Broken Fairytales

by Monica Alexander

  “If they’re so amazing, why haven’t I heard of them?” Keely asked, crossing her arms in front of her.

  I walked over to my stereo. “Because they were never picked up by a label, so they never made it to the radio,” I said, hinting at my earlier point that music on the radio was lacking so much, but I didn’t think she got my subtle jab. “Just listen. You’ll love them. They have this slow song called Glimpse that is so beautiful. Honestly, it’s one of my all-time favorites.”

  I watched her face as the opening chords to the first song started to play, and I could tell she was hooked as soon as the lead singer opened his mouth. He had one of those rough, gravely voices that sounded incredible regardless of what he was singing, and the band had songs with fast, angry tempos, as well as, ballads with seemingly deep meanings. Their range was unheard of, and I couldn’t get enough of them. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the lead singer and if he was with another band or if he’d given up music altogether. I couldn’t fathom that since he was so talented, but since I didn’t know his name, his fate would probably remain a mystery to me.

  Keely and I listened to the nine tracks all the way through before either of us spoke. I lay on my bed, closed my eyes and let the music wash over me as I grasped for the spark for life I used to have on a daily basis. Listening to Liar’s Edge, I could feel it around the fringes of my mind, but it was just out of reach for me to grasp.

  ***

  A few hours later Keely was still in my room. We’d listened to the Liar’s Edge album twice before she begged me to change it. She agreed that they were great but requested variety. I obliged, putting ‘Angry Rock 2006’ back on, but turned it down so we could talk.

  I didn’t have much to share, so I just half-listened to her talk about everything from cheerleading to her friends to boys she liked since my mind kept flitting back to the lead singer of Liar’s Edge and his beyond perfect voice. I couldn’t remember what he looked like, but I’d created a nice image in my head. I was imagining what it would be like to kiss him when I remembered that I had a boyfriend and thinking about kissing someone else was an incredibly crappy thing to do.

  So then I made a mental list of all the things I loved about Ben in an effort to convince myself that he really was a great guy. If only he played the guitar, he would be perfect.

  Okay, that was uncalled for. Ben’s talents lied on the football field, not on a stage, and I couldn’t fault him for that. I wouldn’t. In actuality, my favorite thing about Ben was watching him play football. It was truly where he was at his best. I could easily picture him lined up on the field, sweat glistening on his face, a look of fierce determination as he watched the center snap the ball. As soon as it was in the quarterback’s hands, Ben would be off like a shot, down the field, looking back for the pass. He would catch it. He always caught it. He was good.

  I spent many afternoons watching him when I was supposed to be concentrating on cheering back in high school. Our squad always practiced by the field house near the east end zone. We would set up facing the field, which allowed us to face the players, giving us something to cheer for, but in reality, it was more of a hindrance, as most of the time the guys provided more distractions than not. Ashleigh Ballast, our captain, always had to snap us back into focus, as more times than not, we’d be caught staring at the football players when we were supposed to be saying ‘Go Team’.

  I, personally, felt like I had an excuse, as it was hard to pay attention when Ben was on the field. He was incredible to watch, and I loved the way he put everything he had into every play. No matter how tired he was or how much our team was down, Ben focused on each play like it was the most important one of the game. That was why he was the best, why he had gotten a scholarship to play at UNC, and why I’d noticed him in the first place.

  It was hard not to notice him. He transferred to our high school at the beginning of our junior year. Most people in my group of friends had known each other for years, and the boy pool was pretty dry as far as we were concerned. So, of course, we noticed fresh meat. It was actually Ashleigh who saw him first which was just fitting. She was the person that you didn’t want to get the new guy, but since she worked as an office assistant first period, she was there when Ben walked into school for the first time. As a new student, he had to check in, and Ashleigh was the one who got to do it. It was inevitable that she would make a move for him.

