MUTE part 2

"Ok," Mr. Maysworth said, standing from his computer and holding his coffee mug carefully between his hands, "Welcome, children, to my lair. I'm sorry you'll have to waste and hour of your life here for the rest of the school year, I know you'll enjoy it as little as I will." Everyone laughed and Mr. Maysworth set down his mug next to a stack of pastel drawings. He walked around to the front of his desk and hoisted himself onto it. "Now that we've got out there how much we all don't like each other, I'd like to get some stuff done in here, anyway. I don't like you, and don't care about your welfare, of course, but I do care about my class having an impressive grade average, and I do care about the display my class puts up annually in the gallery at the end of the year." He grabbed his mug and took a sip before continuing, "Because, you know, if your art is terrible, it makes me look like a bad teacher, and I'm a wonderful teacher, so that won't do." Everyone was grinning and laughing, and Mr. Maysworth jumped down from his desk and walked toward the whiteboard. "So," he said, "for starters, I want to see what you can do purely from imagination, without a single prompt, with only a pencil and paper. So everyone please get out your sketch pads." The students who hadn't already done so obeyed the command and Mr. Maysworth glanced at his watch once the room was silent again. "Alright," he said, "Three minutes. Draw." Immediately, everyone slumped over there pads. I took a few seconds to brainstorm as I stared at my pencil. I knew what I wanted to do, what I always did, and that was draw a tree, but I knew that was the easy way out, so I sat and tried to think of something else. All I could think of was trees and flowers and waterfalls, and those were all prime candidates for someone else, but drawn by me Mr. Maysworth would not be impressed. He always told us to expand our horizons, exit our comfort zones. And nature was definitely my comfort zone. The way wind whistled through trees, leaves crunched and animals scurried and creeks flowed- that sound of water rushing... everything about nature welcomed me, drew me in. Trees, animals, and water made beautiful sounds...but they never spoke. I stabbed my pencil into the corner of my page, telling myself to focus. Something else. I needed to draw something that wasn't nature. I glanced at the front of the room and noticed a picture tacked to the wall, of Mr. Maysworth's seven-year-old daughter. And I immediately looked back at my paper and started drawing. When Mr. Maysworth came around a couple minutes later, I was just finishing the shading on a sketch of an empty frame. He picked up my sketchpad and stared at it for a moment, and then nodded and put it back on my desk. "What does this mean to you?" he asked. I bit my lip for a moment and then winged it. I think, I motioned, it's supposed to be an image of what's going on in someone's mind. I think this person loved someone, and it's been a long time since they lost them, so now they're finally letting go...taking the picture out of the frame. Val translated for me, and Mr. Maysworth grinned, "You know why I like you, Melissa?" He waved a finger at me, "Because you spin lies like that. I wish every high school student knew how to spin lies like that." Val and I laughed, and Ames grinned. "Ok, Val. Show me what you got." Val smiled widely and sat up straighter as she handed Mr. Maysworth her sketchpad, which contained a picture of what looked like...what looked a dead animal with a car driving away from it in the distance. "Is this..." Mr. Maysworth started, "Road kill," Val finished for him. She pressed her hand to her chest and said, "Can't you see, Mr. Maysworth." She batted her eyelashes dramatically, "It's a metaphor for our society." Mr. Maysworth shook his head, "Right. Leaving me in awe, Val, as usual." Val grinned as he handed her sketchpad back to her, "Never expect any less, Mr. M." He shook his head again and held his hand out toward Ames, "Welcome, new person, let's see what you got." Ames handed him his sketchpad and Mr. Maysworth nodded. "Very nice. Tell me, what do you think this was caused by? What is this person reacting to?" He set the pad back down on the desk and I looked over and saw that Ames had drawn a mouth, wide open, screaming. "I don't know," Ames said, narrowing his eyes at the picture, "I know that she's scared." Mr. Maysworth nods, "You also know that this person is a girl. So what's she scared of?"

"She's scared..." Ames trailed off. He shook his head, ran his hand through his hair. "I don't know," he said, looking back up at Mr. Maysworth and grinning. Mr. Maysworth nodded, "That's Ok. Good start. You're new, so we'll cut you some slack. Besides, it's better than Miss Valerie's, here." Val slapped her chest, mocking offended, "Excuse me, Mr. Maysworth, but this piece of art here is very personal to me." She shook her head and flipped her hair off her shoulder with her hand, "That's alright, Mr. M, I understand. You're not intellectual enough to truly understand the depth of my masterpiece." Mr. Maysworth took a deep breath, "Lord help me the day I reach that level of intellectuality." Ames and I laughed as Val smiled widely and Mr. Maysworth moved onto the next desk.

