Heavy Heart

The next day, Olivia burst through the door to the room, a copy of The Sun in tow. “Daria Holmes!” she cried, waking Daria from a much-needed afternoon nap after her last sociology class of the day, Populations. Immediately, Daria knew what was coming for her – the storm she had braced herself for the minute she left the Starbucks the afternoon prior.

“You are on the front cover of The Sun!” she wailed, thrusting the paper at her innocently waiting roommate. Daria blanched, sitting straight up in bed, back straight as a board. She’d expected an article somewhere, just a little blurb, but not to be on the front cover of the nation’s biggest gossip rag.

“You’re joking,” she breathed, eyes wide. Her roommate shook her head, long hair swaying around her shoulders. Olivia approached her, magazine outstretched, her long, callused finger pointing to a square in the top right corner. While the biggest photo on the page involved a story about a scandal with a soccer player, the next biggest photo was one of Daria, mouth agape, with Harry Styles dabbing at her chest with a wad of napkins.

“This is a nightmare,” she muttered, pressing her head into her hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Olivia asked, bright green eyes shimmering. Daria looked at her, not amused. Immediately, Olivia’s expression softened, pursed lips curling downwards into a concerned frown.

“Are you okay?”

Eyes welling with tears, Daria shook her head. “I’m so embarrassed, Olivia,” she muttered, struggling to fight back the small droplets that threatened to spill down her cheeks. “I’ve not even been in the country for a week and I’ve managed to get my stupid face on the front cover of The Sun. People everywhere are probably laughing at me.”

“Oh, Daria,” Olivia mumbled softly, climbing up onto Daria’s bed and sitting beside her. Her sinewy legs dangled off the bedside, clad in a pair of bright red Vans, splattered in paint droplets.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cry,” Daria sniffed, wiping away a tear that managed to escape the confines of her waterline. “It’s just…”

In a moment that Daria couldn’t quite understand, she felt like she’d known Olivia forever. They were kindred spirits, both brought from their homes to a place far away, but yet so different – Daria scientific and orderly with Olivia a constant creative mess. As Olivia laced her fingers through Daria’s comfortingly, she felt more connected to her than she had to anyone in a long time.

“I don’t have a lot of friends back home,” she said in a near whisper, her voice breaking unsteadily. “Most of them moved away after high school and I’ve had a hard time making new ones at Wesleyan. I’ve been alone for most of the last year and a half. And even in high school, I alienated myself because…”

Olivia looked at her with wide eyes, set with concentrated focus on every word Daria was saying. Daria took a deep breath, squeezing Olivia’s nimble fingers tightly. “It’s just that, my father died when I was nine, in 2001,” she continued, finally letting out the words that her roommate desperately needed to know to understand her. “And I know that’s a long time ago, but I’ve spent the last eleven years of my life taking care of my mom because after my dad died, she forgot how to take care of herself. With that and work, I basically have no life. I’m not really used to attention.”

Silently, Olivia nodded to signal she was still listening. “That’s why I came here, really,” Daria confessed, choking out a few more tears. “Because I needed to learn how to be a person again, really. How to have friends, how to take care of myself, and just be selfish for a while. I think my mom hates me for it, for leaving her. She won’t talk to me. I keep calling and she won’t answer. I can only imagine what she’s going to say when this reaches her.”

“You don’t deserve to be treated like that, Daria,” Olivia whispered, her own eyes filled with tears. That was Olivia, feeling others emotions wholly, like they were her very own. “I’m so sorry.”

The empathy constricted Daria’s heart, the kindness causing her to ache. “It’s just so much, all at once,” she murmured. “Moving to a new country, starting classes at a different university, meeting new people, having my mom not speaking to me, getting spilled on by a man known worldwide…”

Suddenly, a realization struck Daria. It was the first week of September. She was so wrapped up in what was going on in her life that she had completely forgotten. “What’s the date today?” she gasped.

Olivia’s face contorted into a confused expression, surprised by the sudden subject change. “The seventh,” she answered. “Why?”

Daria’s heart plummeted, the reality gripping her with a sickening fear. All the pain and anguish came back to her, as it always did around this time of year, overwhelming her to the point where after just a moment, she felt completely numb to it.

“You know, Olivia, I’m really not in the mood for this,” she muttered. “I don’t want to talk about it any more than this, but later this week is the anniversary of my dad’s death. So this isn’t exactly on the top of my priority list.”

“Oh,” Olivia breathed. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“I know you didn’t, that’s why I figured I’d let you know ahead of time.”

They were quiet for a moment, Olivia not quite knowing what to say. “Hey, I have something else for you,” “You know that girl Litzy, down the hall? Something of yours apparently got delivered to your door on accident. I think it’s your assignment for your host family.”

