Hannah

Hannah worries about getting a job.  She worries about her father's drinking.  She worries that to keep him, she'll have to give up everything else.

Hannah:  I need a job. 

I have to get a job, I can’t fucking believe it, well I can believe it, but I don’t want to.

My father says not to worry, not yet.  He says we’re not there yet.  He’s not, but I am.  He doesn’t get that worry is almost a superstitious thing with me, like I believe if I worry enough, the bad things won’t happen. 

If I don’t worry enough, then I won’t get to go to college, and I will have to quit the swim team, and I will have to quit babysitting even, because I will have to get a job that I’ll go to every day after school until probably midnight, and then I’ll have to do my homework, and my grades will drop—

But we won’t have to live in our car.  Hell, maybe we’ll still have a car. 

I don’t want to tell my Dad that he shouldn’t have done what he did.  He shouldn’t have kept a cooler of ice and an open bottle of vodka, V-8 Splash and a big red cup in his trunk.  I don’t think that it would be right to criticize him, because he drinks because of me, because of it’s hard to raise a girl on your own and its hard to teach kids all day and then come home to another kid.  It’s hard when your kid doesn’t do the grocery shopping and complains you didn’t leave her money and that’s why there’s nothing to eat for dinner except a box of macaroni and cheese that’s been in the pantry “since your mother died.”

I don’t want to tell him to stop saying these things because then he will get mad and leave and I’ll have no one.

I don’t want to tell him he’s wrong because he’s really the nicest guy deep down and actually I don’t want him to stop drinking because he has to get a break, he works so hard and anyway, he’s nicer when he’s had a few drinks.

It’s never a few.

I’m such a liar!  He always tells me that, that I’m a liar when I tell him I didn’t have Brian over when I was babysitting, and I’m not sleeping with him and I don’t smoke pot and I’m doing the best I can.  He says I’m a liar because I always act like everything’s so hard when I have it so easy, I only have to go to school and—

I’m a liar for saying I have to get a job.

But who’s going to pay to get the lights turned back on?  Who’s going to pay the cable bill for him because he says how’s he going to relax without his TV, and I have some mouth on me and not everyone wants to read a book after a long day and his head hurts so leave him alone—

He should just leave, he says after he’s had six drinks.  He should be able to do what he wants, he’s earned that because he’s been working since he was sixteen and he put himself through college and grad school, and who the fuck do they think they are at that school that they think they can get along without him and who the fuck do I think I am whining about getting a job when I have it so good?

It sounds bad, but I love him, even if he says I’m a liar and I don’t really.  Lie, I mean. 

I love him, and I want him to have his cable and his vodka and everything that will make him happy and make him love me—

And never leave me.

Kayla/Somebody's Daughter

Kayla is a frequent OGW writer.  Her story, along with those of Nancy, Casey and Rain, became the inspiration for a new novel, Somebody's Daughter.  Read the first 21 pp. of Somebody's Daughter at http://www.writing.com/authors/shelley2007.  Read more from Kayla, Casey, Rain and Nancy in OGW:  10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11, 3/25.  Here's a little more from Kayla:

Somebody’s Daughter

Kayla:  Interview 4; recorded Monday, 9/13/10 at 3:35 pm:

I’m recording this now because Mommy you need to know this, you need to hear me, please don’t be mad:  

Here’s what happens when a heart breaks:  You feel it in your back and around my ribs.  The focal point is in your heart, a heavy coldness that spins inside, jagged edges cutting out your center, your self.  The pain extends around like a rope, tying all of you into the loss.

Your stomach feels empty, even though you’ve just eaten a small mountain of chips and spicy melted cheese hoping to fill it and be a normal teenager again, when you’ll never be normal or quirky or pretty or promising or loveable...

You can’t fill yourself, and you grasp with your fingers, without even thinking about it – your fingers open and close, reach and pull.  You want to get something, anything inside.  Even if it’s anger.  Or self-loathing.

Nothing can go right when your heart is breaking.  You get out your paints to try and show the darkness inside on the outside, and the brush flies out of your hand and is lost under the bed where you can’t reach without getting a splinter in your belly. Jesus fucking Christ Give Me a Break!  You yell in a whisper at the ceiling and at all the Gods of all the religions who let this happen to you.  