© 2011

MUTE part 1

Prologue

I was clinging when they found me. Clinging with everything in me, with all I had left. They didn't know, of course. How could they know? All they could possibly know was what they saw. They saw that I was struggling. And so they pulled me up, with force and with strength, even as I wrapped my arms tightly, even as I felt my muscles burst with the effort.
They pulled me away from him.
I opened my mouth, and I tried to cry out, to tell them no, to tell them he was here, too. But I knew, even as I opened my mouth, that nothing would come out. Nothing ever came out. Still, if ever there were a perfect time for my tongue to start working, for my words to finally escape and be heard, that time would be now. And so I tried. I opened my mouth and I tried.
But nothing came out.

Chapter 1

My schedule was ridiculous. I mean, every kid on campus was jealous of me right now. I had art first period, and not only that, I had art with Mr. Maysworth first period. My long history of detentions because of tardiness was put on hold for a year. Right now, though, that wouldn't matter even if I had Mr. Krieff first period, because it was the first day of school, and I was on time. I claimed the best seat in class right away- the window seat in the front row. Mr. Maysworth is one of those rare teachers where you actually want to sit in the front, and the trees outside the window always make for perfect inspiration when I have no idea what to draw, paint, carve, etc. I dropped my Jansport backpack next to my stool and pulled out my sketchpad and my drawing pencils. I started doodling vines on the top of the first blank page while I waited for people to arrive. Mr. Maysworth never actually started class until about ten minutes in, sitting in front of his computer until then, scrolling endlessly and sipping his coffee that was always so milked down it might as well have been tea with a pensive expression on his face. I was focused on one particular root of a small tree I was having sprout from the binding when the stool next to me became occupied. I saw his Chucks and paint-spattered jeans before his face. When I looked up, a white-blond guy with hazel eyes smiled at me, nudging his own sketch pad with his elbow as he stuck his hand out to me in way of greeting. I shook it half-heartedly and he said, "The name's Bond. James Bond." He winked and said, "But you can call me Ames." I raised my eyebrows and tightened my lips, nodding slightly before looking back down to my sketchpad. I felt Ames's eyes still on me, so I moved closer to the paper and scooted my pad away subtly, hoping he'd get the hint. He looked down at his own pad and said, "The quiet type, I see." Valerie walked up just in time to laugh at that statement and said, "You got that right." She stuck her hand out to Ames and said, "Valerie Smith. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. And you are?" He grinned and shook her hand firmly, "Ames Tyler. You can call me Ames. Or Tyler. Or Ty. Anything's fine, really, as long as you don't call me Amy." Val smiled, "Nice to meet you, Ames. Sorry, but I'm gonna have to ask you to remove yourself from that stool." Ames rose his eyebrows, "Why's that?" Val nodded at me, "Me and her, we're kinda two peas in a pod. Printer and paper. Siamese twins separated at birth. Joined at the hip, and all that." Ames grinned, "I'm sure you can handle the distance. Why don't you sit just here, to my left, very close to your fellow pea?" Val's face scrunched up and she shook her head quickly, "Sorry, man, but no can do. I'm her translator." I wanted to bury my face in my hands. I hated that word. Ames rose an eyebrow, confused. He looked at me, "Vous ne parlez pas anglais? Usted no habla Inglés?"

"She speaks English," Val answered for me, "she's just mute." Ah. A word I hated even more than translator. Ames didn't even miss a beat before turning to me and saying, "In that case, since you can't tell me to shut up, if I'm ever talking too much, just pinch me." I couldn't help it. I grinned. And then, annoyed with myself, I pinched him. He laughed, and then pointed to my sketchpad, "What's your name?"

"Melissa," Val answered for me, "But she likes to be called Lissa."

Because it's hard to say, I motioned, and I like to make things as difficult as possible for all you talking jerks. Val laughed and translated to Ames, and he grinned. "So this," he said, copying my last motion, "is how you say 'jerks'?" I laughed and motioned, Almost. But Val was talking to someone across the room, and didn't see me motion, so my words never reached Ames's ears, and I blushed and looked quickly back down at my paper.

© 2011

OWLCITYOWLCITYOWLCITYOWLCITYOWLCITY

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The new Owl City album, All Things Bright and Beautiful, is FINALLY out. I bought it at 12:02

last night/ this morning. YOUR TURN. ;D ;D Seriously, get it,it's BRILLIANT.

