Testimony of a Rock Star: Fame Chapter 1

Chapter 17

17. Ordinary Life

JaciLouisburg, NC ’00-‘01

I walked outside of my dorm room. It had been a long couple of days carrying loads up three flights of stairs. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had to get out of the madness. My other two roommates of three had arrived a few hours ago and my somewhat organized room had just gone back to chaos. I needed a break.

The official move in day for the dorms was today, but I had decided to come a day early with my other roommate Maria Castillo. She was a freshmen and I was a returning sophomore in the “middle of nowhere” junior college.

The baseball team and soccer team had already moved in a couple of weeks earlier because of practices. The rooms across the hall from ours were occupied by a few of the girls on the soccer team. They seemed pretty nice. I few of the guys from the soccer team that we had known from the previous year were diligently working inside our room helping my other two roommates Shannon and Bethany.

I had already told the dreadful story of my tragic summer once, and I was trying to keep it at a bare minimum. I was still very sensitive to the subject. It was hard watching my parents leave a few hours earlier, to be here completely alone. I felt more alone than ever.

The year before, my first year of college, Mav had helped move me in, and even spent the night with me the first night. I had been nervous about college, but he made me feel safe. Now I had to do it by myself. Mav had been in every aspect of my life for the past two years and now it was just me.

I did have my roommates. They all knew about my dreadful summer, and knew this was going to be a hard year for me. I almost felt sorry for them, agreeing to deal with me and my melancholy life. A complete opposite to the wildly entertaining girl I used to be.

Shannon Wallace had become one of my best friends the previous year. She was the only girl on campus that had my same outrageous style of clothes and matching bleach blonde hair. We also had the same birthday. Both of us got along very well and seemed to have the same mind frame. Shannon was an amazing dancer and singer. Hip-hop was her dancing style, but vocally she was all country. Shannon and I loved to sing in the car, and she taught me a few things about harmonizing. She was another girlfriend like Audrey had been, whom I could have fun with and rely on. Now I was going to need her more than ever, and I hated to be so dependent on others.

Bethany Hahn was in our dance class the previous year and had become pretty tight with me and Shannon by the end of the last semester before we had headed back home for the summer. She was a sweet girl and all about dancing. She was very graceful on the dance floor, and had a sweet spirit about her. But she could be over kill with dancing. I mean we all loved it or we wouldn’t have majored in it, but Bethany watched videos, practiced, and talked about it constantly.

Maria had danced with me at my studio back home so when she was choosing a college I persuaded her to come to this one and room with us. Maria and her family had been close with my family for years and her mother Mrs. Castillo owned the major salon in the Town of Cramerton and had given me the makeover of my life.

They had been at my house the day after I had come back from Elizabeth City.

I stared hard at the floor, trying to force my watering eyes to dry. I seemed to only be able to not think of Mav for only eight minutes at a time. Well, that was the going record time for now. I had no idea how I was going to get through this year. This day, this hour.

Shannon didn’t find out about Mav’s death until a few weeks after the fact, but decided to come down from her home state of Ohio and visit me for a week during the summer. We spent the week going out to clubs and dancing the night away. It was fun, but I couldn’t help to look through the crowd of the dance floors and wish that he would just appear around the corner. Sometimes I would mistake a guy for him. I would catch myself just before tapping a random dark haired guy on the shoulder to realize he was too short or, his shoulders weren’t broad enough.