Reviews are the loveliest thing in the world. Wolf's Rain by the way, is a manga/anime. My favorite anime, in fact.
The song near the end is a real song, obviously owned by Guns N' Roses (well, actually by the Rolling Stones . . . ) And the mixed CD with anime on it is real too. . .I'm listening to it this very moment. Tee hee.
The guys on the stages are playing their little hearts out, and their sweat is falling into the people in the front. This band is less angry than the ones before, and there's less screaming. I assume that the screaming ties in with the scream part of screamo.
It's not quite as well as I had assumed it would be, though it's not exactly my music of preference. It seems to be to be pure screaming, and who wants to hear that, unless they're mass murderers and love the pain and suffering of other creatures. Well, there's some sort of harmonic singing going on at the moment, and not screaming, so I feel that they're doing pretty well, music-wise.
"Hey, there you are." Padriac steps out from a small group of people, and grins. "I've been looking for you." I'm captivated by his smile as I usually am.
"Were you? Really." What is it about him that makes me squishy? No, Pix, I scold myself. Tell him what you've been working up the courage to say.
"I think I'd-" I begin in a low voice, unsure still as to whether or not I want to say this. "I have to leave now. I promised to be home early." Good job, Pix. Lying to your true love, it's the smartest thing you could possibly think of doing.
"Really?" He face shows surprise. A little bit of hurt? It could really just be my overactive imagination.
"Um, yeah." I run a nervous hand through my hair, and I smile sheepishly. "It's not you or anything, I just really have to be home tonight. Early."
"I'll give you a ride if you like." I whirl around to face Juliette. Who would think I want to see her? She shrugs and smiles gently. "You can't come back in once you've left. You'd have to pay again, and I think it's my time to leave."
"You're leaving?" Padriac raises an eyebrow. "Doesn't Kirsten need a ride home?"
Juliette grins cheekily. "Tell her I left, won't you? She can get a ride from Ant, as long as her mother doesn't find out. Anyway," she says, the grins gone and a nice, friendly smile in its place, "you do want to see Jeff play, don't you?" With that she grabs my arm and pulls me towards the door. "Bye, Padriac!"
In my shock, I don't resist. Then, when we're outside in the cold, I pull my hand out of her grip. "You didn't even ask me! I don't know you!" I glare at her, and I cross my arms over my chest. I will never get rid of that habit, will I!
"I didn't want you to convince him to give you a ride. Jeff's his best friend, and there's no way I'm going to let you take him away from that." She keeps walking, and doesn't even turn to look at me. "You can't go back in, mind you. Unless you happen to have some extra money on you." I hate her! But there's nowhere else for me to go, so I find myself following her.
"I don't want to go with you, remember that."
She laughs, and opens the driver door to her bright yellow Volkswagon. "Come on in."
She starts the car and asks me for my address. I recite it in a bored voice, looking out the window at the other cars as I say it. I don't want to make more conversation with this girl than I have to. Stupid girl. She just butts in with no thought to other people's opinions and ideas.
"Did he ask you to come, or did you invite yourself?" Juliette asks, breaking the silence. I glance over at her warily, but I answer the question nonetheless.
"He invited me."
"That's rather outgoing of him . . ." she murmurs, mostly to herself. I find myself crossing my arms across my chest, and I don't care anymore. Let her know I'm angry, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm not going to answer her anyway.
"You make me outgoing, too. What an oddity, isn't it?" She doesn't look up from the road, but I have freedom to look at whatever I choose. Oddity? Who the hell uses that word?
"Why?"
"I don't know. That's why I said oddity. Now, if I were all New Age like Kristen, then maybe I'd say that you send out friendly, positive vibes that affect others and in turn cause them to be more like you." She briefly glances at me, and smiles. "Although the fact you seem to have a permanent frown etched onto your face isn't really supporting that idea, is it?"
"Who's Jeff?" I interrupt, really not interested in the least about she's talking about.
"Jeff's only Padriac's best friend in the whole world since forever. You'd think his girlfriend who know that."
"I'm not his girlfriend."
"You were giving him quirky looks. I wonder if you're a seme or a uke . . . " She bites her lip thoughtfully, but doesn't look at me. What the blazes is she talking about!
"Huh?"
"Oh. I'm guessing you don't know what I'm talking about. Which is probably just as well. So, what do you do?" I'm beginning to hate the way she keeps changing the subject so smoothly.
