I woke up in my room, but it wasn’t my room. The walls weren’t sea foam green; the door didn’t have paint chipping on the upper right-hand corner and there were not any of my pictures on the walls. Plus I was naked, and I for one am never naked when I sleep. Something had gone horribly wrong.


As I laid there I could hear only my rhythmic breaths. I listened to my own little harmony trying to wipe away this dream. When I opened my eyes I realized it wasn’t. I tried to remember what happened last and all I could remember was Chelsea inviting me to a party. As I turned over to get out of bed I felt my back going over someone’s hand.


“Cuss!” I cried, quickly catching the word in my mouth. This couldn’t be happening, I thought, it just couldn’t be happening.


know. For some reason I only checked the last one, I think it was because I already knew what the others had said. Mom and Dad were missing me and Chelsea was wondering why I didn’t drive her home. But this number was different all it said was something weird.


“How are you doing today?” was all it said. I simply ignored it. No one asked questions like that anymore, at least not in this town. It was just strange.I removed the sheet from the person’s face half expecting to find a walking corpse. Instead I found the beautiful and sleeping remnant of the most popular guy in school. His name was Shawn Gomez. He had golden brown hair, and eyes the color of almonds. He was a smart boy, I had been close friends with him back in grade school, and we were both in the gifted program together. I remembered one time when he unleashed a whole army of frogs on the cafeteria floor. He was a very strange boy back then.


He lied there his lip quivering as he slept almost like he was about to cry. I wonder what happened the night before but, no. I don’t want to remember. I got off of the bed and brushed off my body, I felt violated by the open windows but I checked and we were on the second story. I looked around for my clothes and my cell phone and found my cell phone near the mirror, mounted on the wall. I checked the messages, twenty seven from mom and dad, three from Chelsea and one from a number that I didn’t


I found my clothes and got dressed. A pink tee, some pants and a jean jacket cover. I tip toed down the stairs and found what simply a horror scene. Teens lie drunk on the floor like the living dead, moaning and groaning for human flesh. They wished for some semblance of life in this atrocious state that they were in. I stepped carefully over each one of them to the door hoping that maybe I could escape any one of them seeing the fear and shame inlaid into my eyes. I reached the door and it was victory for me but as I opened it the light of morning shined in and they hissed and burned. They were worms inching away from the light as quickly as their meaningless limbs allowed them to.


I left and slammed the door behind me. Their cries echoed in my mind. I shook off the pain of leaving them, but I had to get home. What else was I to do?


Keys, ignition, turn, start my car sped away from the curb and moved to home at a breakneck speed. As I raced to my own personal part of hell called home I remembered the party or at least parts of it.


It was supposed to be a normal party like all the rest, just a bunch of kids hanging out and talking. Chelsea didn’t tell me there was going to be a keg. Chelsea didn’t tell me that it was a special sort party. I would have never have gone if she had told me Shawn would be there. And that is where the problem began. I knew I didn’t belong there from moment when I saw that every girl was in a nice dress and I was in my t-shirt and jeans, stood out like a sore thumb I say. So like every party I sat on a couch far away from everyone and just drank my cherry wine.


The party was dull, lively music and livelier people were not enough to drown out the monotone music that the town ebbed. Chelsea and I had thought up this music when we were little girls. It wasn’t a metallic sound with fasteners and rivets; it was unlike a machine turning us into the Borg. There was no “assimilate or die” quality to it. It was simply that we would grow up in that town, and we would live there until we grew old and died. Nothing more nothing less, it was not inescapable, for sure some people would get out of it and find their own way. But for the most of us, we just didn’t have the willpower to do it. It was the way it always was and always will be. I hated that.


So I sat there listening to the music of the town, Westfall, as it was known. I tapped my finger to its irregular beat and just sat there thinking. I had emptied a few glasses of the wine I had drunk, and began to feel the buzz, becoming more in tune with the signal. It said things it said words. None of which I was accustomed to, but it sounded so familiar. This was the air I had grown up in that I had grown around. The air of tradition and trials, the air of status quo that permeated through my skin since I was a baby; I knew what it was saying, it said…
`

“How are you Alice?” the voice shocked me back to reality in an instant. I looked up shivering in my own fear and found a boy about my age with amazing silver blonde hair. It was Shawn.


“I’m doing okay.” I feigned an answer.


