Gravity - - 1 - -

(song : You Can’t Always Get What You Want - Rolling Stones) ((Disclaimer for the song, I don't own it. It's just in the story for creative purposes or...something))

I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she was gonna meet her connection
At her feet was her footloose man

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need

Oh yeah, hey, oh...

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse"
Sing it to me now...


I pulled off my outdated headphones and hung them around my neck, putting my purchases down on the counter and reaching into my pocket for the money I’d found under the couch cushions.

On warm Saturdays such as that day I would roller skate through the - for the most part - deserted streets of the town I lived in. When I could find any cash I would skate to the 711 downtown and buy a candy bar and a Sprite.

“ Keep the change.” I called to the cashier as I sped out the door.

I skated to the town circle and gingerly situated myself onto the stone steps of the gazebo. With a long sigh I bit into the warm chocolate and slowly chewed and swallowed, washing it down with the Sprite and relishing the tingling feeling down my throat.

The hot sun bounced off my skin, and a slight sweat was beading on my forehead. I wiped it away and brushed a stray piece of chocolate off my bare leg before it could start to melt.

A truck full of my classmates drove by and I ducked my head. The heat in my face wasn’t from the sun as they honked their horn and waved at me. I tried to focus my attention on the birds eating out of the trash.

“ ‘Sup, Lonnie!”

I didn’t answer the mocking call from the boy driving. They laughed and moved on, and I let my shoulders slump in relief. I didn’t have any friends.

After finishing my candy bar and Sprite I got up and started rolling down the hill towards the public pool. On the way I put my headphones back on and turned it up, knowing I would have to block out heckling from the other cruel school-goers.

Why they hated me was never clear to me. I didn’t even say anything to them. I never said anything to anyone. All I did was get through the school day as fast as I could and then ride my bike home and lock myself in my room. What could I have done?

Sure enough as soon as the pool came into view a group of them caught sight of me. It was senior girls, dripping wet in bikinis. I couldn’t hear them over the music, but I saw them pointing and laughing. While I sped up to get away some boys were exiting. They saw me and pretended to snatch at my hair.

I screamed, terrified they actually might, and went tumbling off the curb. I landed on my hands and knees, sliding on the tender skin of my palms. I screamed again in pain, still trying to scramble up and away. The boys just laughed, but I was afraid they would try to hurt me while I was down.

Pain throbbed in my hands and knees as I finally struggled up and skated away from them down the street. Hot tears of embarrassment, anger, and pain started streaming down my face. As soon as I felt I was far enough I threw myself onto the grass, staring at my bleeding legs and hands.

With a gasp I took off my headphones and tried to calm down. All I wanted to do was get home and clean up, but I wasn’t sure how to get up again. It hurt so bad.

“ Hey…you ok?”

I looked up with wide eyes to see a man standing across the street from me. Thinking he was going to try and mess around with me too I went to stand, finding that my hands were too sore to be used to push me up. I tried to crawl with my elbows away from him, my lips clamped together to keep in screams.

“ Let me help you up.”

Someone grabbed my arm and started to pull me up, and I tentatively looked up at them. The man who’d called to me was trying to help, and I attempted to make it easier by cooperating. When I was on my feet he grinned at me. I bit hard on my lip, wondering.

“ There we go. You alright?”

“ Y-yes.” I stuttered, looking down.

“ No you aren’t. You’re bleeding. Where do you live?”

“ 2nd Street.”

He made a whistling noise. “ That’s far. Let me walk you.”

“ O-ok.”

The man helped me take off my skates and carried them for me as we walked up down the street towards mine. I felt awkward and pained, I didn’t even know him.

“ You don’t have to walk me. I’ll be ok.” I told him, nearly in a whisper.

“ No, I really want to. Uh…I’m Vic.”

Suddenly he was reaching to shake my hand, and I was wincing.

“ Oh, shit! Sorry!” Vic gasped, wiping my blood off on his dark jeans.

“ It’s ok. I’m Lonnie.”

“ Good to meet you, Lonnie. You go to school here?”

“ Um, yes. I’ve never seen you there.” I said awkwardly, still not facing Vic.

“ Nope. Dropped out last spring.”

I raised my eyebrows. “ Oh.”

Vic laughed. “ You think I’m a delinquent now.”

“ No! I was just….well are you?”

Vic laughed even harder at my bewildered face. “ Not really. School’s just not for me. What year are you?”

“ Sophomore.” I grumbled, unable to keep the cynicism out of my voice.

“ Don’t worry, Lonnie. It does get easier surprisingly.”

“ It won’t. Not for me.”

Vic stopped smiling. “ Why not?”

“ Well…” I shrugged, not sure if I wanted to continued. He urged me to. “ I have no friends. Nobody talks to me, they just make fun of me.”

“ How come?”

“ I don’t know. I’m weird.”

Vic snorted. “ You’re not that weird, kid. You look pretty normal to me.”

“ Yeah, I guess.”

“ Are you harboring some sort of dark secret?” asked Vic, a smirk forming on his lips.

I couldn’t help but smile a little bit. “ No. I just don’t like to yell or dance or deface public property, so I’m a freak.”

“ Goodness gracious, a teenager who doesn’t like to party. It must be the apocalypse.”

“ Apparently.” 

Vic grinned. When he was looking away I studied him. He had short and spiky black hair, and a matching stubble on his face. I noticed a little silver hoop on his left eyebrow, and a stud in his lip. His face was perplexing.

