Bodie Jamison. The enigmatic drummer of Soundcrush,always hiding his pain behind his laughter.
Bodie has two habits he can't quit.
Heroin and Arabella Burns.
What happens when Marley Watkins--Soundcrush's favorite over-the-phone-counselor who ha...
Here we go---the first chapter of Bodie's book belongs to Marley! I really think she has some explaining to do, don't you?
Dark Horse is the song, because Marley is looking like a bit of a dangerous sorceress to Bodie in this chapter. Ironic that he sees Marley as far more dangerous to him than Arabella, at this point.
Our first look at Jasmine/Marley. Yes, I don't usually do this, but I'm faceclaiming a celebrity for this one (Halsey). Only because I wanted an authentically biracial person to illuminate the point that racial identity does not always perfectly align with one's appearance. Halsey for example, looks white but says she identifies as black, and she continually changes her appearance to reflect her mood, not her race, and doesn't really worry about "appropriating" anything. She's just herself. Which is what Marley does at this point in her life. Marley and Bodie both have to say about their identity as the story progresses. Anyway....here's a side by side of our "Smart Girl" as both Jasmine and Marley:
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Marley
All my life, people have told me what a smart girl I am. It started when I was three years old and I could sing the Star Spangled Banner perfectly, pronouncing all the words without any errors. My dad used to take me to Fenway to see the Red Sox play, and when people heard me, singing my tiny heart out, they would tell me, "You're such a smart girl."
I kept hearing how smart I was...all the way to the age of fifteen when I finished high school via homeschooling and made a perfect score on the ACT. College recruiters from all over the country said what "an intelligent young woman" I was and were eager to help me plan my future.
I didn't really believe it anymore, though. Because right around my sixteenth birthday, I found a well-hidden packet of paperwork in my parent's home while I was looking for a place to hide a Christmas present, and I realized I had failed to make two crucial observations that almost any person of normal intelligence should have seen.
I had failed to pick up on the clues my whole life—that I was adopted, and that I was biracial.
Maybe it was because I was home schooled and very sheltered. Or maybe it's just because I'm very light-skinned with racially ambiguous hair. People sometimes accuse me now of being "white-passing" on the rare occasions I share that I'm bi-racial, but the truth is, growing up I didn't know I was "passing." I thought I was white. My parents told me my olive skin came from our Italian heritage, because they didn't want to tell me the truth—that I was adopted.
When I finally figured it out...I freaked. My whole identity was called into question.
I started to do dumb shit
I mean, really dumb shit.
Instead of confronting my parents about the secret they had kept from me my whole life, I ran away from home at sixteen. Mine was an open adoption because I guess my parents thought one day they would share the information about my birth mother with me. Her name, a photograph of her, and an old address was included in my adoption paperwork. So I copied down all that information and used it to find her. When I did—not in Birmingham like she had been, but in Atlanta now— the things she told me sent me into a real tailspin.