That is all it took, before I knew it we were talking and he was making me laugh. We were having a wonderful time. He told me all about this science fiction show that I really should have gotten into, and I told him, in detail, how a phaser from Star Trek really worked (even though I liked Star Wars better). It was actually quite simple, my brother had told me all about it and in the back of my head I knew that he was safely in his bed and that mom and dad were worried sick. Shawn must not have understood that well because he asked if we could go upstairs to talk about it more, something about it being too loud.


After that it got fuzzy. Shawn came back with the last round of drinks and I threw mine to the back of my mouth without even giving a second thought. I should have tasted it first, I should have seen if it was foggy, I should have even looked at the darned thing before I chugged it. In short, I was stupid and I trusted him. I shouldn’t have followed him up the stairs, I shouldn’t have been talking to a boy like him and I shouldn’t have been drinking. I shouldn’t have been at that party period. I couldn’t remember what happened next.
All I knew was that my parents were right.


I drove through town and it didn’t take me long to get home. The town of Westfall was small. Not too much of a small town, you could still find people you hadn’t met before but it’d take a little looking.


I managed to park in the driveway, which meant that Dad’s car was out. That meant that he was out. And that meant that he was looking for his little girl. Me.


I sat there and stood at the door, I knew joey wouldn’t see me he was at his friend’s house today. I felt like a victim about to be part of some deranged murder story. The headline would read: Daughter found dead, parents nowhere to be found. Maybe they would kill me slowly, maybe quick and painless. I didn’t know until I opened the door. I knew I had to do it eventually; so I slowly turned the doorknob.


Inside I saw the hollow of my mother. She was a ghost of her former self, like some sort of monster was wearing her skin and taking whatever life she had left. It was sad as I saw her there sitting on the couch crying, she had never let me see her cry until recently when I had started going to these sorts of parties. I would see her in these arguments and her tears would just keep flowing. She was so passionate that I cried sometimes too. But it didn’t look like she wanted to argue now. She had simply missed her little girl.


As she turned around I saw her face light up like a star at night. She beamed with a smile and ran to me; suddenly the joy of the situation came with my shame. I had left her alone to this sadness, but the joy of the reunion kept me silent. She wrapped her warm arms around me and squeezed me tight as a child grips a teddy bear. She pulled away and grinned through the tears.


“Your father will want to talk to you” Was all she could say. I knew what she meant.


I sat there on the couch watching the people on the television move. In large purple letters they spelt M: U: T: E. I saw a ballerina dancing in a dental commercial. I couldn’t even tell it was a commercial by the way she danced so wonderfully. She flowed around the stage as the white swan so gracefully, like water over the stage she flooded my eyes with the beauty that was her. I only knew it was a dental commercial by the way she smiled and the word “Colgate” appeared at the top of it with a little tube of toothpaste by its side.


After the commercial I was content with looking around at the room. Wooden furniture suggested that we were from wealth. But we weren’t, we simply inherited the furniture from my grandfather who owned the only furniture store. His story is quite amazing to be ending up here. My father says he was a cheap old man that ran a furniture store in one of the bigger towns around here. He was a horrible person constantly hitting the bottle and leaving his family without so much a word as a simple “I’ll be back soon.” Grandma left him when Dad was about fourteen. That’s all I ever heard of him, I’m not even sure if Dad knew his first name.


“Alice where were you?” Suddenly Dad was in front of me. I looked at the clock, its five minutes past from when I saw it last. I tried but I couldn’t remember what happened. That was wrong; I tried to get up but my legs were wobbly.


“Alice where were you, answer me.” Dad had the same question.


“It was a party.” I said looking at him, there was a haze around my eyes.


“You were drunk weren’t you?” I opened my mouth but didn’t have a thing to say. “You were drinking again, oh god you are such a stupid girl.”


He started to walk away but I, in my pseudo-stupor, got up and grabbed his shoulder. “Dad I’m sorry.”


He shrugged me off and shoved a spike through my chest. He didn’t turn back as my heart began to bleed out. I felt the pain in my chest as I rushed after him and turned him around to look at me. I took all of my pain and spite and turned it into the sharpest sword I could and opened my mouth.


“At least I’m not cheating on my wife.” He stopped dead as the sword found its rightful place buried hallway deep into his skull.


For a second I was glad about what I had done. Then I looked into his eyes and found genuine pain. He really had done it. I didn’t know what to do so I tried to apologize. “Dad I don’t know I’m really” He walked away “sorry.”


Mom sat on the couch crying again. I went upstairs to get ready for school.


I took a shower, and cried in there for a while. I heard the cars as they left, Mom took my/her car to go pick up Joey, and Dad went off to work at the tire factory that just about everyone’s dad worked at. After they both were gone I got out of the shower and dried off my body and my tears. I got dressed in a blue blouse and some green-blue shorts. I put on a jacket and tossed my backpack on and walked out to the bus stop, locking the door behind me.


