Crossover Crossroads (The Kell and Maille Story)

011: Musing Muse

Morning came and with it the sunlight. Maille awoke and found herself on the trampoline in her backyard, alone. She glanced around, but Kell was gone and so was his car. She felt a keen sense of disappointment stir and then banished it with a smile. She'd just had the most wonderful and strange night of her life, and she wanted to savor each event. She closed her eyes, but not before she realized she was covered with a beach towel and pinned to it was a slip of paper. She unpinned it and saw a phone number.

Wow! He wanted her to call him.

Why?

Didn't he have a boyfriend? Maybe he was bi... yuck, she thought, I 'm not going there. Not at all. She got off the tramp and went in the wide French doors to the kitchen. No one was currently in sight and no sounds issued forth from the interior of the house, so Maille slipped downstairs to her room and turned on the shower.

Maille was honest enough with herself to understand that her continued presence in the twins daily life was becoming redundant. Because of who they were, family came first, and they would never ask her to leave them. But increasingly they treated her like their puppet, or their.... servant and Maille didn't like it.

In fact, she hated waiting around to participate in their life. To be honest, it was boring.

And she was bored.

And she didn't know how to stop it all. Until last night.   

Something truly amazing had happened last night.

Kell had happened.

Kell was... she smiled to herself.

Well, she didn't know what Kell was.

But she knew that Kell had opened her eyes to alternate possibilities. She'd never said the words aloud before, never even admitted them to herself. But there they were. I want my own car, my own place, my own life.

It was true. She was twenty years old and on her own essentially. There was no reason she shouldn't have those things, the rest of her grown up family did.

She got out of the shower and found a towel. As she passed the mirror she saw the closet behind her, and turned to stare at her clothes. Brown skirts, all different types, shelves of orange and brown sweaters, yellow pants and dark green blouses, cream and tan. Those were the colors her professional coordinator had chosen for her years ago and no one had bought her anything else since. It was like she was a tick mark in their notebooks at Christmas time. Maille: brown sweater, check.

She walked by the closet and out into her bedroom. The walls were cream. She stared at them as if it were the first time she'd ever seen them. If she had her own place, what color would she like her walls to be? The fact was, she'd never asked herself that before. She looked at the quilt on her made up bed. She hadn't slept there, so it was still made from the previous day. Brown and tan and orange, cream background. Suddenly she felt embarrassed at the thought of Kell ever seeing this room. It was so unimaginative, so bare of personality. And he was so....Full of character. Everything about him screamed originality. I am unique, no one is like me.

She slowly turned around in her room. The cream carpet, the large flower prints on the walls, the overstuffed brown easy chair, and pine wood dresser. It wasn't her. Not inside where she really thought of herself. This wasn't her. Like a designer room in a showcase home, flavorless. Nicely appointed, but flavorless.

She pulled the brown towel out of her hair and left it on the floor, then she went back to her closet and found some plain blue jeans and a plain white bra. She dried her straight brown hair, all the while thinking of the girl she'd seen last night in the stage mirror. A girl with color in her cheeks, a dancing light in her eyes, hair coiled artfully around her face. She held up that same hair and wondered how he'd made it do that. She was plain, face it, she thought. There was nothing noteworthy or spectacular about her appearance, nothing.

If it wasn't for twenty years of voice and music lessons she'd have had nothing to offer the band either. She was completely overshadowed by her lively and flamboyant sisters.

She flopped on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Everything had changed last night. Her whole outlook. A strange man had forced her....No-- compelled her-- to face the mousy little thing that she was, and come to a conclusion about her.

If she never saw him again could she keep the bravado to actually do something about it? She sat up and went to the chair where the plain white boys T-shirt was that he'd bought her. She picked it up and imagined herself wearing it. She put the T-shirt on and smoothed it down, recalling a hand in hers.

She looked at her hand. It wasn't any different, but today it seemed different. Somehow today, she felt like a new person. And she knew the old person inside her was just asleep, and could come out and make her be shy and indifferent if she chose to let it, but today she didn't choose.

Maille went upstairs. She went to the refrigerator, but didn't feel like eating. She thought about going to the studio, but knew she never wanted to wait on her sisters again. She sat at the computer across the room, but checking email wasn't her thing either. She sighed.

The problem with wanting to do something about herself, and being able to actually do it was tremendous in her sight. Maille was inexperienced. She had followed too many older, wiser, more confident people around for her entire life. Now she had to make some decisions. Now she had to banish the tears forever. She remembered those daring and novel words spoken in a strange and wonderful moment. I want my own car, my own home, my own life.

And she did want those things. She loved her family, but she definitely knew she didn't want to be the tag along anymore. She wanted to do her own ...

She picked up the phone and dialed Michael's office. She pressed the numbers of his extension and waited breathlessly for him to answer. Michael was the first step. Michael would know what to do. He would handle things. Michael was her mother 's manager, and had been for over twenty years. He also managed her band. Had for four years.

"Michael, this is Maille."

"Hey smiley Maille, where are you? You missed the practice ... for the first time in your life, I might add. Are you sick?"

His voice was cheerful and concerned, like always. Fatherly, and professional. He was more a friend of the family, or maybe just family. "No." she answered. "I slept in."

"Let me sit down honey, you said you slept in? You?" she could see him directing traffic in the studio with one big hand, his phone bead set on, as he spoke to her, and his other hand pushing mixer buttons.

"Yeah. I slept in, and I'm not coming in."

"Anymore, ever, or just today?" his voice had gone soft and quiet. "Anymore, ever."

"I could have seen this coming, Smiley Maille." He said, and she knew he had turned away from the glass windows to give his face a little privacy.

She sighed. "Yeah, me too, only I didn't know how to tell anybody. I'm not even going to do the gig Friday."

He was quiet and then she heard his audible smile. "You have a plan, honey? You ever need a job in the field, I have the place for you."

Now Mai11e smiled. "I know you do, Michael." But today she didn't want to sing, and maybe not for a while. She said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Wow! She'd just done it. She'd quit the band! Talk about bravado puffs. She'd just quit the only job she'd ever had. The only thing she had ever woken up in the morning to do besides high school. She was shocked. She punched the air with her fist and did a little skipping dance around the pink kitchen counter.

Unbelievable. She'd simply called the studio and quit the band. Just like that.

Yes! Yes! She wanted to share it, share the energy... get a plan and work it. .. be Melia... be Megan .... No....

******