"𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗘, 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳. 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗮𝘄 𝗵𝗲𝗿."
𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒, the greatest rock band the generation has ever seen, the bona fide rockstars of their time.
𝐌...
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✧ 19th September 2002 ✧ Los Angeles, California
THE FRONT WOMAN once had a frightening aversion towards darkness. A six-year-old Maia Harket wholly despised being in her room all alone, with only dimmed light being the shine of the moonlight emerging through the window.
The threatening fear of the unknown would tug at her feet and drag her underground, beneath that creaky bed, the room close to its moulded rottenness. Caved in that hellish confinement, a seeming innocence standing in the corner of the room, one disguised as anything but what people told her it was.
She would lie on her bed, tucked into her blankets and a soft toy clutched tightly into her chest as she feigned indifference. Alas, it never worked out. She could have pretended that she was in a magical garden with the brightness of the sunny skies reflecting on her skin and Maia would remain terrified. The younger girl would rush out of bed and jump profusely to slam her fingers onto the light switch.
The darkness of their silent house would be illuminated by the beaming source of the sun creeping through the gaps of her bedroom door. All of her siblings were much older than she was, and Morten was the only one closest to her age. Maia's eldest was Filip——who was twenty-six and married by the time she was six. There was Valeria, 23 and living with her mates. By then, she was fresh in her job, which explains her moving out. But Valeria was rarely home, regardless of her job or the education she received at university. She did not particularly enjoy having Maia and Joan around, and that resentment was carried out towards their father as well.
Erik and Morten were 21 and 19 at the time. It was the former boy and Valeria whom Maia truly did not get on well with, they thought of her as a nuisance and a burden on their father's ripe age. It was not exactly something she could have grave control over.
Morten was often back late, regardless if it was a weekday or the weekends. He would spent most of his leisure time with his friends, fronting some band that was never going to go anywhere in the first place. But what mattered was the hefty and vehement passion that he had for music, and that led him to waste his days away at a music club. Whenever he returned home, Morten would grow curious at the sunbeam highlighting his younger sister's bedroom——he would peek inside, only to find Maia laying late awake on her bed.
What are you doing up? Morten would ask her, head popping into her bedroom. She would tell him that she could not sleep in the dark, and now that the lights were on, the urge to fall asleep had gone away for good.
Maia recalled these moments evocatively. She did because it was the only relevant attention she ever got from anybody in that household. Even more so when her siblings had moved out, when her father was far too busy working, and Joan continued to pick herself apart for supposedly breaking their family apart——as though it was her fault that her step-children refused to acknowledge her care and kindness. Joan tried terribly hard to get along with her half-siblings, going as far as siding with them when Maia had gone off to make a name for herself in Britain.
