Juliet

Juliet:  I don’t want to do it.

     I have to do it.

     I don’t want to—

     Have to--

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

I can.  Juliet, you can do it, you’ll be okay, I tell myself.

You’re not dying, it just feels that way.  It’s just a panic attack. 

Wiping cool sweat from my brow, I hit the space bar on my laptop, waking it up.  Open Safari, sign in to Youtube.  Open iMovie, and I’m almost ready to record. 

I don’t want to do this, but I have to because I can’t breathe and it helps when I’m someone else, performing, playing to my fans but also revealing something from deep inside, my voice--

I am a star, I whisper inside, afraid of what I might say if I dare to speak -- that it might be the wrong thing, that someone’ll get hurt if I even breathe.

Pulling my hair back, I stuff it into the piece of black stocking I use so no one will recognize me.  Sometimes, all I wear is the stocking.  Sometimes I pull it down over my forehead, eyes and nose. 

Today, I put on a snarled Hannah Montana wig from when I was ten and loved Hannah Montana and loved to parade around pretending to be her and now I don’t know who I’m pretending to be anymore or if I’m pretending at all.

Next, a Mardi Gras feathered mask over the upper half of my face.  Then, get my wastebasket.  At last, with the tap of a key, I am recording.  Show’s on!

     Sticking a finger down my throat, I throw up for the camera.

Emily

  Emily:  Pills.

     They’re all over my house.  My Dad takes Vitamin D, a multivitamin, and right now, an antibiotic.  The dog takes doggie-profen and glucosamine.  My brother and I each take three vitamins a day, chewables because he’s only five, and me?  I won’t swallow a pill.  
     Drives my mother nuts.

     She easily swallows her pills, tiny handfuls of them.  She keeps them ordered and ready in one of those big, rectangular pill boxes, only she had to adapt hers, putting stickers over the pre-written days because she takes different combinations of pills on schedule, four times a day.  She keeps the bottles in a big basket in her room.  One day, I checked them out.  Just checked them out.  I wasn’t going to take any.  I won’t swallow a pill.

     Vitamin D, 2000 mg.

     Vitamin D, 1000 mg.

     Multivitamin

     Algaecal (?!)
     Women’s weight loss plus supplement

     Tramadol

     Trazodone

     Cyclobenzaprine

     Neurontin, 100 mg.

     Neurontin, 600 mg.

     Synthroid

     Abilify

     Lorazapam

    

 Me, I won’t swallow a pill.

     ...But I will snort them. ;)  

Liz

     Liz:  I hate my mother.  I hate my mother, hate my mother, hate my mother, hate HATE MY MOTHER, hate her.
     Because of her, I want to die.  No joke, I really do.  I can't go back to class.  I can't.  I can't, ever.
     I'm done for.  It's all her fault.
  
     It started in 6th grade, when I got my first period.  I mean, what happened, happened today of course, but it wouldn't have happened if my mother hadn't been crazy.  It wouldn't have happened if she let me use tampons like the rest of the freakin world.
     She said, no joke, that she didn't want me to lose my virginity so young.  In 6th grade.  When she gave me my first pad, and I said Anna used tampons.  My mother said if Anna's mother wanted her to grow up and be a slut, that was fine, but she wasn't going to let me, she didn't want me to lose my virginity... (to a tampon, OMG!)
     I mean, I didn't think that at the time.  It sounded hinky, but I was like, okay Mommy, because what did I know?  Maybe a tampon was just the same as a penis.
     That's a lie -- I knew it was different, even in 6th grade, I knew it wasn't the same, but even so, I wore the pad, and so on and so forth, until now.  Until today.
     And it had to be a big, white, diaper of a pad -- not one of those ultra thin, deodorized, with wings pads.  Which is why I could never wear pants when I had my period.  I was sure the outline of my pad would show.  I didn't want anyone to know I had my period, of course, but also I was embarrassed to be wearing a pad when everyone else I knew used tampons.
    So that's why I was wearing a skirt today.  That's how come I can't ever go back to class.  Why I'm going to sneak away as soon as the nurse leaves me alone, gonna sneak away out of school out of here, OUT OF HERE, thanks Mom.
    I'll just say it.  You probably figured it out, but I'll just say it.  I was in Social Studies class, and Mr. Lynch asked me to collect the homework, and I was walking up and down the rows when I felt it between my legs.  My pad!  Slipped, out of my underwear.  I clamped my legs shut.  I started to cry.  I couldn't move.  I said I had to go to the nurse, but I couldn't move and everyone thought I'd gone crazy or something, but it was worse than that.
     I don't know why I didn't just stay put, not move until the bell rang and everyone left and let them think I was crazy.  Maybe I thought the pad hadn't slipped all the way.  Maybe I thought if I ran fast enough I could outrun reality, outrun shame.
     You know what happened.  The pad landed on the floor.  I acted like it wasn't mine, and no one said anything, just their mouths dropped open and it was silent.  Silent as death.  My death.
     I can never go back.
     I will never go home.
     I hate my mother.
     Now you know why.