  By second period, the entire cheerleading squad knew that the new guy was gorgeous, and Ashleigh was in love with him. She went on and on about his blond hair, blue eyes and pecs that she wanted to kiss. Ashleigh was, and in fact still is, a bit of a slut, so this comment didn’t shock any of us. She claimed him for herself, calling him like he was shotgun, which usually would have annoyed me, but having not yet seen him, I wasn’t really objecting. If he was as gorgeous as she said, I figured he was most likely a cocky jerk anyway. Plus, I had been engaging in a minor flirtation with Andy Callum, a senior soccer player, so I wasn’t interested in the new guy.

  As other friends had classes with Ben, they weighed in on everything from his voice to his posture in class to the fact that he seemed to keep to himself, although when he did speak, he seemed to have a coy air about him. It seemed every girl I knew was completely smitten with a guy I had yet to lay eyes on.

  Apparently none of our classes were the same, and he didn’t eat lunch with our group. I had to go off of what everyone else was saying, but I told myself it didn’t matter. Andy had been sending me flirty text messages all morning, and at lunch he stopped by to talk to me just before the bell rang. I knew he was going to ask me out. I just wasn’t sure what he was waiting for.

  Then, that afternoon as we stretched by the field house, I watched the football players jog out onto their practice field. It was hypnotic in a way, as they came off the sidelines together, broke into offense and defense and lined up for the first play. There was chatter all around me, but I wasn’t paying much attention to anything the other girls were saying. I was too engrossed in what was going on across the field. I watched, enthralled, as the play started, the ball was handed off and a player took off running toward our end of the field. The defense tried to catch him, but they weren’t quick enough. With Trace Beckham, the fastest player on the defense, sprinting after him, the player crossed into the end zone with ease.

  “Wow,” someone next to me said.

  “I know,” came Ashleigh’s breathy voice.

  “Incredible,” someone else said.

  The player jogged toward us, pulling his helmet off to reveal blond hair that hung damply to the middle of his ears. He shook his hair out, causing drops of sweat to fly out from the ends and grinned at us.

  “Ladies,” he said, as he circled past, making his way back to his teammates.

  At that moment, all thoughts of Andy Callum flew from my mind and were replaced by the new guy. I watched him jog all the way back to mid-field, and all I could think about was that he’d looked right at me. When he’d addressed the collective group of us, his eyes had been on me. For three brief seconds, his blue eyes had locked with my brown ones, and I was completely smitten.

  It took a shove to my shoulder to pull me out of the trance I’d fallen into as a result. As I righted myself, I looked up to see my Rachel standing above me with her hand out. It was a minute before I realized where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. I reached up and took her hand, letting her help me to a standing position.

  “He’s cute, right,” she said, nudging me slightly, as I lined up next to her in the back row.

  “Yeah,” was all I could manage to get out. He was more than cute. He was gorgeous.

  “You might want to wipe that dazed look off your face,” she whispered. “Ashleigh’s staring.”

  I looked up to see Ashleigh glaring at me and remembered then that she’d already claimed the new guy for herself. Her look told me that she’d seen him looking at me and was not happy about it. I quickly wiped the smile off
my face, since Ashleigh sort of scared me, and I didn’t want her to think I was encroaching on her territory. If she wanted him, fine, she could have him. Inside, though, I was gloating. Out of the sixteen girls on our squad, he’d smiled at me.

  Over the next few weeks, Ashleigh desperately threw herself at the new guy, whose full name was Ben Grayson. She sat next to him at lunch, flirted with him after practice and made a point to seek him out before the first game started to wish him good luck, complete with a kiss on the cheek. It was pretty shameless, but apparently it worked. According to her, they’d made out at the first two parties of the year which had me pouting since I hadn’t gone to either of them, having been grounded for missing curfew because Rachel had gotten too drunk at a party, and I’d been taking care of her. I’d been caught sneaking in late by my none-too-happy father and promptly sentenced to two weeks of no social life when I couldn’t provide a valid excuse for being late. It wasn’t like I was going to rat Rachel out, so I took my punishment in silence.

