Writing Our Song by Emma South

message to Blair.  Clearly I wouldn’t be making it to band practice, but there was more I needed to tell him.
    ‘ Sorry.  Have to quit the band.  Can’t do it ’
    Feeling almost empty, I mechanically gathered a few things from my room and then some newspaper and matches from the kitchen before going into the back yard.  Standing there in the unkempt grass was an old barbeque.  No gas, just a grill over an area you could put some charcoal.
    I bunched up the newspaper into loose balls, stuffed them in, piled my things on top and set a match to the whole lot.  As the flames took hold of the newspaper and grew bigger they spread to the real meat of this cook out.
    First to catch was the hat I had worn when I sang in my first school musical, next was the certificate I’d won in a talent show.  Before my eyes everything blackened until at last my scrapbook was consumed too.  In it were all the school newsletters and newspaper clippings that mentioned my singing, all my ham-fisted attempts at writing lyrics.  My secret hopes and dreams, written on the pages I’d never shown anybody.
    I watched it go up in smoke and tried to forget all about what it felt like to be on stage and flying.

Chapter 5
    I didn’t do too well in my exams at the end of the year but the school, or whoever can pull these kinds of strings, took pity on me and bumped up my grades where needed based on my achievements from… before.  Over the summer I applied for a job in the exciting field of fast food.  In the beginning I’d be cleaning up the lobby area where customers ate but if I worked hard and played my cards right I was promised I could one day also flip burgers and work on the tills at the front counter.
    It was mindless work, but it did keep me out of the house.  After that night in my room I avoided my mom as much as possible, it was safer that way.
    When the weather, my shifts at work and daylight hours permitted it, I would go to the cemetery to visit my dad.  Even after such a short time, the fresh dirt over his grave was already growing grass and would be indistinguishable from the area around it soon.
    Usually I sat just to the side of his grave marker, if the ground was dry enough, and leaned my forehead against it.  The stone was so cold, whereas the person had been so warm, but it was the closest I could get.
    I almost always spoke to him, and I almost always began with an apology rather than a greeting.  There was never any forgiveness, but that didn’t stop me.  It was also the only place I consciously let myself lose control of my emotions, rather than when they steamrolled over the walls I was building inside myself.
    “I’m sorry, Dad.  I’m trying to do better.  I’m not living in a dream world anymore, I’ve quit the band.”
    Tears squeezed out of my eyes and dripped off the tip of my nose.
    “Hey, speaking of which, I saw Blair, Drew and Darrin today in the restaurant.  I don’t think they saw me, probably because I hid when I spotted them.  Anyway, looks like they’ve got a new singer, Helena Tyson from Blair’s year.  Can you believe that?  I… I hope they do well.”
    I talked for the best part of an hour and when I looked up I saw the cemetery was entirely deserted except for me.  That was hardly unusual though, I rarely saw anybody else there except for the times when somebody was actually getting buried.  How quickly people seemed to forget.  It was almost like letting their loved ones die twice.
    “I won’t forget you, Dad.  I love you.  I miss you.”
    I kissed the tombstone and stood up, hoping I could get home and into my room without running into my mom.
    *****
    When school started again I was still nervous about being in that crowded environment, facing questions and expectations, but it seemed I’d managed to push everybody away by the way I acted at the end of the previous year and my summer-of-silence.  I sat by myself at lunch, I kept to myself in class.  I just