1st 5 Pages April Workshop- Contois Rev 1

Name: Hannah Contois

Genre: YA Magical Realism

Title: WISHING ON STARS AND OTHER INTANGIBLE OBJECTS

The halls of Stillwater High, stale with teenage angst and an overabundance of cologne and dry shampoo, are alive with songs from souls brimming with Wednesday anticipation. Each song is so vivacious and clear that it’s sad I’m the only one that seems able to hear them.

Music is both my gift and curse, which is why I’m having to fight the intense urge to shred the smudged sheet of music clutched in my hand the entire walk to the cafeteria. Writing this piece should be a cakewalk! Music is easy for me. I can listen to a song once and replay it nearly perfectly. I can compose original pieces using what emotions I glean in the sounds of rain on a rooftop, or from the wind through my wheezing bedroom window. A playground full of children is an entire orchestra piece that I have currently stuffed in my messenger bag. I’ve spent hours creating music to capture the array of emotion that floods these halls, but my damn audition piece, the one revealing my very soul, stubbornly refuses to show me how to finish it! Instead, it has been weeks since I added a single new note, and the deadline for my music school application is the demon riding my shadow wherever I go.

I need them to like me! I need them to see inside me, hear my soul as it cries out for a better future, for a way to escape. My only future rides on getting a full ride. Helena certainly won’t be paying for me to go anywhere, let alone to a 'snobby' music school.

A cluster of students in front of the cafeteria door split apart without acknowledging me as I stomp towards them already trying to find a familiar beanie wearer in the crowd of high schoolers eating lunch. I weave around the chairs and discarded backpacks to where I know Mari is waiting.

I’m not rich in the way of friends since ‘The Incident’ where, back in the days of sophomore naivety I had a boyfriend and social status, I dumped the King of Stillwater High. That’s right, I’d been normal and popular at one point, despite my tendency to carry my violin, Darcy, around like a safety blanket. Post-Incident, I was instantly blacklisted. All my ‘friends’ disappeared like smoke caught in JJ’s wake. All except for Marigold Bibeau, my sassy emo bestie currently staring at the Jock Joint table and their fawning cheerleaders.

I throw myself into a chair at our table, rocking it, but take more care in depositing Darcy at my feet. “I’ve determined that not only am I going to die alone in Helena the Heinous’s attic,” I slap the half empty pages of my audition piece onto the table, my fingers wrinkling the edges. “I’m going to die there only after years of working at the laundromat, marrying out of lonely desperation, popping out a couple of angry children, and when my husband leaves me for the hot local pool-boy, I’ll be suffocated to death by my forty-two cats.”

Mari doesn’t even blink at my declaration. “You’re allergic to cats, Ellena. Why would you have forty-two of them?” Her expression never shifts from her perfectly crafted expression of nothingness, her smooth, pale skin and dark eyes reminding me of a geisha. Her eyes flick away from the jocks to my papers and assess the angry scribbles, like bruises, on the sheet music. “Music is going well, I take it.” She offers me her small baggie of carrot sticks.

I snag one, snapping it between my teeth. “It’s been weeks. Weeks!” I wail, feeling eyes on the back of my head, like a spider’s web caught in my hair. “And Mr. Michals wants to start recording soon.” I collapse my forehead onto the pages and send up a belated prayer that the ink from study hall is dry and isn’t going to mark my face. “I’m Sisyphus pushing his stupid rock up the hill for an eternity.”

She pats the back of my head. “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”

“No!” I snap defensively, but sit up and stare at her, wide-eyed and a touch manic. “You know that if I don’t absolutely kill this audition, I can kiss my future goodbye.”

“Most action you’ll have had in years,” she quips.

I stab a carrot in her direction. “First of all, shut up. Second of all, if I don’t get that scholarship, how the hell am I supposed to get out of here?”

She sighs in exasperation. “This is a thoroughly beaten dead horse. My parents have a trust or whatever. I’m sure they would help you. It’ll be a great tax write-off.”

I pause mid-chew and give her a hard stare. “I’m not taking money from you, or your parents. I will make my own way or die in a basement from trying. I’ve been doing nothing but writing the stupid thing in any spare minute I have hoping for something to break through my writer’s constipation.”

“Is that why you are late for lunch?” She glances over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. “Very late. Here,” she tosses the rest of the carrots at me. “Eat and walk.”

The bell overhead rings as I catch them. “I’ll get you a gold star for your act of kindness for the day.”

“I like gold stars.” Mari stands, adjusting her overly large sweatshirt and t-shirt that says ‘Who needs a heart when you can have donuts?’ I snort. She has the best sarcastic clothes and they match perfectly with her pitch black hair and kohl-rimmed eyes.

“Great, I’ll steal some from Mr. Michals’ office for you.”

She starts leading us out of the cafeteria. “Like that tight-ass would have gold stars. He wouldn’t know a gold star if someone stuck one to his forehead.” Mari turns to me, stuffing her free hand into her sweatshirt pocket. “Ready for Ms. Ora’s class?”

We both have Ms. Ora for one of our elective classes - Classical Mythology. She’s a lot on the eccentric side with at least three different personalities, one of which speaks in a strange language when she doesn’t think we are paying attention. All last class, she’d randomly burst into sobbing fits, crying into a roll of toilet paper. Her sadness had been a great symphony of tears and pain, with peals of string instruments and soft hiccups of the piano to create an emotional rollercoaster that she and I had been trapped on. I’d left class emotionally drained and as sick at heart as she was. “Not even a little. Mr. Michals gave me the key for the studio room. Maybe I’ll ditch and work there instead.”

“Must be nice to have a teacher who has the hots for you.” She grunts when I backhand her across the arm, hard. “What was that for?”

“You know he’s like the father I never had.” I sigh and catch her arm, making her stop in the hallway and causing a traffic jam around us. “You don’t get how important this is. You could get into any school you want. Yale and Princeton have been begging for you since before you got out of diapers.”

She twists the end of a braided pigtail around her finger and adopts an air-headed, open-mouthed gape. “Gag me, right?”

I shake my head and resume walking. “Getting out of New Hampshire and going to music school is my only future.”