the body of a greasy haired drug dealer slash manager of Hollywood video slash whatever else he does that I don't want to know about. "They'll be fine, Ethel." I clock in and resist the urge to just scream. I'm calm and it feels like I've been completed gutted of any sort of emotion. I need to feel something just to make sure that I'm still living. I don't want to be just a zombie who walks around and plagues the world with its lack of life. However, nothing's going to change. I'm going to be numb and I'm going to run to Matt because he's my own personal doctor. I feel again and then I go on until I become too numb again.
I trudge outside into the world of movie and video game rentals with a side dish of candy. Horrible pop music that I've heard more times than a person should permeates through the store as I grab the movies returned last night to restock them. Most first jobs are bagging groceries or asking, "Do you want fries with that?" Honestly, neither of them really appealed to me so I'm stuck in the wasteland. Oh well, seven dollars an hour isn't too shabby. Customers start to meander into the purple themed store looking for their movie needs as I place everything back on the shelf according to genre and then my alphabetical order. Everything is so simple here, sorted into categories for the easiest convenience. Instead of sorting everything in my life into categories, I sort and have control of the entire movie stock.
A group of rowdy kids scamper in with a rather bored looking brunette. Either she had way too much time on her hands or she's the dumping ground for overly hyper active children. Their bright color shirts practically make my eyes want to burn under the fluorescent lights as they run towards the children slash family section that neighbors the new releases. They're a pride of lions chasing after the perfect antelope and I'm just some other animal that could possibly be their prey if they don't catch the antelope. By day I'm the perfect student and employee. By night I'm a little girl lost who finds herself in the wrong place at the right time. This is my life and every second counts. I could change anything at my own personal leisure. Instead, I bathe in the mistakes and get caught up in the web of lies that I'm spinning madly. I could take control of this mess and try to fix it but what's the use? My routine as of now is working out for me.
"What the fuck, Sully," an oh so familiar voice hisses. "Dude, we are not getting Dogma. You've rented it every single week, asshole. I'm tired of seeing Ben Affleck's face."
Sully groans, "Stop acting like a bitch, Alex. I'm getting Fight Club then. Happy now?"
"No," Alex spits out. "But you're paying for the candy, dickhead."
The relationship between Alex and Sully is one filled with romance, loitering, drinks from the seven eleven, and insulting each other every five seconds. Apparently the demon known as my ex-boyfriend's best friend decided to cheat on Alex with my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. Alex and Amy got into a fight and somehow Alex wound up becoming friends with Sully and dating him. The whole story confuses me due to the number of plot holes but there are just so many things you can explain with a detailed and perfectly woven story. Sometimes things just happen and you don't know why. You either dwell on why it happened or you accept it and move on. Of course, I'm horrible at moving on and a gold medal winner in the art of dwelling.
"…is Fight Club an action movie or drama," Sully asks Alex in a confused "Mommy, where do babies come from?" sort of voice.
"How the hell am I supposed to know? Go ask nature girl," She laughs. "She works here."
"No, you ask her."
"What the fuck?"
"I'm paying for the candy."
"Do you want a sticker?"
The arguing continues. And this is why I hate the skin I used to inhabit. Absolutely no one took me seriously in the least. I was the joke and the punch line rolled into one single girl. They're always telling you to be yourself and then everyone will just love you. That was never the case for me. I used to tell myself that they just didn't understand or get me, so that's why people made fun of me. People fear the unknown. It's stated in the fine print when you're born. It's like, I try to be everyone I can possibly be and I get backlash from it. People ask me why I'm turning into someone I'm not. Yet when someone like, say my best friend Manny Santos goes through a complete metamorphosis, everyone embraces it without question. Is my purpose in life just to be something that will eventually be joked about? Is everything I've believed in just a complete joke? If so, why am I not laughing? Am I the plague? Why the hell is it that I feel like the worst person on Earth all of the time? Who am I to go and complain about that to? Everything is so out of my grasp that it's not even funny.
