Whispers of a hidden heart chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4

NO ONE FROM SCHOOL READ THIS PLEASE!!!!

Chapter one.

It’s three in the morning, and I can’t sleep. My thoughts are a tornado in my brain, and then the voices come back. They scream in my head. They yell at me, what are you doing, Scar? Everybody hates you, you’re useless, just leave. Nobody will miss you. I can’t stop thinking. My body is filled with fog, so opaque but still hollow. Tears pave their paths down my cheek, warm before they hit the emptiness of my room. I try my breathing exercises; in, two three four, out, two three four. Anything to stop thinking. To focus on something else.

Anything else.

The little purple clock on my bedside table ticks away at time, seconds into minutes, minutes bleeding into hours, into days. Days form months and months into years, into a lifetime. That is, if you’re lucky. Some people are not. Some people will never take a breath, never open their eyes, and they’re dead. Some people get knocked down by bullets, gone before they hit the ground. Others die from diseases, slow, before they are pulled away from Earth.

When I was little, my Mum said that dying was calm and peaceful, that it was like falling into an endless sleep. Only now, as I lie in the suffocating darkness of my room, can I see that nothing will ever be what it seems. People lie. I lie. I lied when I told my friends that I don’t want to be friends anymore. I lie every time someone asks if I’m okay, because I know what will happen if I tell the truth. If you ask that question, you already know the answer. They don’t care about me anyway. Oh, Scarlett, what have you done?

Adults don’t care. They pretend, just like me. They pretend to care about us. They pretend to care about the future. But I know better. I know the truth. Keep to yourself, you don’ t matter. But I am matter. I am made of matter. Matter is me. I am no different from any other human being. We all exist, dotted around the globe in our little colonies, rotating around each other like planets in the solar system, never crossing paths. But I’m Pluto-not-a-planet, demoted and distant. I’m orbiting around the sun, in an elliptical, tilted orbit.

I circle, closer to Earth sometimes but still so far away, distant and alone. Traversing around life in a chaotic loop is small, invisible me. On the edges of the solar system, I am Pluto-not-a-planet. I am still invisible, still Scarlett Spina. And at the moment, I am alone in the gloom. There is no one to save me now. I am out of bed, pushing my curtains aside and climbing onto the roof. One wrong me move, one slip of my foot could send me falling into darkness, away from the world.

But would it matter anyway?

My back is against the cool tiles layered onto the rooftop and I’m staring into space. Vast galaxies are pasted in front of my eyes, yet I am drawn back to my own world. If the universe is expanding, I am forever getting smaller. I am no more than a dot in a sea of people, a white star painted upon a canvas coated in black. Lights surround me, but I am still in the dark, another girl copy-pasted on Earth. Another child missing potential. Another non-human.

I survive in the shadows of others. I live in the side alleys of the world they built without me. I am an add on to the world, a freebie that never quite set in. The word comes back into my mind. I am different. Unlike. Separate. Individual.

And there is no way that I can hide it.

Chapter two.

I flick back the corks on my Akubra. It’s one of the ridiculous green hats that you find in tourist shops, and I have been wearing it all day. The sun hides beneath clouds coating the sky and noise presses in on me until I can’t feel. I can’t feel myself and I can’t think through the clutter of others. Daniel is saying something, but I can’t hear it above everything else and I’m floating outside my body, unfeeling.

It’s Harmony Day and the whole school is sitting on Singleton Oval, piled onto the fake green grass. There’s an empty circle in the middle, where classes are parading around wearing their cultural dress. I’m wearing bright green shorts, a yellow t-shirt and a green Australian tourist hat. It has corks hanging down from yellow string, dangling in front of my eyes as if taunting me.

Hey, Scarlett. Are we annoying yet?

Scarlett?

Scarlett?

They are there. In my way. My sight. But they are not. They are not in my sight because I don’t see. I roll up another piece of paper as Daniel stops talking, and tape it to my paper flag. The stars blink up at me against the field of blue. Good job, Scarlett. You’re good at pretending. Don’t let the world fool you. You are the master of disguise. And maybe I am. Maybe I am a star in my movie, the main character in my book. In the book where I can’t escape, where I’m peering out of the pages, begging to let go. But I can’t let go because I’m written in the chapters, living a life already mapped out.

I’m sitting at the back of the line with Daniel and Charlie, our conversation overlapping Mrs Roges and her microphone. Charlie passes me another piece of paper and I hold up my flag. “Australia is still bigger than you, thank you very much.” I say, flapping around the paper. I am a proud Australian girl. But how can I be Australian if I still don’t belong anywhere, if I don’t fit in?

