A Modern Fairytale(?) of Love (or friendship, we're still young)

I look in the mirror and sigh before putting my mousey brown hair into a sloppy ponytail over my t-shirt and plain jeans. I purposefully ignore the makeup my mother insists on leaving out for me every morning and head down the stairs to where my brother, Aspen, is waiting for me. He’s a senior and I’m a junior so he drives me to school every morning.

“Hey, sis,” he says like a greeting, “are you ready to go to school? Mom left early for her lawyer job so if you want breakfast we have to make it ourselves.”

I frown. “Her lawyer job? She’s a probate paralegal.”

He ignores me and reaches for a box of cereal. I watch his cerulean orbs–

Wait, what?

My vision suddenly goes out, the word ‘orbs’ transfixed in the air for just a moment before disappearing. When I can see again, Aspen picks up the cereal box again.

I watch his blue eyes dart back and forth, reading. He and I look really similar, and all the girls in my class, including my best friend Beatrix, think he’s really handsome. But while my hair is a boring brown, his is a chestnut auburn. We share the same blue eyes, though.

Which isn’t a surprise to me. We’re siblings. I knew all of this already.

Aspen opens the front door to the house, still holding the cereal, and–

Wait, the cereal is gone. I don’t remember him putting it down, but when I look back at the counter it’s still there.

“Isolde, come on. We’re going to be late,” Aspen says. He rolls his eyes at me and holds the car door open, although how he got from the door to the car so quickly is strange.

“Ugh, call me Izzy...”

“Right, sorry, I forgot,” he says, turning on the car. “Nobody has called you Isolde since Dad left a few years ago.”

I squint my eyes at Aspen. He’s right, but it’s weird to say. “Are you feeling alright this morning?”

He ignores me. “Are you excited about the big announcement at lunch today? What do you think it will be?”

The principal told us yesterday that something really important was going to be announced at lunch, and the whole class has been talking about it non-stop, which hasn’t actually been that long now that I think about it.

“Uh, I don’t know. Maybe Beatrix will know, her sisters are on the student council.”

Beatrix is an identical triplet, but while her sisters are the most pretty, preppy, and popular girls in school, Beatrix is emo and eccentric and not like them, with dyed blue hair and a lot of black eyeliner and mascara and stuff. We became friends in middle school because she stood up to her sisters, my bullies, for me, and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since.

Wait, but since they don’t get along, why would they have told Beatrix? That doesn’t make any sense.

Regardless, Aspen nods. “Well, I can’t wait to see what it is. Alright, we’re here. Do you need me to pick you up, or are you going to get a ride from Beatrix?”

“I’ll probably get a ride since I have choir practice after school,” I say, although since it took us less than two minutes to drive here, I could probably walk home just as easily. Have we always lived so close to the school?

Beatrix meets me at my locker when the bell rings, which is strange, because the bell would mean we have to get to class. She doesn’t look worried, though. She’s wearing a punk rock t-shirt over a pair of ripped jeans and fishnets, which is how she normally dresses, so I’m not sure why I take note of it today.

“Hey, Izzy,” she greets me. “Are you excited for the big announcement at lunch? I hope it’s a poetry reading or a rock concert.”

“This is a high school, it’s probably not either of those things.”

The bluenette–

What?

For a second, my vision tunnels again, like with Aspen’s orbs, and bluenette flashes in front of my face. Just as quickly, it disappears, and all I see is Beatrix’s blue hair. “What was–”

Beatrix ignores me. “Or, you know, I heard a rumor that Tristan Dulcimer was spotted at the local club yesterday. Do you think it could have anything to do with that?”

Ugh, Tristan Dulcimer. Other than me and Beatrix, I swear every girl in my grade is obsessed with the pop star. Even though he’s our age, he rose to fame a year ago and he’s been at the top of the charts ever since. He’s played shows all over the world, and I’ve heard that his new album is supposed to come out in a week, but for some reason the date keeps getting pushed back.

I don’t know why I know this since I don’t particularly like his music.

Beatrix rolls her eyes, like she can hear my thoughts, which she practically can because we’re best friends. “He’s so phony. His songs in the last two albums have all sounded the same.”

“Just because you can’t see the poetry in Tristan’s music doesn’t mean the rest of the world is so deaf. You two are such losers.”

Beatrix’s identical triplet sisters, Angelica and Camille, walk up to us, smirking with their painted bright pink lips. Beatrix rolls her eyes. “What do you know?”

Avery flips her straightened blonde hair behind one shoulder. “More than you, you geek.”

Camille repeats the action. “Let’s just say you might be looking at the new princesses of pop, if everything goes well.”

“What does that mean?”

Rather than answer my question, Angelica and Camille walk away, their hair swinging with their hips. Camille does glance back at me, which I take note of, although Beatrix doesn’t seem to notice.

