Writing Our Song by Emma South Page B

I said.
    Eli put his pen and pad down on the table next to his phone and interlaced his fingers over his stomach.  After an awkward pause he spoke again.
    “So, same nightmare then?”
    I cast my eyes down, feeling like there was no point in denying it.  Elias Rothenberg with his uncanny psychology voodoo would see through it.
    Truth be told, I was having multiple nightmares.  Most of them were about my dad, and those didn’t take any kind of expert to decipher.  One was different though.
    In that one I was going to Blair’s house for band practice, back when I did such things, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.  When I arrived I saw Blair and Drew there waiting for me, having already done whatever warm-up exercises they utilized for their guitar and bass, but the stool behind Darrin’s drum kit was empty.
    “You’re late,” Blair would say, “you ready to start?”
    “What about Darrin?” I would respond.
    “What are you talking about?  You know Darrin’s dead, stop being such a stupid bitch.”
    I’d turn to Drew, with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.
    “Drew, what about Darrin, he’s your friend!”
    “Who?” he’d say.
    Then we’d just practice a few songs, the others not seeming to care about Darrin in the slightest, forging ahead with their practice like nothing was wrong.  I sang terribly, forgot all the words and just couldn’t do anything properly.  Then I would wake up and hope it was morning so I wouldn’t have to try to go back to sleep.
    “You know,” Eli said, “there is a school of thought that, when we have dreams about people, each person in the dream represents an aspect of ourselves.  What do you think that might mean for you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Try.”
    “Um.  Like, something has died?”
    “What?”
    “A… a part of… me.”
    “What part might that be?”
    I thought about that for a moment.  About the way my mom treated me now, how cold she was.  About how I’d lost my friends, my place in the band, my place in the world, my boyfriend.  Then it hit me.  If a part of me had died I had a suspicion as to what it was.
    “The… the… lovable part.”
    I covered my face with my hands as the tears poured from my eyes.  Damn him, he’d got me again.
    *****
    My birthday came and went without anybody noticing.  Even I missed it until the day after when I was sitting at my desk doing homework and spotted the date on my phone.
    “Yay.  Sweet sixteen plus one day,” I said without enthusiasm.
    The same went for Christmas.  Just another day at our house.  Last year had been different.  I’d leapt out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning as excited as if I was still five years old, we’d had a tree, presents, laughter and everything good.  This year I didn’t get out of bed until around noon.
    The school year flew by for months with no particular break from the tedium.  I didn’t know if I was getting better or just getting better at my act, but my sessions with Eli never seemed to end in tears anymore.
    Around April my mom got herself a job as a secretary in the city, which was fine by me.  It meant that I could, on evenings that I wasn’t working, have a few hours after school in the house by myself where I could make some food, and have some complete peace and quiet.  I made sure to be in my room by the time she came back though.
    One afternoon in early June I had the evening off so came straight home from school.  I walked in the front door and past the entrance to the living room and then did a double-take.
    Taking two steps backwards I looked in and saw a big bunch of red roses in a vase on the mantelpiece over the fireplace.  I took a few tentative steps into the room, looking around in case my mom had come home early.
    I saw no sign of her, I guessed she must have put the flowers up there the previous night or early this morning before she went to work and I had just not seen them when I went to