Fight With Fire

18

I burst into the theater making a noise that echoes on the walls and through the room. The sound scares Charlie causing him to stop in the middle of a song. I immediately regret my outburst and walk down the aisle and take a seat. The soft velvet of the seat calms me a little bit as I dig my hands into it. When I release the fabric there are scratches from my finger nails. I let out a breath and look up to see Charlie studying me.

"Ella, are you okay? Did something happen?" Everything from my conversation with Adrian is playing on repeat.

"I'm fine Charlie. Just another nightmare." I motion for Charlie to continue but he doesn't.

"First of all, that is not 'fine' and I don't believe you." Charlie puts down his instrument and walks towards me. He sits next to me and waits for me to say something.

"What do you want from me? Confess all my biggest secrets? Everyone is struggling with something here. What about you, huh? You are still hiding this from everyone and you get less sleep than me. You are being so hypocritical expecting me to share everything with you when you tell me nothing." Charlie stares at me and I think about what I just said. I take an angry breath.

"I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated and tired and confused." Charlie raises his eyebrows at me. "Don't look at me like that." Charlie shakes his head and laughs slightly. Sometimes it is hard to believe that he is younger than me.

"Okay if I'm being so hypocritical than what do you want to know?" I cross my arms stubbornly knowing that I don't have an answer. "You are right, I am struggling. I play this beautiful music that is lost because of history. I hide it because no one will be able to appreciate it. I feel like I am a traitor if I share it with the public. It deserves to be lost in history as something beautiful, not ruined and forgotten anyway." I shake my head.

"You don't know that will happen. And what do you mean about all this history." Now Charlie is shaking his head.

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Exactly. I can't understand your problems and you can't understand mine." We stare at each other knowing that there is a lot of truth to my words. We are very different and although we are both struggling, there is a little we can do to help each other. Charlie smiles sadly at me.

"Everything is scarier when you face it alone." I nod.

"But you don't have to be alone anymore." I turn to him as I say this hoping to get my point across.

"Neither do you." We silently agree that although we both need help, neither of us are going to do something about it.

Charlie gets up and walks up the small stairs to the stage and sits on his chair. He plays a soft melody that instantly calms me. Charlie seems so far away as always. I wonder if this is his escape. His one moment where he can disconnect from everything that he hates about this world. Like if I touched him, I would push him into his own world. If only that were possible and I could save him from this world.

He seems so happy when he is playing his music but when he stops those small eyes become unreadable. He's like his music box which seems like a useless piece of junk but you can't appreciate it until you wind it up and hear it play. He said that music should be left alone so it stays beautiful or else it will be ruined. Does that mean that he will stop playing? If he is a music box and he has nothing to wind him up, then will he be lost or forgotten?

I shake these thoughts out of my head as I watch those strong hands of his pluck the strings. Then he starts singing and I sink back becoming one with my seat. My mind swirls with thoughts that collide and combine to create one big ball that is hammering against my skull.

The desire that Adrian described seems so obvious and yet seems so much more complicated. John knows my Aerdell but refused to tell me. He hinted that it had something to do with climbing the building and there have been weirder Aerdells but this still seems wrong.

Organizing my thoughts feels like building a spider web. It is very confusing while building but in the end it will seem so simple, so obvious. Right now I don't know where to start building the web and I'm stuck in my own string.

I look up to Charlie who is finishing up on his song. Out of everything I am trying to figure out there is one small thing I can try to understand.

"Charlie, what did you mean when you were talking about our history?"