You get out another brush and paint anyway, but the color over color over color turns to mud, and it only drags your spirit into the mess of your aching body and the final picture doesn’t cover the hole inside you, it makes you cry, and before long you’re  wailing as you try to paint the canvas, and fail, and start painting yourself brown and ugly like you feel.  

You feel like everything you’ve worked for – hoping and dreaming and praying so hard – it was all a lie, a great cosmic lie.  The way you felt just hours before the party – swollen with excitement, fat with pleasure, open to possibilities, one with the whole fucking fabric of the universe or some shit, well it’s all gone now because it wasn’t just waking up and not remembering, and it wasn’t just finding the only boy you ever loved in the room with your best friend -- it wasn’t just your innocence…

It was all of you.

Allison

Allison has a weight problem, which she believes is why her boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend.  While she exercises and listens to random music, she discovers that she is worth more than she thought.  She is "good enough."

Allison:  My mother bought doughnuts.

They're downstairs.

I hear them calling my name.  Just kidding.  That was a stupid joke, not even funny.  Not even a joke.  Just stupid.  God, I'm stupid and fat. 

     My eyelids are drooping.  Gotta stay awake.  Five am, holy crap attack, WTF am I doing?  Exercising.  Me. 

     Weird.

     Wack job.

     (Wack job who just wants someone to love her.)

     Doughnuts:  "Allison, come eat us..."

     Turning up the music -- Bono singing "Children of the Revolution",

"You won't stop children of the revolution..."

"Aaaa-llison, eat me..."

Okay, that was kinda funny.  But seriously, gotta focus.  Mandy, older sister, bitch, banging on the wall.  Turn down the music.  Decide to put on iPod.  Down on the floor with my mother's old "Ab Slide" which I found in the basement, in an area of sorry stuff I call "As Seen on TV Fitness Junk".  OMG, I am hysterical.

Slide once out and in with the Ab Slide and my knees crunch.  Get a pillow and kneel on that.  Slide, Slide.  This hurts my shoulders.  The song is "Before He Cheats," Carrie Underwood.  How appropriate.  Stupid shit stupid Jared stupid fuckhead stupid pot smoking dipshit creep.

Wow, that woke me up.  Start Ab Sliding faster.

Earbud wire gets rolled over, then tangled, and buds fall out of my ears.  Put them back in.  Song:  Concrete Blonde, "Mendocino."  Oldie but goodie-- "If I could be with you again/I would fall all over you like a rain."

Stop Sliding.

Stretch.  Think about DOUGHNUTS.  Don't think about doughnuts.  Dance in front of the mirror (song:  Flobots, "Handlebars"... "I can tie a knot in a cherry stem")  I can.  Tie a knot in a cherry stem, I mean.  With my tongue.  And yet dumbshit Jared messed around with Eleanor, and what kind of name is that anyway?  Better than "Allison", I guess.

Everything's better than Allison, I guess.  Everyone is better than Allison, I guess. 

Fat.  Smart enough to "ruin the curve" -- that's what they say, "Allison, you ruined the curve." No style.  Half the music on my iPod is my sister's or my mother's, how pathetic.  Loser!

Downstairs, past the doughnuts (DOUGHNUTS).  Listening to Christina Aquilera, "Beautiful", change it to "Fighter" -- "After all you put me through/ You'd think I'd despise you/ But in the end I want to thank you/Cause you made me that much stronger"-- yeah, right. That's why I Ab Slided (Slid?) for a whole minute.  Sign me up for the Olympics.

OMG, I've got to get moving.  Five-thirty.  Half hour to doughnuts if I run. 

Past the Beecher's old house.  Their daughter, Eleanor.  As in Jared was feeling her up in the hall during cheerleading practice which he thought I was at but I got kicked off the team and left early because I can't do a split and I don't look good in a short skirt either...

That Eleanor.

Huff Puff.  "All Apologies," Nirvana.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention Eleanor used to be my neighbor and best friend and I've known her since I was two years old?  That Jared met her when she was with me?

Eleanor had to move away from our block.  Song:  "Sleeps with Butterflies," Tori Amos.  Anyway, Eleanor moved last year. Foreclosure on her house.  Now she lives in a dirty little apartment with her loser father who never comes home and actually does heroin, I mean truthfully, does heroin, which is like, heroin?  A Dad who does heroin.  Freaks me out to think about it.