  The good news was that my pouting spell over Ben didn’t last long. Then I internally smiled for a full week after that. I was partially smiling because my grounding had ended, and I was finally free, but there was also another reason. I had a secret – a secret that was so good that even Ashleigh bragging about how she was going to sleep with Ben at the party after the next game didn’t faze me.

  What I hadn’t told anyone was that I’d run into Ben at the gym – the first place I’d gone after regaining my freedom. I’d been coming in, and he’d been leaving. I smiled at him, thinking he probably wouldn’t recognize me, but I could at least be polite. He’d joined our group at lunch on the second day of school, but it was a large group of football players and cheerleaders that sprawled over three tables, so it was possible he wouldn’t remember me. We hadn’t actually been introduced, and since I’d been out of the social scene for two weeks, I wasn’t exactly afforded the opportunity to catch his attention outside of school.

  He did remember me though. He stopped me when I smiled, and we talked for a few minutes. Then, shock of all shocks, as I completely thought he was semi-seeing Ashleigh, he asked for my number. He proceeded to call me every night over that next week, and we’d spent close to an hour on the phone each time we talked. By the time Friday came around, I wasn’t sure what we were, but I was pretty sure Ashleigh wouldn’t be doing anything with Ben that night. This was unbeknownst to her, though, as I had the joy of listening as she bragged about what she was going to do to him – very graphically, I might add – as we stretched before the game.

  I’d gotten up the courage to ask Ben about Ashleigh a few nights earlier. He said she was a fun girl, but he wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship. He admitted that, yes, they did kiss a few times, but they weren’t dating. He actually liked someone else – me! Apparently he’d asked Ashleigh about me when they’d hung out at the first party, and she’d told him that I was dating Andy Callum. So, being a teenage guy, Ben had shrugged and taken Ashleigh up on what she was offering. Then after talking to Andy later on and learning that I was not in fact dating him, Ben decided to ask for my number.

  I’d be lying if I said this information didn’t send me floating on air. By that point, I really liked Ben, and I would have died if I had to compete with Ashleigh Ballast with her experience and willingness to experiment. I was a virgin at the time, so she would have beaten me hands down if it had come down to a battle of sexuality. Fortunately for me, it didn’t. I can’t say I was thrilled with the fact that Ashleigh had gotten to Ben first, but in the end, he’d picked me, so I guess I won.

  That Friday night, I had laid low while Ashleigh monopolized Ben for the first hour of the party, talking and flirting, batting her eyelashes and making any excuse to touch him. I hung out on the back porch with Rachel and watched Ashleigh make a joke of herself. We watched as Ben talked politely to her, but he never once responded to her advances or made any of his own. Then we watched him excuse himself, look around, spot me and walk directly over to where we were standing. In that moment, I was too busy watching Ben to notice anything else, but Rachel told me later, that if looks could kill, I would have been dead. Ashleigh apparently turned red, glared, stomped her foot and marched off, more pissed than she’d ever been.

  All I could focus on was the gorgeous smile aimed right at me, as the most perfect boy I’d ever laid eyes on stopped in front of me and ran his hand through his moppy blond hair. I felt myself get giddy as I looked up at him and took a sip of my beer in an effort to have something to do with my hands.

  “Hey Em,” he said. He’d taken to calling me Em during our phone conversations, and I loved the way my nickname rolled off his tongue.

  “Hi,” I said quietly, shyness taking over.

  “You having fun?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer and eyeing me.

  I nodded.

  He laughed, obviously appreciating watching me squirm, but then, as if to ease the tension, he took my hand and asked if I wanted to take a walk. Again, all I could do was nod.

  We walked around the house to a more secluded area, where we wouldn’t have the eyes of all of our classmates on us while we stumbled through our first party together. I found that with Ben’s hand around mine, I was able to relax a little, even though I didn’t actually have to form words, which was a good thing. On the phone it had been so much easier. I was pretty sure I’d been witty and charming, but in person I had trouble putting coherent sentences together.