"What do you mean by that?" I ask, puzzled. Why am I in the car with so erratic a person?
"I mean, you go to school, apparently. You go to shows. Do you stare at the wall with the rest of your free time?"
"No," I reply defensively. "I hang out with my friends." I expect this to be the end of it, but I shouldn't have expected something like that from Juliette.
"You do things on your own, don't you? Or are your friends somehow surgically attached to you?"
I am beginning to get unbelievably sick of this girl. Who does she think she is, acting like we're friends? I want to defend myself and indignantly reply that I do do things at home without my friends, but I don't want to bring myself to answer her. I think she realizes this, and doesn't push the subject. Instead she reaches over and presses a button on her dashboard. Immediately, music surrounds me, and pounds in my ears.
It's not the kind I'd heard that the show, screaming and guitars and drums and a thrashing beat that makes my heart pop out of my chest. It's a soft beat, sort of like a piano. The lyrics are of a haunting sort, the kind that make your heart—
Juliette's sighs rip me from my reverie. "Wolf's Rain, you really are a gift from the Goddess."
I stare at her blankly. "The Goddess? Don't you mean God?"
She grins gently, and shakes her head. "No, I mean Goddess. I believe that Gaia, the Earth, itself as a thing to be revered and worshiped for its beauty and strength. Sure I believe in God, but . . . I suppose it's a wavering sort of faith." She says this loudly, through the music. "What about you?"
"What religion am I? Catholic, I suppose." I've never really much cared for delving into religion. I believe in God as much as the next person, but I have more interesting things to think about.
She laughs, and near runs through a red light. "The default religion, eh?" She laughs again. "Oh god, do I love this song. How about you?"
"It's nice." I respond curtly.
"Nice? Well, I suppose, to the untrained ear this may sound like an ordinary song. But to an insane animangsta like me, this song is a story." She sighs, pouts gently. Then she begins to sing along with the song. "Heaven's not enough, if when I get there I don't remember yooooou. And heaven does enough. You think you know and then it uses you. I saw so many thiiiings—what music do you listen to anyway?"
I'm shocked by how she completely changes her thought pattern so quickly. I should be used to it though, and if I'm smart I'll expect it in the future. What am I talking about! There won't be a future! "I dunno. Whatever's on the radio, I suppose. A bit of everything."
She giggles softly. "Ah ha! A mainstream gal. What in the blazes are you doing with Padriac? You two are a Romeo and Juliet of sorts! A preppy mainstream girl and a punk rocker fall in love despite horrible odds. It does make a good story, don't you think?"
"I'm not a preppy mainstream girl. And your name's Juliette, so if you like the story so much, you can reenact it yourself. Don't they die in the end anyway?" I don't like the way this conversation is going. It sounds like she's insulting me. I'm not used to being insulted, really. It's usually the other way around. In fact, I've teased girls like Juliette more often than I can count. I should be able to get back at her.
"Yes, they die. But they die defending their love to very end, which is as close to a reasonable death as I can imagine." She turns to face me briefly. "Do I make a turn here?"
I look out the window to check. I see a familiar street looming closely, and I nod quickly. "Uh huh, it's only a couple streets down." The song ends, and another one starts up, with a beat that sounds suspiciously like a helicopter's wings. A woman sings eerily in another language (it sure isn't English). "What's this now?"
"This is one of my many anime mixes. This song's called Inner Universe. Isn't it just the loveliest thing you'd ever heard?" If she expected conformity, she's speaking to the completely wrong person.
"Not really."
She tsks with her tongue gently. "Poor, young'un. It's okay, you'll understand soon enough." I interrupt what could have grown to be a long lecture.
"That's my house right there."
She slows down in front of it. She whistles lowly and looks over the house appreciatorily. "Wow, that is one hell of house. I take back what I just said about poor." Then she laughs. "Now I'll feel bad about returning to my small hut in the forest. Damn you, Pix."
"You can close your eyes if you don't like what you see," I snap back at her, and I begin to get out of the car. Another song starts up, in English this time. "Another anime song?" I ask as I stand up.
"Yep," she chirps in response. I walk around the front of the car towards the sidewalk, but before I can begin to go up the walk towards the door, she rolls down her window, and calls me over. For some reason, instead of ignoring her and continuing my walk towards a nice normal night, I turn and lean towards the open window.
"What?"
