The air stuck to me as if it was trying to suffocate me. It was such a nice day with the sun pouring through the trees and the flowers stretching towards it. School seemed far away. Not as if I had just been there for the past six hours. The same old boring, lecturing teachers droning on about the subject they were teaching. The teachers seemed less enthusiastic than the students. At least they were getting paid to stand there and point to a particularly normal leaf that happened to fall victim. As I walked beneath the scorching sun and the glorious bright, baby blue sky I pondered about what my mother would be doing later on. It was just mum and I, see my father had left when I was very little and I don’t remember him that much.
My mother was the happy go lucky type with a very hyper attitude which meant she always had to keep moving and do something with her hands. She had short pixie like hair which stuck out at surprising angles. Her face was very pixyish too and her features were very sharp. Her smile was so wide and toothy you could be won by it before you even met her. You would assume that I would be just like her but I was in fact, the complete opposite. I had very long and curly dark brown hair. I couldn’t bear to get it cut so it had grown to my waist and straightened out a bit too. I had startling blue eyes that some people found a little creepy if they found me watching them. I was all curves but no corners. I wouldn’t say I was anywhere near plump though. And that’s all. Just mother and I. You see, my ‘father’ was no good. Or so I’m told. But I’ve never met him and so it’s hard to know for sure if that’s what my father is like or if it is just my mother’s bitter resentment. I know mother wouldn’t lie and he’s not been here for me. Probably not even on this continent. He went far away with mother’s last scratching of money. She made a new start and we do all right. Mother has her job- career would be pushing it- and I have a paper round. Ok, it’s not much. But that’s us and that’s how our life flows. On the tipping edge but not falling over just yet. We do get by but only just. And everyone knows Boston is a busy place.
My most prized possession is my guitar. It is my Gran’s old one. She told me to have it in her will. I am never without it now. It has just become part of my life. I sometimes play on the streets hoping some people will throw money to help with my pocket money. I have had to teach myself as the real guitar lessons are far too much money for my mother to afford. I get a thrill when people’s appreciating and stunned faces listen and watch. After the first couple of chords then I lose myself and the guitar plays itself. I start singing along, using my painful lyrics to drill into people. I try to show them how hard life gets when you have hardly any money. But the music makes worries fade and I feel a whole new self shine through. It can feel like meditation.
At home I try to do as much as I can to help my mum along but sometimes I just want to stay out of the way and fade back to my guitar playing. Sometimes I just want to forget the world and share someone else’s problems for a change. It helps to stay close to the wall. I don’t really have proper friends. Just some people I hang about with at school. I’m always to busy to go out after school, too busy to be girly and too busy for any boy’s. Also I’m trying to practice for this school concert because Galena Topaz will be there and they are choosing only one student to give a scholarship to and also a chance to work beside her and create a complete album with her. It is going to be the most amazing experience ever! Finally someone might find that I have a slight talent for creating music. I’ve always fantasized about how I will become an amazing singer/ song writer but I guess that is just a dream and probably hardly ever likely to happen. But dreams can turn into reality, can they not? Better trying and failed than knowing that you were the one that could have made yourself a whole new future. I don’t think I’d be able to live with that. I’d rather take my chances.
Yet how was I to know that one simple letter could change possibly my whole entire future and ruin the rest of my life while also helping me find the one I have longed for. Falling into a fairytale action story was the last thought on my mind while I turned that one piece of paper in my hands. The shocked face of my own, reflecting from the plastic covering. There was an unfamiliar address in the corner and the date of a fair few days back, strange.
