A/N - A story I wrote for my short story class earlier this year. The plot and general format is based on Raymond Carver's "Cathedral (that was the assignment). I do not own "Cathedral" nor Evanescence. I liked it enough that I thought I could share it here with you guys. Enjoy!

"'The Other Side'"

This Latvian girl, a friend of my boyfriend, was coming to visit us for a day. She was new in town, having moved here for college. I knew nothing about her or her culture. Why would someone from this place called Latvia come to the United States for school? Don't they have Latvian colleges or whatever?

My boyfriend met her initially in a coffee shop near the school. He and I always go there after school to wind down with the alluring scent of coffee. And maybe sometimes we buy things. It was our place. But the one day that I'm sick and stay at home, my boyfriend gets all buddy-buddy with this Latvian chick, asking her to come over and hang out at our apartment. Ugh, it's my apartment too, don't I get a say in this?

Nope, not really. My boyfriend even told me that I had to stay out of our room and hang out with them. I've never heard anything of this place, Latvia, and I was not looking forward to meeting some girl from it. Well, there went my pleasant afternoon with my boyfriend.

He didn't usually do things like this. I guess that after he rose out of his depression over the death of his sister two and a half years ago, he's been more open to girls again. That's when he met me. We were two naïve little freshmen in college, and happened to get adjacent dorms. When I decked out my door with black paper and stuck my favorite bands onto it, he instantly brought over Avenged Sevenfold's newest album and introduced his dashing self to me.

Anyway, my boyfriend's been telling me little things about this Latvian girl, but I haven't really been listening. I don't want anything to do with her. I have no business with Latvian chicks I don't know.

Now this girl was going to spend time in my apartment. Joy.

Finally, the time had come. I heard my boyfriend's voice clearly through the wooden door. "Here's the place." The steps stopped.

And then the doorknob turned.

I was in the kitchen, having just made myself a small sandwich when I heard the door creak open. I turned around, slowly chewing the first bite of my ham sandwich.

There she was. A blonde, tall, thin girl with pale skin stood next to my boyfriend, who was smiling all the way.

"Elita, this is my girlfriend. She also goes to our school," my boyfriend introduced.

Elita pushed aside the black leather purse slung across her chest and held out her hand. "It is nice to meet you," she greeted, with what I presumed was a thick Latvian accent.

"So, how'd you end up here?" I asked, taking another bite of my sandwich as I moved to the couch.

My boyfriend shot me a glare. Be polite, he mouthed.

I exhaled briefly and corrected myself. "What I meant was, why did you decide to come to the United States for college if you live in Latvia?"

"Ah, yes!" She turned to my boyfriend, and then to me. "May I sit?" she asked, motioning to the couch on which I sat.

"Oh yeah, of course. Would you like anything to eat or drink, Elita?" My boyfriend walked over to the fridge, opening it. "We've got orange juice, beer, and water."

"No thank you, I am alright," she replied, walking over to me and sitting delicately on the couch, like a leaf on the surface of a pond in the winter. She looked at me, waiting for my attention. Sighing, I gave it to her. Well, at least partially.

"My parents wanted American education for me. So they send me here," she told me as she crossed her legs.

I finished off the last bit of my sandwich, licking off the last drop of mayonnaise lingering on the back of my finger. "So you're from Latvia, right?"

"Correct, yes."

I shifted a little in my seat. "So, uh, where exactly is Latvia?"

"It is one of the Baltic States to the left of Russia. It is very small, and not many Americans know where it is," she agreed, nodding. "We are surrounded by Estonia and Lithuania, but you probably do not know where those places are either."

Well, she got me.

My boyfriend returned from the kitchen with his own sandwich, having seen me eating one earlier. "What are you guys talking about?" he asked me.

"Her country, Latvia," I responded, getting up from the couch to make room.

"You don't have to move, you can stay there." He turned to Elita. "Would you like to watch some TV or a movie?"

"Okay, I do like the sports that America has," she said, nodding.

My boyfriend turned on the TV with a click of the remote. The TV flashed on, showing a National Geographic documentary on cheetahs. He flipped to the next channel. News about an earthquake on the West Coast.

"Ah, there we go," he said, the TV coming to rest on a live soccer game.

I leaned back into the couch, squishing the leather cushions into the back of the frame. Turning my head slightly, I studied the foreign girl engrossed in the soccer game playing on the TV in my living room. She was younger that I was, perhaps by a couple of years. Her hair was the blondest I've ever seen. Stuck in a natural shade between blonde and bleached, her hair was a dazzling sight, especially compared to mine, dyed pitch black. Her body was thin and straight. She was an attractive one for sure. Probably why my boyfriend had spotted her in the first place.

The soccer game finished, and Elita cheered along. "Woo! Laba spēle!"

My boyfriend and I stared at each other in mutual confusion.

"Uh...what did you say?" my boyfriend asked the Latvian girl jumping up and down.

"Oh." Elita stopped bouncing. "I said, 'laba spēle', which means 'good game'. That is the expression, correct?"

I nodded. "Yep." Well at least she knew some idioms.

An awkward silence followed. We heard the sounds of a TV commercial advertising the new iPad mini, and the musical clinking of the wind chime hung outside the kitchen window. Our neighbor's car door shut loudly outside.

