Sunday, July 24, 2005
me and my family history part 1
You don't know me. You'll probably never really know who I am. You have no way of knowing. I'm only me, and I'm writing all of this down, but the likelihood that you'll actually be interested is somewhat small. Don't you think?
I don't even know why I am doing this. I mean, the internet is probably the most unsafe place on Earth. But right now I'm past caring about that. I mean, I do care to some extent, but at the same time I don't care. If that makes any sense. Right now it's kind of more important that I write this. I need to tell someone how I feel, since in my real life, it seems like no one will ever listen.
And so now this is just me.

I'm Ariel Cassanova Skywalker. If you want to know how I got stuck with such a strange, polysyllabled, complicated name, the story is a little long: My mother, Elena Voller Cassanova, was travelling in India a long time ago, and she fell in love with a man there called Harish Patil. She was very young: eighteen, and the reason she was there at all was because she wanted to travel, and she was sick of being tied down to her family. They wanted to her to go to college, get a good job, get married to some well-connected fellow.... all that junk. But she didn't want that.
So there she was, traipsing around the city of Mumbai, staying with some friends she'd made at their place (at first she'd had to stay in some ratty hotel, but that was before she made friends. And my mother was always good at making friends quickly.) One day they had some grand party, and this guy, Harish Patil, he came. They fell in love very quickly, I think.... anyway, the next few months, they were going out and stuff, and then he went with her to Malaysia. I guess everyone knew it was serious then - I mean, if you're gonna be going with someone right out of the country, it's got to be serious, right?
But then she came back to Mumbai, and she was pregnant (with me) and Harish Patil had died in a car accident in Kuala Lumpur. Now when Lyon tells me this he sounds grave, and he talks about how she was depressed for a long time.
She was.

I don't think she ever really got over it. She had me when she was nineteen, but before that, she met Lyon Skywalker. I'm not saying my mother was a slut (she wasn't)- that she flitted from one man to the other; or something like that; because she didn't.
But Lyon was a man still grieving over the death of his own wife, which had happened three years before. He had three children, and he was on a vacation in India, but he was in a bad state. He was very messed up because his wife had gotten killed very suddenly, like Harish. He couldn't deal with it even though it had been three years. This was taking some toll on how he took care of the children - Natalia, ten; Jake, eight; and Annette, seven (at that time.) So Lyon was staying in Mumbai too, and it so happened that he was staying in the very mansion where my mother was staying. His friends also happened to be her friends. Over the next five months, Lyon helped my mom a lot with her prenatal care and things. They became really good friends. I was born. They continued to live there for a year, and then my mother wanted to go back to the US. She decided that there was no point in her staying in India if she had to raise a child alone.
I asked Lyon why he didn't follow her back there, but he answers vaguely - he says he didn't think it would make very much sense, that she might have found it odd - so many things. But I think he was afraid that he'd fallen in love with her. But he missed me, because I had grown to be like his own child. He's always been my real father, even if not biological. He missed my mother. He was completely in love with her. After not hearing from her for three months, he moved right back to Manhattan and bought an apartment. (I should probably explain that Lyon is very rich.)
Never mind the details. Within a year Lyon and my mother were married.
And as for my name - which I really began with - I was renamed with Lyon's last name because that seemed more fitting, seeing as he was more of my real father.

But my mom always missed Harish.
Meanwhile, I grew up with Anny and Jake and Nattie and Lyon and Mom, and we were all one happy family, I suppose. Except that Mom's family had disowned her when they found out about Harish, and me.
When I was thirteen my mother left home - and we never saw her again.


Lyon became extremely depressed after my mom left. Almost two years have passed, but both of us know that without my mother things are never going to be the same.

When I was around ten or eleven, I stopped calling him Daddy and started calling him Lyon. Not because he was acting less like a father, but because I was going through a phase when I was shocked to find out he wasn't my real father. It stuck.

Lyon's been through a lot. I regret giving him a hard time.

So, that's my basic family history. More later.

July 25
Hello, it's me again. Well, anyway.
I stopped in the middle the last time because I suddenly got uninspired. Maybe.

Well, nothing much has been happening. I live in San Diego, and you would think that would make my life minorly interesting, but it doesn't. Actually, now I think of it, why would that make my life more interesting? Really. I guess I'm just another beach straggler who thinks living near a great beach automatically makes me interesting and important.

But it doesn't.

I've lived in San Diego since I was five, when Lyon and my mother decided that schools in New York weren't good, and they decided they would raise me in better schools. I am now 14; Nattie is 24 and lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and the twins; Jake is 22 and is at Princeton, studying something to do with biomolecular structure, immensely boring; and Anny is 21 and she's a star on Broadway. Lyon idolises this fact, because it's raised his whole family to some status of stardom. Anny is good - she was in Bombay Dreams and some other really cool musicals, but sometimes I think she's becoming too wrapped up in her career and less and less wrapped up in her family, her emotions and her relationships.

So now it's just Lyon and me, really. Lyon is very professorial, in cliche terms: he's an English professor at the University of San Diego, and he's usually working. Lyon officially became a workaholic after my mom left, but he was always like that to some degree.
Now it's like Lyon and I live entirely different lives, which is a little sad. We were always very close. I wouldn't say it's either of our faults - it's just something that's happened.

I've just finished the ninth grade. Almost two years ago, in May, before seventh grade ended, Nayaa Tanmei moved with her mom here. Her mom is a workaholic like Lyon, except in a much more hurrying-around-places-trying-to-get-things-done-efficiently way. Well, anyway, Nayaa decided to come to our school for the last month. She had moved in next door to me with her aunt Hannah, so I was really delighted and I showed her around school and stuff. We became great friends and now we're closer than soulmates. We're more intimate than you'll ever be able to imagine.
And you all with your dirty sick minds, you can just shut up.

So now I hate school. And I'm glad to be on vacation, but I wish it could last forever.

OH, more later, I have to go put the dishes in the dishwasher.

Monday, July 25, 2005
Nayaa
Ok, I'm back.
But it's late, and I have to go to sleep soon. I just wanted to get to more. I was rather busy until now - I was chatting with Nayaa, but then she had to go, so I'm back again.
Nayaa.... Nayaa.... Nayaa. She moved six months back, and it inspired some sort of dramatic change in me.
I didn't know Nayaa for very long. But the time we did know each other was so awesome, so intense, so perfect, that it made us the very best of friends. You don't even know what I'm talking about. The words *best friend* don't seem to fit, really. Not even soulmate.
We're closer than closer than close.

She moved suddenly. Her mom is still here, which is probably the part that hurts the most.
Nayaa never really wanted to be here, but when she met me she wanted to be here more. She's from England originally, though she lived in India for a long time with her mother. But recently, just two months ago, she found out that her mother had kept her away from her father purposely, and her dad had been looking and looking for her for ages, and her mom wasn't willing to let her see him. It was because her parents did not agree with each other, or rather, her mum hated her dad with a passion because he had always loved someone else, even years before they were married, when they were lovers. I still don't understand why this was such a big deal, but evidently Nayaa's mum was very angry when she illicitly found out, and she took Nayaa away with her when Nayaa was three, and never told her dad where they were. Meanwhile, her dad filed a court case to no avail, and tried to search everywhere. When he finally found Nayaa, two months ago, she was aghast to find out the truth. Because her dad seemed so much more flexible, trusting and wholehearted than her mum, she believed him. I believed him too, when I met him. He seemed such a good person, and Nayaa and her mum had never really gotten along, because Nayaa craved independence and her mum didn't seem to understand this. Her mum was just intent on keeping Nayaa her little doll.
So Nayaa went off with her dad, and her dad won the court case. It was a very small one, because the facts seemed very obvious.
Nayaa wasn't sure she wanted to leave, because I wouldn't be with her. But then eventually we decided she had to. She needed to know her father.
So now she lives in Argentina with Hal (her dad), and she goes to a really nice international Baccalaureate school, and we're so far apart, continents, and seasons apart too. We seem so far apart but we're still becoming closer.
We're not gonna ever be separated truly.

Nayaa likes it at her school, the Davonne School for Young Entrepreneurs, as the school so flamboyantly calls itself, but we miss each other too much. She's learning Portuguese, which is not exactly easy, although she doesn't need to speak it at school since it's an international one. But she does need it to really get around the place. She's already made friends at her school, which for some reason makes me feel bitter.

Without Nayaa, I'm friendless. But I know that it's my fault, that I haven't really bothered..... but so many things are twirling through my mind....