Slowing down.  "Solitude stands by the window," (Suzanne Vega).  Eleanor is so alone.  She needs Jared.  But I need Jared.  We all need someone.  That's gotta be a song, but not one on my iPod or not one I can think of right now because there's hardly any oxygen getting to my brain anymore.  Pant gulp pant.

This is not even running!  I am walking.  My lungs burn.  My shoulder hurts.  It's dark and it's cold.  I am tired.  I press forward on the iPod.  Now, Evanescence, "Immortal," singing, "I held your hand through all of these years," which is really me and Eleanor, not me and Jared.  Screw Jared.  I pick up the pace.

Miley Cyrus, "Hoedown Showdown"... "Put your hawk in the sky move side to side--" whatever the hell that means, but I'm singing out loud anyway.  Really moving now (!!!)--

Dance-walking.

Jogging!

Running -- "We will be Victorious" (Muse, "Uprising)

"Smells Like Teen spirit"

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"

Eddie Vedder

Natasha Bedingfield

More Muse and Nirvana Christina Aquilera Cyndi Lauper Jimmy Eats World Vivaldi Blue October Avril Levigne more Christina Flobots L'il Kim Fleetwood Mac (?) Patti Smith Go Go Go Go Go Run Run Run I am Allison I am

Good enough.

Cherish

Cherish:  New Outsider Girl Cherish is a young mother, trying to complete high school and still raise her son Jonah with love and attention.

     Cherish: “But I don’t like school.  I want to stay with you,” my son says, pushing out his lower lip.

     My heart breaks for just an instant, and then I’m back on task.

     “Jonah, you have to go to school.  Mommy has to go to school.  Same as every day.  It’s the same every day!  Come3 on baby, why do you have to do this to me?  Put on your shoes.”

     “No.”

     “Jonah!”  I break.  I grab him hard and pull him to me.  I shove his feet into his sneakers.  “You don’t need me to dress you, Jonah.  You’re a big boy.”

     He clutches at me, but falls when I move back too quickly.

     Great, now he’s crying.  Great, that means there will be no time to make my lunch or get to my first class on time, and it’s all his fault and I hate—

     Pulling him into a hug, I say, “It’s okay, baby.  Mommy’s here.  I love you so much, baby.”

     “Can I go with you today?  I want to stay with you,” he says, pouting again, tears stopped in their tracks on his cheeks, guilting me until I wipe them away with my sleeve.

     I’m angry again.  Everyday we have this stupid argument!  He thinks I don’t want to be with him, but I am with him almost all the time.  After school, I don’t do my homework, I play knights and pirates with him.  I read to him, I bathe him, I feed him a fucking butter sandwich because he won’t eat the grilled cheese with bacon that I made specially for him.  I watch “Tutenstein” and “Little Bill”. 

     And after he’s in bed, when he gets up at ten o’clock, when I’ve finally has time to start my own homework – when he comes out of our room into the living room and my mother yells, “Jonah get your ass back in bed this minute!” and he tilts his head, smiles and says, “One more hug kiss?”…

     I drop everything, and I hug his scrawny body, kiss him on the lips and tuck his head under my chin so I can suck up the scent of baby that still lingers in his hair even though he’s already four.

     I will never graduate if I don’t get to school.  I will get another zero today on my homework. 

     “Quit babying him Cherish,” my mother says.

     “Please can I go with you?” Jonah asks me.  “You can walk with your friends and I’ll be really quiet.”

     I laugh at that.

“Hey,” I say.  “How about if instead of Gran driving you, you walk with me and my friends.”

“Cherish, honest to God in His Kingdom, how you gonna ever make something of your life if you don’t start teaching him life is what it is and get used to it, so what it sucks!  Get yourself to school girl!  Come on Jonah.  You with me.”

Zipping Jonah’s hoodie, I say to my mother.  “Naah Ma, he’s with me today.”

She looks at me like I’m the stupidest child who ever walked the earth.  She rolls her eyes.  “I’m gonna be late for work,” she says.  Leaving, she doesn’t even stop to kiss her grandson.

I pull him close.  “One more hug kiss,” I say.  We hold on tight for each other, believing that no matter what anyone says, we’re going to make it.

So what if we’re a little late. 

Kayla

Kayla is caught up in a bad situation at Brian Kepler’s party…  Kayla has been a frequent character at OGW, and is now a main character in my next book, Somebody’s Daughter.  To catch up with Kayla and her friends in earlier parts of this thread, read OGW 10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11.

