Scars and Souvenirs

Five

Not proofread or edited or anything but it's my birthday so it's allowed.
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Performances of the musical kind had been second nature to Taylor since she was tiny. She'd played Mary in a rendition of the nativity story in primary four, she was eight and had messed her lines up so badly the other people participating had been so confused they had to cut it short. Her solos had gone perfectly though, and she couldn't help the pride that swelled in her chest. Her parents had recorded that show, much to Taylor's distress, and brought it out every Christmas until Taylor was sixteen.

Stacey was sat with the Director of Performance of Low Shore College, scouting out the best talent in the music programme to take part in the closing show in December. They'd left it late this year, claiming that lack of notice would help show them who performed the best under pressure. Taylor thought it was almost cruel, Stacey had told Taylor's group the day before, to give them the chance to pick songs and instruments. It Taylor being Taylor already knew what she was going sing, and with Hunter sitting in the makeshift audience in front of the laminate square of carpeted floor that acted as a stage, Taylor had every intention to show him just how dead Mykaelah was.

As Darren stepped off stage after butchering Justin Bieber's Sorry with such ferocity Taylor wondered how he passed national five or higher music in the first place. Since Stacey and the man whose name Taylor didn't know called them up alphabetically, Taylor was next. Her palms weren't sweaty with nerves and her heart was steady in her chest. Most people didn't know how well she could sing, it was the one thing about herself she was sure of. She was confident, singing had been her life until she met Hunter and started smoking and drinking and everything else she did. But she thought the six years of smoking had done something for her voice, while it had been husky and sexy before, if had something extra now. Something someone with a standardised voice couldn't replicate.

The strap held the guitar to her body as she walked up to the laminate floor. Not many people, no more than thirty, looked at her with curiosity and doubt in their eyes, they'd never heard the dark haired girl with fake glasses and a permanent bed head sing. Most of them had never heard a word uttered from her chapped lips. The microphone was just right for her height, for that she was thankful. Clearing her throat she opened her mouth, her voice echoing around the larger than large room.

"Hi, my name is Taylor Carlyle," he right hand, holding the purple plastic pick, lifted in a wave, far from cheerful. Acting nervous made sense to her. "I'll be singing Wake Me Up When September Ends."

She let the contentment flow over her as her hands began to move, he mouth opening as the words fell out effortlessly; "summer has come and past, the innocent can never last."

Mykaelah had always claimed she hated Green Day, but secretly, so secretly that not even Hunter knew, this song had always been her favourite. She often wondered if it was an omen, telling her that September would be the month her life broke into tiny shards so small they could never be put back together. In that way she related to the song, Billie Joe lost his father, Mykaelah, Taylor, lost everything. She sometimes wished she had been younger than sixteen, that she was so young she couldn't remember anything about her family. But, the majority of the time she only wished that she had fallen to the same fate, that she was lying in a coffin in a cemetery somewhere on the east coast. Not living a life so pointless she wondered why she was alive. Maybe that was why she'd tried to kill herself so many times. Maybe that was why she did things to herself that most people wouldn't consider doing to their worst enemy.

Or maybe that was why she decided to forgive Matthew. And maybe, just maybe, that was why he made everything so much worse than Taylor ever thought would be possible.

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Matthew woke up with a headache and the smell of vomit invading his senses. Peeling his eyes open, he frowned at the water building in his eyes, the intensity of the light too much for him to bear. He was topless, and his bed was as empty as his memory. What happened? Why had he gotten this drunk? Where had he thrown up?