they meet at a party. they are introduced white against dark crowds. the boy has sat down and the girl sits next to him. they make small talk before exchanging phone numbers and asking to meet the next day. they hang out a couple of times before the boy mentions he writes his own music and has a band sorta starting. he asks the girl if she likes his lyrics. she reads them and comments on where certain lines are too long or short according to what he's got figured out rhythmatically. she loves the songs and mentions there needs to be some romance. he adds some. couple weeks go by, he asks her out. they flirt and play with the idea. they fall in love.

she is inspired by his work and makes storyboards for future music videos. he likes them and asks for more. they are perfect together. months go by with few problems. then he begins to not message her for days. he's sick a couple times. she is too happy to care about the absences. they still get together to try out lyrics and she still has several pages of storyboards each week.

been going out for a year. by now she's wearing a new style of clothes. he's climbing in his succuss and his band has local concerts. she disguises herself and attends a couple; she greets him at them but doesn't draw attention to herself. she can't make it to one concert. at this one a girl comes up after the concert and introduces herself and they hit it off. after this concert, one of the band members has a party. the boy goes with the girl he just met. while there, they cuddle on a couch.

the original girl and the boy are still dating. one day he mentions that this second girl is good at art too. she storyboards short plays and sequences involving characters of hers. she's never done anything for the boy but she did let him be in a small video once.



he stops writing lyrics regularly. she asks one day whether he has any. he shows her some. they describe the second girl and his romantic feelings towards her. she asks whether he would leave her for this girl. it depends. she doesn't get upset but she doesn't condone this information either. she hides her slight worry.
one day she comes to him for help on another relationship. apparently this guy, with a different variation of the first boy's name, made her his girlfriend without actually asking her out and although it had seemed like an okay idea at the time, he's a lousy boyfriend and completely incompetent when it comes to giving her attention. halfway through the boy's advice, he asks whether this second guy is made up and she's just trying to give him a well-thought-out hint. she's not but it's still a good idea. she breaks up with the second guy only to never hear from him again.
later, she also comes across some old songsheets she'd never seen. she asks whether she can see them and is granted permission. some are new and involve a girl. she questions about this and they too were influenced by this second girl.
one night, the girl asks whether he could write some romantic lyrics for her because she needs them for a small project. he can't do it, even after she pleads and tries to give him ideas. he gives the excuse that he can't write his real emotions into his lyrics. making up situations and girls as themes is one thing. to really write about the girl he loves is too difficult for him. she drops the subject and does her project by herself.
the girl once asked whether she was allowed to talk to him while he was working on things besides lyrics and such. he told her she could never bother him. she now can't get him to speak to her while he works. she hangs around his house only to leave without notice.
the girl's prom is coming up. she asks her boyfriend to it. he has to practice for an audition which is shortly after the day of her prom. they have all new songs and have to learn them. she asks if he'll at least be able to make it to her birthday party which is the month after prom. he has a tour all summer and won't be near her town even once. she decides if he can't make it to her prom, at least something involving him could go. she shows him pictures of dresses but he expresses his dislike for dresses, which he won't make an exception for in this case. she quits.
one night, while her boyfriend is out with friends at a party, she picks up his lyrics notebooks, lays down on his bed, and reads through them all. there are plenty on politics, monsterous descriptionsof supernatural horrors, and life itself in different ways. half of a single notebook was filled with songs inspired by the second girl. the rest was blank for future songs involving her. getting up she lifts up a few scattered papers before finding his original notebook. still decorated by some stars and words she'd sketched out of boredom one day on it, the thing had a tiny layer of dust that had formed before it'd become buried by papers. opening it and reading through what had brought them together best, she smiled as the old rhythms once more echoed in her mind. nearing the end, she sees he had started rewriting the songs so they would go better with the music the band now played. he had shown her a few edited songs before but had stopped doing that a while back. putting on one of the band's lighter cds, she curls up with a pillow, pondering how he's written things for and about other people, esspecially this second girl, yet he never once wrote about her into a song. the closest he had done was play some music as she made up lyrics, and help her when she got stuck. on the desk where she'd found his music notebooks, there is an entire stack of homemade dvds with their music videos on. some she even directed vicariously through her boyfriend. she had edited, spliced, and burnt each video onto the discs for him as a gift. her eyes drifted to the notebooks beside her, in which nothing truly new was written, with the exception of two new songs involving the second girl. the second new song was really heavy and she sort of liked it, but it still wasn't what she'd asked for as a return valentine's gift- more songs in the star-bedecked book. turning over, she pulls the light off and hugs the pillow tighter as she goes to sleep alone for yet another night.

waking up to the sun glaring in her face, she goes to the kitchen to find the boy nearly drowning in a bowl of cereal as he tries to stay awake. she leans his head back away from the lethal milk and kisses his forehead. she then sits next to him as she munchs some toast. she asks how the party was and who was there. he names his band mates, the second girl, and some names she reconizes but never was told about. the party was alright; they played with some turntables and mixing programs to screw with each other's songs. she asks whether anything was recorded but it wasn't. she voices her disappointment but appears to get over it. she asks what time he got back. he says it's been only about an hour. everyone had crashed in the second girl's basement, with the exception of a few crazy night owls who went to sleep around 4. he had slept fine for a while until he was tackled by the second girl and challenged to a video game. after she beat him for the twelfth time he decided he needed to get home in order to sleep. he'd made it to the living room couch before exhaustion had taken over. he managed to crawl to the kitchen table just a little bit ago but was apparently still tired. he looked at his bowl again before deciding a shower might be a good idea before taking on the cereal again. after he comes out smelling all fresh and soggy, he sits next to her on the sofa. she asks whether he wants editing help on his two newest songs. he says sure and she jumps over the sofa arm to get his notebook. she turns to the newest pages and points out things to him. he barely comments, so she puts the notebook aside and tells him about her winning a new award for a video she'd produced in school. she is going to have her photo with a congressman and everything. getting no response, she gives him a hug and says she needs to be going anyway. she puts the notebook back on the desk along with the others, gets dressed, and leaves.

four months later, she gets bored and looks at a blog of one of the bandmembers. the band has taken a break due to people getting jobs. of course she wasn't told. emails and voice mails go unanswered.

she's a year away from college. it occurs to her that this will be the first year of high school without her boyfriend. her main influence and inspiration will not be around when she's getting assignments for making videos. she's horrible out of practice.

8/13/05 7:33 PM
(c) Meghann Pardee