  Ben stopped once we were out of sight, turned to face me and made a joke. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember laughing as I let my guard down, and we spent the rest of the night leaning against the side of the house talking. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes before I had to be home that Rachel found me and told me we had to go. I couldn’t believe how fast three hours had gone by. I definitely didn’t want to leave, but the last thing I wanted was to be under house arrest again, so I begrudgingly told Ben I had to go.

  Seeing our night rapidly come to a close, he’d offered to drive me home. He obviously didn’t want to part just yet either. When we pulled up in front of my house, he walked me to the front porch where we sat down on the steps. He said he didn’t have to be home just yet, and would my parents mind if I stayed outside for a while to talk.

  I shook my head, although I really had no idea how my parents would feel about me sitting on the front porch with a boy. Technically I wasn’t violating curfew, but they might see things differently. Luckily, they were asleep.

  Ben took my hand and held it in his lap, as we sat down on the cold cement. For a few minutes, he didn’t say anything. He just played with my fingers before lacing our hands together. I watched our hands as he did this, still amazed at who was sitting next to me. Then, he looked at me for a few seconds, leaned over and kissed me lightly, sending my stomach into a tailspin.

  From that night on, we were inseparable. He was my first love, and until recently, I’d thought everything with him was perfect, but now it was like he was grating on my nerves on a regular basis. I tried to focus on the good things about him, the things I loved, but it seemed like the bad had been outweighing the good more and more frequently, and my feelings for him had started to feel forced.

  I glanced over at the picture of Ben and me on my nightstand. It had been taken our senior year of high school after one of the football games. Ben was hugging me from behind, his head tucked next to mine. We were both smiling widely. Our team had just won, so we were excited. You could see the flush in both of our cheeks from the excitement and the cold weather. More than that, we looked so in love with each other. I wondered when exactly I’d stopped feeling that happy with him and how I could get that feeling back.

  Chapter Four

  “You should break up with him. He’s a douche. You could do so much better.”

  I looked up to see my brother standing in my doorway, lazily leaning against the door jam.

  “What do you want?” I asked h
im, completely ignoring his comment.

  Chase hated Ben, so his chastising comments were commonplace. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that I was thinking along the same lines. I wouldn’t give Chase that pleasure. I in no way wanted him to think he was even partially right.

  It was a good thing we went to school so far away from each other. Chase was going to be a senior at NYU in the fall. Fortunately, because of this, I didn’t have to see him more than a few times a year, and even then I could avoid spending any actual time around him. I hadn’t even called him while I’d been in New York visiting Rachel over spring break. We didn’t keep in touch during the school year and had barely acknowledged each other since we’d been home for the summer. I knew he was only talking to me because he needed something, just like he only wanted to drive to the beach with Keely and me because it was convenient for him.

  I wish we got along or could at least be civil to each other, but in truth we hadn’t had much in common since we were kids. Chase was more of a loner, in the ‘I don’t conform to normal societal expectations and therefore prefer to alienate myself from anyone who does’. In high school he’d lived for breaking the rules, getting away with whatever he could, and conning my parents into believing he was the perfect son, which frustrated me to no end, since they always believed him. From my experience he hadn’t changed much since then, so I didn’t make much of an effort to bridge the gap between us. My mother was always giving me crap for not making more of an effort to be friends with him. She didn’t get that we couldn’t have been more different and therefore tolerated each other at best.

  Irritatingly enough, with his almost black hair, bright green eyes that he got from some obscure relative, and dark, thick lashes, he turned a lot of heads – mostly from girls who liked bad boys or who were just as pierced and tattooed as he was – but still, girls loved my brother. I’d never actually known him to have a girlfriend, but growing up my friends all thought he was gorgeous. I just didn’t see the allure. The year before he’d pierced his left eyebrow with a silver barbell, adding to the piercing he had in his tongue and his left nipple. He also had a sleeve of tattoos up his right arm and some strategically placed tattoos on other areas of his body.