beginning of an untitled something

Chapter One

They tell you to go out with a bang. My question is, how do you know when to go out? And isn’t that the same thing as giving up? And if that’s the case, is it even possible to quit with a bang? Quitting loudly, or quitting softly…the end result is the same. You’re surrendering.

They say that honesty is the best policy. I want to know, for what? War? In my experiences, honesty has never led to any good. It hurts. It can wound even the toughest soldier, and there’s no armor against it. Except maybe denial.

They want you to believe that love is the best thing on Earth. Maybe it is. I know it’s pretty great; not much can compare to loving and being loved in return. You better pray, though, you don’t love two people who pull you in opposite directions. Love, when used like that, can literally tear you down the middle. It’s great, yeah, but powerful.

They tell you that you can do anything you dream, if you believe. My question is, do you believe what you’ve been told your whole life, or do you break away from that? If so, how? And if not, why? And what if, your whole life, you’ve been told to believe you can’t go anywhere?

What then?



I stretched out on my back, across the patchwork quilt that served as his bedspread, and looked up at the water damaged ceiling, yellowed from his little cousin overflowing the bath above one too many times. I tilted my head back and looked, upside-down, at the small window. Through the cracks in the broken mini-blinds, I could see the blue, blue sky outside. The room was dim; the moss green walls appeared darker than they actually were. We liked the room dark, though. It made the candles on the floor light that much brighter.

The glowing ember of Ashton’s cigarette waggled at me as he spoke. His words began to blend together, as they always did in these lazy afternoons, but I knew if they suddenly stopped, I would miss them. He sat, cross-legged, idly shuffling a deck of cards. His sandy brown hair, tinged with purple highlights just to piss people off, fell into his dark eyes as he watched his hands move, seemingly of their own accord. Back and forth, back and forth, the cards flowing through them like water.

I turned my face to study him, the serious line of his mouth, the straight slope of his nose and the slight definition of his cheekbones. I watched the way his fingers deftly flew over the cards, the way his foot wiggled under his left knee. It was strange, as it was always strange, looking at Ashton. I knew if I tried to shuffle the cards that fast, my fingers would fumble over one another and the cards would go flying. I knew if I dyed my hair that color, my mom’s anger would have been enough to make me dye it back; if I was smoking that cigarette, I’d be coughing nonstop. I was only seventeen, but I knew that I loved Ashton. I knew because he finished my sentences, he smoothed my hair back before he kissed me, he was a thousand things that I could never be, and, because of that, he completed me.

This was no ordinary lazy afternoon in Ashton’s aunt’s house. I had news, news that settled in my stomach, a bubble of excitement waiting to burst. I had to pick just the right moment to tell him, though. It had to be perfect because, well, this news was pretty perfect.

“Ashton!” his aunt Lydia called, her voice ringing through the closed bedroom door like a tropical bird’s. “Is Allie staying for dinner?”

He looked up at me suddenly, his charcoal-gray eyes flashing, a half-smile forming on his lips. “You up for it?” he asked.

It’s not like I wasn’t up for it. It’s just that I knew I had to go home. “Can’t,” I said.

He blinked, then looked back down at his cards. “Dinner with the parent tonight?” he asked.

That was something Ashton did, and I’m not sure he even knew he did it. Ever since I’d met him—when he moved here, after moving out of his mom’s place in Chicago—he’d referred to anyone’s mom or dad as “the parent.” Almost like it should be a proper noun. Like it was something that needed no other explanation.

“Yeah,” I said, then sat up and scooted closer to him, crossing my legs, face-to-face. I placed my hands over his knees and said, “Ashton.”

“Allie?” he said back. The card-shuffling slowed, but didn’t stop. “What’s up?”

“I might have a record deal,” I said, and with those words, let the bubble burst.

The cards flew in a thousand directions. Swiftly, he snubbed out his cigarette with his thumb, tossed it carelessly aside, then framed my face with his hands and kissed me. “Allison Gallagher,” he said approvingly. “You rock.”

“I know,” I answered, grinning wide. He touched the dimple in my left cheek—a habit—then kissed me again. I could taste the thick, burnt flavor of cigarette smoke, and something under that, something sweet and salty that I knew was Ashton himself. I broke away from the kiss and said, “Nothing’s definite yet. Remember that contest I won? And that judge who said he could help me out?”

“Remember how I said I’d break his face if he lied?” Ashton said, raising an eyebrow and making me laugh.

“Yeah, well, he gave me a call. Said he’d pay for me to live out in Los Angeles, studio time, everything. He knows this producer who’s interested, and—” I paused to take a breath. “It could be a shot.”

Ashton beamed at me. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s amazing, Al.”

“Of course, it could be fake, too—”

“But if you don’t go for it, you’ll always wonder what could have happened,” he pointed out.

“I know. Then, of course, there’s my mom—”

“You really think she’d say no to this?” Ashton asked.

I shook my head. “She’d never say no to anything,” I said. “But I can’t just leave her. And there’s no way she’d move to California.”

“Not even if it’s what you want more than anything?”

More than anything. I studied Ashton’s face, even though I could see it in my mind’s eye as clear as a photograph. He was the flip side to my coin; he could read every mood I had as easily as if it was written on my forehead. And he was right, I did want this, more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

But I thought of Mom. I didn’t want Mom, because I had her. You can’t want something you have. If I didn’t have her, though, would I want her as badly as I wanted to sing?

Ashton reached out, touched the end of my long braid. I’d spent about fifteen minutes earlier braiding my hair in his mirror, seeing him in the reflection, smoking on the bed behind me. I’d twisted and tucked my hair around and around and tied it with a rubber band to keep it out of my face. Now he twirled the end of it in his fingers gently, like if he handled it too roughly, the whole thing would unravel and come apart. “This is about you right now,” he said quietly. “Only you.”

He was wrong, though. It could never only be about me. There was no such thing as only me, as long as she was in the shadows of my past.