Dont worry, Ill be quiet now. I have to study.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/all-things-bright-beautiful/id441864817

No Sense (anything can happen) part 11

"I'm sorry," I said, "What?" Noah looked at the ground. He swallowed and then said, "I know. I'm sorry. I don't want...I mean, I don't want to keep you...locked...locked up in here, but- but they were going to execute you, Vanessa. They want to kill you, and if you go strolling back to the House, that's exactly what they'll do." Of course, this made sense, and I wanted to trust Noah, but...I looked around the tiny little house and took a deep sigh. "Fine," I said, after a minute, "Are you going to be staying here too? Because somehow I doubt they'll take you back into the...Great House...I doubt they'll take you back particularly courteously." Noah laughed, genuinely, and replied, "No, I don't think they would. They'd have my head, if I know them at all." He was grinning, but I couldn't do anything but look back over to the hearth. "Have my head". It sounded medieval, as if they were royalty, and the image of Noah on his knees, his neck placed under the knife of a guillotine, presented itself in my mind before I could stop it. I looked quickly back at his face to distract myself before the blade could fall, and asked, "So you'll be living here, then?" Noah nodded, and then added, "Yes, but I won't be here all the time, like you will. I'll have to sneak out to get us food, and such. And I..." he trailed off, his eyes lost in wondering about something distant. He cleared his throat and met my eyes again, "I'm going to try to figure out a way out." My eyebrows shot up at this. "Of course, it will be even harder, now that I'm on the outside, than it would have been before. The Contact Room was off-limits for me, of course, when I was a Great One, but I could have found a way in, if I really wanted to. Even then, though, it would have taken me a long time to discover how to sneak out, and my visits to the Contact Room would have to be short and spread out, so they would not be detected. Now..." he sighed, "now I've got a lot of work ahead of me." He didn't say anything else, after this, and though I wanted to ask a million questions, I could only think of one that I thought he might answer immediately. So I cleared my throat a little and asked, "Do we have any food?" Noah cracked up at this, clearly grateful for the change of mood, and when he was done laughing, he answered, "No, not at the moment. The fridge and the supply closet have long since been empty, but I can sneak out tonight, and get us some things." This answer rose more questions and more hunger, but I said nothing else, instead sitting on the stool in front of the hearth and staring pointlessly. Noah sat on the stool by the table and stared at the kitchen doors, his mind clearly at work with something. As I stared at the ashes, I leaned closer towards them, and realized that some of them were fairly recent. It hadn't been long since a fire had been lit here. "Noah, how long have the people who lived here been gone?" I asked, glancing over at him. "About a month," he replied quickly, not looking at me. I rose my eyebrows and looked back in the fireplace. "These ashes look more recent than that." Now Noah turned toward me. "Oh," he said, but his tone sounded more like he was confused than remembering something, "yea. Well, they are. The Great Ones couldn't know about this place, couldn't know that those servers were gone. So I've, uh, been lighting fires in here frequently, you know." It seemed strange, to me, almost too coincidental, that Noah just happened to have this little hiding place ready and waiting, as if he knew I was coming, knew I would need to be hidden. "It's strange," I told him, "Convenient, I mean, but strange, that you just...you know. That this place was yours just in time for me to be hidden here." Noah nodded, and looked toward the front door. After a moment, he said, "Well, you know...I've been...wanting to get out of there for a while." He grinned at me, "You're not the whole reason I ran away." I nodded, though this didn't really suffice to silence my confusion about the timing of his acquiring this little house, and after sitting in silence with him for what couldn't have been more than five minutes but felt like five hours, I got up, crossed the approximately ten feet to the other side of the house, and lay on the bed closest to the wall, closing my eyes and coaxing myself into sleep.

