Broken Fairytales (4 page)

“
The music was loud
. I figured you wouldn’t hear me
,” Keely
said,
nonchalantly
, not
getting my annoyance
or just pretending
not
to
get it
, as she opened the magazine and flipped idly through the pages
.

I rolled my eyes at her and shook my head, but she just shrugged.

Keely
has
always
had a knack
for playing dumb.
It’s
her way of
defying our
sometimes
clueless parents.
They have
always been
under the i
mpression that she’s
an air
head when i
n reality, she gets everyt
hing.
Being an airhead
is just
her
way of staying out of trouble
.
She’s
gotten away with things I
neve
r dreamed of doing when I was
her age and living at home.

As I started to
stack some of my piles into one of my suitcases,
I saw Keely start to flip through a
large
stack of CDs
that I’d hadn’t yet uploaded
.
The stack was high, and some of the music
, I hadn’t listened to in years.

“
Will you put this in?”
she
asked
, holding up a CD that said, ‘Angry Rock
2006
’.
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what was on it.
 

She tossed it to me, and I caught
it in mid-air between my hands
and slid it into my laptop
, waiting
for the first song to come on.

“Why aren’t you
packing,” I asked her
, as she continued to look through the CDs.
I knew she would wait until the last minute and throw her clothes into some bags haphazardly, not really knowing what she was packing, and end up pilfering my closet all summer.

She shrug
ged, not looking up, but nodding
her head in time with
an
All-American Rejects
song I’d listened to more times than I could count.

“How do you know this song?” I asked, appraising the girl who’s musica
l tastes were
extremely narrow and usually changed with what was in the Top 40
.

“
It was on the radio
all the time a few years ago.
”
Her
tone was on the mocking side,
and
I could tell
she was excited to
be able to converse with me about a subject I usually knew much more about
.

“You know I
never
listen to the radio,” I said in my
defense, and maybe a little snappier
than I’d intended. “It’s so repetitive and unoriginal.
Just like the people who listen to it.
”

“Ouch,”
Keely
said, looking
up in surprise, her eyebrows rising
.
“Apparently
you’re just as
unoriginal if you’re listening to the same music that they play.”

Ooh, burn,
I thought sarcastically, fighting the urge to roll my eyes at her snappy retort
,
because I realized too late that I was guilty of doing the same thing to her
.

It
was exactly
what
I’d been doing
for the past few months
,
snapping and getting upset at peopl
e when they didn’t deserve it
. M
y ‘
I’m great,
everything’s perfect façade’
was
starting to slip
farther
away
, and my true feeling were
coming out
more often
.
I was having trouble even keeping up the ruse
that I wasn’t irritated with the world, and I never knew when my act would be overtaken by my inner bitch
.
Just like during
my fight with Rachel two weeks earlier, and the two arguments I’d had with Ben since then, t
he words just seemed to fly out of my mouth
, no matter how rude or hurtful. It
was extremely
disconcerting.

“
I’m
s
orry,” I said
quickly
, catching myself too late
. “I
really wasn’t trying to be a bitch
.”

“It’s cool,” Keely said, looking
back down a
t the CDs
and truly seeming unfazed.

She was laid back enough that most things didn’t affect her for more than a few seconds. It made me little jealous to be honest, and in fact drew the line between me and my siblings even deeper as of late.
Where I’d grown up always being a bit more focused, I’d always been able to let things others did roll off my back
, but recently it seemed like everything affected me, sometimes to the point of extended frustration that I just couldn’t shake. I longed for the days where I could easily forgive and forget, but it seemed they were long gone.

“Who’
s this band?
” Keely asked then, pulling me from my personal pity party. “
July for
Kings
?
What does that even mean?
Where does Rachel get this stuff?” She looked up at me, as if I would know the answer.

I shrugged. “Who knows
?
It’s a good album, though.
You can borrow it, if you want
.”

She set the CD on the floor by her feet.
“What about
Liar’s Edge
?” she asked, looking up at me expectantly. “Are they any good?”

“
Liar’s Edge
,” I said
, crossing the space between us and snatching the CD o
ut of her hands, “i
s the single most fabulous unsigned
band ever
.
”

“
Ok-ay,
” Keely
said
,
looking at me like I was insane.
Of course, my voice had spiked about three octaves,
and my emotion was palpable,
so her look was entirely
understandable
.