On weekends at Birmingham, study abroad students had the opportunity to visit a real British family for dinner, to get some time being fully immersed in the culture and to have parental adults in their lives. Immediately brightening, Daria took the letter from Olivia’s hand and ripped it open, eyes quickly scanning the page.

It read that she would be assigned to a family with a son and a daughter in a city called Holmes Chapel. “Do you know where Holmes Chapel is?”

“Is that where your host family lives?” Olivia asked, coming to her side and taking the letter from Daria’s hands to get a look herself. “How funny, your last name being Holmes and all. I wonder if they did that on purpose. That’s about an hour and a half north of here, I’d say.”

“Not a bad drive, I don’t think,” Daria muttered. “It was a much longer drive into London just to get nationally humiliated, so I think I can survive a drive into the countryside.”

Olivia raised her eyebrows sympathetically before wrapping her arms around Daria in a tight embrace. Stiffening in surprise at the sudden contact, Daria slowly melted into her roommate’s arms. She had needed a hug.

“And I visit on Saturday, which is the anniversary,” she muttered, bringing her eyes back to the letter. “Maybe that’ll be good to keep my mind off things. Or even just to be in a home. Some place comfortable.”

“I think that if you keep your chin up, everything will be fine,” Olivia countered confidently, a sweet smile spreading across her lips.

Olivia quietly went to her computer and pressed play on her iTunes, a track Daria had never heard before playing through the speakers. “This is The Mountain Goats,” Olivia explained, as though she could read Daria’s mind. “I already have an art project to work on, can you believe that? We’ve had class for two days and I already have something to finish by Friday. Uni’s getting more mental by the minute, I tell you.”

Daria hummed in agreement while Olivia pulled out her art supplies from underneath her bed. As they fell into silence, Daria’s eyes travelled over to where the current copy of The Sun rested on her nightstand. Almost involuntary, her hands went to it, taking the paper in their grasp and opening the pages with a light rustle. She flipped through to the section regarding her, a short, overdone story about a truly miniscule event in pop culture history that she somehow managed to get wrapped up in.

It was almost like Daria enjoyed putting herself through pain and misery, fighting with the Japanese puzzle box for about an hour every day to no avail, and now sitting and reading through an article meant only to detail her humiliation to the rest of the country, and then the rest of the world through the Internet.

Yesterday, the nation’s darling’s One Direction put on a performance in the park for their latest single, “Live While We’re Young.” It seemed that what was the majority of London’s population showed up, flooding the streets around Regent’s Park, clambering for a sight of their favorite member.

Things initially went well, until curly cutie Harry Styles decided to go alone on a coffee run to the Starbucks down the road, and ended up making a complete ass of himself. Harry managed to spill an entire tray of drinks all over a small, brunette girl watching the chaos that ensued from his arrival into the shop. He proceeded to grope her with napkins, causing the girl to turn the brightest shade of vermillion you’d ever see. Looked like someone was a little flustered to have a pop superstars hands all over her lady bits.

He then proceeded to write something on a napkin and handed it to her. Initially, no one in the crowd knew what exactly the paper read, but Harry himself shed a little light on the situation when interviewed.

“I just want her to know, whoever she is, that I’m truly sorry. I believe every girl deserves to be seen, and I didn’t show that today. I truly hope she calls me so I can make it up to her.”

The mystery girl, identified as “Daria” by the barista when asked – known only by the name given for her order – ran out of the shop before being able to be questioned. We can only hope the blushing babe calls Hazza so he can make it up to her.

Sighing angrily, Daria settled the rag over her face, blowing her exhale into the heavily scented paper. “It’ll blow over soon,” Olivia assured her, the sound of her voice muffled by the paper settled over her ears. Daria wished she could just melt away from the world for a couple of days, not deal with the certain recognition on campus. But hiding wasn’t any way to deal with life – she’d been dealing with hiding from the world for far too long to continue.

Sitting up, she settled the publication in the folds of her crossed legs, scanning the page one last time. Next to a collection of photos of her interaction with Harry, there was a photo of just the man himself. That winning smile was spread across his lips, laughing freely into the camera. Daria had to admit; he was stunningly attractive, unlike any of the boys that lived in Middletown. And if he could sing, no wonder he managed to become a national superstar.

She thought of his number in her purse, the crumpled napkin forced to the bottom. There was no way she was going to call him, no matter how sweet he appeared to come off in the article. He was trained to be that way, his media crew teaching him just how to appear like the charming, young man that sold all the millions of albums.

“Do you want to take a break, Olivia?” she asked, crumpling up the magazine and tossing it into the bin. “I could use some coffee.”

“Definitely,” Olivia chimed with a grin, and the two of them headed to the coffee shop downstairs, chattering about everything but what Olivia had just learned. And despite the looks that Daria got as she went, she felt a bit better with her new friend by her side.