And nobody will ever, ever replace Nayaa. Not that I want them to, but as a matter of principle.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005
brief transcripts of me
Although I have acquired some sort of independence ever since my mother left and Lyon became somewhat distant and sad, I have never really been so much away from home, so definitely so. I seem to feel okay here, even though it's only been 4 days so how do I know? But I've never really had what I can describe as a real family. I love my family members, don't get me wrong, but Anny, Nattie and Jake were so much older than me and Lyon so impassive, and soon my sibs went away and it was just Lyon, Mum and me, and that seemed so alone, such a bleak home environment. Mum was odd and depressed at times, Lyon was getting to be a workaholic, and then Mum left. I was popular when I was in the fourth to seventh grades, but even then my friends couldn't populate my family life, or my house. And then I had Nayaa, and she was better than family could ever be, but now - now she's left too. Are all the people in my life who matter going to just leave, become something different? I know that sounds like such a terrible thing to say, and of course it's not true, but my moods alternate so much and sometimes I just say things without even knowing what I really mean, or what I'm really saying. Then I look back and my morals and values kick in, my sense of responsibility, my sense of wondering what other people will think, and so on.
I don't know if I'm making any sense at all, or not. It seems so weird, so strange, to be me, sometimes.
I'm always the one who stays up the latest and gets up the earliest. I can get by on as less as four hours of sleep and as much as seven hours of sleep, I don't usually ever sleep more than that. My average is six hours. I'm the kind of person who feels like I'm always running out of time, and I'm always trying to find more to spend. Because Lyon and Mum didn't usually restrict my sleeping timings, I kind of grew up having my own sleeping times, after I was around nine, anyway, because until then Nattie, who's always been motherly, tried to keep up some semblance of a structure in my life, and take care of me like my mom should have. Every now and then Lyon would come over all protective, and then he would retract into his state of half-awareness as far as I was concerned. Mum... well, she was just Mum.
Well, that's how I feel, anyway. I could be wrong.
Even though my father was Indian, he didn't look like one, really. Well. He looked like a Himalayan, I suppose, since that was where he was from. He had fair skin and brown hair. For some inexplicable reason, I ended up really pale, paler than both my parents, and I never got freckled or sunburned either, which was even more strange. It seemed to defy nature. I inherited my mother's red hair. I changed it after Nayaa left, when I went into a black mood. I mean that literally. I dyed all my clothes, shoes, everything - all black. I only wear black now, which a lot of people find weird, but I pretend I don't care.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
the twist
sometimes the oddest things seem fabulous. For me, even being near Nayaa would be fabulous. Even breathing in a small whiff of the violet perfume she's always wearing could send me into a permanently intoxicated state.
But the thing is, I never can smell that whiff anymore. It's gone, and so is she, all the way to Argentina. And the worst thing is that she's changed her perfume style. It's now rose and pine. Queer mixture, but I'm sad because it seemed like I had her perfume to hold on to, and now that's gone too. I'm sad because what if she changes? what if she becomes someone I'll never be able to identify with anymore?

but I know that won't happen. Just like I know the world isn't gonna end today. Nor is the moon going to become a star, or the sky the sea. Some things are irreversible, and one of those is the togetherness of Nayaa and me.

But something really wonderful happened today.
I've been trying to get into this international boarding school called Fontana in a place called Bacchanal in California (it's really minuscule and not even on the map, but it's apparently a really lovely beachside town) for two years, but it's really hard to get a scholarship and it's terribly expensive otherwise unless you get support. I couldn't get support either because Lyon's a lawyer now and earns a lot, but not enough to fund me there. So anyway, I've been rejected again and again, and guess what?
that's so stupid, when you know the obvious answer already. I got accepted into Fontana, finally!!!!! They sent me a letter about it today!!!! When I came home and opened the package with dread, I was so stunned to read my letter of acceptance. And then all these glossy leaflets and forms fell out - how they get their forms all glossed too! - and I ran in to tell Lyon, but he wasn't home.

And when he did come home and I told him I had a full scholarship, he just looked weary, which wasn't exactly what I expected. Then he gave a small sigh and said, "So you'll be leaving too, then."
So I looked at him for a while. I didn't really say anything. Then I left him with the parents' forms.

They allow you to pick all your subjects, or at least the preferred ones, beforehand, and give you adequate information about what you'll need for college. I'm not very sure about college - I may want to travel around the world with...... Nayaa - but I do want to keep my 'options open,' as Lyon and my teachers keep telling me.
School starts very soon, in a week- unfortunately I won't be getting much vacation, but I'm willing to sacrifice that. I just want to get away from here. this house is so depressing, Lyon's always tired and/or depressed, and Nayaa's gone. There's nothing but memory to haunt me here.

I'm running away from all the things and people I loved, or still love..... and this realisation struck me halfway through one of those boring forms where you fill in irritating statistics.

I flopped down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. A huge collage bepaints the painted wood, and suddenly my own collage seemed almost hazy, as if I couldn't understand it anymore. I closed my eyes but all these strange pictures kept floating around in my mind. A huge closeup of Nayaa glinting her white teeth at me.
Nayaa dancing with me.

I always liked dancing, but I never truly knew what it meant until I met Nayaa. I took ballet for eleven years, ever since I was three. I stopped when Nayaa left. Life became a black chalkboard again. I always liked ballet, the way everything seemed beautiful and how the pain of standing on tiptoe vanished with the grace and peacefulness of the music. So I automatically became a dancer, and I was the star of a lot of ballet programmes. I was getting very ambitious about it when I met Nayaa. Nayaa came from an entirely different sort of background. She had never taken dance lessons. But she had always danced. It befitted her, as naturally as a dream befits a rose.
But while I had perfect poise, structure, professionalism and measured grace in my dancing, she had passion, power, unimaginable beauty, sensualism, sensation in her dancing. It was so much more alive. I was always methodically practicing and learning. I danced as if it was just another routine in my life, nothing special. I lost the excitement of a child learning to be agile.
And I regained that when I danced with Nayaa.

But I haven't danced at all since Nayaa left. I thought not getting any exercise would make me fat, but instead, for some obscure reason, coupled with the little food I've been eating and the little light I've been getting, I'm thinner. Not much, but a little.

But I love dancing. Don't I?

I returned to the forms and stared down the list of subjects. They blurred and merged. They were so many. Too many to understand or contemplate. I struck off sports completely, then discovered I had to take either gymnastics, some sport or other, PE, foods and fitness or weight lifting. So eventually I chose swimming, deciding it would be better than slacking around in PE like I had done for 9 years.
Eventually, after some vague thinking, I chose English AP, AP world history, chemistry 2nd level, AP math, drama and vocals in addition to swimming. I took 7, almost as much as the maximum quota, 8 subjects.

I was looking forward to Fontana.

Friday, July 29, 2005
my mother
Running like everything lost and gone and then found.... running like a person possessed, someone who just realised their dream had come true... running away from love....

Mum left nearly two years ago and in those two years Lyon and I changed. My popularity drifted down the drain and I became more sombe, and when Nayaa left I changed altogether. Lyon worked more and talked less, and always looked drawn and sad, and somewhat shabby, something he never looked before. Lyon's job was one many would love to have, a fancy lawyer in a fancy office who took on fancy cases, and the money just poured in. I didn't really care much for this, I was glad Lyon at least was a humanised lawyer, rather than just a money whore, but I was worried when he became so different after Mum left. Of course he would change, but I didn't expect it to be so dramatic. After a while I stopped caring. But it makes me think. How could I stop caring about the situation's effect on my father?
Maybe because both of us were being distanced more and more as the days, weeks, months, years went by.
Sometimes I wake up in the night and I walk out onto the little balcony outside my room. I look down at the street, at the lamps, at the lights the neighbours always leave on, at the neat little lawns, so picture perfect. So unreal. And I imagine my mother walking down the street, her bracelets, necklaces, rings and anklets all jangling, her hippie-stylish mom attire so imperfect in this otherworld of a suburban neighbourhood.
Did she leave because she was so different? But wasn't I different too? Wasn't I like her too, inside?
No, it took her to leave to make me realise I was like her too. I might have jus continued being that person, that Ariel, the one so popular and a 'cool girl,' perhaps a preppie, perhaps a cheerleader later on. I shuddered. It took Nayaa to meet me and Mum to leave to make me what I really was.
But why did it have to be that? And why did Nayaa have to leave for me to realise the impact she had had on my life? Why did it have to be like this?
But maybe this is just me being selfish. How cruel of me to think that it was for me that Mum left, that Nayaa came and went. How self-absorbed of me to think that the world ran its course... for me... with me at its centre. I was not the sun, I was not a planet moons revolved around, I was not a goddess, I was not the only one.

But I need them back.
And how come Mum never even wrote? Didn't she care?
I was scared for a long time after a while, then the fear dully changed to desensitisation, a knowledge, a weary realisation that she wouldn't be coming back. I got on with life. But now I've stopped again.

Sunday, July 31, 2005
Jesse
I went to see Jesse today.
But I haven't really told you anything about Jesse, have I?
Jesse Wilkins and I have known each other since before we were babies. Our mothers were childhood friends, and although they didn't have their "wonderful reconnoitre" until we were 5 and Lyon moved us to San Diego, where it so happened that Miranda, Jesse's mom, was living too - coincidence of coincidences - they did keep in contact about up till the time my mother met Harish. Then, I think, they drifted apart.... and then, about 6 years later, back together again. So in a way, Jesse and I were somehow connected even before we were born.
As a five year old, I liked Jesse, and all the other little boys teased him mercilessly for it. But after six toiling years, during which this silly childish spat/liking continued, we became friends..... well, I can't believe it took six years. We were always friends, but what I mean is acknowledged, no-resentment-in-the-deal friends. By that time we were about to start at junior high school, and the pains of elementary school were thankfully whisked away. In junior high Jesse had a crush on me, the roles reversed. I went out with him for a long time in seventh grade, when I was oh-so-popular, the height, but then we broke up and for three months we.... I don't know.... he seemed depressed and as for me.... I was too haughty to care..... we didn't talk much at all. I met Nayaa in those three months, and that kind of changed me. Jesse and I became friends again. It wasn't until about four months later that I realised I was desperately in love with him. But it was so confusing because he didn't seem to like me that way anymore and I was afraid to tell him. I don't know why I was afraid to tell him. Maybe I cherished our newly renewed friendship too much to let anything disturb it. But anyway. Jesse and I probably started growing apart then: when I couldn't tell him all my feelings, and when he grew more depressed.
Then my mother left, and that really isolated me a lot. I was still okay, I still managed, Nayaa helped me through, but I was going out with Amir... more about him later.... and that was a lot to deal with too, and then you know Nayaa left five months ago.
Meanwhile, I was breaking down. Shortly before Nayaa left, I told Jesse I loved him, and I was scared Amir would be angry if he found out. I never told him. I still haven't.
And Jesse told me.... this was six months ago.... it was his fifteenth birthday actually, the day I told him, he told me he was gay.
And I guess this made me more than ever depressed, because I knew I had to stop loving him.
But it isn't that easy.
Love..... is.... never.... easy.... as the cliche goes.
And I guess everything just fell apart then.
Now Jesse and I aren't really that close at all. He is still one of my great friends, but I think we drifted apart when I met Nayaa and he met his boyfriend Noah. It's exceedingly sad, but sometimes I just feel so helpless about the situation.

