Chapter 3: Dear...
Well, Mr. North had taken it well, considering I called him so early. He had given me the address to his record label, North Star Records, which I had given the driver at once. The two phone calls had only killed ten minutes of my two and a half hour drive, and I hadn´t brought any books with me. But I had a tingling feeling in my hands, like I couldn´t keep them still. So I got out my notebook and pen again and paused, the pen inches from the paper. What was I going to write?
Then it hit me. I wanted to write to Jake. The short letter I had written about 15 minutes ago didn´t seam to cover everything I had wanted to tell him. It didn´t show much I hated to hurt him, how he was the main reason I could consider myself human again.
So I started to write another letter. But as I wrote it, a melody begun playing in my head. The lines became the verses and the chorus of a song. I cried silently as I wrote, and sometimes I would make an angry noise when the words came out all wrong and I furiously crossed them out. When I was finally satisfied with the text, I had killed yet another hour.
I leaned forward and cleared my throat.
"Excuse me sir, but would it be OK with you if played a bitt on my guitar?" I asked the driver in the sweetest voice I could manage. The driver, that probably thought I was a nutcase anyway, just took a brief glance at me through the rear-view mirror, and shrugged. I gave him an unconvincing smile, and unpacked Charlies guitar from the battered guitar-case that lay in the seat next to me. I don´t know all the different chords yet, but it was enough to harmonize to the melody in my head.
Suddenly, some thing clicked, and the song was finished. I looked up, and the driver was looking at me intensely. He looked like he was thinking very hard on something.
"Are you famous or something?" The question came out of the blue, and it took a couple of seconds before I could answer.
"N- no, I´m sorry, you must have me mixed up with someone else," I stammered, feeling my face getting hot.
"Oh, sorry."
I continued playing the guitar absentmindedly while the sun arose in the sky. Things felt better now that I had gotten it all down on paper. It still hurt somewhere inside my chest, but just like when I had sung on the stage last night, I felt like I was slowly mending again.
"Excuse me, I don´t mean to be impertinent, but did you just write a song?"
I looked up at the driver, unsure, and nodded.
He hesitated. "Would it be too much to ask to hear it? It sounded... Nice."
My first impulse was to say no, in a very polite manner of course. But then I thought; "Oh well, I have to get used to it anyway."
"Sure," I smiled, and but my notebook on my lap and started to sing:
I'll always treasure the naivety
Of the past we've shared
Our bodies grew much faster than our minds
But together we got good at stopping time
My teen angst drove me to hurt myself
And I made you watch
Oh the pain I must have caused
But by staying around you saved my life
We were never meant to be lovers
Just fellow late bloomers
Who blossomed the part
My painful past
made me look for something destructive
And there you were
With all the characteristics of my love
Familiarity of home
The emotional gap led to wrong assumptions
I didn´t return your love
I'm glad we left things when we did
I doubt I'd survive another bloody moan
We were never meant to be lovers
We just mirrored each other's self destructiveness
The spotlight burned in the room when we were together
And we played our parts
And I wore an imaginary TV screen
So you never got to touch my heart
We were never meant to be lovers
Our egos fed of each other
And died overweight
I thought I'd seen it all when u first walked in
But you shut me up
And challenged every wrong perception I've had of myself
And you haven't ever stopped
I took a deep breath. That was everything I wanted to say to Jake, and I really hoped that someday, he would here it and know it was dedicated to him.
When I looked at the driver again, I was terrified to see that he had tears in his eyes. Was it that bad? Or that good.
"Sir, are you OK?" I asked, scared of his response.
The man nodded, and cleared his throat.
"It was beautiful, thank you," he whispered silently.
The rest of the trip was spent in silence, and in no time, I could spot Seattle in the distance, now glowing in the sunlight. Twenty minutes later, we took a left hand turn, and there, on the right side of the street, between a hair dresser and a book shop (book shop, yey!), there was a big, blue sign above a glass door saying:
North Star Records
Owen North
The sign was simple, with an actual star instead of the A in "star". I instantly loved it. The street looked nice, with red brick buildings at both sides. On the left side of the street, there was actually a little coffee shop, appropriately named The Little Coffee Shop, with apartments on both sides of the shop.
"Here we are miss," the driver said and for the first time, he rally smiled at me. I dug into my bag to get the cash out of the envelope, but the driver shook his head.
"Just sign this," he said and handed me peace of paper. "I can cell it later when you are famous or something." I was surprised, but gladly signed the paper and gave it to him. I got out of the cab and waved to the the nice cab driver as he drove away. Then I walked up to the glass door and paused.
"Oh well, here goes nothing."
Then I opened the door.
"Mr. North?"
AN: Ta-da, a new chapter. Next one coming up soon. Song: Maria Mena, Dear...
Sorry for my bad spelling! Review pleas.