Nora

Nora:  I follow Gina into her room, and then freeze.  Maybe my mouth hangs open for a moment, but I quickly shut it and continue into the room – pretending I’m not humbled, awed, diminished? By the hundreds of pictures of supermodels.  Cut-outs from magazines paper the walls.  The dresser drawers.  The closet door.  Even the headboard of Gina’s bed is a rainbow of eyes, faces, bodies.

I guess I didn’t hide my surprise so well, because Gina says, “My mom and I cut out pictures of women we admire.  They’re for inspiration.”

For what?  I wonder.

As if she read my mind, Gina says, “It’s supposed to help me get thin.”

“Uh huh,” I say.  So lame. 

Gina crosses the floor, her corduroys swishing because of her thighs rubbing together.  That’s exactly why I never wear corduroys.  But if Gina is embarrassed, it doesn’t show.  Still, after patting down a curled corner on one of the pictures, she turns to me – a long way from supermodel thin.  A long way from any kind of thin – and she says, “I don’t think it’s working, and I don’t know why.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’m bulimic.”

I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I already do, with all those beautiful eyes staring at me.  But I do feel smaller, less than.  And something burns in me – jealousy.

Juliet

Juliet:  I will never take off these socks, I think to myself.

I will take them off, but I will never wash them, I’ll save them, the socks that are filling with dirt as I press my heels into the side of the hill, off the path that leads away from Griffith Park Observatory.

There are people just above us, looking out at the lights of L.A. in the distance I hope, and not down into the dark hillside to the dark shadows which are Raif and I.  This is not how I expected my first time to be.

My mouth is raw from kissing Raif, kissing that started outside the theater, as soon as we got into his car.  Kissing that almost got out of control in the parking lot outside Starbucks, then turned tender inside, where we sat in front of the fake fireplace and ignored our coffee.

I have to pee, I think.  My underwear, down around my ankles, is probably getting full of dirt.  This hurts.  I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  I’m sliding a little down the hill and rocks are scraping my butt.  We didn’t go to Raif’s apartment because he said he wanted to take me someplace special.  This is special.

Stop complaining, Juliet, this is special.  We’re under the stars.  We’re in love.  I love Raif and he loves me.  How long is this supposed to last?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking, Juliet.  You’re not supposed to be thinking at all!

This is so awesome!  I’m having sex!  Me, Juliet, Never Been Kissed Juliet. 

And Raif is not old, like Michael said.  He’s twenty-four. 

Raif grunts softly, then sighs, long and deep.  Rolling to the side, staying on the flannel shirt he laid down for us, he pulls me close.  He sucks on my neck, and I realize too late that he’s giving me a hickey, which I know I should be happy about because it means I’m his, and it’s not like he’s branding me like a cow, it’s not. 

Only now I have to tell my mother.

I worry too much.

“Your skin is so soft,” Raif whispers.

“My boot!” I say as I grab for it, rolling down the hill. 