It was a nice sunny day, the wind still cold from the winter coming in. The sky was a blue color that you only see in story books. I smiled a bit at the day, regardless of how I was feeling at least others were having a good day. I had to put on another guise of a perfect life, as if anyone but Chelsea cared.


I waited at the bus stop for about five minutes, in that time Chelsea showed up with her usual perky self.


“Hiya, honey” She said grinning trying to cheer me up even though she didn’t know she was trying. It was working


“Hiya” I said trying not to smile too hard. I gave a slight wave.


“Where did you go last night?” She asks frowning “You were my ride home.”


“I got a little sick and I had to go home early. I couldn’t find you.” I lied quickly.


It was a poorly made lie but she took it anyway saying “Oh its ok, I actually took the ride home from a boy.” She leans in and whispers in my ear “We made out for like twenty minutes in front of my house.”


She yips and we both smile, holding hands. She gives me his details. Tall, black hair, muscular, a mustache and goatee, he was one of last year’s football players. His name was Max Malchovich, and she loved the way it just rolled off the tongue with an exotic flare. The bus pulled up and we sat in the middle, still talking about this boy named Max. I was only half listening looking out the window at a landscape that I had seen a thousand times before. Two stops away from us I saw a lone boy at one of the bus stops he was about seventeen by his height, and he looked clean shaven. He wore all black and held a nice clean grin with a big hat on his head. The hat seemed bit overkill but I ignored it. I was just a bit interested in the way this boy held himself. He had the air of pride around him and as he got on the bus I felt it like a flood.


Our eyes met as he floated to the end of the bus, he gave a slight grin and I turned blush pink and turned away. Chelsea caught wind of it and opened her mouth wide about to say something stupid I was sure. So I quickly covered her mouth and pretended everything was alright. The boy was halfway to his seat from where I sat and he looked back seeing our antics and laughed a bit. I turned staring at his back and looked away when he sat down, still covering Chelsea’s mouth. I glanced back and he took off his hat revealing neatly combed and jetty hair.


“Did you just lick my hand?” I looked back at Chelsea in shock.


Chelsea nodded smiling. “You like him.”


I cross my arms “what’s it to you?”


Chelsea began playing with her hair like a little school girl and she asked trying to toy with me “Do you want to know his name?”


I lit up like red Christmas lights, each of my freckles their own shade of crimson. “No.” I lied badly. But regardless of my attempt at deceit Chelsea caught on.


“His name is Valentine, like the day you know.” She beamed with her chin resting on her arm observing me “He’s actually really dreamy but I don’t know much about him, since you know he never talks to anyone, but you know that right?”


“Yeah I knew that.” Why did I keep lying? I looked down wondering if my pants were on fire.


I was silent the rest of the way to school. I tried to wait a little for Valentine to go ahead of me; nonetheless Chelsea pushed me out into the moving machine of a line. I decided to keep moving forward with the flow of the world, like I always did. So not to make a disturbance I just went along with everyone else.


I stepped out of the doors and saw Shawn standing there at the school gates. I hid my face as I walked past him. He grabbed my arm and pulled me in. I looked around for Chelsea. She was nowhere to be found.


Shawn leaned in and let his breath touch my cheek, I shivered. “I don’t like waking up alone honey. You should have stayed, maybe next time we could have some more fun.” I could feel his dark smile as he kissed my cheek.


I pulled away suddenly, and I slapped his face.
SMACK. The world stopped and looked at us. I turned flush and looked down. Shawn simply smiled kept the bile in the back of his throat as he spoke.
“I’m sorry Alice; I should have driven you home.” He sounded genuine but for someone who is used to lying I could hear the poison. Everyone else took the lie as truth, they knew Shawn’s personality as far as he would let him and it made sense to them. A girl was upset that she had to walk home after one of his explorations. It was something that they could accept so as easily as a shot in the arm.
The world started moving again and he leaned in again “You won’t be so lucky next time.” He flowed away.