"I was wondering, you don't seem especially adverse to my music." A fourth song begins in the car, and I raise an eyebrow. She may just be right. I have a thing for languages, truth be told. "I'm personally inviting you to an Anime Party tomorrow. Will you come? I would have made you an invite, but this is sort of short notice."
"An Anime Party?" I reply lamely. I barely know her, and I've been nothing but rude and she . . . invites me to a party?
"Yeah."
"Who'll be there?" Maybe Padriac will come . . .
"Well, if you say yes . . . you."
"You and me! How is that possibly a party?" She is so odd. Had she just made up this 'Anime Party' on the spot?
"Well, I could invite Kristen, but I don't think she'd come. Also, you're both complete strangers, and though she probably wouldn't be quiet and obscure, you might be. Or could just be your brilliantly friendly self, which is quite possibly worse. So, I assumed you and me would go down pretty well. Ooh, I like this song!" She turns and restarts the song, as well as raising the volume a bit. "See what you did? You made me miss a minute of that song!" She looks like she's making an attempt to look angry, but she's smiling too widely to actually succeed.
I simply blink at her. She is so strange. That should be reason enough to refuse her invitation. Yet . . .
There's something intriguing about her. The fact that she is so odd, probably. I've never met anyone like her. Or at least, I've never allowed myself to converse without anyone like her. Also, she's a close friend of Padriac. She can teach me how to be the type of girl that Padriac might want to spend more time with. Everyone wins, right? She gets a friend to show her 'anime' to and I get some pointers. And Padriac gets a hot, punk girlfriend.
"I'll come."
"Yay. Okay, then. What time would you like me to pick you up, then?" Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long, long year . . . This song doesn't sound very foreign. Well, it does, but not in the way the others did.
Juliette seems to notice my pause, and nods knowingly. "This is a Gun N' Roses cover of one of the Rolling Stones songs. Sympathy for the Devil, I believe it's called." I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain . . .
"Well, listening to this, no wonder you don't believe in God!"Please to meet, hope you guess my name. Of yeah. But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game. I stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change . . .
"I do believe in God. I just don't think he likes us very much. Or at least, needs us very much." I watched with glee as your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made. I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys, when after all, it was you and me . . .
"I really don't get this song very much," I answer simply, raising an eyebrow at the lyrics.
"The devil's singing this, supposedly."
"Who killed the Kennedys, after all it was you and me? What's that supposed to mean?" I ask incredulously.
"I never thought I would use this expression but. . . if you need to ask, you can't possibly understand it. " Just as every cop's a criminal, and all the sinners saints. As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer. 'cause I'm in need of some restraint . . .
"Whatever." We both let a short silence fall as we both listen to the song, as the voice fades into the guitar.
"That guitar is so fucking beautiful. I'm so glad I grew up with this." She says slowly, closing her eyes and smiling slightly. For some reason it seems to be the realest smile she's given me all night.
"You grew up with this?"
"I sure did. My father put Guns N' Roses on for me when I was a little sproutling. I remember being a little baby and loving the vinyl with the four skulls on it." She laughs loudly. "And people ask why I'm so morbid!" Another short silence, and the song ends, sliding easily into a slow song in french, or at least, I think it's french.
"Come at ten, alright?" I want to leave all of a sudden. I can only take so more weirdness at a time. She nods, but doesn't look up at me again.
"Tata, then. Have a good night." Before I can respond similarly, she rolls up the window again, and drives off without another word. I let out a breath I hadn't been exactly conscious of holding in.
Why? Why had I been so nervous? If I had really, really asked myself at that moment why I had accepted Juliette's invitation, or why I had been so friendly to her, and if I had been honest with myself, I would have come to a simple conclusion. I want Juliette's approval, just as I've always wants the approval of my friends. Except this time I don't want it to acieve popularity or status. I want it for . . . me. Because, deep, deep down, in that tiny, hidden part of me that liked the music I'd heard in her car—excluding the devil one, that one was either too deep or just too wrong for me to like very much—liked her.
I wanted to be her friend, just for the purpose of being her friend. Of course, I didn't admit this to myself; I convinced myself that I was only doing this out of pity for her, when in fact it was probably the other way around. I walk into the house, and I let myself in. I fall onto the couch, exhausted, and I just lie there until my eyes close of their own accord, and I fall into a restless sleep.
I decided that I would not stop writing until I finished this. So I complete this chapter at 334 in the morning (though, it should really be 234 because of Daylight Savings Time, but who's counting?) Enjoy.