Beatrix rolls her eyes. “Ugh, those two. I guess we’ll just have to wait until lunch to find out.”

My next three classes fly by in a blur. It seems like just a few minutes after saying goodbye to Beatrix at my locker– I guess she didn’t need to visit hers?-- we’re meeting in the lunchroom, where we sit at a table in the back by ourselves. Our school is pretty big, but the grades still all eat together; I can see Aspen at the front of the room with his friends. Angelica and Camille are here too, sitting with the rest of the annoying preps at the front of the school.

The principal taps the microphone– is there always a microphone just out in the cafeteria?-- and launches into his speech right away. “Hello, East High! I’m sure you’re all excited to see what our big announcement is. Well, I’m pleased to announce—”

He’s cut off when the lights suddenly dim, which I wasn’t aware they could do. The doors to the cafeteria slam open and fake smoke pours out, along with laser-like lights. There’s just a hallway behind those doors, so I’m not sure how they’re making that happen. Music starts playing from somewhere too, and three men walk over to where our principal was standing, their silhouettes barely visible with the bright and moving lights. When the lights blink back on, there are two large men in suits standing in front and on either side of a teenage boy on a stage– when did they build a stage in the cafeteria?

Despite sitting in the back of a large room, I know it’s Tristan Dulcimer immediately. The cafeteria falls under a hush as all eyes turn to him, although, for some reason, he’s looking straight at me.

Then, he grabs the microphone, which is no longer attached to a cord, although I could have sworn it was when the principal was speaking. “Hey, East High.”

The cafeteria erupts in cheers.

“It’s me, Tristan Dulcimer,” he clarifies over the screams, as if we didn’t all know. “How are you doing?”

Someone in the front couple tables shouts “I love you, Tristan!” and he shoots them a cocky smirk. I think. He’s quite far away still.

“I’m here to announce something… something I’m pretty excited about.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and everybody quiets down. “How would you like the chance… to collaborate with me on my new album?”

The room gasps.

“Well, you’re in luck. In three days, I’ll be holding a talent competition, and one lucky lady or gentleman will have the pleasure of recording their song with me on my new album that releases in a week. I look forward to seeing the best that East High has to offer!”

With one last glance and wink in my direction, he swaggers off the stage, and once he’s out of the room, the regular lights turn back on and the crowd erupts into excited titters.

Beatrix rolls her eyes. “What a cash grab.”

“How could this possibly be a cash grab?” I’m also pretty sure that the turnaround time for recording and producing an entire album is more than four days, so even without the cash grab aspect, this logistically doesn’t follow.

“Music should come from the heart, not from some popularity contest, right, Izzy?” Despite not having eaten anything, Beatrix and I stand up and put our trays away. Now that I think of it, I also left before having breakfast. Why am I not hungry? “Speaking of music, have you written anything lately?”

“No?” Beatrix knows full well that I stopped writing original music when my dad left, so it’s a little weird for her to bring it up.

“That’s a shame. Your music was powerful, not like the mass-market slop Tristan writes.” Beatrix waves goodbye to me before heading off to her next class. “I’ll see you in choir class.”

The only class Beatrix, her sisters, and I all have together is choir, which, despite being a class and not a club, is after school for some reason. I’m too shy to sing solos, so I sing quietly in the alto section, although I definitely have a soprano range. Or, at least, I usually do, since I’m a nobody at this school. Today, however, something is different– I don’t know if it’s all the weird things I’ve never noticed about my school and my life before or what– but I find myself singing louder, adding embellishments to the choral pieces that aren’t there, and even losing myself in the music entirely, singing even as the piano and everyone else drops out one by one. When I realize I’m singing alone for the first time in years, I feel my cheeks turn bright red.

“Um, keep your screeching to yourself,” Angelica says, and the class laughs. The class continues like normal, but when we pack up to leave, our choir teacher pulls me aside.

“You’ve got a lovely voice, Isolde.”

“Izzy,” I remind her. She’s never called me Isolde before.

“Have you considered entering the competition to sing with Tristan? I remember you used to write such beautiful songs.”

It’s a weird detail for a teacher to remember about me, I think, given that it was years ago and also that I can’t remember her name. She must have one. And I love choir, I must know it. Something is wrong, something has been wrong with this whole day. My vision glitches.

“I’ll think about it,” I mumble, and I walk past her and out into the hall where I smash my nose directly into someone’s chest, tumbling to the floor because I’m too clumsy to catch myself.

“Woah, watch wear you’re going.”

It feels a little late for that. When I look up, it’s into the silhouette of Tristan Dulcimer, who, even though his words reflected his bad-boy image, is holding his hand out towards me. Despite his cocky posture, I have to admit to myself he’s infuriatingly handsome–

Nope, that’s it. I’m done.

