In retrospect, Adelaide Brookes should've known to stay away from the sole thing that would make society hate her. She lives in a world where there is nothing more important than sports. Where books, movies, and music are pushed to the side as if they are some sort of disease. She should've just left it alone and stayed with the rest of the world.
The previous June had seen then fifteen year old Addie as a social outcast. She wasn't in love with sports like the rest of the world. She didn't want to be on every sports team at her school and she didn't want to go out every other night to see some game, whether it was football, soccer, volleyball, curling, etcetera. She just didn't care about sports.
It was different back then. She had a small group of friends who were all on at least two teams, when one or more of them were at practice, the remaining would sit with her in the cafeteria, the teachers would compliment her work ethic- she had the highest grades in all of her classes, and her parents would brag to the other parents about how lovely their only child was.
But then Addie started paying attention to the music. The music that everyone else pushed aside as nothing more than stupid noise, but not Addie, no. Addie found herself liking the music, and that's where things began to change. Her friends started looking at her weirdly, the teachers ignored her as if she was the worst student in the whole school, and her parents became disappointed in her. What did she ever do to them? Why was the world getting so worked up over music?
Jump to fifteen months later, newly seventeen year old Addie stands in the middle of her bedroom. The walls are blue, blanketed floor to ceiling in band posters and song lyrics. She's looking at her reflection in her broken vanity mirror. Her messy brown hair is tied up in a ponytail, green eyes looking darker than and not as full of life as they used to be. She's wearing a pair of ugly sweatpants and an oversized band T-shirt, black with one of her favourite bands written in white chicken scratch across the front. She appears slightly shorter in the mirror; shorter than she actually is, at five foot five. She looks sad, she feels sad.
She has one of her first CD's in her CD player. A band called Bad Timing, the first band she listened to when her "music phase" started. The first song she heard by them is playing, a short little song called Juvenile. It's about a teenage boy who has been deemed a lost cause by society, dressed head to toe in all black everything, not saying a word to anyone at any time, and letting the music take him away. Addie can relate to him. She figured out months ago that the boy had been the bands lead singer, born in England but raised in the States, best known for his bright blue hair. She finds a saviour in Blue Hair. Blue is Adelaide's favourite colour.
She remembers a few weeks ago, she had gone to the band's concert. First time they'd been in her town in just over three years. There weren't that many people in the audience; maybe 70 at the most, but even that was surprising for such an unpopular band in the world they live in. She got to meet Blue Hair. He pulled her up on stage, gave her a quick side hug and Addie got to sing one of her favourite songs of theirs with him. She remembers how that day was the best day of her life. She felt like she belonged somewhere for once, in a small crowd watching one of her favourite bands perform, the music pulsing through her veins. She had never felt more alive.
She remembers how over the course of the next week, she had been sadder than usual. Post-concert depression, someone online had called it. She was sad because it was over. The day after the concert, Blue Hair replied to her on social media site ChitChat, a small spike in her happiness that only lasted a few minutes before she was back to the drawing board. She tried to distract herself. She played RockHero on her GameStation5 for a few hours, set on mastering expert level. She failed miserably. Addie still had that heavy feeling settled in her chest.
(She never mastered expert, either.)
Every day she goes to school and sits through the lessons and the glares and waits until quarter to four when she can finally go home. She daydreams about Summer Daze, her other favourite band. A band of four boys, only a couple years older than her, who all sing- as opposed to Bad Timing, where Blue Hair is the only singer. With Summer Daze, the bassist is her favourite. The dark haired boy who is the youngest in the group at only eighteen years old (nineteen in precisely twenty three days). You could say that Addie was a little bit obsessed.
It was the rasp in his voice when he sang his solo in their song Midnight and the sparkle in his dark blue eyes that got her hooked. He was the one who was the most overlooked in the band. His bandmates often told of how he was the outcast at the school they had all gone to when they were younger. Addie thinks about when she looks at their old photos, from when the band first started out three years ago, how she could see the pain laced into his eyes. He was fifteen back then. No one that young should feel like that, she thinks. No one of any age should feel like that. She thinks about how as the pictures got newer, Blue Eyes' cold, dark, sadness was slowly replaced with happiness, until they were completely filled with light. She wishes she could be as happy as him. Blue Eyes gives Addie hope. Things will change, she tells herself. People will change. Things will get better.
Skip to about a month into the future; Summer Daze will have just released their latest album, adding a few to Addie's list of favourite songs. They'll be back on tour, and that day they will be in her hometown for the first time ever. Addie will grab her keys, ignoring the angry words her mother directs at her, and set out for the day. She'll walk around town for a few hours in the chilly autumn air, keeping an eye out for the band. Having no luck, she'll sit against the wall outside of the local music store where she will close her eyes and listen to her surroundings.
There will be little to no traffic; a car or two passing every few minutes. It'll be game day; a baseball game happening on the other side of town, so Addie wouldn't expect to see many people out anyways, and she'll have been sitting there for just over fifteen minutes when she hears the footsteps coming towards her. Her breath will hitch, but when she opens her eyes, she will stay calm. Blue eyes will stare into her green ones, and they will be even more beautiful in person.
He'll sit next to her, probably aware of how Addie is a fan by how she'd dressed in a sky blue T-Shirt with the Summer Daze logo spread out across the front and multiple band bracelets wrapped around her wrists. Blue Eyes won't ask for her name, but he'll speak solemnly to her. He's never been happy, he'll confess.
"I'm a really sad person, just as sad now as I was when I was fifteen, but being in the eye of the public has made me better at hiding it. People will never care about a musician the way that they care about an athlete. It's never changed," he'll avert his gaze to the other side of the street, "and I'm beginning to believe it never will."
He'll look down at his feet and unspoken words will be left ringing through Addie's mind; so you're telling me to give up? That I'll never be accepted, that I'll be a lost cause forever?
With that, Addie will stand up numbly and start to walk away from him with shaking hands and a cold heart. She'll look like the living dead, but she won't care. Blue Eyes will gaze after her as she turns the corner, giving him a short despairing glance before disappearing from his line of sight.
Then, Addie wakes up in a cold sweat under her blue comforter in her blue room with Blue Hair and Blue Eyes' pictures hanging on every square inch of the walls surrounding her and tears pouring down her face. She looks sad, she feels sad, she is sad.
Adelaide decides that blue is no longer her favourite colour.
