this was a thereputic chain of events...

I didn't sleep well that night. Zach crept into our room later then usual at 5:30. The oddest part was that he was walking steadily, and I could only smell the fruity perfume. No alchohol.

At 6 I gave up on sleeping and began praying that something might be in the kitchen for breakfast. After digging around for a few minutes I managed to find an old pack on apples and cinnamon instant oatmeal. While I waited for the water to boil, I cleaned up a bit. There were old ciggarette butts all over the counters and broken jewel cases near where the stereo once was from our last burgalry. They were common, but there wasnt much left to steal anymore. I kept the boombox under the bed while I slept and my Panic CD was always in it. My laptop was kept nestled in with my sweaters and school books in the bottom drawer of my wardrobe, and I often slept listening to my MP3 player. But I was certain that someday that wouldn't stop them from stealing it all. I just tried to forget. 

School flew passed. Nothing ever happened there. I was sure that people must talk to me, and I know I replied. And I never sat alone at lunch. But I could never remember what we talked about 5 minutes later if you were to ask me. It was just this humming in the back of my mind.

Starbucks was quiet. No one was speaking except the workers, yelling orders back and forth to eachother. I liked days like this, days when I could really concentrate. These were the days I did my GPA 4.0 work. I practically lived for them during the week.

at 3 I dropped my bag off at home and headed off towards work. I swept up hair clippings and shampooed hair at some fancy salon in Manhatten. I had no interest in cutting hair or anything, but one of my friends from childhood had reccomended me for the job so I took it. I worked here on Fridays, Mondays and Wednesdays, I bussed tables at an indian resteraunt near battary park on Fridays also, along with Saturdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Sunday was my only day off, because on Thursdays I would pick up any odd jobs that could come my way.

Halfway through my shift a rather robust woman asked to speak to my manager because I accidentally used red hair shampoo on her blonde hair and it left an odd orang-ish tint. Then I accidentally tripped someone with the broom as I was cleaning up. The manager gave me a warning and said that one more problem would loose me my job. I sighed and left the salon in disgust at how the upper class works.

But I was going to see Panic! at the Disco on Saturday.

NYU was an excellent college for me. It provided me with everything I needed to become a journalist. But you might ask how I ended up at a $40,000 a year school, seeing as how I live in the crappiest area of NYC in an old warehouse with an on-and-off supply of semi-clean, luke-warm water. My grandfather was a very rich man when he was alive, a very physcopathic man, but a rich one. Why physcopathic? Well for one, he wore clothes and furnished his home with furniture from good will, and he never spent much on anything, except education. When he died I was about 12, he had all of his money saved for his family's education. So even though I was living with rats and hobos on my doorstep (i take that back, the hobos might've been on the doorstep, but the rats often made it inside), I still got the best education I could've asked for.

I was a good student. I had been doing this for three years now, and even though things were supposedly harder in your last year of college, I found it easy. While my classmates were out partying and sleeping around, I sat in starbucks and tapped away on my beloved lap top. sure, my lap top was ancient, but I treasured it. I had always appriciated it even more when I rescued it from one of my dad's drunken house sweeps. He'd come home from gambling his life away and find anything worth anything to pawn at the store below our tiny apartment to pay off his new debts.

but what was there for me to do? I couldn't afford any recreation, and most of my classmates found me boring and predictable. I didn't take that as an insult because it was true. When I was little my dream was to become a journalist, and ever since that point, I was going to be a journalist. When I was 6 I made 4 friends, all girls, and they were still my 4 friends. When I was 13 I said I was going to NYU, and here I was, at NYU. When I moved to NYC I found a boyfriend, and he had been my boyfriend, and I his girlfriend, since my first freshman semester. It didn't matter to me that my friends treated me like I was below them, maybe I was. It didn;t matter to me that my boyfriend was out at clubs until dawn instead of working to support our apartment, because I was scared to change his habits, scared I'd loose him. That was me, boring, spineless, predictable.