© 2011

No Sense (anything can happen) part 10

I woke up feeling dizzy and exhausted, my whole body seeming to pull down, nailing me to the ground with my own weight. My eyelids were heavy but I forced them up and looked around me. There was nothing to see, really. It was relatively dark, but from what my eyes could make out, I was in a small, empty room. It looked almost like a storage closet. Actually...now that I thought about it, as my eyes adjusted, I made out the metal racks pushed against the walls. They were empty, but I recognized them and knew that I was, indeed, in a storage closet. I looked down at my hands but they weren't bonded, and my feet were free, as well. So I stood up and walked over to one of the racks. I ran my finger along the rim of a rack and came up with about an inch of dust. Clearly this closet hadn't been used in a while. I tried the door, but it was locked, as was to be expected, so I sat back down in the same spot I had woken up in and just stared around me, wondering where I was, what was going on. After a while, I have no idea how long, the door swung open, and someone stood there and looked down at me. It took me a moment to realize it was Noah, as his hair and face was caked in dirt and dust, his clothes looking as if it had been rubbed with coal. The light from outside the closet shown in and I realized that I, too, was covered in filth. "Noah," I said, "What's going on?" Noah took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and said, "Sorry for knocking you out. They didn't think you would come willingly, and I figured you'd prefer anesthesia to a punch in the head." I rose my eyebrows, "Who are they?" Noah blushes, "A couple of lower class citizens. They were servers in the Great House, but I managed to smuggle them into the upper class, in exchange for them giving me their lower class residence." Noah opened the storage closet door open wider and I found myself in what looked like a miniature restaurant kitchen. Noah saw my confused expression and explained, "Every citizen of the lower class who serves in the Great House has an individual Serving Kitchen, because the Great Ones- Delatrix, really- doesn't want the the hassle of a large Serving Kitchen taking up as much space as it would in the Great House. I walked behind Nick out of the small "Serving Kitchen", as he called it, through swinging doors that reminded me of so many restaurants back home, and into a tiny house that looked strange connected to professional kitchen. It was tiny- a small hearth on one wall, with a stool sitting in front of it, a makeshift table made from a food crate with another stool sitting in front of it, and two low-to-the-ground beds with thin covers and pathetic-looking pillows. There were two doors other than the ones to the Serving kitchen, one that clearly led outside, and one in the wall the beds were pushed closest to. Nick told me, "That's the bathroom. The toilet flushes, and the sink runs, but the shower head is broken, and there's no tub. I walk over to the bathroom and open the door. The toilet is also low-to-the-ground, and a muddy brown color. The sink is really just a faucet over a bucket, but I figure you're supposed to pour the water down the showed drain when you're done. The shower is small, with no curtain or door, just a shower head pointing down at a broken tile square with a drain in the middle, surrounded by two inch walls to prevent the water from flooding the bathroom. I turned away from the bathroom and rose an eyebrow at Nick. "Ok," I said, "So why am I here?" Nick frowned apologetically and motioned around him, "Welcome home."

© 2011

The Famine Tournaments

Heyyyyy guys,

So I read this book recently. It's called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. You might have heard of it. I don't know, probably not. It's kind of obscure. Anyway, my friend gave me a paperback copy of the book, and I already owned a hardcover copy of the last book in the trilogy that The Hunger Games is part of, (I bought it for like four bucks when one of my favorite local bookstores was closing,) so I figured I might as well read the thing. I'm about a fourth of the way through the third book now, but this is just a review of the first one. Mostly. Maybe, probably.

Anyway.

The book is really addicting, though it can be very frustrating and the main character...well...

Katniss Everdeen:

And you thought Bella Swan was annoying.*

Well, she's really more annoying in the second book. Which isn't to say she isn't annoying in the first one. She is.

But she's also interesting and aggressive and surrounded by less annoying characters. My favorite character in all the books is Peeta Mellark, the male lead of the first book and mostly the second book and a little bit the third book. (That didn't make much sense, but I don't really care.) I probably like him because he's sort of got the whole Edward Cullen thing going on- totally in love and very protective over the female lead. (Check out how Edward this line is: "Peeta rolls his eyes at Haymitch. 'She has no idea. The effect she can have.'" ...right? Right? I know.) The actual games are brilliantly written, gripping and keeping you constantly on edge, and the romance is irresistible, too, even if it is mostly one-sided. (Grrrr.)

The first book is less frustrating than the others, and I really did genuinely enjoy it, but I do have to say one thing: there was an extremely irritating amount of missing commas. I mean, seriously. I can understand if the author never really caught on to the proper way to use commas in school, and the manuscript she sent in was essentially comma-free. But really, you'd think that, in the hands of professional editors, this problem would be solved. But whatever. I just inserted them mentally as I read.

Overall, I have to give this book a ***** rating, but I feel like maybe I should add a backslash and then a -***** rating, because I'm not sure I would really recommend these books. They're brilliant, sure, but really a pain to read. And not because of the missing commas. I mean...when a book is Wuthering Heights, it's worth it to read it, despite the fact that it's frustrating beyond belief. But though Hunger Games is wonderfully written and has been very successful, it's not Wuthering Heights.

Still, if you want my opinion on whether it's worth it, just to me.... if I could go back in time and advise myself on whether or not to read Hunger Games...I'd read it again. But it'd still be annoying.