Raif scrambles down a few feet after it.  His ass is pale in the moonlight.  Skinny, the knobs of his pelvis show when he turns over.  Like me, like me!

“I think I love you,” I say, my fingers holding tightly to my boots, nervous fingers because I never said that to a guy before.

Raif smiles and kisses me.  Crushing my Doc Martens between us, and we start to slide again.  My underwear is sticky and cold, and dirty and gross.  Raif didn’t say he loved me back, but that’s okay.  Of course he loves me, or we wouldn’t be here.

“I have to pee,” I say, giggling.  

Meghan

Meghan:  has just come out of rehab for the second time, and she’s only seventeen!  Meghan has appeared previously in OGW 12/3/09 and 6/10/10.

Meghan:  Seriously.  Seriously.  Is this it?  Sitting in a damp church basement room that smells like old turkey gravy, listening to some bleached blond in a sweater set who’s trying to look thirty-something but it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s actually fifty-something, listening to her tell us that the “Our Father”, the fucking “Our Father” is really the (fucking) “Lord’s Prayer,” and we should look it up.  Seriously.  I should look that up.

     “Thank you Sharon,” the group says in one voice, like the automatons, the sober robots they are.

     “Eat me Sharon,” is what I say, but under my breath, so they don’t hear.

     In my hand, I hold on tightly to the form the chairperson has to sign to prove I came here, sat through this bullshit for a whole freaking hour of my life that I’ll never get back.  Sat through this, my first AA meeting.

Juliet

Juliet was the main character in a novel I didn't finished, Let Her Cry.  I'm reworking the novel, but this part probably won't appear in it.  Still, it's something Juliet needs to say...

Let her Cry

By Juliet Lourdes

Setting:  a small home in Los Angeles, CA

Characters:

Juliet:  sixteen

Cristina:  Juliet’s mother, late forties

Dan/Danny:  Juliet’s father, early forties

Scene one:

Juliet lies on the floor of her bedroom with her feet in the air.  Her laptop is next to her.  She types with one hand as she speaks.

Juliet

I’ll bet when people think of me, they are like, “Wow, look at her, she’s so cool with her clothes from Out of the Closet, all punky and retro.  She gets that from her mother, Cristina Lourdes, the actress.  Juliet’s mother is the coolest mother in the world…”

They don’t know us.  They don’t know that sometimes I have to lie on the floor with my feet in the air, counting…

Scene two:

Cristina and Dan enter the living room, just one thin wall away from Juliet’s bedroom.  Cristina slams the door behind them, then pushes past Dan and paces.

Cristina

They hated me!  I’m not going to get the part!  I hate me!  You hate me!

Cristina collapses on the floor, bawling.

Dan

I don’t hate you.

Cristina

They hated me.

Dan

No one hates you.

Dan tries to comfort Cristina, but she pushes him away and hurries past Juliet’s room to her own.  Dan stares after her, lost.  He goes to the stereo, puts on a Hootie and the Blowfish tune, “Let Her Cry”.   The lyrics blare, “And if the sun comes out tomorrow/ Let her cry…”

Scene  three:

Juliet, still lying on her floor with her feet in the air, gulps for air as she counts…

Juliet

Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven…

Juliet stops counting, looks at the audience.

Juliet

“They” don’t know us.  Sure, my mother and I are close.  Sure, she’s cool.  She takes me to awesome thrift shops for clothes.  She’s my best friend sometimes.  She taught me that when I’m having a panic attack, I should put my feet in the air and count backwards from one hundred because if you’re counting, you’re breathing, plus, no one dies with their feet in the air, counting backwards from one hundred.  When I have a panic attack, it feels like someone’s going to die.

Eighty-six, Eighty-five…

Scene four:

While Juliet continues to count, Hootie continues to play in the living room – “And if the sun comes up tomorrow/Let her be...let her be.”  Dan gulps from a glass of scotch.  Cristina rushes out of her bedroom, runs to Dan and collapses against him.  Juliet is still counting.  Dan and Cristina hug-walk to their bedroom.  No one checks on Juliet.