But today I thought I would go see him and tell him I got accepted into Fontana, and, also... I guess... to say goodbye.... because I'm leaving tomorrow morning, and I'd finished packing yesterday. Once I knew I was getting into Fontana, I wanted to get everything perfectly ready as soon as possible, especially since they had taken so long to inform me of this highly important fact. I'll be going on my first flight alone, which should probably be okay, but probably really boring. It's only a short flight, since Bacchanal is near San Jose, and the only reason I am taking it at all is because there's nobody to drive me down there as Lyon has an important case tomorrow.

Jesse used to live next door to me. For almost nine years we lived right next door to each other. But then Miranda got a job elsewhere, and they moved. So then I only saw him at school. I guess this also aided in our drifting apart. It seems so odd, the way we drifted apart, it almost makes you believe there is a God and fate after all, but of course there isn't. It's life. Life is odd.

So now I had to take two buses: first downtown, then further south, until finally I reached the neighbourhood where he lived. I might have been in my own neighbourhood - the same suburban petite cardboard box houses, the same perfect wood slab walls, the same plastic-looking grass, the same pruned trees. It was almost like the little kids playing hide and seek and swimming in their kiddie pools were the same as in my neighbourhood. Eerie.

I hadn't called him, so when Miranda opened the front door she was pleasantly surprised to see me, although I could see the tension in her face when she asked if we'd heard from my mother yet. I knew she and my mother hadn't gotten along so well for a year, and now I wasn't sure what Miranda thought of her at all. But then Miranda was so prim and proper and posh - she scared me in some ways with her airs - I never understood in the first place how my mother's best friend could be someone with such different ideals from her own.
After a lot of discomfited small talk, Miranda said she would call Jesse down. But I said I would go up myself.
I didn't go up the regular way.
I took the side stairs, which open into this small landing, from where you can slip into Jesse's closet. When he first moved here, we went crazy exploring the place. It's such a mansion - and an old one, too - so antique and fancy and posh and elaborate - I loved it always, but now it felt foreign. As I slipped into Jesse's closet, I wondered if he would appreciate me coming over at all, even if it was to say goodbye, and what about this disorderly way of coming in? I sank to the ground in the closet, my heart starting to beat faster. I could never completely stop loving Jesse. He was my first love, and it's not just the cliche of that which I mean, it's just that we've known each other for ever so long, and even though I hadn't talked to him since summer started in May, and school ended, and I hadn't really talked to him since January, when I told him I loved him, I still felt close to him.
After some trepidation and contemplation, I slowly eased the closet door opened and with my dancer's agility I stepped out into the full glow of his room. All the posters, the old and the new merged together. Photographs. I so clearly stood out from so many of them, I wondered if he missed me. Meanwhile, he was lying faceup on the bed, but he was looking at the ceiling, so he couldn't see me. I smiled a little...
and crept up silently behind him, and draped my arms around his neck. We used to sneak up like that on each other before, and laugh about it, but Jesse's response this time was different. He looked shocked, and shot up immediately. "Ariel!" He exclaimed. His brow creased slightly as he stood up, looking at me. He looked back at the closet and then again at me, and I saw his face soften, but the new fear was still there. But why should he ever be afraid of me?
"Hi," I said, fumbling with my hair. All the old enticement was gone. I was just a little girl talking to a stranger, and Jesse was just eyeing me like he would a creepy stalker.
Okay, I was exaggerating.
"It's...." Jesse paused, "interesting," he seemed to smile a little, "to see you."
"Yeah," I closed the closet and sat down in his swivel desk chair. I looked at him. He sat down on the bed again, gingerly.
"How are you?" I asked. As I looked at Jesse, I saw so many different versions of him. The Jesse at age 13/14 who would kiss me, and who I would kiss, and how we were such entrepreneurs, so scared, almost, to be what we were. Then I saw him for what he was at 15 and how he was stunned when I told him I still loved him, and then as he was now, how I hardly knew him anymore.
I needed to kiss him before he left, just once last time. Even if he was gay. I don't think this would be wrong. I just wanted him to know that I would always love him. Maybe you will think I should have just said that, instead, but anyway.

"I got accepted into Fontana," I said, when he didn't reply to this endeavour at small talk.
"Fontana?" he looked blank, and I couldn't believe he could have forgotten. But then he remembered, and he smiled fully. "Oh, that's great! Congratulations!"
I wondered if he was happy that I was leaving. "Thanks."
Silence. Then I said, "How is it going with you and Noah?"
He was suddenly silent. "We.... broke up, a month ago." Then he sighed, and looked at me fully. "Oh, Ariel. I'm still trying to figure things out."
"It's not easy," I said, trying to sound sympathetic. But I was wildly cruising about for a possibility that maybe he loved me, and that's what he was trying to figure out.
"So when are you leaving?" He asked.
"Tomorrow morning," I said.
He looked shocked. "What?! How come you didn't tell me before?"
"I only got informed five days ago." I snapped. "Besides, you haven't been all that eager to see me, have you, not since January!"
He looked downcast. I suddenly regretted the idea of kissing him. I got up and strode towards the doorway. Suddenly a lot of anger was surfacing. I needed to escape before I started screaming at him.
"Ariel," He caught me. "Where are you going?"
"Home," I said, "This was a mistake. I just wanted to say... goodbye."
But I stopped, and wearily consigned myself to stay there.
"I'm sorry," He said, suddenly, "I'm sorry we.... something happened.... that it had to be this way."
"It didn't have to be this way." I said, a little vehemently, and then, recklessly, I pulled him to me and kissed him, passionately, ruthlessly.... and for a moment he was surprised, reluctant perhaps, but then, with sudden passion, he was kissing me too, and we were..... so rapturously in this moment that it seemed we were back in some other long-lost time. Where had this come from?
He was caressing me, and I was drinking in all those things I had missed so much about him, all those things I hadn't had in almost 2 years.
And when we were side by side on his bed, consigned to the fact that it was dangerous to go farther than making out, I stared up at the ceiling and said, "I never thought this would happen again."
"Nor did I." He said.
An infinity seemed to pass.
"But...." I was confused. It had all seemed so quick, so sudden, so unreal.
"I know," Jesse said. "I don't know. Maybe I'm bi, or maybe.... maybe... I loved you all along, and I didn't know."
I rolled over onto my stomach to face him. I couldn't believe this. This was not happening. It did not make sense. "Why didn't you tell me?"
I saw fear in his eyes, then quickly replaced by some kind of understanding. "I wasn't sure," He said.
I kissed him again. A few more moments of bliss.
"But now..." He said hopelessly. "You're going to leave."
And I didn't want to leave. But at the same time I needed to.

Eventually I left, and that brings me here.
I can't talk about Jesse anymore. I'm just..... miserably passionately in love with him, and it doesn't help that he loves me. Not anymore.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Bacchanal
Bacchanal is such a tiny beachside town that it's not even on the map anywhere. It's near San Diego, and it's really pretty and has all these quaint shops in markets. It's really more Mexican, and I'm glad they've preserved the heritage because it's such a horrible thing the way all the Indian land is on 'reservation' and sometimes there are casinos and stuff. I'm really against the US government for many extensive reasons (I hate Bush with a vengeance), and one of them is how they stole all the land (originally, the Europeans) from the Native Americans and how even now they won't give it back or give proper reservations or rights etc.

I'm sorry I haven't written in 3 days. It's just that I was so busy getting ready for coming here, and then the past two days I was just setting up here.
I haven't started my classes yet. I got here yesterday, and they don't start classes until tomorrow.

I love it here. They have really lavish, posh suites and everything, because it's essentially a very rich school. So my room right now is like a really fancy hotel room, and better! I did personalise it with my things, but even with my collages up it looks more like I've invaded on something that isn't mine.
What I really like is how I can just use my laptop in privacy and do my own thing, and nobody interferes.

More later, I'm gonna go get something to eat and read for a while and then go to bed.

Thursday, August 04, 2005
my new life part 1
Take a look at my schedule (yeah, I know this is stupid, but I have a passion for schedules and family trees and stuff like that):

Monday-Friday

8-9 am - AP English
9:10-10:10 am - vocals
10:40 am - 12:10 pm - swimming
12:30 - 1 pm - lunch
1:30 - 2:30 pm - math AP
2:40 -3:40 pm - chemistry 2
3:50-4:50 pm - AP world history
6:30 pm - dinner
7 - 10 pm - drama

Now, in case you're wondering why the hell I took so many subjects when the required quota was only 4 subjects, and why drama is for 3 hours, the reason is a) because I like vocals and drama, because I took an advanced drama class, c) because it'll look good on my transcript, d) because I have to keep up with my music, and e) because it's not really that bad. There are breaks between all of the classes, and I usually can finish all my pending work (we don't really get 'homework' so much, because the classes are longer and it's a boarding school, though they do give us assignments) during the breaks.

And maybe you're wondering why I didn't take any kind of dancing, since I love dancing so much. But you already know it's because my inspiration went away along with Nayaa.

****

Oh, but I haven't even got you to the most interesting part: the people. Well, my own suite I share with a young, somewhat eccentricably artistic teacher who's really more of a girl, and who insists we call her Omega; Rowena Hayes, a rather impeccable eighth grader who flashes her pretty blonde hair everywhere; Anabel Moore, a 12th grade goth who has a strange nose ring in the shape of a skull; and...... Satine LaMarr, who is so ubiquitous it's hard to ever analyse her.

Satine is sensational. In the 3 days that I've been here, I've been observing her. As if she is a portrait to study. But she isn't. Actually, she's the one in control. She seems to look right into your eyes and know exactly what you are thinking. She herself is as mysterious as an eternal ocean, as beautiful as a flower blowing in the wind, as lovely as the song 'The Blower's Daughter' by Damien Rice, as dangerous as an elegant ruby-studded dagger, as seductive as red wine, as elegant as your fairy godmother's black cat.

