Chapter 2

[do.you.live.the.days.you.go.through.]

"What can I say that would make you give me a chance?" I followed. I am cliache. Infact, I am as bad as any TVLand repeat ever aired. I watched her though. The sound becoming ever more incessant.

"Do you hear that?" I whispered, proving to my insanity.

"Hear what?"

"That song...da da du da du" I began to hum the tune to the phantom song that plagued my nights. I looked at her intently, almost as though I was trying to make her hear the song.

"No." She looked at me through painful eyes, either out of pity or some other form of anguish. I could not exactly decipher her intentions. She looked away towards the floor, but my eyes did not waver, as I watched her shut the door.

"And if you listen very hard..." I sighed into the door..."the tune will come to you at last." I slid my hand down the grain of the wood, looking one last time at the door, I somberly turned and walked away, the song now nostalgically penetrating my being.

"When all are one and one is all......To be a rock and not to roll." her movement, so silently concieved that I had not heard her open her door. I turned, with a defeated mein, and looked at her as she whispered calmly.

An over zealous emotion trappled my sanity, or what sanity I had left, which by my calculations apon this evening were slim if any, but at this moment in time I felt pretty good, to say the least.

I stepped towards her, "And she's buying...a stairway to Heaven." I half smiled contently.

She looked into my eyes, and at the moment in time, her eyes -- their fiery mein -- quivered in their concavity. An emotion running through me with a potent force devoured all feeling from this crippled being...the numbness now invading at a quickening pace.

"What made you listen to the song that has been here for so long?" I asked, as I watched her lean up against the door frame.

"I...I don't know exactly...I guess when a song has made home in one's head, one becomes immuned to such pitches, and intonations..." She sighed, an earthy silence enraptured the space between our two beings. It lived and breathed and heavily sighed. And with an anticipated stare, her voice did travel through the air once more. "and by some amazing force, I know not the origin, I feared that it would never stray from this institution...leaving me here wounded before you by its marrow, never having tasted such helplessness. I yearn for perfection."

"I wish you wouldn't. That leads only to failure."

"I do not know of such things, such feelings...failure, define it for me."

"I can not."

"But you have."

"How can one human being, and I do emphazing human being, be utterly perfect by nature?"

"One can not...by nature or any other devices...only by their standards can one rise and fall to their demise."

"How can one yearn for perfection, while never having tasted defeat, as you say you have?"

"There are things that I desire, but they will not aid in my ruin...I'm sure you feel likewise."

"Tell me....what is it you desire?" By this point in time, I was presently standing infront of her, and our tones had grown low, and our minds had grown latent, and my heart did beat so loudly that I am sure I quivered in it's wake.

"I can not...nor willl I ever." she smiled. I felt flushed with embarrsement or the heat that glowed from the hot blood that swooned my dilated viens. I turned my head.

"Why must you taunt me?" I laughed. There was nothing more I could do. I do believe, though, that she rathered enjoyed the uncomfortable state that I was presently in.

"There in no one answer, I assume. But you are rather easy to taunt." Oh, how she smiled. And if the Heavens were to open up and consume me, I would rather stay here. In her smile.

There was either an enternal pause, or I drifted out of consciousness for a few moments, becuase I don't remeber words that ever surfaced for the few instances that followed her last remark. Maybe I lost my self in her glassy eyes, or the way she shifted her weight as frequent as her emotions changed. Maybe it was just the silence that prevailed upon all forces of nature. And maybe it was just me being a dork. But maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was her.

"What does this mean?"I asked. I needed answers. I watched her eyes shift to the floor, again. She had a tendency to do that often -- look at the floor when thoughts did stretch across her mind.

"In truth, I do not know. I have never known. I only thought that tunes and melodies, like this, come soaring on quiet breezes and humble streams and brookes. Never in my wildest dreams, have I dreamt of such spontaneous exemplified sounds."

"Do you always speak in long ramblings of which you simply travel through and around, making an intricate web of words spill forth?"

"Forgive me...I seemed to have forgotten that I am in America. The land of which, if I do recall, ensures freedoms...freedoms like assembly, the right to bear arms, oh and do correct me if I make an error...but the the freedom of speech." she paused, or took a breath for another instant of sarcasim."And my mother is a proffessor of English, so I was born into long ramblings of nothing." she smiled again. and for another time tonight, everything was beautiful.