“A mind shifting, a mind staying, a mind dancing is one worth saving.” He sang as he walked through the halls. It was almost under his breath but if one stood close enough one could hear the rhythmic melody that was in his voice. It was a mystical tune, his heels clicked to the happy beat.
As he danced down the halls the adolescents gave him dark, dark looks. They were angry at him for something he didn’t even do, but he didn’t care he knew he was worth so much more, If they even knew.
“Good morning Val, how are you doing today?” Joshua Weiss was a nice boy. He had his demons like the rest, but like Valentine, he seemed to always look on the bright side of things. His parents were divorced when he was little and he took it hard. He had taken it hard when he was little and then he turned his pain into a love for video-photography. That explained the lens in Valentine’s face as turned to greet his friend.
“Get that thing out of my face, Joshua.” He pushed the lens away from him laughing.
“Aw.´ Joshua pulled the camera in closer to examine the damage. “You smudged the lens.” He started mock crying and cried out “You monster!”
“Dude” Valentine touched Joshua’s back giggling; Joshua flinched and turned away from him keeping up the charade. Normal people ignored them and continued on their boring existence, as they had all the fun. Valentine leaned in and as sincere as he could muster he whispered “I’m sorry about your camera Joshua”
Joshua sniffled a little “do you really mean it?”
Valentine smiled calming saying “No now cry me a river now build a bridge and get over it.”
They both laughed putting up the farce for some other occasion. They hugged as brothers, Joshua putting his arm around Valentine’s head and ruffling his hair. It was happy, oh so very happy.
I glimpsed a bit of it as I walked out to English class where I had to give a lecture. Well I sort of caught more than a glimpse because I sort of walked right into one of the columns that held up the school roof. I was a klutz.
Paper, books, desk, chair, sit, sat, listen, read, wait, class began. The teacher, Mr. Oer a.k.a. Mr. “I used to be on the board of education, but I retired and then my retirement money wasn’t enough to live on, so I had to go again and get my teaching license and I am forever disappointed in the system nowadays, but I still abide by it because I don’t have anything else to believe in,” checked me out as I walked in the classroom and I hid my face. He was a bad man, I could tell. I met his wife once and she had a large nasty bruise on her arm she seemed not to mention or notice. She however was a nice lady; with low self-esteem I could be sure. I could just look at her and tell the beauty of her youth. He droned on about how keeping hydrated was good for speeches, Yes, What?
He called on me, to give a speech. I was petrified; my legs wouldn’t let me move. I couldn’t say a word. I felt I was dead but I could still breathe, I hoped I was dead but I could still breathe.
“RING! RING! RING!” The bell cut through the class, it called for lunch B. Smelly teens with imbalanced hormones got up all around me and in the melting pot of voices I found the strength to lift myself from this corpse. The bell, It was a savior to me who was a small person in a much bigger picture.

The lunch room was a mix of the seven deadly sins in the worst of ways. I sat at a table with Chelsea and Lily, far away from the Over weights who gorged themselves with food, and from the Underweight airheads who let themselves vomit up what little food they ate during this time. The Underweights ruled this school with their little bit of popularity, the guys swooned for those tiny waists and the girls envied those blue eyes. It was sickening the way that they thought that they were better than all the rest of us, but then again I had thought that I was better than the nerds, and junkies and a few other groups, because, simply, that’s how things were.
I moved myself I had packed some green apple slices, and a ham sandwich, not turkey; I was an idiot and refused to eat any sort of bird. If someone were to look at me at the time they would have called me and imbecile and laughed. I would have laughed to if I met anyone like that. But then again there is a major difference between watching your life and experiencing it.
Black boots pounded against the tile with a rhythmic beat. He was just so close he was created by the air around and sat next to me. His pale smile cut through his star power and he was just another teen to me, a beautiful one at that. I was just too taken by his looks to realize he had even spoken to me for a moment.
“Alice, are you there?” His voice was like a song. Going up and down with his heartbeat, or was it my heartbeat. Because the music of my heart was so loud that it was deafening.
“Yeah I’m here.” His breath took away mine.
“So like I was saying I really like the way you did your hair.” I had only just tossed my hair around with a little bit of mouse but if he liked it then I must have done something right.
“Oh thank you.” I gasped helplessly.
“So I saw that you and Jessie McCartney had a little event over there.” His tone became a little more quiet, just a little more serious. “If you need help, I am there remember that.”
This boy I had just met was offering me help in a problem he knew nothing about. I should have been offended but I had no reason to be, he was sincere enough, honest enough, and a generally good guy. “No really I’m ok.”
He knew I was lying but didn’t push the issue “I understand.”
“Hi!” Lily and Chelsea appeared to my side and a smiling Chelsea said “Well I think we will just leave you two alone to get acquainted.”
He laughed and patted my head, standing up and saying “It seems like I’m done here for now. I hope you have a good day Alice, you too Chelsea.”
Chelsea and Lily began to geek out over what had just happened. Lily said that he was cute and Chelsea wanted to know all the details of our conversation. I wasn’t listening to either of them though my mind was out on the boy that I had just met and what had just went on.
I had watched as he walked away. His heels hitting the ground with a resounding click as he walked. The clicking was almost to a beat almost to music, but a little off, not like the melody of this town but a more happy and lighthearted tune with a dark underlying. He had secrets just like all of us, I could tell. He, somehow, had managed to wear his heart on his sleeve and be happy nonetheless.