The first thing she said to me when she discovered me looking out of the window at the waves from the lounge, she said, "You look like a painting."
I turned around when she said that. It was the second day and I was buzzing with thoughts. But then as I looked at Satine LaMarr, who stood there poised in entirety, suddenly everything seemed timeless. It was like we were standing in a wormhole or something. I had this queer sensation of being in a different world.
You know, she's like Arwen in the Lord of the Rings, or like Galadriel, but in a much better way. She's like a sorceress unrevealed, who will change the world. She's come to establish that sorceresses can be good.

I don't remember what exactly I said. Just some old hi, I'm Ariel, who are you rubbish, though I don't know how I could have composed myself.
She just has this aura. It bepaints the carpet she walks on.
As for beauty, she's surrealistically beautiful. She has green, green eyes; pale, pale skin; and black, black hair. She's thin, tall and willowy, and her contours are perfect. She looks like a Beautiful Person out of a dream.

I'm going. I have to sleep now, I've been writing this for ages.

Friday, August 05, 2005
my new life part 2
So where was I last night? Oh, I was talking about Satine.
But.... I mean... Satine is so much like a poem. That sentence seems so flippant to describe her.

But I will come back to her later. Right now I want to talk about my life as it is right now, and the grand change it has incurred.
Anyway. Omega is also my English teacher, which means I'm somewhere around her most of the day and night, but that's cool because she's pretty cool. Her eccentricity at twenty three is exciting and somewhat contagious in a good way. She's always talking imagerically (is that a word? I so have a tendency to make up words) and she loves symbolism and surrealism, and she's really philosophical. Our first English class she had us all write what we knew and thought about Socrates, what person we wanted to become most like in life, what impact Harry Potter has had on our lives, what we thought about Shakespeare honestly, and what our slogans would be.
Anyway, that's how our classes have gone with Omega. She doesn't insist on structure and form like a lot of English teachers do. We write a lot. Poetry, stories, analysis, whatever. On our jeans, on the board, on paper, on our laptops or mobile phones, on the desks, wherever. I know that sounds irresponsible, but maybe life is irresponsible.
In English we're doing Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and so far I'm halfway through though the class is only one fourth through. I really like Bel Canto, it really makes you love opera and makes you appreciate poesy and imagery, and also gives this sense of excitement mixed with worrying about what will eventually happen to the characters. Omega told me yesterday that I would hate the ending, but she didn't say why, or why she thought I would hate it, particularly, but I'm really dreading it if they all die. That would be terrible.

I keep listening to the same old music over and over and sometimes as I write I start drumming my leg, which is weird, and probably shows nervousness, but whatever.
I really like my world history teacher too, Mr Darwin. No, I am not kidding. That is really his name. Fits, doesn't it? He's interesting, with his sudden bursts of excitement about a subject, with his enthusiasm and the documentaries he picks out, with his boggly eyes which stick out behind his glasses, and the way he'll bring newspaper cartoons to class and have us analyse them. Right now we're studying like the real beginning, ancient civilisations, and so he brings in all these charts and photographs and antiques and all sorts of stuff, although of course they're much more modern, just replicas of what could have been the original. He sometimes talks about his own life, but rarely. Every now and then he will ask you something like, "Eureka, do you think the Mesopotamians liked cheese? Do you think they had it at all?" even if your name's not Eureka, which, well, it's probably not, though I think it's a cool name. That seems like a totally random question, but his are usually even randomer than that. Mr Darwin doesn't like to side with anyone on political beliefs, but I have a good idea he's more Democrat or Liberal. Which is cool!
My math teacher, Mr Lawson, is nice in the way that he'll help you whenever you need help and really encourage you, but he's kind of fast-moving and seems to try and teach you only what you need to know, and asks you to come some other time if you want to know more. Which is ok and all, and understandable since he has to keep the class going, but I'm the kind of person who always wants to know so much more, so I'm always ending up disappointed with the way there's too much to learn and how I don't always like math so much, the concepts can baffle me sometimes and it's so irritating when a problem doesn't work out, you know? Though math does have its interesting points.

Apparently Anabel is also up right now, because I can hear faint gothic music from behind her doorway (she puts it on low so we won't all bug her), but the light's off. My door, unusually closed, is open, but hers isn't. I'm wondering what she's doing behind that door, but somehow barging in doesn't seem like such a good idea. Anabel is kind of scary in the way sometimes goths can be, with her pierced nose and the handcuffs she wears every now and then, and her deadpan white paste she smears on her face, and her super gleaming black lipstick.

I should go now, it's after 12:30, and I want to do a lot of things tomorrow, even though it's Sunday. Goodnight.

Saturday, August 06, 2005
more about my new life
I'm exhausted. But anyway.
I forgot to talk about Kabir last time, and I can't believe I forgot that.
Drama had a huge number of girls, particularly, waiting to audition. (You have to audition for your final enlisting in drama.) I thought this was strange, but I didn't make anything of it. But then, that first day, when we all sat down to wait for our chances to audition, suddenly this tall, strong-looking woman walked onstage.... followed by the handsomest, most artistic guy I had ever seen. He didn't look as if he could be older than twenty, and yet that seemed strange, for someone so young to be a teacher at Fontana. But then so many things at Fontana were strange.
His name is Kabir Renoir. Another fancy name to add to the list of extravagant names. It seems we all are hiding under some sort of camouflage, and very often that camouflage is our names.
So then, looking at his midnight hair with the vaguest tint of indigo, the way his eyes seemed to sear right into your heart and read your mind (they were the darkest indigo), the paleness of his skin, which, rather than making him look sickly, made him look exotic...... his tallness and sexy figure... it was all understandable. And all the girls giggled when they saw him. But I didn't. I mean, sure, there were others who didn't too, so I'm not trying to make a point about how different I am or anything.
My audition was near the end. By that time I was nervous, because everyone was getting a topic on the spur of the moment. The woman, whose name was Sonja Yelenski (she was the main teacher), would usually give out these random topics, but sometimes Kabir would help her out. So far the oddest topics to act had been Godzilla, the dream and the rose, God and a striptease (lots of sniggers about that one, and some disconcerted muttering.)
So I was worried by the time they called out my name. And some people sniggered at the Skywalker part of my name, so that didn't make things better. But the thing is, when I'm nervous, my adrenaline shoots up so high and my quota for riskiness increases too, until I've become someone so dangerously alluringly reckless it's hard to get me down. It's a strange inverse logic, that I tend to become so reckless when I'm nervous. But I stood up and threw my hair back and stared cuttingly at the first guy I could pinpoint who had sniggered at my name, then I walked up, and waited. I stared directly at Kabir, and, I was pleased to see, he looked back at me. There was this small smile about his lips, and I loved that. His fingers made a small tower, and he appeared to be thinking. Then Sonja told me to.... talk. This startled me at first, and she must have seen my surprise, but she didn't say anything. So my mind flew around wildly. I would do anything to get into drama. So then I started talking about Nayaa. I didn't use her name. But I talked about her.
And now this memory has settled back into the trunk of near days, and all I remember is the way everyone looked stunned when I said I'd wanted to kiss Nayaa. I don't know why I said that. I know I felt as if I'd betrayed her when I did that, and I would never, ever tell her. If she finds this blog, well..... but I couldn't possibly tell her. She might never forgive me, even though I didn't mention her name.
But Sonja and Kabir appeared to like my openness and recklessness, so I got in.
I make it sound so simple. But it was so entirely unsimple.

Satine would make a good actress, but she doesn't take drama. I asked her once why she didn't. But all she said was, "Why? Do you think I would be good at it?" so then I said yes, and again she asked me why. But that time I couldn't figure out where to begin.

Today while I was swimming this guy in my class came up to me and said, "You have red hair. Why do you hide it?" So then I came up and clutched the handlebar, and twisted my hair around. True. Underneath all the black dye, the red was starting to show. I looked at him. He looked.... well.... completely what you would call buff, in a very dancerish, chocolaty-skin, seductive fashion. So I was surprised he wanted to talk to me at all, because - well - I'm not ugly, but I'm not the kind of girl guys would be running up to talk to either (I'm not a typical blonde, I do have a good figure but I don't have the attitude....) and then I was surprised by the question he'd asked me.
"Well," I said, "I like black better than red, I guess."
He bobbed up and down in the water next to me. "But your red hair has so much more character."
I shrugged, and swam away. I didn't feel like talking to anyone just then. I had been thinking of Nayaa, and halfway she had merged into Satine, and then Satine had merged back into Nayaa. It was confusing.

Rowena was really upset back at the suite because, apparently, she had broken up with her boyfriend. She had dumped him because he - ahem - gave her a satire on stereotypes for her birthday, and she took offence at some comments about blondes. This seems like a really weird, obscure, STUPID reason to break up, but whatever. She's been crying and stuff, but it doesn't really make sense. Girls like Rowena have never made any sense to me. Omega says it was an 'impending breakup,' and then, in a stage whisper, she says 'they didn't suit each other,' which probably is true, but whatever.
What Anabel said was worse, though. She snapped, "Oh, go fuck another guy, won't you? Like you don't have em lining up at your door anyway." Which really didn't make any sense to me, because Anabel doesn't have any reason for a grudge against Rowena - she never knew her before, apparently - and she just seems to hate pretty preppy girls. But that's really mean.
Or maybe Anabel is upset because every time her boyfriend Jared comes over he looks more at Rowena than he does at her.
As for Satine, she just said, "C'est la vie." Which didn't help, either. So then it was as if they all turned to me for something to say to Rowena. But all I came out with was, "I hope it gets alright," which was unbelievably lame.

