Listen To Me

prologue ⋆

     Noel Margot Jean.

     The epitome of a paradox. Her name literally translated to 'good news pearl'. It conjured images of prettiness and positivity, like the rhyme about sugar and spices. Her grandmother had sung it to her, dancing in circles until Noel felt delirious with childish joy. And then her grandmother had died. The rhyme faded with the memory of the only person who loved her.

     Noel was once loved by many. Admired for her flawless ability to pair clothes so that she always stood out. A stand in for head girl; gorgeous, intelligent, with all the other redeeming labels private school could offer her.

     Noel was a pretty person, all right. People never failed to tell her. But she was also sad. Sunk deep into a sea of untold grief.

     Why was it always that the prettiest girls carried the biggest burdens? What sort of justice was it, that she had to bear the worst of her past alone? A steep price to pay for some warped form of beauty and a good childhood, she thought. She would prefer to fade into the background, rather than to continuously stand out and be forced to reap the consequences.

     Her life was hell. Every time something newly good surfaced in it, the ghosts pulled her back in. Breathing felt like the moving of a clock's hands. Immutable, unforgiving. Being condemned for some untold crime.

     But then Jax came in like a tempest, coaxing her life's storms into shape. So that they became something tangible, something to fight. Rather than an endless void, a chasm of chaos and otherworldly damnation. His hair was golden, his features angelic, but his eyes were those of someone well-versed in the arts of social warfare. Everyone crowded him like he was the latest piece of technology they wanted to get their hands on. 

     He knew Noel's plight.

     And he was going to be the one to save her, in the end.

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I remember because it was a morning in September, and I'd walked in with bitterly cold skin from the freezing wind. But the cold didn't matter when the dread of repeating my dully painful routine overpowered it. I was unwrapping my scarf from my neck and the door opened. And I looked up because the room immediately fell silent.

Perhaps it was the dark but somehow golden hair, like a halo, curling round his head. He was a new face in the circle of hell I had lost myself in. I wasn't prepared for the following surge of desperation encouraging me to stride over to him, take his hands and beg him to help me. But I didn't have the courage, or the idiocy, to do so.

Jax had an immediate quality that I wish I could put into words. Something freeing. His presence was enough to settle some piece of my restlessness, so that the burden didn't feel so heavy anymore. I could tell my classmates felt it too, from the way everyone looked at him with growing curiosity. Or perhaps it was just his face.

But his entrance is not my beginning. It extends to long before this year, to the person I used to be and somewhat dearly miss now. A piece of me that's so tarnished and flawed, it's now useless to everyone. Including myself.

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