The Picture

It was a badly taken picture. The lighting was bad. The outline blurred. So much for a 1.5 mega pixel camera phone! All you could really see was the red dots of flowers, behind the wire, in their garden. A well kept garden it was too. Bees, butterflies, bottle brush-they must have paid Maude a good sum. However did they manage? She hadn’t been working for sometime now. He was a writer, a lyricist actually. Did he work for a record label? I know he wasn’t part of a regular band. Different artists recorded his songs.

Of course I knew all of them inside out- my soul songs. They sang of things I was feeling. He could sense my darkness somehow. That’s why I felt so connected to him. It was freaky sometimes the way his songs reflected my innermost fears.

“…that’s when I knew that I could never have you. I knew that before you did yet I’m the one who’s stupid. And there’s this burning…”

Yes, they were my soul songs and I'm addicted to them. I’ve played this one (Motorcycle Drive By-Third Eye Blind) 16 times already and it’s still on repeat on my media player.

The tune inspired total confidence. It was like I knew him. Without so much as half a decent conversation, I knew him.

If only I…Beauty doesn’t count, it’s personality…but I didn’t have that either! I would go up to him one day and tell him. I told myself I would. I knew the words I must say…But it’s too late now. He’s gone. He ran after I did. In the opposite direction. I didn’t look back but I knew he had to run and he wasn’t running behind me.

The streets were empty that evening. Everyone was at the town’s council meeting. They hadn’t gone. What did two lovebirds have to do with waste management anyway? And I was the youngest on the block. Can you believe it? No one younger than 16 lives on Limon Lane. All old hags playing bingo in the club on Saturdays. Dad liked his bridge nights and the divorced women had their own drunken balls.

Loneliness was as much a part of me as this computer here or my mobile phone. My virtual life had always been more active. I lived one life to feed the other.

That reminds me-I haven’t eaten since lunch in school yesterday. I’ve been cooped up here in my room all night and half the day thinking of Bryan. This is not the first time. But it has to be the last. I have to stop loving him. He’s a murderer! A murderer! He belongs in cuffs, behind bars. No mercy. 15 years? A life sentence? Possible. What a waste though. I hope he continues to…Dad calling. It’s the cops. They’ve come for questioning. It’s time.

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