Is this what my life has been reduced to? A complete lie? I mean, that's all I am anymore. I'm a marketing scheme that portrays something so sacred and perfect but in actuality I'm absolutely rotten to the core. I'm an apple with perfect red skin but with the worm inside eating away at everything. When did this get so terribly complicated that I don't even know what the fuck is going on? Am I stuck in the middle of the web of lies I've spun for eternity? However, there's absolutely no point that I can trace to go back to. I just have to keep on driving until I run out of fuel. The show must go on. I need to keep the curtains open and just act like there's no tomorrow even though there will be a tomorrow and more than likely I will hate it.
"Well, well," a voice greets me menacingly. I swear to god I know who this is but their name isn't on the tip of my tongue. Damn it. I twirl around still with a small stack of videos cradled in my arms and am face to face with Matt's lovely next door neighbor. "At least you're of working age or my good friend Matty's ass would be thrown in jail." She snickers slightly as she airs my dirty laundry right in the middle of the new release section of Hollywood Video.
"Could you be a little quieter," I hiss.
Lydia rolls her eyes, "Someone's a tad touchy. Chill out." Sorry, crazy or not, Emma Nelson does not chill out. She's lukewarm and stuck in suspension therefore she can never ever chill out as the saying goes. "When's your break, blondie?"
I glance at the clock wall. The minute hand is slowly inching its way to the four as the second hand whirls around the track and the hour hand just stays there until it can move with the minute hand to the two. Apparently, my break is in two hours but between Rosie flirting with Sully and getting her head bitten off by Alex and Frank just being there stoned off his ass, my break can be right now.
"Uh, right now," I say as though there's supposed to be a question mark attached at the end of the statement. However, the question mark doesn't feel like its needed so it scoots off and three periods come to take its slot. Lydia raises her eyebrows as I begin to walk with her as if I'm programmed to do so. The clouds are thick in the sky ready to rain on absolutely everyone and their parades. I want to go home, crawl into my bed, and suffocate myself with my pillow right about now.
"Here's the thing," Lydia speaks up. "Pardon my French, but what the fuck are you doing with Matt Oleander? I mean, the guy is a drunken loser who needs to be slapped sometime this century." Great, she's staging an intervention for reasons completely unknown to me. Don't I annoy her for some odd reason like practically everyone else on the planet?
I shrug, "I don't know. What do you want me to say that we're like, oh my god totally in love with each other and we're going to get married?" I can feel her just picking me apart and analyzing me with such precision that she figures out what I'm all about. That would be a miracle because I don't even know what I'm all about anymore.
"Then you would be a dumbass," She states simply. "I mean, what the hell? Why of all the people in the Toronto area did you pick him?" We pass the bank bustling with money hungry piranhas as the sky is concentrated with even more clouds filled to the brim with moisture.
I scoff, "Why do you need to know? More importantly, why do you even care? It's none of your business." I want her to stop interrogating me while poking and prodding in all of the right nooks and crannies. It seems as though she's the kind of person who puts people underneath a microscope and zooms in on every imperfection and magnifying it one hundred times.
There are so many people I would rather be right now. I would give anything to just crawl around in their skins and be them so I didn't have to face dissection on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. I could crawl around in Danny Van Zandt's skin and be an absolute nut job annoying people and making them secretly wanting to laugh with my antics. I could be free and in grade nine again just being a complete dope just acting like life is one Adam Sandler movie after another after another. I could crawl around in Darcy O'Sullivan's skin and just giggle at everything and act like the world is an extended issue of Seventeen magazine. I could be a cheerleading star and know what exactly is going on in the life of Manny Santos while yelling at my obnoxious older brother for being a jackass. I could crawl around in JT Yorke's skin and be a comedian that everyone laughed with and not at. I could have slightly quirky parents and an older sister who needs to get her mind out of 1999. However, out of all of the people I could be at the moment, I'd probably choose Nate Monroe.