I was back in English class, the teacher droning on almost the same as before. Something about English’s most beautiful phrase “cellar door”. Everything in my head kept rhyming, even though I knew in my head it was lying. I felt so corrupt. Sitting there as the teacher called me up. I moved and I moved and I went to the front, all in my embarrassment I couldn’t keep up my front. It gnawed at me and I swayed. Seconds felt like days. Everything was weird, I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t see.
All I said was “I gotta pee.”
Suddenly they came to life, all to my dark mistrust and strife. They laughed and giggled, under their heel I squirmed and wriggled. They sounded like a thousand clowns, all tossing and shouting me down. From a cliff a place so high up, I began to cry. This was enough. I ran out of the room, running to my doom. I ran out the halls, I slowly swooned. I was about to throw up, I threw open the doors of the bathroom.


Bathroom stall, deposit a check; it’s all in change well what the heck.


I crouched down over the toilet, letting it all go, my tears and my lunch. I cried because no one knew me, I didn’t even know myself. Sixteen years in a small town really didn’t do much for me; I just flowed along listening to the sound of the beat. Never taking a part always watching, I had never wanted to really fit in, I was content in observing. But now I didn’t really have a choice. This year mattered the most in my career as a student. I was beginning to fail horribly. I didn’t know what to do. Just at that moment I had felt that I had been thrust into the limelight and someone gave me my cue. And I just stood there like I didn’t know what to do, because, in all sincerity, I didn’t.


That was when things changed. I heard a sad sound in the deepest parts of my soul. It was coming from all around and inside of me. This song of me filled me with energy I was no longer afraid.


I got out of the stall and then I heard another song, a song of confusion. Valentine stood directly in front of me, behind him were the urinals. Urinals?!? Why are there urinals in the girls bathroom, I thought, then I realized, Oh God.


“Alice you aren’t supposed to be here.” His voice was deep.


“I’m sorry, I’ll leave.” I said immediately, my song had gone wrong and the song of the town had taken over me again.
He stepped closer to where we were a breath’s width apart. “No I’m serious; you aren’t supposed to be here. A lot of bad things are about to happen.” His head cocked toward the door on the left. I heard voices. Valentine grabbed my arm and pushed me into the bathroom stall, he looked me in the eyes when I turned around and said calmly “Stay off the ground, and don’t make a sound. You’ll know when it’s done.”
I got up on the toilet seat and crisscrossed my legs, it was nasty in there. Fluids I didn’t want to think about were on the ground and graffiti on the walls. That’s when I heard them enter.
There were three of them by the sound of their voices, laughing and giggling all the like. A voice like Shawn’s spoke first “Oh well lookie here, we found us our lost little deputy sheriff.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Valentine said firmly. But Shawn and his henchmen wouldn’t take it.
One of his lackeys found the will to speak, this one sounded excessively strong and stupid “Oh sounds like little V over here doesn't want to play.”
“No, no I don’t and I don’t think the two of you want to either.” Valentine’s voice changed to something that made the air around him cold enough to make me shiver.
The door opened and they scurried out, leaving Shawn and Valentine alone. Shawn began to laugh and doubled over in a way that was almost sickening. His tears fell to the ground and he simply couldn’t contain his amusement. This caught me off guard, laughing, I thought, what the hell is going on?
“What are you doing?’ Val asked taking a step back from his previously defined part of defense. Now he was confused, and that seemed to be Shawn’s point.
“Do you really think you can scare me with all that s***? I’ve seen things; there are things in this town even you could not believe.” He gasped through the laughs that were almost killing him. He stopped laughing and he sniffed the air. “I can smell her, she’s here isn’t she?”
I heard noises, a hiss and a solid smack against flesh, it sounded hollow. Valentine opened the stall door and I saw Shawn doubled over against the sink; a large scrape was on his back, blood spurting out to the world like a fountain. Valentine looked uninjured, save a gash on his shoulder that didn’t bleed.
He reached out to me and the world around me became black. He told me to grab his hand that everything would be all right. I grabbed his hand and he pulled me closer. I held his body as he made a strange noise in my ear, I passed out.