I looked
down
at her, m
y eyes alight with excitement.
“This is the most amazing band I ha
ve ever heard,” I explaine
d
, the passion dripping from my voice as I spoke of my favorite band
. “You’ve heard them.
I’ve played their stuff
in the car
before
. They have a song called
Regret
that you loved. Fast beat, hauntingly beautiful lyrics?”

She shook her head
, smirking at my use of the term ‘hauntingly beautiful’
.
She had no idea what I was talking about.

So I told her the story of how Rachel and I discovered
Liar’s Edge
two
years earlier
. We
had gone to
a club in Durham
to se
e them play after
our
high school
friend
,
Chris
DeLuca
,
who was a freshman at Duke, recommended
them
. We’d gone because we liked live music,
but
mostly because Rachel had hooked up with Chris
when we’d been home for Thanksgiving
the weekend before and wanted to see him again before deciding if she wanted to cut him loose or date him.

Ironically, Rachel had almost immediately decided she wanted to cut Chris loose
after she saw the drummer for
Liar’s Edge. He was this ridiculously
tattooed guy who played without a shirt on the whole set and kept flicking his shoulder length blond hair out of his eyes. I didn’t quite see the allure, but that might have been because I was fixated on the lead singer.
He was sexy and smoldering and his voice was hypnotic.
I was glued to him the entire show, and i
t was
the
only time I’d ever seriously considered cheating on Ben.

Aside from that, we
were blown away by
the depth
the band had.
I swear our mouths were hanging open throughout the whole show
.
We
each bought their CD
and then
waited around
to see
if we could talk to them
afterward
.

Rachel cornered the drummer
at the bar – h
e
had thank
fully put a shirt on
.
I’d followed her and stood quietly while she’d flirted, sipped my beer and simultaneously stole glances at the lead singer across the bar, d
isappointed to see that he had two
very attractive blond
s
attached to his arm. Of course, I had a boyfriend, so it wasn’t like I was going to act on my feelings of lust, but I could admire him from afar. Which I did until
Rachel started making out with Drummer B
oy, and I’d decided to call it a night. I went home and listened to their CD over and over until I fell asleep, not able to shake the way the lead singer’s voice made me feel when he belted out lyrics that all seemed to resonate with me just a little too well.  

After that
night, partially because Rachel was pissed that she’d gone home with the drummer
and he’d never called her
, and because I was obsessed with their music,
we
’d
desp
erately tried to track down Liar’s Edge, wanting to see t
hem live again, but we never made it to a show
.
When we saw
Chris
over
s
pring break
, he told us they’d just completed a local tour around North Carolina and were taking a break. By
the summer, he reported that they’d broken up. Rachel and I had been
sad
, but we
still
listened to their album non-stop.
It had been a
while since I’d heard it, but suddenly I felt like I needed to hear those so
ngs
again
. I needed to go back to a
time in my life wh
en an album could make me smile
or a great band co
uld send me over the edge.
It had been a long time
since I’d felt that way.

“If they’re so amazing, why haven’t I heard of them?” Keely asked, crossing her arms in front of her.

I walked over to my
stereo.
“
Because they were never picked up by a label, so they never made it to the radio,” I said, hinting at my earlier point that music on the radio was lacking so much, but
I didn’t think she got m
y subtle jab
. “J
ust listen.
You’ll love them. They have this
slow
song called
Glimpse
that is so beautiful
.
Honestly,
it’s one of my all-
time favorites.”

I watched her face as
the opening chords to t
he first song started to play, and
I could tell
she
was hooked as soon as the
lead singer opened his mouth.
He had one of those r
ough, gravely voices that sounded
in
credible regardless of what he was singing, and the
band had songs with fast, angry tempos, as well as, ballads with seemingly deep meaning
s.
Their range was unheard of,
and I couldn’t get enough of them.
I couldn’t help but wonder what
happened to the lead singer and if he was with another band or if he’d given up music altogether.
I couldn’t fathom that since he was so talented
, but since I didn’t know his name, his fate would probably remain a mystery to me
.

Keely and I listened to the nine tracks all the way through be
fore either of us spoke. I lay
on my bed, closed my eyes and let the music wash over m
e
as I grasped for the spark for life I used to have on a daily basis. Listening to Liar’s Edge, I could feel it around the fringes of my mind, but it was just out of reach for me to grasp.