a few chords from a broken piano

sometimes she would sit on her bed alone and think about how she would react to different things that might happen to her but never had and probably (knock on wood) never would. sometimes she thought too hard about things like phone calls from her mother to tell her that someone (her cousin madelyn for example, the littlest, tomboyish one who had just recently turned into a very pretty girl with shiny blonde hair and freckles) had died and her eyes would well up with tears and sometimes she would let them roll down her cheeks until the wetness gathering in the collar of her shirt was just too much for comfort and she would have to take it off.

whenever she was at shows she would spend a ridiculous amount of time glancing behind her at the door or whatever it was that happened to be there just to. well, just to see. every minute or so she would look back there and scan the crowd of faces staring at the performance in front of her. she really wasn't sure what (or who) she was looking for, but she wondered if anyone around her ever noticed and if it bothered them until the day the boy sitting to her right said "i'm scared that my ex might show up, what's your excuse?" and she responded with "oh, i'm just crazy."

these days she'd been very lonely and missing the boy that she didn't really miss. she spent a lot of time thinking about the times that he had made her cry and also the times that he hadn't. she had decided that after three years of crying and not crying she really didn't know him as well as she thought she did. or he thought she did. and he really didn't know her either. and that was kind of okay with her because he really wasn't her type anyway. she wanted a new body to sleep next to and a new pair of lips to kiss, but she didn't want to have a new obligation or any new reasons to cry. or maybe she did.

her sister came to visit her in the rainy green northwest and when she found her at the airport she hugged her tight and cried because she would be leaving again in just a few days. her sister slept with her in that big lonely bed that really belonged to the boy she didn't miss. her sister laughed at the jokes her new friends made and it felt like they'd known them for a million years. she wondered how she'd managed without her for so long until she remembered the old feeling she felt with all these new people and she realized that she'd finally found her home.