I think I'll continue with a description of my teachers. Last time we stopped at Mr Lawson. Well, next is my swimming teacher, Ms Florence. She's this small, thin woman, which probably makes a lot of girls feel bad because they're so much larger (but of course that's not her fault) and she speaks in this kind of shrill voice, and when she's not yelling at us when we're in the pool (not because she's mad, but because it's impossible to hear otherwise, it's so large and there's music in the background and stuff), she speaks in a really small voice. Swimming is ok because you can basically do whatever you like as long as you're gaining some physical, safe exercise.
I already talked about Sonja and Kabir, but not in so much detail. Well, that's a long story, so more on that later. But oh yeah, my chemistry teacher. Mrs Anna Keith-Scheffer, who insists we call her Mrs Keith-Scheffer even though Mrs K-S would be easier. She's this really uptight woman who always has every hair meticulously in place, and who probably goes to sleep every night with curlers in her hair. She's strict in an unpleasant way. I don't like her much and she doesn't like people who ask questions, so that doesn't help either. It's a pity because I've always hated science and now chemistry is just worse than ever. I mean, I can understand things somehow, but the thing is I just get so bored and tired and cranky after being through one of her classes. The class' atmosphere is so austere, too: smells of some hygienic room cleaner and everything's in place and K-S shouts at anyone who sprawls in their seats and the girl in front of me keeps draping her long brown hair over my desk, and I keep nearly shutting it in my book by mistake.

As for drama, my class has 32 students, and we're going to do Moulin Rouge minus the too-explicit-and-sick scenes in about four months, so right now everyone is kind of auditioning for roles and stuff, and the crew is getting started up. Hardly any people actually want to be in the crew, and all these additional people keep pouring in for the auditions since taking drama and being in the play are entirely different things (drama is also about history, techniques, exercises, styles and so on - there is a lot of theory and research to do in the actual class) and anyway, for the moment that's rather complicated. I've already auditioned for Satine - funny how it's the same name as my Satine - but we're not going to find out the results till next week, so that's a bit complicated. Millions of people bombard Sonja and Kabir with queries about the roles, but they don't answer.
Meanwhile, everyone except Sonja and Kabir seem to think I'm really strange ever since That Day. There's this clique of three girls - Nora, Anne and Lindsey; tenth-graders like me - and they really seem to be prejudiced against me. They act all snotty around me and pick on me. But that's alright because I'm really adverse to their lovely remarks. I mean. I'm not always averse to their comments, but I try to be. It's kind of irritating when they keep calling me lesbo, though, it seems so inadequate and rude...... well, of course it is. But what infuriates them is how I'm always so serene about their comments.
As for Kabir.... we only really talk about drama, but every now and then we will start talking about other things, life in general, but then we quickly revert to drama soon, because it's a class and everything. Kabir is only nineteen but he's been in a drama school since forever and he's trying this out as a possible opportunity. It seems Fontana does give out a lot of chances for opportunities....

I usually lug my laptop around with me everywhere, and I keep using it like all the time. Since the whole school is an internet zone, the net is always working. And I pretty much find time to work on my laptop and do my homework in between, so that by this time I manage to feel more peaceful.

I think I'll go now....

Sunday, August 07, 2005
net addiction
Most of the day I seem to be pretending about my life, saying all the happy things, but inside I'm just sad. I'm going to try and concentrate on what's more important - the real things.
I know it seems absurd that I don't even pay enough attention to something as important as my life, and the truth of it, but you know what? So many things are like that. I think sometimes we all push our life aside to make way for other things, until all those real thoughts have become indistinct lost particles... and we don't know what's real anymore....
and we decide it's ok to pretend.
well, that's the way I feel, anyway.

sometimes.

The results of the auditions won't be out till Monday next (not tomorrow, the next Monday) and I am just too excited.

Satine is usually at the window looking out at the sea. I still don't understand her. We talk sometimes, but not much. I just feel as if she reminds me too much of me, and Nayaa, and Amir - I will talk about Amir some other day, I don't feel like it right now - or as if she knows us all so clearly, and that's.... a very strange thought.

Or maybe I'm just scared and hurt when I shouldn't be.

Monday, August 08, 2005
Yanik
Meanwhile, the guy in swimming who told me my hair was red is called Yanik, and he's actually okay. I mean, I don't really want to get involved with him or something - I've really had enough of that for a long time - but he's totally crazy about me, even I can tell clearly, but for some reason it's not embarrassing. I don't mean that I'm some sex kitten or something - I am so NOT, and I would hate to be - this is the first time I've ever actually been heralded so clearly, I think - but he doesn't make it pathetically embarrassing or something. Yesterday he asked me out - well, we went to the Peace gardens - and we lay down in the grass and stared up at the twilight sky for a long time.
Then he said, "My friend wants to photograph you."
I looked at him. I stared at him. "What? What do you mean?"
He laughed. "She doesn't want to photograph you nude and broadcast your pictures on the internet.... come on." Yanik laughed. "She's really into art, you should come and see her room. It looks like a... like a.... tomato splattered abandoned canvas project."
I smiled at him, then said, "So is she your girlfriend?"
Yanik laughed. "No way, Irene wouldn't be my girlfriend."
"Why?" I asked.
"Oh..." He sounded vague. "Well, she likes me. But I don't like her.... like that. We're just friends."
For a moment he looked at me. I thought he was going to kiss me and I was wondering wildly what to do, because I didn't want to kiss him.... well, I did, but I was also really afraid.
But when he was as close as we could get without touching - except maybe a hair on my nose, or something - so close that vision fuzzed out and I was panicking, he slowly drew away. For a long time we were silent, and I relaxed a little.
"Are you in love with someone else?" He asked. I thought this a really odd question considering I had only known Yanik 5 days - but yet in those 5 days we had talked so much it was impossible for us not to know each other - but suddenly now I felt this clearly strike me.
"Maybe," I said. Then I got up and I went away. He didn't follow me, but eventually he did, and we went back to the school.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005
finding time
Remember how I told you about Yanik yesterday? how he and I are getting along so well and everything. and also about Irene, the girl who wanted to photograph me.
I met her today.
Irene is okay, but she's not the kind of person who I usually find immeasurably intriguing. She seems easy to figure out. She is a photographer, which got me interested, but maybe I'm condescending or something, but when I met her she seemed too..... normal.
She dresses in preppy clothes, her friends are mostly preppy people, and the only thing that seems to connect her at all to the art world is photography, and in the time I spent talking to her in between classes and stuff, and with Yanik, and her friends, I noticed she doesn't talk much about her photography at all with them. I could be wrong, though, of course. Maybe her photography is something intimate, like my singing, and she doesn't need to talk about it to show how much she loves it. Or maybe she does talk a lot about it, just not today. But when I asked her about it, one of her friends rolled her eyes and Irene sounded unusually small as she said, "Oh yeah...." and bla bla bla.
She does want to photograph me, but that'll have to wait for some other time. We're both busy this weekend, me with Bel Canto, other projects, Yanik and stuff in general, and Irene with some other projects or whatever. So maybe sometime next week or something.

Thursday, August 11, 2005
the week of roses
I just started this book called Atonement by Ian McEwan and it seems like it could be interesting, but it's written in a very old-fashioned style.
Meanwhile, Yanik and I are known as a "couple," but we're not really a couple. I'm afraid of being in a relationship, as I might have mentioned before.
In Vocals - the only lesson where I don't really have a constant teacher since for some reason the teachers come and go on shifts - I seem to be getting better, but then I'm pretty good at singing - I've been taking lessons since I was 3 - so I'm not really sure if there is a real change. I don't really play any instruments well, not even piano, because although I've always been a singer in so many ways, and I tend to voice my thoughts in songs, I've never actually shown a grand interest in any musical instruments.
And I still haven't started dancing again. This makes me sad, and my feet yearn for the familiar movements, but my mind is somewhere else, somewhere my singing takes me, but my dancing is lost in.
I don't talk about my singing much, maybe because it is so much a part of me, one of those necessary things I am, while dancing is something I admire, something illustrious I feel abashed by entitling myself to, something so mysterious. But singing is just myself. Sometimes I don't even say I like singing, because I AM a singer, I don't need to prove it by saying it is a 'hobby' or a 'pastime' - it is so much more than that. Maybe this doesn't make any sense, but whatever.
I usually practise singing - just alone, or with a backdrop of classical music - in the early morning, and of course I do sing in Vocals with whoever is that day's teacher - it is more individual study in some ways, because the teachers let you experiment with the music and your voice, and they don't become severely attached to you the way so many of my previous singing teachers became, so fiercely competitive about their students. I think it is better this way, and also, I am almost 15, I have learnt a lot but I have not yet developed my own strongly unique style as definitively as I would have liked to.

I don't get much free time. I try to spend my free time either songwriting or updating this blog, because it seems I really need to outlet my feelings and thoughts somehow, but usually I end up going somewhere with Yanik, or talking to someone else....

and that leaves no time to just be me, since otherwise I'm so caught up in schoolwork, and I have to respond to my email and stuff.... and I have to do my drama exercises, vocal training.... I don't know, time escapes me too quickly, too unfathomably for me to ever capture it.

I must go again, so many things to do....

Friday, August 12, 2005
stunned
I'm just so stunned, I don't know what to say.
There is a new guy in drama... no wait... I had a boyfriend once... no.... I was in love once... we were lovers.... my ex-lover Amir just joined the school... joined the drama club... auditioned but I guess that doesn't matter... but... I can't believe... he's here....

He didn't seem stunned to see me. Maybe he was, though. Amir has always hidden his feelings as secretively, as seductively, as amazingly, as anyone possibly could... I am not good at similes... well.
Amir was not like Jesse. I love Jesse, but I have always been confused about whether I could possibly love Amir more. Maybe that was one of the reasons I broke up with him.
But Amir... I met Amir a little while after I met Nayaa, when we were beginning the eighth grade. I had recently turned thirteen and I was a somewhat temperamental person. Amir was a sophomore at the high school and he and I were in the same acting group... funny how this has happened all over again, like deja vu... and we became really really close... intimate... lovers.... but in a way that was much more dangerous than the way Nayaa and I became. Amir and I loved each other with an unmatched passion - or at least I loved him that way. But maybe all you adults will scoff at this and say teenage puppy love and shit like that but that's not true - we CAN and did love each other.