That was why Kara, the shortest, palest girl I'd ever seen over the age of 11, knew to be at my starbucks, waiting for our Thursday study session. It wasn't much of a study session. We only had one class together, and we never asked eachother any questions. we just sat, typing, reading. we rarely said a word, rarely made a face. The only things we had in common were our silence and secret addiction to music. Our poison? Panic! at the Disco, and we were seeing them Saturday night.

As I bent over my laptop, concentrating hard on a qoute from hemingway that i was trying to find a secret meaning to, Kara's airy voice floated to me. Her voice clashed against her bulky, ill fitting clothes and too big signature ankle high boots. Her natural beauty was somehow still evident underneath it all. Her pale skin was milky and looked so thin that a single touch would tear it, her complexion perfect. Her eyes were an icy blue and her long, platinum blonde hair flowed effortlessly over her torso. If she weren't so short, she could pass for a super model on an off day.

"When is the show again?" She asked me. She knew the answere, it was just something to say.

"8:30." I answered simply. Discussion wasn't what she wanted, she just didn't like never ending silence. One reply from me would satisfy her for the week. 

After 3 hours of constant work, we parted ways and I walked the final few blocks to my apartment. As I climbed the rickity stairs, jumping holes and ignoring small mammals, a girl slightly younger then me in a two short mini-skirt with very rosy cheeks darted past me, bee-lining straight for the exit. I caught a strong wiff of mango and kept climbing towards the top floor.

I found the door unlocked, and Zach hopping around on one foot, pulling his pants on. He was short of breath.

"just woke up," he said. I nodded in acknowledgement, and headed for the bedroom. The window was down again, and cool air was slowly carrying the scent of mango out of the room. I wasn't sure if it was the low temperature on my bare skin as I changed that made me tremble uncontrollably, but as I heard the front door close behind Zach on his way out, i collapsed onto the floor, clutching my knees to my chest, shirt around my neck and my pants unzipped. This wasn't unusual, but the reaction was. It happened all the time. Just never in my own room. All I had to comfort me was that this room was our room and only me and Zach ever were in it together. I didn't care what happened at 4 AM when he was drunk, it was what he had just done, sober, in our bed.

After a few minutes like that, the familiar numb feeling returned to my mind and I sat up, searching for my panic! cd on my bed side table. I shook as I stood and jammed it into the small boombox in the kitchen, and the familiar intro started pounding in my ears.

I was going to see Panic! at the Disco on Saturday.

"Ebba? Ebba?" Something blocked the light shining in front of me. "Are you okay? Ebba? It's me!" I tried to focus my eyes, but I couldn't. I wondered if I could figure out who it was from my memory of the night. All I knew was it was saturday night and my right heel was broken. Everything was a blur. Not just my vision, I felt like the past week had happened in an hour.

------------------------------------------------------------

"So testosterone boys and harlequin girls, will you dance to this beat and hold a lover close?" Brendon's voice blared into my ears. My eyes were shut and all that kept me from lolling off into a deep sleep was the constant pounding of the city bus going over pot holes and hitting curbs. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if we hit a pedestrian, but oddly enough, in the past 3 years I had spent riding this bus to and from class, we hadn't hit even a pidgeon.

the bus came to a quick stop, lurching me forward into the seat in front of me. after apologizing profusly, a single ear bud hanging into my left ear for dear life, i stumbled off of the bus. Balance isn't my strong point.

As I walked along the street towards my Shakespearian lit. class, it began to rain. What a wonderful morning, i thought. First, I wake up at 4 to Zach (my boyfriend) creeping into bed, and then he cracks the window so that his scent of alchohol and second-hand cheap purfume doesn't reach my nose, even though it always does anyways. Did i mention that it was 30 degrees last night? Then I shivered my way to the shower to discover that the water heater broke again. Gotta love a cold shower on a nice late november morning. Then the bus was late, making me even later for class, and now it was raining. It wasn't even cold enough to snow. Nope, it was raining.

But I was going to see Panic! at the Disco on Saturday.