"Um, may I give a question?" Elita politely asked, breaking the vocal silence.

"Sure, go ahead," my boyfriend agreed.

"Thank you," she replied, putting her hands under her thighs. "I was thinking about how you two meet each other."

Just then, my boyfriend's cell phone rang in the next room. The ringtone sounded into the room, reverberating off the empty walls and into our ears.

"Sorry, let me get that," he said, excusing himself as he rose from the couch. "You can take it from here, babe."

"Yeah, sure," I mumbled, watching him leave. I did not want to be left alone with this Latvian girl. What were we supposed to talk about? My fingers twitched impatiently. I was itching to get this whole ordeal over with and reclaim my Saturday. But the girl had asked a question, and as a host, I would answer. I had nothing better to do anyways.

"When I first moved into my college dorm..." I paused, looking at the girl. "You know what a dorm is, right? Dormitory? Place where people on college campuses often live?"

She nodded, signaling her comprehension.

So I continued. "I put up a bunch of band pictures on my door. My boyfriend also happened to live next door, and he saw my door. He also loves those bands, and we just hit it off."

"Ah, very nice," Elita commented, nodding.

"Well alright then," I finished, taking out my MP3 player from my pocket. I stuck the two white ear buds into my ears and pushed play.

Apparently, my music was loud enough for Elita to hear. She tapped me on the shoulder with a quick finger. "Is that 'My Immortal'?"

Hearing the name of the song I was listening to come out of Elita's mouth, I caught my breath. I whipped my head to face her. "You know the song?" I asked, my jaw dropped. No way this foreign girl knew of this band I absolutely adored.

She grinned at me, nodding happily. "Yes! I love Evanescence! They rock!" Her hands dove into her purse, emerging a moment later with a cell phone in their grasp. "Look!" Indeed, her phone background was a picture of Evanescence, my favorite American band. It was a really good picture of them too, the front woman in a black corset and a short pink skirt walking down a misty alley with her band mates behind her. I had seen it somewhere before, perhaps on their website, in a CD booklet, or something.

I sat, stunned. I immediately felt the need to test her, to know that she actually listened to music that I did, that although we were from two distant countries, we weren't as different as I had thought. "What's their newest album called?"

"Evanescence!" she happily chimed in.

She was right, but that could have been a lucky guess, as most artists and bands have a self-titled album somewhere in their history or future. I went on to question number two: "What's your favorite song?"

"I like the song called 'The Other Side'. The singer is very good in that song," Elita responded.

There it was. The proof. "The Other Side" was a song off of Evanescence's latest album, one I hadn't particularly cared for, but it was most definitely a song of theirs. This girl really did listen to Evanescence. Perhaps I had been thinking about her the wrong way.

"Do you have piano here?" she asked me.

"Do we have a piano? Yeah, in the dining room," I replied with a slight nod of the head.

"May I play?"

I got up from the couch, unplugging myself from my MP3 player. "Knock yourself out."

She looked at me with a slight quizzical face. "Eh..."

"Sorry. Figure of speech. I don't actually mean for you to knock yourself out." I walked her to the piano in the dining room. She excitedly ran over to it and sat down.

And then she began to play the piano entrance of "My Immortal".

"No way."

Her nimble fingers lightly played the delicate, flowing line as I stood behind her in awe. "Did you teach yourself how to play that?" I asked her, still reeling in amazement at this girl. I'd always wanted to learn how to play piano, especially this one song. And this Latvian girl could do it.

"Yes! I am piano teacher to little kids back in Latvia."

As she approached the singer's entrance, I took a deep breath and began to sing.

"'I'm so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears...'"

And so we continued through the rest of the song. I smiled as I sang, and I saw her grinning as she played along, our two instruments blending to produce one sound.

As her fingers rested on the song's last notes, the sounds slowly fading away, Elita and I made real eye contact for the first time since she arrived. We both breathed through our smiles, perfectly in sync.

Elita rose from the piano bench. "And now..." She picked up my MP3 player from atop the piano and unplugged my headphones. She plugged the jack into the living room speakers as she scrolled through my extensive list of Evanescence songs, eventually selecting one. "...we dance!"

She had chosen her favorite song, "The Other Side", and the sounds of the rhythmic drum entrance rang out into the room. She immediately placed my MP3 player back onto the piano, and began to play an air guitar as the guitars came in. My foot began tapping to the beat all on its own. I smiled, seeing her begin to play her air guitar in time with Evanescence's guitarist. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen and ran back over just in time to join in with my vocals.

"'Make me whole again, open your eyes! Taunted by the shadows of your life,'" we both sang together, filling the normally quiet living room with a bright, full sound. Elita jumped to the beat, dramatically playing her air guitar while I made exaggerated motions with my free hand as I sang into my banana.

Just then, my boyfriend walked into the room, having ended his call moments before. He was probably expecting a mellow conversation between us, not two college girls jumping around with an air guitar and singing into fruit. "What the heck are you guys doing?" he asked, observing our antics.

We were now about two minutes into the song, and a brief instrumental interlude was playing. A faint smile came upon my face as I turned to Elita. "Just rocking out with a friend."

A/N - Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to leave a review! :)