Beauty in the Breakdown

The people inside shot her sympathetic looks and talked in hushed whispers about her.

The dirty blonde girl with purple streaks in her sideswept bangs took another swig from the bottle and stood up swaying a bit as she made her way to a tour bus, up the steps and climbed into her bunk, high and quiet. She quickly finished rest of the bottle’s contents, searched for her I-Pod , turned the device on, stuck the headphones in her ears, and turned it up to maximum volume as she lost herself in Nick Thomas’ voice.

Sometime later the bus started moving and a face peered into her bunk. Finding her asleep, the boy glanced at the song playing on repeat and frowned as he saw the empty bottle. He sighed, brushed his hand across her cheek and softly and slowly traced her lips, looking at with a feeling even he couldn’t describe in his heart. He covered the girl with a blanket, closed the curtains to the bunk and climbed down.

He then walked into the main room of the bus and plopped down on the couch.

“Is she asleep?” A dark haired boy asked him.

“Yeah,” He muttered. “I found this too.”

The dark haired boy took the bottle from him, unscrewed the cap and upended the bottle over his mouth and grimaced as the few last drops trickled into his mouth and announced “Vodka.”

“Looks like you’ll have to take her to rehab now and while your there get her a shrink as well.”

“Not funny Poolie.” The other dark haired boy remarked.

“She’s just…I don’t know.” The boy muttered. “I can’t even talk to her without being cussed at.”

“She won’t tell anyone anything Martin.” Paul shook her head. “You know her better than anyone, why can’t you fix her?”

“I wish I could.”

“She’s getting on my nerves being all depressed and shit when she used to be happy.” Martin relayed, brows furrowed in confusion.

Paul nodded as if he understood and both of them turned their attention to the TV.

The girl in the next room, turned over onto her side tears trailing down her cheeks. She turned up the volume on her I-Pod again - after she had turned it down to hear Martin and Paul’s conversation - and she decided that tomorrow she was leaving this god-forsaken tour for good.

The next day was slightly busy in the morning and early afternoon as the bands started setting up their equipment for the show later that day.

The grey eyed girl awoke around one in the afternoon, her mind set. She climbed out of her top bunk, grabbed a pair of skinny jeans, a t-shirt, hoodie and her slip on Vans from her suitcase and put on the clothes quickly. Then she wrestled the suitcase and started piling the remainder of her clothes and other stuff in there. She also grabbed her laptop from the kitchen as well and zipped it in its case and then she slipped off the bus with her things in hand and no one in sight.

She was half-way out of the parking lot when Martin caught up with her.

“Where the hell are you going, Lana?”

“Where it does look like?” She replied sarcastically, not even stopping.

There was a bus station at the end of the street and Martin blocked her path.

“Move, Martin.”

“No, tell me why first.”

“Why, what?” She sighed wearily as she pulled out a pair of black sunglasses from her tote bag.

“Why are you acting like this and what happened to you?” He almost screamed at her.

“I’m not acting like anything. This is who I am, who I’ve always been.”

She sidestepped him and continued on her way and he followed, not giving up.

“You used to be different, more like a girl I thought I knew, not like this all depressed and sarcastically cynical.”

“Leave me the fuck alone, Martin.” She hissed at him.

“Exactly what I’m talking about.”

They came upon the bus station then and she stepped up to the counter, took one look at the list of places she could go and said to the clerk “One ticket to New York, please.”

“Thirty - five dollars, miss.” The man replied and she gave him exact change.

Then she took her ticket and found somewhere to sit to wait the half and hour until her bus came.

“New York?” Martin said with disdain in his voice. “What the hell are you going to do in New York?”

“Live.” She replied, a tiny smile playing on her lips.

“Right, because you know tons of people there.”

“I’ll be fine.” She announced. “Now get the hell away from me.”

He seemed taken back for a second and finally he really looked at her, the girl who all those songs were written for.

Her dirty blonde hair was slightly curled and her purple streaked bangs hung over her left eye that mirrored a cloudy grey sky. There were heavy bags under her eyes and she looked so sick and tired, no emotion in her eyes, no sparkle or regret. Her clothes were rumpled and she would have looked normal to anyone else - just another tired merch girl on tour but Martin knew better.

“Lana, come on.” He pleaded. “Explain to me what happened to us, to everything.”

She laughed then, cruelty lining that laugh, dangerous and low.

“You want to know what happened now.” She stated, the question as a statement.

“Martin, you haven’t even said full sentences to me this entire tour.”

“I was just your hook-up, your fling, your one night stand, whatever you want to call it and no one knew.” She hissed, not facing him.

“Don’t you know what people say about me now, “Poor Lana, she looks so depressed” or “I heard she’s a drug addict, alcoholic and had two abortions” or even better: the golden ticket “She’s so fucked up.”

“You never used to care what anyone said about you.” Martin remarked.

“I didn’t until my own friends started saying the same.”

Martin winced knowing that she had heard his conversation with Paul last night and maybe even more.

“No one cares,” She said softly. “I can’t do this anyone, pretend that we never happened, pretend to be someone I’m not. I’m not going to end up or act like you.”

“Oh yeah, and how do I act?”

“All the world’s a stage…” She started quoting.

He knew where she was going with this and he hated to defend himself against her, so perfect, beautiful and once his.

“I’m not the only hypocrite in this scenario.” He mumbled staring at her.

She turned to look at him for a second and immediately got lost in his sky blue eyes.

“I thought we would stay who we were a year ago forever but I guess people change.”

Change was the key word here, Martin thought. Nothing compared to change, nothing stopped change. They hadn’t tried to stop it like everyone else, maybe now they wished that they had tried.

A bus pulled up to stop number four and Lana gathered her things and stood up, half turned as if she wanted to say something and instead shook her head and walked toward the bus.

Martin knew he had to say something, anything to make her stay.

“Lana…, Lana, wait.”

She turned outside the bus’ open doors and he was in front of her struggling for words.

“I think-”

“Save it, Martin.” She hissed, her words stinging him.

She then stepped onto the bus and handed the driver her ticket and nodded once when he asked if she was the only one going to New York.

“When are you coming back?” He asked his mouth dry, even though he knew the answer before she even responded.

“Never.”

The doors closed then and the driver looked bored as if he had heard this type of conversation a thousand times before. Martin stepped back as the bus pulled away with Lana sitting in a window seat, staring into the sun and into her future and not at him.

Martin exhaled slowly, his heart beating erratically with sadness and finished his sentence from before “I think I’m in love with you.”

He then stuck his hands in his pockets and walked out the bus terminal and down the road back to the club and buses.

His heart burned and his thoughts were scrambled as he replayed her pulling away again and again in his mind.

Before he could step onto the bus, he was stopped by Paul, Bryan and John.

“Where’s Lana?” Paul asked in a slightly worried voice, seeing Martin’s crumpled expression.

“Gone,” Martin muttered wearily. “She’s gone.”

With those words hanging to the air, he walked up the steps, stepped into the bus and walked until he was in front of her bunk and he closed his eyes as the world revolved around him not stopping for one tragedy and words that Lana had once said floated across his mind.

“There’s more to living than being alive.”