Screaming Into Thin Air

Prologue

I had been there so many times before. Not always there, literally, but always the exact same situation. I was always ready to leave before he was. Every single time. I hated it beyond words. And why I felt like there was nothing I could do about it until that night, I have no idea.

That night was an exceptionally cold night. It was the end of November, but there was no snow on the ground yet. The wind was brutal as it blew my hair around. I could no longer feel my ears or my nose and my lips were getting to that point as well. I wished I had mittens on, but I knew I didn’t own any. I wished I had a warmer jacket, but the light windbreaker was all I had, and it didn’t seem to be doing the trick. And then I began to shake. And I knew it was time to do something about my current situation.

I could hear him laughing from inside the house and it made my stomach turn. I hated the sound of his laugh, especially when it sounded as evil as it did at that moment. It felt as if he had planned this, and that he planned it every time. But I know he didn’t. Because he didn’t care enough to plan things like that. He didn’t care that much about me. He didn’t care that much about anything.

I stood up then. Just as I did, I heard the door open and someone stepped outside and onto the front porch where I was currently sitting, alone. I didn’t bother to look because I knew who it was. I knew it was him.

“Where are you going?” he asked me in his deep, angry voice. He sounded far more mature than I knew he was, and I wondered if he had done that on purpose or not.

“I guess I’m going home,” I replied quietly, knowing without a doubt that that was not where I was going. And he knew it too.

He muffled a laugh. “Home?” he questioned me, because he knew it would upset me. He always did things because he knew they would make me angry.

“Why’s that so hard to believe?” I wondered out loud, feeling confident for once. It wasn’t very often that I talked back to him, but it seemed appropriate this time.

“You don’t have a home,” he told me harshly. And then smirked at me like he was secretly thrilled with this fact.

“I have a home. I just don’t like it there,” I answered, and left it at that.

“Bullshit,” he mumbled, and took a step closer to me.

I rolled my eyes in his direction but I don’t even know if he saw it or not. It didn’t really matter. There was something about him that night that made him seem even more mean and hurtful then he usually was. Maybe it was the fact that he was higher than a kite. Or maybe because he knew that I was going home with him either way, he figured he had some sort of control over me. In a way, he did. I usually did what he said and went where he wanted me to go, but only because I never had anything better to do. I didn’t care too much about him, although it would be a lie to say that I didn’t care about him at all. I had really loved him at one point, for many years. Back when he was really him. When he was just Taylor Haywood, my best friend, my boyfriend, my whatever. But since he had become Taylor Haywood, lead singer and lead guitarist of The Secret Goldfish, and a local “hero” if you will, he had changed far too much to ever be that person again. And I hated him for it.

“Taylor, I’m sick of sitting out here in the freezing cold, by myself, while you’re busy partying and getting high with people I’ve never even met,” I told him, as my teeth chattered and I rubbed my hands together to make friction in hopes of warming them even just slightly.

“Then go home,” he replied darkly, in a voice I had never heard from him before. I couldn’t even tell if he meant the words or not.

I attempted to look into his eyes but he wasn’t looking at me. I wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him to smarten up and quit being such an asshole. I knew he was only putting on an act for them. For everyone. He didn’t want anyone to know the real Taylor Haywood. The boy who grew up on the streets and was lucky if he ate once a day, for years in a row. The boy who I met in a back alley of a dark street, on Christmas Eve back when we were just barely teenagers. The boy who changed my life. That boy was gone, and in replace of him was this man, this twenty-two year old angry, bitter person who hated everything in the world except playing music. And so that’s all he did.

Up until that night when we met two guys in a sketchy coffee shop downtown, just before Christmas the previous year. Luke and Andre; I would tell you their last names, but I don’t even know them. They were struggling musicians as well, apparently, and wanted Taylor, my Taylor, to be in the band they were just starting up. They said he looked exactly like what they were looking for in a lead singer. They didn’t even hear him sing or play a note before he joined their band. Coincidentally, everything fell into place after that day. Two months later they were playing in that very coffee shop at open mic nights, and three months after that they had recorded a couple of songs at a small, broken down recording studio that Luke’s cousin had taken them to. They hadn’t even meant for anyone to hear the songs, but Andre’s girlfriend took the tape to a local radio station that, once in a while, played hardcore music. I don’t even know how it happened. But within another month, just six months after Taylor had met these guys, their song – a song Taylor had written years prior to everything – Screaming into Thin Air, was being played frequently on local radio stations. And The Secret Goldfish was officially born.

I was the stereotypical “groupie/girlfriend” for the first few months, as I felt I should be. Taylor seemed happy, so I was happy. Or I pretended to be. But he was beginning to get recognized when we went out places, and that was too much for me. The two of us were living in the basement of the house Luke and Andre rented; and it was the first time either of us had had a real “home” in many, many years. I liked it better on the streets. I knew the streets. I didn’t know this basement or these people. I never had been good with change of any kind, and this change was so drastic and changed everything that I knew and was okay with. But since Taylor seemed to be enjoying our new life, I knew I had to stick it out.

And then came the partying and the drinking and the drugs. Within a month, the basement turned into a huge party, every single night. I didn’t sleep for days at a time, for a while. And Taylor was changing more and more as the days went by. And I was resenting him more and more every day as well. I tried leaving on numerous occasions but I always went back, and he knew I would always go back. Taylor was my rock; he kept me going even though I would never have admitted it then. All I knew was that I needed him.

And finally, almost a year after all the craziness began and flipped mine and Taylor’s lives around and upside, something so drastic happened that I didn’t know if I could even go on.

I didn’t say another word to him that night. I wasn’t sure if I could really leave and not end up back there a few hours later, telling him I was sorry I left and that I just wanted everything to be okay again. I did it every time. But this time was different. I went down the steps of the front porch of that house that had been my residence for the past eleven months. I only looked back for a second, and Taylor was staring at me with a look of disbelief and confusion. I think even he knew that this time was different. He would never have admitted it to me, though.

“Go, then,” he shouted angrily, and I could hear in his voice that he didn’t really want me to go.

“I’m going, Taylor,” I told him, still focused on his face.

“Good. See ya,” he said, but his voice was already much quieter. “You’ll be back when you realize you would prefer a bed to a park bench.” He said the same thing to me every time I tried to go.

“Not this time, Taylor,” I replied, finally breaking my contact with him and looking down at the ground in front of me.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours,” he yelled, like he always did, ignoring my previous statement.

And then I turned back around and began to walk. I knew he was still standing there on the front porch, watching me. I knew he would watch me until I was out of his sight. But he would never follow me, because he didn’t care enough. Or he was just too stubborn to admit that he did care. And so I walked, and rubbed my hands together and then wiped my face as the warm tears started to fall down my cheeks. I knew then that this time was different. And I knew that Taylor was still expecting me back again, like every other time.