The Music in the Bedroom

The whole thing starts with a sentence—not even—a word. As I sit on the scratchy, green couch, mashed up between Sara and Noah, I hear that word and I just feel… odd. It’s like all of me, my powdered face, my made-up eyes, my straightened hair, my torn-up jeans, all of it—it just zaps. Popular. It’s simple. A single word and I can’t see myself as that same girl, the one that I was this morning. I’m still me, but that very idea brings tears to my eyes. Because, really, what is that? Who am I?

Am I the girl who just yesterday felt blessed that school was over so she could escape the lack of attention or interaction that she had with her peers, and the overexcited announcements of her latest academic accomplishments from her teachers? That girl likes the way her corduroys, glasses, and mousy brown hair fade into the background, but she doesn’t like comparing it to the way her Juicy denim, violet contacts, and shiny locks jump out in the present situation.

See, I might be that girl. I certainly am at my new school. But at my old school, and with my old friends, it was a different story; I never considered that I could be someone else. Am I that girl? Am I the one who, just now, was partying with her old friends?

That girl has just had her not-all-natural high oh-so-rudely interrupted by a group of gossipy nerds in the apartment across the way. Her make out sesh’ with Noah was in full swing until that word hit her and her mind forced her lips out of their lock, her hand out of the thick, curly hair beneath Noah’s beanie. Popular.

I hate to think about it this way, but that girl is me.

Once I had numbly pulled myself out of Noah’s embrace, I staggered—partially due to the crap I’d been funneling into my system all night and partially due to the impact that word had on me—into the bathroom. I stood dumbly in front of the mirror, contemplating every inch of my face, turning my head down and studying the palms of my hands, my manicured fingers. The word, uttered thoughtlessly by the no-ones across the way, had launched me out of the dream world that I had created, the one galaxies away from my new school, my new life. Popular. I remember that I bent down to splash water on my face, as I heard a knock on the door.

I suppose it’s a good thing; I don’t have any idea how long I was in the bathroom before the girl, her clothes and makeup eerily reminding me of the girl who I had just spent however long studying in the mirror, felt the need to empty her bladder. Or maybe the contents of her stomach.

The lack of bathroom left me lacking anywhere to go without a cloud of perfume and a posse trailing along. I simply sunk into the couch in the least occupied room. I don’t know when Noah showed up, his fingers tracing a line across my bra strap, down my waist, and onto the side of my ass. At some point, the lights must have turned down, too, or maybe that was the sun.

And I guess that brings us back here, where the girl, me, is pondering her identity, questioning who the hell she is! She sits, melting into the furniture, while the party goes on around her, because her mind is forcing her to think about who she wants to be, who she is, and who she coulda-woulda-shoulda been.

I don’t want to think about it. I really shouldn’t think about it. It kills me inside, but my head just keeps going. I know I can’t think about it too long before my brain gets into a twisted mess and I stop feeling the warmth of Noah’s hand on my thigh and stop smelling the booze in the crumpled cans strewn about the couch and stop seeing the flashing, red “1:30” across the room and stop hearing the shitty rock music, playing, just a bit too loud, in the bedroom. I can’t think about it too long before all I can see is my real self, the one that’s hiding this other girl, the one lacking a hickey on her neck, the one with a tote bag filled with books.

Soon my brain will be playing like a slideshow, with the images of these girls, my dual identities, flashing past each other, with the girls—the girls with the same eyes, nose, mouth—sitting side by side, their differences overshadowing even the idea of similarity.

The timid girl, the one with the sensible shoes, walks to the mirror, and all she can see is some whore. She desperately wants to be that girl, the one on the other side of the mirror.

And then—this always comes next when I think too long—the slut sashays to the mirror and finds a nerd, a dork, someone she’d write nasty things about on the door of a bathroom stall. And she desperately wants to be that girl.

I suppose I shouldn’t blame the word, even though it is what gets me thinking; it is what forces the jealousy to arise between my two girls. Still, “popular” is hardly something to get mad about. So I don’t think. One girl shuts off her brain and leads Noah to the shitty rock music, playing, just a bit too loud, in the bedroom. The next day, girl number two will shut off her brain and dig into her backpack for a sharpened pencil…

“Populars,” I hear them scoff again.

So I don’t think.