Smiling at Everything

Jazz sat alone on the couch of the living room of the bus. It was late; around one in the morning. Zack ended up going to sleep at midnight. He just couldn't handle staying up for so long with Jazz. But he tried and Jazz had to give him props for that. While the pair had been up, the other band members on the bus had woken up from their naps for a short period of time. However, they felt it better to sleep out the trip to the first venue.

Trying to occupy themselves on a bus while awaiting the pending performance was hard.

Jazz was the only one awake now. She would be for some time. It wasn't a big deal to her. For most of the tours, she was the only one who stayed up almost every night. Every once in awhile, Dorian would find the need to overdose on caffeine and stay up with her, playing pranks on their fellow band members while they were asleep. When Jazz did allow herself to sleep, she tried to pick days that she felt she wouldn't have nightmares. There were normally ways of telling. Depending on how out of it she had been during the day, how many times the memories decided to try to overwhelm her, she could figure out whether or not she would have a significant nightmare.

Lately though, she had been having nightmares everytime she fell asleep. They had become much more realistic than they used to be, much more frightening. There was no way to control them. At least not one that she could figure out. She gave up on trying some time ago. She couldn't combat the nightmares.

Maybe one day they would go away, disappear somewhere in the back most recesses of her mind. Till then, she was awake and alone on a tour bus with nothing to do but think.

In front of Jazz, the television showed scenes she wasn't quite paying attention to. She had the volume on low so as to not wake anyone, just high enough for her ears to pick up the vague noises. It was some cartoon on some children's channel, that much she knew. The storyline, however, was completely void of her.

Watching cartoons reminded her too much of how she used to be, the carefree girl who didn't have any secrets. She and Neon used to watch cartoons when they had sleepovers till the early hours of the morning. When Jazz wasn't doing homework, she tended to watch mind-numbing cartoons to offset her headaches. It hadn't affected her social life; she had been relatively popular until the middle of seventh grade.

And then it happened the first time.

She originally forced the memory to the back of her mind, trying to convince herself it was all a nightmare. But it happened two more times in that same month; by that point it was real. She became awkward around males after that, mainly men who were many years her elder. On nights she couldn't sleep, she watched television, stumbling on anime. She found that much more mind-numbing to watch then cartoons. It required more of her attention-span to follow the character's through their journeys. Alongside her keyboard, she was successfully kept from her memories.

For awhile.

When it came time for summer, she found it harder to keep herself from thinking about it. She had convinced herself that she deserved it, made herself feel terrible about something she couldn't control. Her self-esteem plummeted. She avoided many of things she loved that summer, like swimming and hanging out at the mall. Going in public was just too much.

That's when she started cutting.

She didn't know exactly what day it started or where she got the idea. Her upbringing had been extremely sheltered; the idea of self-harm was completely foreign to her. She remembered how the idea hurting herself would take away emotional pain was implanted into her mind though. She had been home by herself all day; her nanny had been dismissed early to deal with a family emergency. Jazz had been playing her piano in the living room, practicing a piece for her piano lessons. It was an easy piece, one that allowed her mind to wander. Her thoughts ended up on the detention incidents with her gym coach, replaying in her mind with graphic images as she played the piece. Frustrated that the images wouldn't leave her mind, Jazz went to her room where she got caught up staring into her vanity mirror, the images still floating in her mind. She couldn't stand looking at herself anymore, disgusted with the image that she saw, so she broke the mirror with her fist.

Pain.

That was the first thing she remembered feeling. A swarm of it, causing her nerves to tingle. For days, she dealt with the pain, bandaging her hand on her own and keeping it hidden in the pockets of her shorts. When the pain subsided, the memories came back. During the time she had a healing wound, the pain was so great that the memories never surfaced. There was no room in her mind beyond the pain for the memories to even exist. So she decided inflicting pain on herself was the best option.

She was only going to do it during the summer when she had no school to focus her mind on. But she didn't actually quit when she claimed she would. Even now, sitting on the couch of the tour bus all alone, she didn't know if she was over it.

"Some things are just too addicting to get over, Juliet."

Jazz jolted in her spot on the couch, glancing nervously around the living room area. This was all their fault, this nervousness and fakeness. She hated them for what they did to her. They screwed up her life for their sick fantasies. She had trusted them both to some extent.

They brutally raped that trust and left it broken.

Jazz's frantic eyes drifted to the kitchen area of the bus, focusing in on the secured cabinets. She knew what was behind the doors of the cabinet on the far right. Behind those doors was the one thing that she knew would cause her internal pain to disappear, the one thing she had been aching for since she started packing for tour. Jazz bit her bottom lip, debating. Could she really throw away the amount of work she did to try to rid her mind of memories, something she could probably get over in time?

"Stop fighting it, Presley."

Jazz shook her head, tossing the voice from her mind for the moment. Without any further mental questions, she stood from the couch. The mild bumps the bus took on did nothing to upset her balance. She was used to tour buses. They had been a major part of her life for so long. On skilled legs, she walked to the kitchen area of the bus. Jazz yanked the cabinet on the far right open, disconnecting the magnetic securing system that kept the cabinets from opening over the course of the trip. She hesitated, the objects of her desire stationed against the side of the cabinet.

The knives stared at her, awaiting her next move, glinting in the dim lighting. Jazz reached her hand forward, shaking in anticipation. On instinct, she picked up the largest and the sharpest of the knives. She held it up to the light, staring at the sharp side of the blade. Her tongue flitted over her lips, contemplating the amount of damage she could do to her body with the sharpened object. Guilt panged in the back of her mind, knowing that, if she did do this, she would feel even worse once the high from the cut wore off. She would be letting herself down, letting down the people who cared about her.

Oh wait, no one knew about this, no one would be affected, no one would care.

Jazz shook her bracelets off her arm, letting them bounce on the counter top. She positioned the blade against her arm, sharp side down., next to the scar that read "whore" in large letters. She paused again. This was her last chance to put the knife away and pretend she never got off the couch, her last chance to continue to pretend to be normal. It was harder to hide an open wound behind a set of bracelets; they would move throughout the day and expose glimpses of the cut.

But her band mates wouldn't ask questions.

Jazz bit her lip, pressed the blade against her skin, and dragged it across her arm. A whimper sounded in the confines of her throat as the pain began to encompass her. She pressed the blade even harder against her skin; blood bubbled around the knife, staining the silver.

She would just wear red bracelets for awhile.