Kayla:  I feel weird.  Everyone is looking, and I don’t like to be looked at.  I’m Rain’s best friend, but I’m not like her, especially not tonight.  She’s more than her usual self, like possessed or something. 

“Come on, Kayla,” Rain whispers.  “You want Brian to notice you!”

I look around the hot tub.  Brian isn’t noticing me, that’s true.  He doesn’t even know I’m here.  I want to pretend he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and he isn’t talking to me because he respects me too much to grab my breast the way he just did that other giggling girl, oh shit, I am a loser.  I can’t believe it took me two beers and this stupid, insanely stupid, visit to the hot tub for me to realize that.  Where is Casey?  I want to just go home, so I stand up. 

Like an idiot, like a little baby, I want to cry, and I’m just standing there, shivering, when Rain stands up next to me, and she’s all “Oh yeah, you go Kayla,” and she’s bumping my skinny hip to make me dance and now everyone is looking and we look so stupid, Shit Rain stop!

She doesn’t stop.  Before I can even say, “let’s go,” she’s pulled off her bikini top!  Before I can even grab her and pull her under the water and ask her what she’s on and why she’s doing this, before I can even—

She pulls off my top!  Holy shit!  My nipples are cold and hard, and I don’t feel good, but now Brian is looking, and he’s forgotten about the other skanks, and he’s cheering us on! 

Someone hands me a jello shot, which I swallow, and then a beer, which I chug, and then I, little, meek, pathetic eleventh-grader at a senior party, not-even-invited girl, I wiggle my hips, and dance with Rain.

She says, “They want to see a show, Kayla, should we give them a show?”

My head is a little swimmy.  I see Casey coming toward us, and she looks concerned and nervous and as if she’s about to put a stop to all this.  For a moment I’m torn between the comfort of my old self, promised by Casey, and the promise of following Rain’s lewd behavior and branding myself in Brian’s mind forever -- but then Brian’s best friends Kris and Damien from the basketball team, they get in the way so I can’t see Casey anymore.  All I see is how happy Rain and I are making the boys and I’m thinking, Brian will never forget me, and when Rain squirts me with beer, I squirt her back with the beer that magically appears in my hands, and now those other girls who were in the hot tub before have disappeared, fucking disappeared!  It’s all Rain, it’s all me!  We play fight, and everyone is cheering, everyone loves us.

We put on an awesome show.  Rain spreads beer foam on me and you won’t believe this, but I lick it off her stomach, because that’s what the crowd wants!  They love me!  Afterward, when I’m sweaty and breathless and drunk, Brian – Brian Kepler! -- gently lifts me out of the hot tub and ties my bathing suit top back on for me.

“You don’t belong up there” he says. He smiles at me!  He likes me, me!  “Come on,” he says, grinning, “let me get you a beer or something.”

Arm in arm, Brian and I walk to the keg, if you can call what I’m doing walking.  Really, it’s more like I’m floating.

Jenna

Jenna:  Jenna is from Spun, a novel I wrote about a girl with a crystal meth addiction.  Here, she’s been clean for several weeks, but her boyfriend Josh convinces her to get high again.

Jenna:  One sniff, and it’s back.

            Confidence, yes.  I mean, Yes!  Who did I think I was before, trying to be someone

            What?  Who?

            This is me.  The real me.

            All that tormenting of myself, wondering if I was worth anything, wondering if it was okay for Josh, or my mother, or drugs to complete me, and now here I am, and when Josh offers me the cd case again, I snort another line of meth without even thinking about it because all that crap about feeling my feelings was just crap, and now I feel it, I feel it all, it’s all good, and I’m all in my head:  Josh, Mom, Paige!  I love you guys!  Ruby!  And that great writer I love too, that Yann Martel who is totally awesome!

            Burning in my nose and brain, and I’m a little anxious and my thinking is going all over the place but so what!

            “Did you ever read Life of Pi?” I ask Josh, whose hands are on me, and it makes me uncomfortable (but I love him!  I do and it. is. all. good. smiles.) The author, Yann Martel said-- 

Don’t know why I’m talking to Josh about a book right now it’s crazy and has nothing to do with me really, and yet it does, because now everything means something.  I want to cry.

            “I love that you’re the smart one,” Josh says, kissing my neck.

