Capturing Mercy

Chapter 1

I always walk down the halls in school smoking, ear buds in, pills in my bag incase someone pisses me off. And I'm not some sort of badass who acts tough. Also not a Call of Duty, Eminem fanatic who checks her shoes for a scoff mark every five seconds. No, see, Im the type to listen to classics. The originals. The first violins and backup harmony. Classical music. The one who sits on her bed reading, and sometimes lays her book on her theigh, thumb as her page-saver, and looks out the window, tracing the rain. The one who doesn't have the perfect family, but still has one. I seem ordinary, only I'm not.

English comes first. Im pretty smart with words, not numbers. We all are. Teens, babies, parents, all of the diaries in our minds speaking words even if we don't know how to physically. Some diaries are more advanced then others, remembering conversations completely, word for word, an expression for each. Some have entries from before we learned to write. We don't need paper, we have our memories.

I sit in my chair in the back of the room, always on time, calm. The wind is cooling today, the only thing good about this Monday, and the breeze makes it way to the surface of my skin. The teacher takes attendance, scanning over the room, puts down her pen and begins to talk about the arts of Shakespeare, my que to tune out.

When the period ends, I stay. No one questions me as usual, and I leave when third period bell rings, heading up to the music room.

One thing that should very much be band is touching the instruments if you do not know how to play them. The screeching of the violins when idiots play the E string, the pounding of the non-repetitive rhythm of the drums, and the keys of the piano just being hit on like a child didn't know any better.

But the guitar. The guitar's sound was gorgeous. Non-sarcastically speaking, I paced the room in a curious manner, and found the source of the beautiful playing. He gorgeous. I stammered in my thoughts, its gorgeous, not completely agreeing with myself.

His hair was pitch black, messily brushed with his fingers, bangs pushed upward into a quiff, allowing his pale forehead to be shown. His hollow eyes looked past me out the window, looking as if reading the sheet music out of the the thinness of the air. He was so ugly, nothing more then a sidekick to his jock friend Michael and a loser, according to the "Mean Girls" of Tessett High.

I sat down to the empty seat next to him silently and careful not to disturb him. For the next 50 minutes I listened to him play. When music was over I skipped lunch and hummed the familiar melody that my mom used to sing to me on the way home.