Right now, I’m supposed to see a glimmer of him as a person, not a star. He heard me sing. He’ll admit that he’s been having a hard time with inspiration but when he saw me in the cafeteria, something about me enraptured him. After much cajoling from him we work in secret for three days. He brings back my passion for music and I help him write from the heart and when I win the contest– which honestly feels like cheating since he’s been helping me– he tells me he loves me and we kiss. He proposes at prom, and by twenty-two we have two kids.

Nope. I close my eyes.

None of that.

With my eyes closed, the sound around me dies away until everything is silent, and when I open my eyes, I see the next three days laid out in front of me in script, handwritten and messy, with questionable spelling. When I read beyond the time I closed my eyes, I see that the story went on without me. Tomorrow, he sneaks me into his mansion and we play a duet on his family’s beautiful heritage fortepiano, which is actually a grand piano but I’m not sure the author knows the difference. I do though, since I was a musician. That night, I fight with Beatrix over selling out. I defend her against Angelica and Camille and we make up. My dad comes back the night of the contest and tells me he’s proud of me, which almost throws me off my game but with Tristan’s support--

It’s got a lot of heart. But it’s not my story. I’m sorry.

It’s okay. You’re a self-insert anyway.

Even more reason to have a different story, then. We don’t need a savior. We certainly don’t need two kids by twenty-two.

I reach into my pocket for a pen– hey, if I’m a sensitive nobody, I’ve gotta have a pen on me to write down secret lyrics, right? Help me out here.

The pen appears, and I start at the top.

I look in the mirror and sigh smile before putting my mousey brown hair into a sloppy ponytail over my t-shirt and plain jeans. I look how I want to look. I walk to school.

Beatrix meets me at my locker when the bell rings. “Hey, Izzy,” she greets me. “Are you excited for the big announcement at lunch? I hope it’s a poetry reading or a rock concert.”

“This is a high school, it’s probably not either of those things.”

The bluenette Beatrix ignores me. “Or, you know, I heard a rumor that Tristan Dulcimer was spotted at the local club yesterday. Do you think it could have anything to do with that?”

“Probably.”

“He’s so phony. His songs in the last two albums have all sounded the same. His music isn’t for me, but I think everyone should be able to express themselves.”

“Just because you can’t see the poetry in Tristan’s music doesn’t mean the rest of the world is so deaf Thanks for saying that. Sometimes I worry that you think we’re stupid.”

Angelica and Camille, walk up to us, smirking with their painted bright pink lips smiling. We aren’t in middle school anymore and they’ve apologized.

Avery flips her straightened blonde hair behind one shoulder. “More than you, you geek. Tristan Dulcimer is coming to the school for a competition. We want to enter. Do you want to help us, Izzy?”

Camille repeats the action. “Let’s just say You might be looking at the new princesses of pop, if everything goes well.”

“What does that mean? That sounds fun! Let’s work!”

Angelica and Camille walk away, their hair swinging with their hips. Camille does glance back at me, which I take note of. Maybe Camille likes me as more than a friend. If a glance in a cafeteria can mean that, why can’t a glance in the hallway? I have shown no interest in anyone so far– why assume I’m heteronormative?

Later, we meet in the lunchroom. Angelica and Camille are here too, sitting with the rest of the student council at the front of the school their friends.

The principal taps the microphone. “Hello, East High! I’m sure you’re all excited to see what our big announcement is. Well, I’m pleased to announce—”

He’s cut off when the lights suddenly dim. The doors to the cafeteria slam open and fake smoke pours out, along with laser-like lights. Music starts playing and when the lights blink back on, a teenage boy stands on a stage.

“Hey, East High.”

The cafeteria erupts in cheers.

“It’s me, Tristan Dulcimer,” he clarifies over the screams, as if we didn’t all know. “How are you doing?”

“I’m here to announce something… something I’m pretty excited about.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and everybody quiets down. “How would you like the chance… to collaborate with me on my new album?”

The room gasps.

“Well, you’re in luck. In three days, I’ll be holding a talent competition, and one lucky lady or gentleman will have the pleasure of recording their song with me on my new album that releases in a week. I look forward to seeing the best that East High has to offer!”

Beatrix rolls her eyes waves as her sisters come towards us. “What a cash grab. Hey!”

“I’m already so psyched to work with you three,” Angelica says. Camille smiles at me.

“Music should come from the heart, right, Izzy? Speaking of music, have you written anything lately?”

“No.”

“I know you and your dad used to write together. Maybe by writing with us you can start to heal.”

And then we write a song and enter and lose the contest to a sophomore beatboxer, but we have so much fun anyway that we don’t mind. Tristan Dulcimer learns the inspiration was inside him and doesn’t have to find romantic love at seventeen to regain his passion. I’m not anybody’s muse but my own.

And we live?

…happily ever after?

Indeed.