We got into a lot of serious stuff with each other. But that... isn't... for... now..

Anyway. But then we broke up, and that's a story for another day. I've been grieving ever since then, and when Nayaa left it was even worse, it was like my entire life just turned to shit and nothing was worth anything anymore.
And he moved away. I didn't think I would ever see him again.

But he's here... in the here and now... and I don't know why... but he's here, and in a class of mine... a three hour class... and I'm scared. I'm breaking down all over again. But I don't know what to do about it. My hands are shaking.
We haven't said a word to each other.... yet. But we can't avoid each other forever, and I know he will be my rival here, as he always was, because he's the only competitor I've ever had where singing is concerned (in my own circle of friends, in my own age group... I am not boasting, but I am a good singer... it is my life... alright, maybe I am boasting.) And we are putting on Moulin Rouge.

And suddenly I don't know if I want the part of Satine anymore. But why should I give up a role, just because he is there?

But I.... I still love him... I will always even though I dumped him... but it wasn't....

I need to go, I need something to calm me down, I'm just so confused.


sunday, august 14
officially braindead
it's the middle of the night and I'm feeling braindead but I could care less. I'm rather high-strung at the moment because I... oh my freaking goodness.... yay!!! yippee!! i got the part of Satine!!! omg! omfg! i cant believe this! its excellent!

sorry. more later. after I get some sleep. and stop sounding drunk (even though I'm not drunk.)


monday, august 15
more composed
The last time I posted I told you I had been given the part of Satine. Now that rehearsals have started, I've been given the somewhat rewritten script (some new scenes have been added too, which is interesting), I've had some time to mull over this. For some of you who've had great roles in plays this may not seem like such a big deal, but I've never really had a great role, so I guess it's a big deal for me.
I can't really think of much else to say right now, maybe more later.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005
so many things to say, so little time
The thing is, Amir is Christian. And I knew that, right from the first rehearsal. I knew it the moment I looked at the list. Well, obviously I did. I guess I'm just dramatising.
But I didn't realise I would really have to act in love with him, to kiss him, to caress him........ (because I've never been good at pretending to love) until yesterday. Yesterday Sonja was supervising us during the Your Song performance, and we hadn't come to the scene where they kiss yet, but then we did. And Amir was okay, I think. He smiled a little at me, and kissed me. He pulled me close and I could feel the passion, I knew he still loved me as deep as he ever did. I knew he wasn't being a jerk, he was just acting, but at the same time... he wasn't acting. And I pulled apart and I stared at him, breathing hard, and suddenly I realised I was starting to cry. And so, dramatic though it is, I ran off the stage.
And I didn't go back, even though it was only 8:30 and I was skipping class. I went down to the beach.
I was cold. It was a cold night because it had rained all day, and because it was warmer inside, I was only wearing a tank top and capris. So I hugged myself and stared at the waves. They were crashing down with a vengeance. The night sky was cloudy and the moon could hardly be seen. It was windy. Quite cold.
But I didn't care.
I dug my feet into the sand. For a long time I just stared silently at the ground.

I love Amir.
I should get that clear.
I have always loved him. I know in a previous entry I seemed unsure.
But he and I.... we were so intense. and I was so sad when Nayaa left. It all seemed pointless. I don't know why I broke up with him. We hadn't got so deep in with each other that we'd had sex, come on, I'm only 14. But sometimes emotions run deeper than the physical. And I was depressed. And I wanted Nayaa so bad. I didn't want Amir to replace her, not that he had done before, but now it seemed both of them were blurring together. Sometimes I would wake up next to Amir and think I was with Nayaa, then turn to look and it was Amir.
You see, Lyon trusted Amir and me. He let us sleep at each other's houses. Both of us were far too mature to get in trouble. And Lyon, after one year, saw that. So that was okay.
But what was not okay was the hollowness that still remains when I think of Nayaa, and the fear, the pain, when I think of Amir. I can't love again, my ideas of love seem so destroyed. When I write to Nayaa I miss her deeply, with a passion, but it doesn't help, this communication. I NEED her here, right now.
and the idea that I love Amir as much as I love Nayaa is unbearable. I can't do it. I can't bear it.
I don't know why. If I could understand my feelings things would be so much simpler.
And then he moved away, too. That just proved that love is worthless to me. Of course he didn't want to go live with his dad after all that. But it was a court custody decision. But it was like I was so alone, and Jesse and I weren't close anymore, and Janey hated/envied me, and everyone else just faded away....
But he's here, and I'm here, and something's bound to happen.

He always loved me, and I never stopped loving him.

But maybe figuring things out became too hard for me.
I know it doesn't make any sense. Hell, I know it sounds shitty and stupid. But that's me. Take or leave... or somewhere in between.

So anyway, I was sitting there on the beach, and shivering, when I heard someone come up behind me. I turned. It was Kabir. This barely registered at first. Then I was surprised. Why would he come? He didn't even really know all those things about me.
And how would he find me?
But how selfish of me to think he would abandon his class just for me.
But then why did he abandon his class?
Of course not for me.

But, of course, the cliché operated. He had come for me.
"I went to look for you at your suite, but Satine told me you weren't there. Then I had an inkling you would be here. And you are."
He slipped down beside me, and I was wondering how he knew Satine.
He slipped an arm out of his jacket and proffered the half of it to me. It was a huge jacket, so we could both fit comfortably in it. Another old cliché movie scene. But usually the guy gives the girl the whole jacket. This seemed more fair.
It was curiously intimate, cuddling up next to Kabir - my teacher! - his arm around me, my head resting on his shoulder. But it also felt just right. It felt nice, like we had known each other forever.
"What's the matter?" He asked after a long time.
I didn't reply for a long time, but he waited.
"I know Amir," I said...
"We guessed." Kabir looked at me. "But S-Ariel, this is a play."
"You started to call me someone else." I said, immediately alert. S? "You started to call me Satine."
"So I did," Kabir said, though his expression was distant. "What of it?"
"How do you know her?" I asked.
"Once upon a time she was my girlfriend," Kabir said curtly.
We were silent.
Then I said, "Once upon a time Amir was my boyfriend." I said. I paused. I looked at him. "It's complicated. I know it's a play, but in the end it's not just a play, it's also emotions, and life... isn't it?"
"To some extent, everything has an impact on life," Kabir said, gravely. "But do you really want to give up this role because - of this?"
"No," I said.
"Ariel...." Kabir paused. The moon slunk out a little more. He took my hand and touched the ring Nayaa had given me before she left, on my ring finger, and the one Amir gave me, on my middle finger. Then he kissed my hand. I looked at him, surprised.
He smiled. "We can stay here if you like, all night."
I was wondering about the possible implications of this statement, but eventually I decided I didn't need to worry about it.
We stayed there for a long time, quiet. I think I fell asleep, because I was dimly aware of Kabir carrying me up to my room, and then when I woke up in the morning I was disorientated.

And Amir, of course, was sitting at the edge of my bed. I looked at myself. Still dressed in the skirt and tank top. I ran my hands through my hair.
"What?" I asked, leaning back against the pillows. I was tired. The sun was too bright. The clouds had cleared up. I wished they hadn't.
"I'm sorry," He said seriously.
I didn't look at him.
"Ariel, please. I still don't understand what happened to us."
I sighed. "It's hard." I said. I got out of bed and took off my tank top. I suddenly felt a little naked in my bra. I hadn't felt like this with Amir for a long time, but now I did. I drew a dressing robe over myself and went into the bathroom.
In the mirror I looked like some kind of freak. Very tired. Very dry. Very teary. Drained out.

Eventually we went for a walk around the grounds, and talked a lot. I think at the end we were reconciled to an extent, but he understood, I think, that it could take time.

And then I wrote a long email to Nayaa. I thought of her in Argentina. She had told me bits and pieces. Here and there. I tried connecting them. But still everything was incomplete.
I wondered if she felt like I did.
I still wonder if she does.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
all those things we are
living in a nowhere land... where the impossible becomes the possible... and then becomes the impossible again.....
I now have four guys on my mind. It's complicated.
Also, my birthday is tomorrow.
I don't really know what to do for my birthday, whether there's anything to do at all really. I mean, I feel so disillusioned this year, even with all the strange things that have been happening. Actually, too many things have been happening. It's so hard to deal with change. And yet I crave change.
It may sound highly unreal to have four guys on my mind.
But you know what? Maybe this world is unreal. Because odd things do happen sometimes.
I won't act like I'm such a wonderful girl that all these boys like me. Because it's not so easy. Kabir... I think he's just friendly, of course he'd never be interested in me. But lately I've been having all these day and night fantasies in which Kabir and I are together, and we kiss, and so on.... and I can't rationalise this. I'm not interested in him. I can't be, because there's already so much pain to deal with. I don't want more.
Amir doesn't know about Jesse and I kissing so passionately before I left. Yanik doesn't know about Amir or Jesse, and he thinks we're a couple, or sort of does, anyway, even though we can never be. I really don't want another relationship. And Jesse... he's emailed me almost every day, and I've been too afraid to reply. I don't know what to say.
My life is coming apart in shreds, and I'm scared.

Friday, August 19, 2005
happy birthday to me
it's my birthday today. yay! happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dearrrr Ariel....

I'm acting weird.
today was a great day, though. I got all these presents from everybody. And it was generally fun even though I didn't have a party. Everyone was so nice to me. They always are, but today was special.