The formerly fantastic five that may rest in peace never really acknowledged the presence of Nate. He was just kind of there in the back of our classes shooting off random questions that didn't pertain to the lesson plans at all. He had enough quirks to hand out to sitcom characters and still keep some for himself in the end. Everyone in our grade knew him as your typical band geek with tousled dirty blonde hair and getting every god damn solo in one of those band concerts I was forced to go to. He had a love for drama and would have a supporting role in the play. He was just there in existence and no one really ever noticed him that much.
However in High School, when you have a band, you're some sort of a celebrity. All of the girls in the younger grades absolutely adore him. He's the human form of an Indie movie gone completely mainstream without losing any of its glory. He still asks bizarre questions in History that still don't pertain with the lesson. He still trips over his own feet when he's wearing a new pair of shoes. He's the same exact person but magnified so that everyone notices him and adores him. Yet again, I've been myself in all the possible magnifications humanly possible and I just annoy people to no end. I'm the joke that I don't get while everyone else is just laughing and confusing the hell out of me. Not funny. At all.
"Have you left the building," Lydia's voice howls at me, slightly amused. "Dude, I'm surprised you didn't get hit that asshole in the black convertible." And now it seems like she's going to make a spectacle of herself while I just want to make like the rain and drip into that storm drain sitting on the edge of the road. "Hey jackass, hitting people looks like shit on your record!" Then the person in the black convertible proceeds to flip off Lydia before speeding off and leaving the Dunkin Donuts we're right next to behind on the road. She glances at me again with her microscope eyes just burning away any semblance of a front that I have left right about now. "So now that I just saved your life, tell me why you're with the second biggest asshole in Toronto." She looks at me impatiently as I damn up all of the words that are trying to tumble out of my mouth and into her ears.
"I don't know, it just sort of happened," I explain as I lean against a no parking sign. "And over and over again, it just happens. I just happen to lie to my parents that I'm going to my friend's house. I just happen to end up at his shitty apartment night after night. It's like, putting up with his crap is the only form of stability I have in my life." I'm in desperate need of a rewind button. "He's not that bad. I mean, aren't you supposed to hate your neighbors?"
She continues to stare blankly, "Sam and Clarissa didn't hate each other. Mr. Feeny gave Corey and Eric advice."
"Those are examples from television shows," I point out.
"And your point? Matt's an asshole and I'm still friends with him," Lydia states. "I'm friends with a ton of assholes, actually. That's okay, even assholes need friends. However, what I don't get is that you and all of these other girls are like thinking that the guys I'm friends with are Prince Charming."
I groan, "I never thought the guy was Prince Charming, for crying out loud."
"Yet for some reason, you keep crawling back to him like he's supposed to come out on a white horse and save you," She scoffs. "Newsflash, Matt can't even take care of himself let alone another human being. I don't think the man can even take care of a pet rock. But for some reason, you're completely enamored with him and letting him do whatever the hell he wants to you." Why do I feel like someone just ripped off all of my clothes, threw them in the streets, and they got run over by an eighteen wheeler? I have to bite back and not let her kick me while I'm down and bleeding on the ground.
"You seem to get a pretty big trip out of not dating someone you claim to be a colossal asshole," I spit back. "First of all, you don't even know me and who I happen to be involved with isn't any of your concern." Lydia just rolls her eyes before flipping a stream of curls over her shoulder.
"Whatever," She groans. "Have a nice life with Prince Charming, blondie."
It's then that I'm alone standing against a No Parking sign as it starts to downpour all around me. I'm absolutely saturated with rain that could possibly be considered an acid as my heavy cotton purple shirt clings to me like static. Has everything just spiraled so out of control that I can't hit the stop button? No, it couldn't have because regardless of my situation, I wouldn't have let that happen. Maybe everything has just been spinning for the longest time and it's finally stopped. I can't survey the wreckage around me. I want to get off this ride but I can't yell at the person spinning me around and around.
I'm not going down without a fight.