“You wouldn’t exist without us.” He retaliated, throwing his flag into the air. I roll my eyes just as I keep rolling up the paper, to make my flag bigger. If only paper could make me bigger. I tell Daniel that, actually, they wouldn’t survive without us because we supply them with oil. And maybe they wouldn’t. Or maybe they would do just fine, because they are big and we are just tucked away in the corner of the world, like me.

It starts raining, the cool drops of water falling from the sky and soaking into my skin. They sink through my body, the same body that holds these thoughts, the same body that tells itself that it will never be enough.

The same body that will kill itself one day.

And people are pushing past me, a rainbow streak of colours rushing undercover. But I’m standing under the sky, staring at the raindrops hammering down on me. There are cold drops of water running down my cheeks and half of them are tears. I want to stay here, in this fudged up mess of a world, gazing at the heavens. I want time to stop for me so that I can catch up, and not keep running after everyone else. I want to leave. To escape school and escape home and escape life all together. One slip. One cut.

I put my head back down and trudge undercover, where the sky can’t see me, and the world can still hurt me. No one saw me, creepy sky-girl who is insane and wretched and just wrong. Nobody can see me now as I’m part of the crowd moving back to class. And that could be a good thing. Maybe in another universe I would still be next to the boys. Who talk to me and can’t see the demon inside me.

I am a drop of water sheltering in the ocean’s expanse.

Chapter three.

Later that day, I’m sucking the end of my pencil and thinking. Just thinking. I’m wondering in words, white words torched into my mind before flashing away. I start writing, the sentences flowing out of my mind. Yet, they are not imaginative. They are the truth, pouring onto paper. Because sometimes it is better to let it all out, to find a secret-keeper, and let the words spill out like water flying off a cliff.

A waterfall of me; now on paper. Come snatch it out of my hands and read it to the whole class while you have the chance. Because there are people who have it easy. People who don’t worry about what’s happening on the other side of the world, people who don’t turn their mind to affording a house after they leave school. There are people whose parents pay for them to go to fancy high schools, pay to have a perfect life. There are people who get because they are smart, flawless. There are people who can play sport, who will one day be a soccer star or tennis player grinning up from the tv.

And then there is me.

I would stick out like a sore thumb. If, that is, people noticed me. If this world was not filled with eight billion perfect human beings, people might see me. But they do not. They don’t see the sticky-note I am writing on, they don’t see when I answer a question. They smile with me, they laugh with me, but they don’t. They enjoy themselves with each other, I am always on the edge. I am always Pluto.

Now that I finished writing, I reread it. Over and over again, until the words become a jumble of letters, squiggles and lines, and everything doesn’t feel real like I’m staring through a stained-glass window. But I keep reading. Again and again, read, read, readreadread, read, read. See. See the words that you wrote, that are on that page, that are real. I am real.

The bell plays through the speakers, the class gets up, I stay sitting, they get their laptops, I pick up my stuff and follow them, they are at the bag racks. I pull my bag on my back and it’s now or never. To give Charlie the sticky note. The sticky note saying that I have a crush on him. The bad, bad truth. Or good, good truth. Or just the truth. This could be the death of me. Or maybe make a better me. Because I reach the note over and put it in his hands.

I don’t know if he read it. I don’t know if he opened it. I was gone. Down the corridor, bag on my back. My insides twirl and tighten, and I feel smaller and smaller. Can you die if you are already dead?

Chapter four.

The sun bears down on me, throwing light and heat across the oval. I can feel sweat on my face, ruining the green zinc I carefully applied this morning. Crowds of people surround me, but I am still alone. I twirl Leila’s watch band around in my hands, my eyes scanning the people. I have to find her. And suddenly I’ve sprung out of the tents, eyes wide. Searching. Aren’t I always?

I see Charlie and run up to him. “You seen Leila?” I ask.

“No, why?” He asks. I hold up her watch, before turning away and walking across the grass.

“Scarlett, wait” I swing around but Charlie has already gone, melted into the crowds of green and yellow and red. Tutus and coloured shirts, capes and zinc. Everything is the same. He left me, just as Leila did. And now I have to find her.

It’s cross-country day, and the seniors, grade five and six, are fighting over a spot in the shade to shelter. We’re packed under the tents, hidden under hats and layers of sunscreen. People race around the track, three laps around the oval then a loop around the park before coming back to the start line. I turn my feet to the side as I walk down the steep dirt slope, away from the freshly mowed grass and people. To find Leila.

What did Charlie want to say? I still don’t know if he read the note from yesterday, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t see me at all, the note just smoke lying under the bag racks. Maybe he read the part to please not treat me differently. He might hate me, he might like me. I still don’t know.

And I remember writing in my diary that night. Is this love, or is it a joke waiting to happen?