Jesse sent me a red silk dress. I can't believe he would spend all his money on a dress for me, but it's beautiful, he must have been saving for ages. And in the middle was a beautiful card and a ring with a red rose on it. So beautiful.
But I still don't understand.
I mean, why would he love me so much now? After... well, I knew...
I knew that things could never be the same... but...
I didn't expect him to love me...
ever.

the others gave me various stuff too, but what I really needed to mention was Jesse's gift.
It made me write back to him.

But I'm still so confused.

Saturday, August 20, 2005
depressed
I'm 15, finally, but it doesn't seem to really have any impact on me.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Such a clichéd ritual. I looked at myself naked, with several kinds of clothes on, and I set the camera to take photographs of myself.
And in all of them my eyes look so sad.
like I'm just wanting something, or waiting for something, so bad.
and the thing that terrifies me is that I don't know what this thing is. It's like something I can't figure out. some kind of haunting image in the back of my mind I keep pushing away, I don't want to push it away, but it keeps getting pushed away anyway.

I tried on the dress Jesse gave me again. It's deep, dark, passionate red, and it's got all these shifting hues in the light. It's amazingly seductive, and shorter in front than in back. It ends in fancy, elaborate ruffles, and is sleeveless. I look like such a different person in it. I wore it with my red heels, but they seemed too childish for the dress. I have to get some new shoes for it, I guess.
but I'm so surprised that Jesse gave it to me.
and the most surprising thing of all is that I know this dress. It has been in my thoughts so many times before. When I was in the seventh grade, Jesse dared me in one of our elaborately ritualistic truth or dare games to sneak in through the open vent of this fancy store at night, and wear this dress, in place of the mannequin. Jesse would take the photograph as evidence. Sounds so childish now, but it was quite thrilling then.

and now it's mine....

Tuesday, August 23, 2005
more of life as it often is.
I don't know how to explain things all the time. Sometimes I just feel so disillusioned with life, other times I'm too tired to sit down and explain it all. But deep inside I really want to explain, I really want to tell you everything. I mean, I don't know why I like to write down my thoughts, and yet at the same time it can get hard for me. A few of my past posts haven't been as descriptive as I would have liked them to be. But then nothing is really as descriptive as I would like to be, is it?
Today the oddest things happened.
It started when I woke up, as usual, sometime around five-thirty. I seem to get lesser and lesser sleep these days. Tonight I'm up so late, I doubt I'll even manage to get in six hours of sleep, what with the vocal training I always do each morning and school starting at 8. I always go down to the vocal training to train with Dana, my piano accompanist. I need at least one instrument to accompany my singing to really practise well, though I can do without music too. But it's not really professional then.
But today Dana wasn't there. Instead Irene was there.
I was amazed to see her. She looked a little sour, and I guess I felt awkward too, because I had been acting rather bored around her lately, treating her like someone boring, not very appealing. It was wrong of me. Suddenly I saw that. Well, not suddenly. Or maybe it was suddenly. I really don't know. But I did feel abashed to see her there. She was wearing rather prettier clothes than she usually did, in a velour shirt with white jeans, her long hair (and I mean really, really long: it reaches about to her knees) bundled up with a lot of trains dripping out glamorously around her face. She wears glasses rather than contacts, but they look nice on her, and she likes it that way. I guess glasses do accomodate a person when they are okay with it.
"A new student joined vocals and Dana had to become her accompanist instead. So now I guess we're partners." She would rather not say accompanist, and I could see why, because she was haughty around me. But it was my fault. She had been open, friendly, wanting to photograph me, and I had treated her with disdain just because of her stereotypical sort of friends and the way she was shy about admitting to liking photography in public.
And now it turned out she played piano too... beautifully. Much like Kato did in Bel Canto, except better, probably, though of course that was just a book.
But she was surprised to hear me sing. She could not disguise her thrill, her anticipation, as I moved on from scales to songs, and I could tell she had never been assigned to a really good singer before. Or perhaps there were not many good singers at the age of 15. I had been professionally trained all my life, and I was used to people being wowed away at my singing. But Irene was not used to being presented with someone who was actually qualified.
But I don't think I really sung as well as I usually do, today. I was thinking about Irene, and how I'd been so callous to her, and how it was so unfair of me, and when you are singing you are supposed to concentrate wholly on the music, but now guilt kept creeping in. Eventually I stopped and said, "I'm sorry, Irene."
"What for?" She stopped too, but the tinkling of the piano keys seemed to linger, its ghostly music reverberating around the room, intoxicating the atmosphere.
"For dissing you," I said, and maybe because the atmosphere seemed to induce a sort of ruthlessness about me, I added, "I just treated you like a stereotypical, weak person. But you're not. I shouldn't judge by outward impressions that I form with a prejudiced mind."
She was silent. Then she said, "Well, you're certainly the first person I've met who delivers speeches like that so eloquently. But then, Miss Posh, you would speak like that, wouldn't you? You're not another stupid person, are you? No, you're just superior to the rest of us."
She whipped her hair back. "I think we'd better continue with our practise," She said coldly. "Half an hour left, however much you despise being with me."
I stared at her. "Irene." I said, shaking my head. "Really... I didn't mean it like that."
She just looked back at me. "It's not nice to be underestimated, Ariel."
"I know," I said.
"No," She said vehemently. "You don't know. All your life you've lived with people telling you how you sing so beautifully, how you look so beautiful or cute or whatever, and I can see you come from some rich family, you always have all the clothes, all the gadgets, all the attitudes.... except with your own personalised touch of snobbishness. And you think you're greater than everyone, even those of your own class and caliber."
She sat back down at the piano and rattled off a stunning, breathtaking Mozart suite, pouring so much anger and hurt into it I was stunned.
I didn't realise I had hurt her so much. I wondered if this was all an unnecessary melodrama, but then again, maybe it wasn't. Maybe I should have thought more about her, about how she felt, about how she was brave enough to make friends with me, and how I had just rejected her.
But what she said wasn't completely true. I am rich, I am a good singer, people do compliment me, but....
there are other things too.
And then I remembered Yanik telling me Irene liked him, but he didn't like her. And I realised she was angry at me because so many boys like me. That was probably an additional factor that was causing her so much pain.
"Irene..." I said. "I am sorry I acted the way I did. Truly. And... I know you like Yanik. I don't like him in that way, but I can't help it if he likes me. I'm sorry."
She was quiet, then she said, shortly, "Let's continue practise."

I have to go to bed now, to get some semblance of sleep. I will continue with the other happenings tomorrow.

25 August 2005, Thursday
ah well
Sorry about not writing yesterday, I had evil cramps and was in bed all day, reading and not doing much else, not attending classes either, and too tired to work on my computer. Today I feel better though, attended classes and all, though I stayed out of swimming (as I always do when I have my period.) Now, why am I talking about my period on my blog? Weird. Oh well, it’s just me I suppose. I mean, it’s part of my life too. Also, why is it such a taboo subject? I mean, really. You would think it was okay to talk about the normal things in life...
shows how lame our society is, anyway.
Blogger suddenly removed their formatting options; I don’t know what is up with them. So weird the way they did that, I have switched to word and decided I will mail the entries to Blogger.
Actually, I missed being able to really format my stuff nicely, which is what I can do on word.

The strangest things happened though. But let’s start with what I was talking about last time. Irene. Well. After we finished practise, Irene said, coolly, “You should be in an advanced music school. You should aim for Juilliard, you know.”
I looked at her. “No, I don’t want to enter that world, everything’s so fiercely competitive... but you’re a great pianist too, you know.”
“I’m mediocre,” She said dismissively.
She turned to go and I called her, “Irene. Does this mean we can be friends after all?”
She turned and looked at me. “Maybe,” She said. I thought I saw the vaguest smile on her rather otherwise stern countenance. But I’m not sure. But suddenly I really wanted Irene to forgive me... it was so shameful to realise that I could be a bitch sometimes. But now I sound like some weird warped Mary Sue person, like I’m always valiant and brave and wonderful... when in reality I am not, why should I be anyway?
I’m just mediocre...
Irene’s the one who’s not mediocre, but I mistook her for being so.
I feel terrible.

