Thursday, October 28, 2010

Allison


Allison has both weight and self-esteem issues.  She takes most of her self-image from what others think of her, especially boys.  Here, she tries to make herself into a doll.  Allison first appeared in OGW 4/8/10.

Allison:  I was going through this box of my things from like around fifth grade, and I found this doll with blond hair like mine only better of course because it’s smooth and straight and goes down to the doll’s butt.  I’ve been growing my hair out for a year, and my hair only just goes past my shoulders, plus it’s ragged and all different lengths from when I stupidly had it cut short and “sassy” – that was the word I used, and…
Where was I?
     Oh yeah, the doll.  So, I uncover this doll and I realize that I have a black shirt with a pink skull on it just like the doll is wearing, and I have pink sneakers and the perfect pink and black plaid skort that’s in my “thin clothes” drawer, but maybe I can fit in it.
Maybe I can be just like this doll.  I want to be like a doll.  I want her smile.
The shorts part of the skort squeezes my thighs, but with black leggings underneath, it’s not so bad. 
The doll is flat in front.  My skull shirt is baggy and hides my humungous alien breasts pretty well, and my tummy too, kinda.  I can be a doll.
With a Sharpie marker, I put pink streaks in my hair like the doll has.  I know, I know, Sharpies are permanent ink… I know my Mom is going to tell me this, if she notices at all.
I am going to tell everyone at school that they made a doll after me.  I am going to tell Trevor and he’s going to say “Of course they’d do that, because you’re a doll, Allison!”
And then I’ll smile, secure like my doll.  

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Lola


Lola is another Fant, like Aleia (OGW 10/14) and Gemma (OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, 5/27, 7/29, 9/16).  Lola – half-mermaid -- was thrown back to sea by her parents and almost drowned before she came to live with her Fant family.  Maybe this is why she is the angriest, most distrusting and solitary of the Fants.

Lola:  “There’s nobody ho-ome, nobody home,” I sing with my earbuds stuffed deep. 
     It’s hard to dance in the little bedroom of our one-bedroom, four bed apartment, but I’ve moved the space heater to rest on the bottom bunk, Aleia’s bed.  Probably going to go up in flames, but I don’t care.
     That’s what everyone thinks, that I don’t care.
     Well, maybe I don’t.  Not right now!  I think as I front-kick across the nine foot width of the room, listening to Avril Levigne sing, “She’s lost inside/Lost inside…”
     I’m pent-up energy, a snake hissing inside, coiling and uncoiling, rattling.  I am myself, scales on my legs, green face, shark teeth – the whole Fant package, half mermaid, half really really pissed off girl.
     I don’t even know what I’m angry at.  A lot of times, I don’t even know.
     I just know that this morning Luke said something about Gemma being in trouble, and it’s not that I’m jealous – what do I have to be jealous of – but suddenly I was clacking my sharp teeth together like I was going to bite someone’s head off.
     I could do it, too.  That’s the scary part.  These guys are my family, but I could seriously bite one of them sometimes.  That’s why, when they went out to gather supplies for a rescue of their precious new fairy friend, I laced up my punky boots, put on a black dress with zippers and studs I got on St. Mark’s Place last week, and scrolled down to Avril on my iPod.
     Well, our iPod.  Me, Aleia, Ian, Luke, we share everything.  Nothing’s mine.  No.  Thing.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Aleia


Aleia is a “Fant” (short for “Fantasy Creature”, also, child of a parent who was addicted to magic).  Her mother smoked Sylph, the most dangerous of the magical drugs, and as a result, when Aleia tries to feel any kind of emotion, she turns to air.  Aleia is a new friend of Gemma’s, the Fairy-girl in OGW 9/24/09, 10/29/09, 2/4/10, 5/27, 7/29, 9/16.  Both girls appear in the novel I’m working on, Wings.

Aleia:  Sometimes I think the worst thing about being part-Sylph is not being able to feel my heart beat.  Or break.
     After Gemma leaves to find out more about her mother, for a moment I feel something, something like a soreness inside, something like a green stick bending bending bending until –
     The image blows away, and so do I. 
     See, the thing with us Fants is that our emotions bring out the elements of our deformities.  I’m the most deformed of all.  I don’t get to just sport a fancy glowing horn-nub like Luke, or have long, luxurious hair like Lola.  Sure she has scales, but only on her legs, and she can cover them if she wants.
     Me, I turn to smoke.  Wind, if I’m really upset.  Polluted wind, that’s what it feels like when my heart breaks.
     Gemma wants to find her mother, who smoked Fairy Dust.  Big deal, right?  Not to me.  My mother smoked Sylph, smoked the actual spirit of the air, made the spirits disappear and made herself disappear finally, like she always wanted.
     Floating near the ceiling, not joining in the conversation with my friends as they discuss Gemma and whether they can trust her and where she came from and all that stuff that I don’t want to hear because it’s what made that beding greenstick feeling happen and then made me change from little girl to air…
     Anyway, I am what I am. 
     My mother never could be.  She was so tiny, with fingers like slender bird bones that floated over the piano keys.  I liked to lie under the grand piano we had and the instrument was my sky, and I could put my hands up and touch it, feel the sky, feel it vibrate.  Feel my mother’s heart, in her music.
     Hear her voice, like sparkling drops of rain or sharp jewels… flowing like a stream or racing like a river… everything, everywhere.  Mine.
     But her music was all she had, all she thought she had.  Forget my father or me -- she did.  Forget that she made her first album when she was nineteen and she went on tour and she had fans and everyone said she was the next big thing.
     She wasn’t, and so after a while, she forgot.  She forgot everything, except how to play and sing and cry.  Eventually, to smoke.  Smoke Sylph until she disappeared into the breeze, and it was just the way she wanted it, I think, to be the air moving the chimes outside the window, but not to be in the real world of solid things like broken dreams and hearts.
     The ache in me makes me swell, like a dark cloud.  But I cannot rain.  I cannot feel what I want to feel, like everyone else.  I can only sink into a shadow in the corner, and imagine that my heart is broken because I will never have a mother again.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Maree


(add your comments) to Maree’s rant about what to do when you’re really mad…

Maree:
What to do when someone yells at you and you didn’t do anything!….

“key” your leg so no one sees
punch yourself in the stomach
get drunk smoke dope forget
eat a bowl of Phish food with whipped cream
eat another bowl of Phish food with whipped cream
yell really loud in your car
yell back!
tear a notebook in half
run around the block
run up and down the stairs over and over
count to one thousand
look at your hurt face in the mirror
swear a blue streak, whatever that means
go to your room and chain-smoke
get some fresh air
dig your toes in dirt
take a nap
cry cower run
          away