Live Forever

Sweating, shaking, paralysed by boredom, kicking around in my too-small room; I think I’m getting withdrawal symptoms.
Not for Dan. We’ve seen each other far too much over the last three months. I’m not complaining, but sometimes we need a day off from each other; I’ve used up countless lip balms due to the severe abuse they get every time I see him. But it’s a nice sort of abuse, if such a thing exists. I’m seeing him tomorrow – and, so that we can’t argue over what the best album of the year is (you see, I know it’s The Great Escape, but still he fruitlessly tries to persuade me that (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is the album of the decade. I despair), we’re going to see that new Disney film. Toy Story. Unlike most couples who go to the cinema, however, we will actually watch the film. There’s nothing more irritating than the storyline being constantly interrupted by heavy breathing and sweet nothings from the row behind; Dan’s personal highlight of our relationship so far was the screening of the original Star Wars movies, during which a slightly over-amorous couple lost control so completely that they ended up hitting me on the head with their entwined bodies. Furious, I turned round and whacked them with my lightsabre (which Dan thoughtfully bought me as a two-month anniversary present), and we were consequently chucked out. It was an interesting date.
No; instead, I pine for my copy of The Great Escape, which Stella borrowed and has subsequently lost. Where the hell could she have put it? Until I reluctantly handed it over last Friday, it had been on constant repeat on my tape player. My father claims that, last night, I was mumbling the words to The Universal in my sleep. This is how a chain-smoker must feel when their vice is so cruelly snatched away. I’m a martyr, a slave to my addiction, and my empty walls need a soundtrack to them. There’s only one thing to do. I must ring Stella, to berate her and then have a DMC about life – I’m starting to think that, perhaps, just maybe, I’m in love with Dan. But I want to try the words out before saying them. I want to know just how pathetic I sound. How helpless and drippy I can be. But Stella’s father informs me that she’s out with a boy (my response being to drop the phone in astonishment), and that she’ll call me back later. I overhear footsteps leading upstairs on my end. A dull thump of trainers, a clip, clop of heels. A male voice, a female voice. Baritone, mezzo-soprano. It’s my brother Colin, back from uni, with his...
“Heyyy, Lyla!” he chirps. “Have you got that Blur CD? Daisy wants to borrow it for a while, like. ‘S that ok?”
And there she is, standing in my doorway, my black-clad, short-skirted nemesis. Daisy Robinson. Stella’s older sister. Colin’s best friend with benefits. She’s his one true love, and she plays with him as carelessly as if he were a toy. And now she wants to steal my CD soulmate away from me. As if!
“Stella already has it. Actually, Stella’s already lost it,” I mumble. Awkwardness disguises my rage that she’s here. Daisy’s frosty eyes stare daggers at me, blunted with amusement. It’s a mutual hatred.
“Has she, now,” she articulates, coating every syllable in venom and polishing it off with a nice layer of malice. The November air is icy enough without her presence freezing the room, goosebumps on my arms. Only Colin remains oblivious to the cold war between us. He certainly got optimism in the gene pool, probably from Mum; I’m plagued by the ever-present pessimism that my father’s DNA bestowed on me. Joy! “I didn’t realise she’d lost it. Who did she lose it to?”
I don’t flatter her with a response. Instead, Colin falls about laughing and they head off to his room to do God knows what. All I know is that her fiancé certainly doesn’t know she’s round here, or it would be a twentieth century version of Romeo and Juliet – but with a more gruesome fight scene.

***

The sighs from next door become increasingly disturbing, and the mission to find a CD to listen to becomes too intense. I throw on the first CD I can find, blindly throwing it into my stereo, and letting the music run its course. A decent riff kicks off the album – it must be one of my dad’s old ones, because I don’t recognise it.
Thirty seconds in, I realise the true extent of my mistake. The horribly familiar, nasal Manc accent fills my room, snarling its way through my ears; but I can’t turn it off, lest I hear the indecent thumping on the walls. Every time I turn it down a notch, I hear things that should really have been soundproofed from my innocent little mind. And so it continues through the repetitive trash of ‘Rock en Role Star’ (Dave’s spelling never was very good), and the painful crap that is ‘Shackermaker’. Onto the song that Stella was harping on about. I listen more carefully.
A generic drum solo. The voice kicks in.

“Maybe... I don’t really wanna know how your garden grows...”
Alarm bells sound for a misplaced innuendo. What kind of an opening line is that, anyway? Stella, never the sanest of creatures anyway, must have been in a sensationally mad mood that day. Maybe she’d taken something? Perhaps Dave was a drug dealer and was going to whisk her away to the Cornish equivalent of Camden. Newquay, perhaps. I’d heard about Newquay; Dan’s family –his dad, himself and his stepmother– had gone there on holiday the year previously, and he’d been forcibly pinned up against a pasty shop wall by a Londoner-deprived girl with indecent intentions. Evidently, the backstreets of Manchester were nothing compared to the backwaters of Cornwall.

“’Cause I just wanna fly...”
Don’t we all.

“Lately, did you ever feel the pain in the morning rain, as it soaks you to the bone?”
How can you feel pain in rain? The lyrics frustrate me, but anything’s better than overhearing the she-wolf devour my brother. It’s a hideous thought. Oasis, for once, are the lesser of two evils; something I never thought I’d think, and something that I will probably never think again.

“Maybe I just wanna fly; wanna live, I don’t wanna die...”
Stating the obvious, perhaps. But I am having a horrendous epiphany; this is not a bad song. It’s warm with emotion, and as Stella said, it’s sort of beautiful. I think of life; I think of death. I think of my ups; Dan, Stella. I think of my downs; Mum, Dad, Daisy. And I can’t do anything except listen to the rest of the song.

“Maybe I just wanna breathe, maybe I just don’t believe. Maybe you’re the same as me, we’ll see things they’ll never see – you and I are gonna live forever...”
Emotions change so quickly, like traffic lights; but instead of letting the cars go through, this song is making unprecedented tears roll down my cheeks. I’m ridiculous: a shell of a girl who can’t stick to her unyielding beliefs. Two minutes ago I was a vehement Oasis-hater, and now I’m bawling at the beauty of a single song. And I need to talk to Dan, because I’m pretty sure now that I do love him, and no matter how soppy or unrealistic it is, I do want to live forever with him.
But as I pick up the phone to dial his number, and to open my heart like a defenceless, stupid diary, it shakes with a sudden ferocity which makes me scream. Regaining my composure, I scrabble to click the button and answer the call. My pulse thumps in my ears. What if it’s Dan? Could I still tell him?
“Hello, Lyla here. Who’s speaking?” My phone voice sounded as pretentious as ever. The hysterical breathing told me that my fears were unfounded; it was, instead, my melodramatic best friend embroiled in yet another existential crisis.
“Lyla, Lyla! You’ve gotta help me! Somethin’ mental’s just happened!” she gasps light-headedly.
“Let me guess, your packet of Smarties was made up of just blue Smarties?” It’s a decent shot; Stella tends to get overexcited about the most mundane anomalies.
“No...” She gulps. “Dave’s fookin’ here!”
Sighing – in a very different way to Colin and Daisy – I agree to come over and sort out her life. After all, my life hardly needs sorting out, does it?