Later I was lying around in bed feeling better, sometime after supper, doing some procrastinated homework, and I was thinking of Irene.
There was a picture of Irene on her room’s ceiling. I hadn’t thought about it, but now I did. Irene has beautiful eyes, but since she usually wears glasses you can’t really notice them as well. They’re an ordinary colour: blue-grey, but something about them makes you look twice at them... especially if you see them uncovered by glasses. Not that she looks ugly with glasses at all – I said before they suit her, and they do.
Well, in this picture Irene looks a little younger, and her reddish-light-brown hair is fanned out, she’s lying down somewhere apparently, even though you can only see her face. She’s not wearing any makeup. You can see some freckles across her nose and cheeks. But she looks beautiful, just so simple and innocent, and just so clear. I love the clarity of that photograph. She positioned the camera and took it herself, I think that’s what she told me.
And suddenly I want to tell Irene she is beautiful.
Just then Satine came in. She has an uncanny way of coming into rooms sometimes without knocking, but it’s not annoying because she seems so polite about it. Hard to explain, really.
“Hey,” She said, and this in itself was so unusual of Satine I sat up, not caring that my hair stuck up in odd places at odd angles due to tossing and turning around in bed and contorting and shaking in pain earlier on, and that my pyjamas were my most worn ones. I probably looked like a ghost and probably had eye dirt all over my face, but I didn’t think of that then.
Satine never really says hello or that sort of thing. She doesn’t talk to the rest of us much. She’s usually so mysterious and sad and silent it’s hard to see any of her world at all. I saw her now, and she looked a little tired, a little weary, a little worn, but I could see she was trying for something... I wasn’t sure what that something was, but I could see it was there, hidden behind her closed up self’s exterior. And suddenly I looked at her and realised she had been badly hurt, sometime, somewhere, somehow. But she had been badly hurt.
This confused me, because I didn’t know all the whens and wheres and hows and whys, and I needed to know them.
“I have six sisters, you know,” She said, settling down on the window seat, looking down at her hands, playing with the curtain cords.
“Oh?” I asked. I wiped some dirt out of my eyes and settled back a little more comfortably.
“Yeah.” Satine looked at me and vaguely smiled. Then she quickly looked back down at her lap again. “Delphinium, Rose, Tulip, Chrysanthemum, Iris and Sunflower. They’re all named after flowers.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Sunny is twenty one and is married and lives somewhere. Our parents cut her off because she... she got married to someone they didn’t like.” Satine looked more tired. “Delphy’s seventeen, Rose and Tulip are identical twins and thirteen, Chryssy is eleven and Iris is seven. They all live with our parents in Freeport, Long Island.”
I was confused.
“I was the only one not named after a flower.” Satine said. Then she turned to me. “What about you? You have any sisters or brothers? Where do they live?”
“Oh.” I said, nonplussed. “My mother... she was cut off from her family too. She met my father in India when she was travelling. But my father died before I was born. She met my... stepfather, I guess, but he’s really more like my real father, Lyon, soon after and they got married sometime later. Lyon’s kids are.. my siblings... Jake, he lives at Princeton, studies there, and Natalia is married with kids and lives in Salt Lake City. And Anny... she’s... well, Annette Skywalker...”
I trailed off, looking at Satine uncertainly, wondering if she had heard of my sister.
“Oh, really?” Satine looked interested. “I did wonder if you were related to her.”
“Yeah.” I said.
Uncomfortable silence. Then Satine said, “So.. you lived with your parents before you came here?”
“With Lyon.” I corrected. “My mother... left.”
“Mmhm.” Satine nodded; it was a matter of fact thing, nothing to be surprised about. “My parents are the most uptight people you could ever meet. They’re Republicans, you know.” Satine grimaced. “I’ve always resented that; I lived with my aunt Charlotte for six years and she was the one who taught me what I needed to know, and she really raised me.”
“Oh...” I said, wondering if this was dangerous ground. “How come...” I began hesitantly.
“I didn’t live at home?” Satine asked cheerily, but she was fiercely tying the cords together. She noticed me looking and her expression became more blank. “Oh.” She looked off into the distance for a moment. I opened my mouth, but she quickly said, “I.. was having some trouble.”
Satine is older than me: she’s in the eleventh grade and sixteen; so that’s probably another reason why I don’t know her so well, but when you think about it, I should, because after all, I live with her, and I do see her a lot. Again I felt guilty; why didn’t I make more of an effort to know the people I should know?
“Oh.” I said. And that was it. That sealed the awkwardness and put its stamp on our lovely reconnoitre.
Satine abruptly got up and left the room.

And then today....
Well, it started out good, because I felt like completely better, and I was enthusiastic about my English class, because I’d finally finished my Bel Canto analysis and Omega was going to do creative writing today.
But in swimming when I was sitting aside, just doing some work, it got all worse. Yanik suddenly came up to me out of nowhere and, slipping into the seat beside me and splashing water all over my notebook, said, “Hey... oh, sorry.”
I snapped my notebook shut. “Hey.” I said, turning to look at him.
He was troubled, I could see that. “What’s the matter?” I asked, but the bell rang for changing time, and he had to go. I was a little uneasy and waited for him outside the locker rooms.
When he came out, mopping his hair, he didn’t look at me. I caught up to him. “Yanik.” I grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Come on,” I said gently, “What’s the matter?”
“You gave off the impression of being scared to be in a relationship.” He said, calmly. “I’m sick of games, Ariel. I mean, really. You could have told me you were already in a relationship.” He shook his head, moving his hands through his hair.
“But I’m not,” I said.
“It’s all over the school about how you kissed that new guy onstage the other day,” Yanik said cuttingly.
I sighed. “Yanik. It’s a play, for god’s sake.”
“There’s a difference between playacting and reality.” He said.
“I can’t believe you’re acting so childish! I had to act out the part of someone who is in love! Can’t you understand that?”
“That’s why you ran off the stage.” Yanik said, dully.
“Because....” I sighed again. “Alright, so I was in a relationship with Amir for six months... but that was last year. I broke up with him in January.”
“But you obviously still love each other,” Yanik said.
“Oh, so are you telling me about my own feelings now?” I asked, angrily. “Besides, what’s it your business of? We’re just friends.”
“You know I want to go out with you.” Yanik said. “And it seemed you wouldn’t agree because you were scared. You could have just told me the truth.”
“I don’t even know you that well,” I said. “And maybe I was, and am, confused about things. We’re just friends. And if you think we can’t be, it’s...” I breathed in. “not fair of you, because I never said we were in a relationship.”
“Well, maybe even friends should be more open towards each other.” Yanik said, and he turned around and walked away, just like in a movie. And I stared after him, just like in a movie.
And I walked away too, just like in a movie.
I was later sitting at my window seat, having finished my work, and not really knowing what to do. So I restlessly got up and paced around my room for a while, wondering if and when I should approach Yanik. Finally I went downstairs. Then stopped. Started to go back upstairs. Back downstairs. And then I saw her.
The doors to the great dance hall, the one I admired so much, the one that almost made me cry thinking about how I longed to dance and fly away, were wide open. Not unusual, but unusual at this time of the night. And a girl was dancing, without any music, but no music was needed. Satine. She whirled and spun with great passion, and I could feel the intoxication that I had always felt with Nayaa steal over me. I crept into the room, silently, slowly, drawn.
I loved dancing. I loved Nayaa. And I loved some things about Satine so much too, even though I didn’t really know her that much... yet.
I can’t explain what happened next. I really can’t. I.... I’m just at a loss, because I don’t understand it at all.
Satine paused and curtsied gracefully to me. “Come and dance,” She said simply, and that thrilled me, and the shock of the thrill made me crouch back and slam into the doors, which banged shut. Satine watched me, apparently ignoring the clanging sound. I was terrified people would come running to see what the hell was going on. But nobody came. Only Satine. She came so close, so close, so close. She said, “You know you want to dance.” I could smell her hair, a faint unidentifiable beautiful scent, I could see those beautiful evergreen eyes so clearly, I could feel her breath almost on mine. I could see her seeing me. And I cupped my hands around her face and kissed her. Deeply.
And she kissed me back, and then she took my hand and spun me away from her, and my feet found the old steps. And slowly, slowly, I began to dance. A very slow sort of graceful ballet-cum-tango-cum-modern dance, all patterns forgotten, only the moments remained. And then Satine pushed me softly against the wall, and she was kissing me, so entrancingly. I could feel all the fear, all the change, all the anticipation, all the beauty and all the passion of the moment, and as we kissed I suddenly felt as if I had known her along. And then I blinked, and I saw Nayaa kissing me. But it wasn’t Nayaa. It was Satine. And then suddenly I was terrified. I pushed apart and I ran, ran, ran, ran.

28 August 2005, 12:10 am
Two hopeless days I felt like I couldn’t write. I just couldn’t bring myself to think properly. I thought I was able to rationalise what happened the other day, but I guess I couldn’t. I couldn’t look Satine in the eye, almost the whole weekend I stayed shut up in my room, scared to talk to anyone. Well, not scared exactly, it’s more that I just felt, and still feel, so... confused. I don’t know what I am anymore, or who I am, or who I really want to be. And I miss Nayaa so much. I wrote her an email and told her what happened, but I haven’t received a reply from her yet. And this makes me sad, and yet I am longing for something too hard, I am feeling things I don’t know if I can feel, I am just so lost.
I haven’t even spoken to Yanik once, and I keep wanting to call him up, but then I stop, because he should be the one to apologise after all, he was the one who seemed to think we couldn’t be friends, that something was wrong with that, that I was a liar when I was just confused.
But what happened tonight. I was just disconsolate being stuck up in my room, and finally I just got pissed and I grabbed a notebook and pen and flounced out of the room, and even though Omega called me and asked me where I was going, I wouldn’t reply and I was too fast and soon I was running and soon I was near the waves, and I was breathing hard. Tonight it was cloudy and solitary, I could tell it would rain later on, and I collapsed to my knees, and suddenly the whole atmosphere seemed to ask me for my feelings, it seemed to want to take me away, to let me fly away to where I really want to be.
I was crying and crying and crying when Kabir found me. He always finds me, like my shadow in green, like someone I’ll never completely understand but whom I can rely on. And when I saw him I felt this rush of gratitude as he looked anxiously at me, and I couldn’t help myself, just like I couldn’t help myself with Satine the other day, but this was different. As he slipped down beside me, I rolled over and kissed him, letting my hair fall over his face, closing my eyes, breathing in the smell of the air and the beach and the salt and the taste of bitter, sour wine in Kabir’s mouth. And the taste of my tears mingled with it.
He drew apart, startled. And in that moment I realised what I’d done, and it was like I had been drinking, not him, because he was completely sober and I seemed to be drunk even though I wasn’t. And I realised I was such a tart, to go around recklessly kissing anyone and everyone... it seemed. And I started crying again, and I shook my head at him, and I tried to get up, but I was too tired and I didn’t want to half of me did half of me didn’t, and I was so confused and scared and I wanted Nayaa there to comfort me, and I didn’t know what was happening to me, or why I was so scared or why I was being so weird or why I had kissed him.
“Ariel...” He began, and I could sense the awkwardness in his voice. And I looked away from him.
He took my hands and turned me around so he was looking at me seriously. “Ariel, I’m... you’re... well... you don’t even know me, for starters, and I’m a lot older than you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I tried to sober up, I tried to stop crying, and soon I could take shuddery breaths without sobbing. “I’m... I’m insane. I’m crazy. I’m....” I looked at him. “I’m just a silly little girl, I didn’t mean to.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “You don’t strike me as a silly little girl,” was all he said, and then he collapsed back on the sand and sighed. He looked sideways at me. “It’s Satine, isn’t it?”
I looked at him carefully. Satine was so personal I didn’t know if I could tell him, even him.

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