(alexandra)

Dylan, a short girl at the age of four, waved to me from her postion at the top of the slide. I am her "big sister". no, not genetically or anything of that sorts, I am an only child. But for one or two days a week, I have a little sister. I watched nostigcally as she twisted and turned down the slide.

"Al, why do you look so sad?" Dylan questioned me between breaths, as she ran over to "our" spot.

I looked up at her from sitting position, trying to block the sun from my eyes, "I'm not sad," I smiled. And in truth, I had no reason for saddness. It was just something that had always stolen me away into its private quaters. when I said people who have no logic are fools...I guess I am then a fool with them. for every matter I lack reason, and logic and emotion to some point. I just never really thought that reason and logic and other such feelings or states of mind were ever relevant. I figured all I ever needed I would read from books or be taught in school. But I guess I was wrong. Like I am in so many other things that only reason and logic could conceive.

She sat down and began to stare at me. If it's one thing that makes me most uncomfortable is when people look at me for no apparent reason. They just look. Constantely. I guess it's just the thought of them thinking thoughts that I don't know of. And I can't control that, and it breaks me to the point of maddness.

"Don't you want to go play? There's a swing that's open...and I know that's what you like best." I smiled, again. It seems I have been doing that alot lately. I'll have to put more thought into such gestures and make sure I truely mean them.

"Will you push me in the swing?" Dylan asked me, as she jumped up and grabbed my hand. I really can't say no to that, now can I? I got up and she led me over to the swing. My stomach started to turn and twist with nervousness. I don't exactly know why? I had nothing to fear, or nothing to prove to a bunch of 5 year olds, did I? Did my digestive system know something that I was not aware of? I began to pusch Dylan in the swing, trying to disregard my inward feeling.

"Hey Alexandra," I heard a deep male voice speak to me from directly behind me. Knowing that voice, i immediately regretted turning around. He was the last person I wanted to talk to. He made me feel things that I was unsure I could ever feel, and I hated not having control over my self like that.

"Hello." was my only reply...or I was hoping that it would be...but unfortunately other words did follow. Words like "ouch" and "sorry". Words that could only accompany being hit in the back by a moving swing, and shoved into compromising positions with spectators of such events, namely Zac Hanson.

"Well that was quite embarrassing." I laughed as I stepped away from him, quickely. I had never felt so much heat from one being. Never. Ever. this scared me to the point of dizziness...almost. And the feeling that vibrated through myself whenever contact was made between Zac and I, can only be explained as the feeling one gets when one takes a nine volt battery and touched it with their tongue.

But as I picked my confidence off the floor, and regained any awareness to what had actually taken place, I started to ramble. Not the lengthy, well thought out ramble that I usually formulate, but the nervouse, jumpy ramble that mentally dysfunctional people tend to jabber out.

"Hi" Dylan stepped out of the swing and towards Zac, perpetually swipping at her careless hair that seemed to be attracted to her face.

"Why, hello there." Zac said kneeling down so that he was on her level.

He began to talk to her, the way that I never really could. I stepped back and sat on the swing that Dylan had occupied previously and just watched. There was a certain aura that I could not ever really distingish about him. It was just in the way he was, infront of me. For I can not truely say what he is when he is not near me, because that i do not know. But the few times I have been near him, he has confused me indefinitely. Sometimes I try to pick my brain on those sleepless nights and try and think of what he has done to me to make me dread his presence. But I can not come up with any real answers. but I guess to questions like such, no one ever really knows answers, they just know by the way they feel. And if the world was left up to such feelings then I guess we would either live in an inhumane world or a world of total compassion and kindess with out regulations and morbid concepts.

I had begun to toe the sand under the swing, compacted with age and wear, when Dyland skipped towards me and beckoned for my attention.

"Yes?"

"Zac is comming to lunch with us." Dylan stated matter-of-factly. I tried to imagine the horrified look on my face, as I'm sure it was present. I looked upwards in the direction of his face. His face looked distant, as if he was thinking of another time, or another place. The silent west wind crept up upon him and rustled his hair. Zac, noticing my lingering gaze, turned and smiled at me. I offered all of what I could, a simple smile. My heart reddened and almost flowed honey as I looked in my mind's eye the way he seemed at this moment. So sedated. I sighed and stood up from the swing.

"Where to then?" I asked as I grabbed Dylan's hand.