*Yes, I am admitting that Bella Swan can be kind of annoying sometimes. Well, I don't really think so very much personally. But I can see how someone else could feel that way.

Also, on a totally different note, I feel like "I got my groove back"...ever since I finished Broken Glass, Broken Hearts, I've been kind of...failing...as far as writing frequently goes, but I'm pretty much back into the swing of things, which means a lot more posts more frequently again, especially since summer is coming up. So I'm excited about that!

Got My Groove Back Playlist

1. Melt My Heart To Stone by Adele
2. Turning Tables by Adele
3. Car Song by Woodie Guthrie
4. Do Re Mi by Woodie Guthrie
5. Truth by Alexander
6. Brother by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
7. Make You Feel My Love by Adele
8. Make You Feel My Love covered by Ronan Parke (on Britain's Got Talent)
9. 100 Years by Five For Fighting

Also also, for those of you who've read the books and understand, if I was in the Hunger Games, I would say bye to my family and then step off the platform as soon as they put me in the arena.

Starving=I'll pass.

Being stabbed/shot/killed by another person by any method= Thanks but no thanks.

Burning alive= Um, nah.

Killing people= Nooooo, thank you.

Also also also, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides over the weekend and when I first heard about it, I was annoyed they were making another one because the story of the two main characters had ended, but...my friend wanted to see it and I can't resist Johnny Depp so I went anyway. And...it was just kind of totally flippin' amazing. I'm talkin', not only revolving around the beauty and hilarity that is Johnny Depp, but also featuring a side plot...are you ready for this...romance between a mermaid/siren and a missionary.

In case you didn't notice from my book Forbidden Love, I kind of love mermaid love stories. Also, I kind of love boys who love God. Also, I kind of love people who are beautiful. Which is both of the people in this couple. It's like they were custom made for me. Philip+Syrena Philip+Syrena Philip+Syrena = <3

Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks! ,

Sienna Mellark-Cullen-Roth-Darcy-Etc./Let's just say I'm kind of a hopeless romantic book nerd

(professional wrestler in all 60 states)

© 2011

No Sense (anything can happen) part 9

"Hm," Delatrix purred, turning her face towards me, "Well, that won't do, certainly, will it, Petreus?" Petreus said nothing. "I could," Noah spoke up, and my eyes darted toward him, my heart beating quickly by now, as these strange people pondered my demise, "I could take her. Take care of her." Noah cleared his throat, his eyes wide with fear, whether more for me or himself I couldn't tell, "I'd like a...pet." Delatrix was smiling upon him, but her expression was amused, which didn't seem promising, and Noah added, "If you don't mind, of course, Madame Del." Delatrix smiled at the formal name and said, "I shall...think about it." She yawned, then, and stood. "I am tired," she said, "We shall discuss this more in the morning." Then, finally, she pressed a button on the table, the only sign of modern technology that I could see in the room, and summoned her servants back into the room. "Take the glitch away, Luke," she ordered, "I don't want it in my sight any longer tonight." Luke grabbed my shoulders and the last thing I saw before I was quickly ushered out of the room was Delatrix clasping herself to Petreus's side, smiling upon his barren expression and whispering something to him as she cupped his cheek with her hand.

Furious knocking. Loud bangs on the door that practically shook the whole room. I groaned and rolled over in the enormous bed. I fell asleep on top of the covers, already feeling lightheaded from the heat without the thick covers laying on top of me. I pushed myself off the bed and took a second to regain my balance before walking over to the door. The merciless pounding continued, and I threw open the door with frustration when I reached it, hissing, "What?" in my intruder's face. Noah was there, his big green eyes widened in terror. "What?" I asked again, my tone changed to one of fear and confusion. "We have to go," he whispered, "We have to go now." My eyebrows shot up, "We? We who? Go where?"

"Come on," he demanded, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of the room quickly, not even pausing to close the door. "Wha-" he yanked me forward, cutting off my protests, and I followed in silent confusion as he half-ran down the spiral staircase. We took a sudden left at the bottom and he pulled me through a pitch black hallway until we reached a door, which he knocked on twice before it was thrown open. Before I could see the face of whoever had opened it, though, we were dashing through the room to another door, and Noah forced that heavy wood open himself, pulling us into the cool night air and shadows that showed me we were outside. A cossy suddenly pulled up, faster than I'd ever seen a cossy drive, and Noah shoved me in, squeezing into the same contept with me and and slamming the door closed. He pressed the button to speak to the driver and said two words I hadn't heard spoken in a long time, "Floor it."

© 2011