            Hey!  I’m trying to talk here!

            Josh isn’t listening, but I say anyway, because I am so profound right now, and I am the smart one, why didn’t I see that before?  “Life and death, birth and love,”

            “Mm hmm,” Josh says. 

            Straighten up, Jenna.  I try to remember the whole quote from that author guy I love whose name I can’t even think of right now because I feel buzzy in my head, and it’s like every book I ever read is spinning around in there.  Suddenly, out of the whirl, I pull out, “Life and death, birth and love….They’re not problems, they’re life itself.”

            That’s it.  That’s me and my experience.  High on meth again, and it’s all in focus for an instant, and I’m not so sure anymore.

Josh doesn’t answer, but I don’t care, I’m just wishing I could get that initial buzz-burn back, that feeling of everything inside of me, but I can’t. 

            Whoa.  I am suddenly empty, I feel nothing.  When Josh tries to lift my shirt over my head, I say “No,” for the first time.

Caitlin

Caitlin’s younger brother Corey matters even more to her than her mermaid collection.  If she can’t have him in her life anymore, she doesn’t want anything…

Caitlin:  There’s an old glass salad bowl on my desk at home, full of mermaids.  All I have to do is reach in, and grab a memory.

     Like this one – She is missing her tail, so technically she’s a little girl with a sparkly bikini top and nothing on the bottom but jointed legs.  When I was four, my parents took me to Catalina Island, and they told me a story about the mermaid fairy, who lived off the shore of the island, and who brought good little girls mermaid dolls in their sleep.  I woke up in the morning with a little girl mermaid under my pillow, a mermaid as young as I was, but with a real tail that came off and everything.

     There’s a picture of a mermaid fountain outside a bar where my mother took me, six, and my baby brother.  We used to go there everyday after my mother picked me up from school, and stay until just before Daddy got home.  I ate grilled cheese.  She had a small bowl of lobster bisque and three vodka doubles rocks everytime.

     The mermaid with the broken tail fin.  I pick it up.  The ceramic is cool against my cheek.  The edge of the broken fin matches the scar on my eyebrow like a jigsaw puzzle.  Corey threw it at me when he was eight.  I needed seven stitches.  He said seven was his favorite number, and he cried.  He always loved me, and I always loved him, and we always had each other.

     Until I was fourteen.  He was ten.  It was the first time he was sent away.  My parents couldn’t control him.  He was ten, but he sent me a letter asking me if I could get him any acid and bring it when I visited.  I wasn’t allowed to visit, they said he wouldn’t get better if he always had me.  Here’s the mermaid I got in New Hampshire at Storyland, where my mother took me while my Dad visited Corey at “camp,” they called it.  I was too old for Storyland.  Corey was too young for “camp”.

     This silver mermaid on a leather cord was a gift from Corey the day my mother was a year sober, and Corey was home for the weekend.  He stole the mermaid, but I didn’t tell.  I never told.  He said he wanted to put a bomb in my mother’s car that would blow her up when she got in to go to one of her meetings with all her new friends.  He was so angry, always so angry at her.  I never told.

     The mermaid on a rock, topless, from the white elephant sale at the carnival where I met Corey when he was thirteen.  I brought him clothes and food.  He said he didn’t need it.  He smelled bad.  His teeth were brown.  One was blacked out from a fight.  He wore an old army jacket from my Dad’s closet. He said, “That’s a nice mermaid, Kath.”  He said goodbye.

     I don’t have a mermaid for today, but I found this head, copper colored with flowing hair, and it could be a mermaid’s head.  I place it in the bowl.  My Mass card doesn’t have a mermaid on it either, but I place it in the bowl, too. 

     When I was five, I told my mother everyday, “I want a baby.”  She’d be tired, and her hair would be wild, andf she only wanted to kiss me goodnight, her good girl, and she’d say, “If we have another baby, it will cost money and time.  What if we can’t get you that mermaid costume you want?”  I said that was okay, I just wanted a little brother or sister.  She said she’d think about it.  In the end, she got me the mermaid costume anyway, and a mermaid Barbie too, that I used to take a bath with.  It’s in the bowl with its glamorous eyes stained from our hard water. 

     “Goodbye Corey,” I say.  Then I pick up the bowl and throw it.  Mermaids and memories break and scatter and I suck in air, but it won’t come.