He didn’t look quite handsome, yet Vic’s face was very endearing. His nose was long and straight, and his cheeks were tight on his high cheekbones. His lips seemed a bit too full for the rest of his face. Vic’s eyes were also strange. Light green around his pupil, but fading to a dark brown on the outer edge of his iris.

“ Are you staring at me?” he asked, crooked smirk that I was noticing he wore often appearing.

I blushed and looked at the sidewalk. “ Sorry.”

“ That’s ok. How old are you, Lonnie?”

“ Fifteen…you?”

“ Nineteen. I turn twenty next week. You know what, you should come to my party.”

“ That sounds fun.” I blurted enthusiastically, catching myself. “ But…I don’t think my aunt will let me.”

“ I bet you can find a way. What’s your number? I’ll call you Friday.”

I caught my breath long enough to give him my phone number, which he wrote on his palm with a black pen from his pocket. That was when I noticed his t-shirt.

“ Butthole Surfers.” I said fondly.

Vic looked down at his shirt too, smiling. “ You know ’em?”

“ Know them? They’re one of my favorites.” I cried, blushing when I realized I was blurting again.

“ Mine too. This your street?”

I looked up, shocked we’d walking the fifteen blocks already. My house was visable at the end of the street, standing stout and green as always.

“ Yep. The green one.”

Vic nodded, watching my face as I spoke. I didn’t know why he was looking at me so closely, but I had ogled him earlier so I would allow the staring. All of a sudden we were right outside my door.

“ Thanks for walking me, Vic.” I said under my breath.

He smirked again. “ T’was no big deal. I’ll be calling you, Lonnie.”

“ Gotcha…bye.”

I heard Vic chuckle as I limped up the steps onto the rickety porch and opened the screen door. Right before I stepped inside Vic called out for me to wait.

“ I’ll leave your skates on the step, Lonster.”

I smirked at the crappy nickname. “ Thanks.”

“ No prob. Bye.”

With a heavy sigh I went inside and leaned against the kitchen counter. I jumped a little when I saw my Aunt Dana was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at me suspiciously.

“ Who was that? A friend from school?” she asked.

I hobbled over to the cupboards to find the first aid kit. “ Yep.” I lied through my teeth.

“ Oh…he’s going to call you?”

I rolled my eyes at the wall so she couldn’t see me. Dana was always so suspicious of me, though I’d never done anything to warrant it. I always said where I was going and when I’d be back, I was always home early or right on time, I’d never lied or stolen, and I had perfect grades. Most likely she was terrified that my parents genes would someday rear their ugly heads and I would go mental.

“ Yeah, about homework.” I lied again, finding it best. If I told her I was fraternizing with high school dropouts with facial piercings she would never let me out of the house again.

“ I see. Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you call Danny from upstairs?”

I nodded, because it wasn’t a question. It was a demand. I’d cleaned the blood and dirt off my hands and knees, and went to call my seven-year-old cousin down for dinner before getting them bandaged.

“ Danny, dinner!” I shouted up the stair case. A stampede, no a seven-year-old, came bounding at me seconds later.

Danny grinned his devil’s grin at me. I kept in a scowl. I hated the boy, and my aunt for that matter. Just the fact that her name was Dana and she named her son Danny was enough, but she also didn’t like me very much.

Dana wasn’t really related to me, as I was constantly reminded by her disdain fro me. My uncle married her, and produced the little monster before dying. My Uncle Bo was fun, loving, everything Dana wasn’t. He died a year after I moved in.

My parents were drug addicts. My mother more so. She and my dad raised me in a one room apartment, often leaving me alone for long periods when they would go and score crack in the alley behind our building. To make extra money my dad was a dealer.

The day he got shot my mom grabbed me and went to Bo and Dana’s, begging to let me stay there. I never saw her again. I still didn’t know if she was dead or not. I thought it might have been better if she was. Her brother, Uncle Bo, raised me better than she could have anyway. For that year anyway.

Whenever I get really down, thinking that Dana will never trust me and that Bo will never come bursting in the door singing Pour Some Sugar On Me again, I dwell on happier times. Like when my mom and dad would have rare bouts where they tried to get sober for me, and they would make me happy promises and take me to the zoo. Or when Bo would tell me crazy stories and take me fishing. Those were the days.

I sprayed my wounds with the stinging spray then put squares of gauze on my knees and then secured them with medical tape, doing the same for my hands. Then I leaned against the counter again, waiting for the rest of my ‘family’ to assemble for dinner.

“ Lonelle would you please pour some water in the glasses? Danny’s being difficult.” called Dana from the other room, and I heard Danny cackle.

I flinched as she used my whole name, then got the pitcher from the fridge. My real name always felt constricting and fake. It was what they called me at school, and what Dana called me. Lonnie fit me much better.

As I poured the water I caught my reflection. My face was pale as always, my blue eyes half closed with fatigue, and my long dishwater blonde hair tangled from my experience earlier. I ran a hand through it as I put the pitcher away, substituting it for a brush.

Dana struggled into the room with Danny, throwing him down into a chair. He was laughing at his mother’s red face, kicking his bare dirty feet into the table and making food go flying. I sighed and started to clean it up as Dana yelled.

After a lot of shouting and empty promises of beating that didn’t even phase Danny we finally sat down to eat. Danny had grabbed the majority of the food he hadn’t destroyed, so Dana and I were left with a small portion of soupy mashed potatoes and chewy broccoli with burnt pork roast. Bo was a good cook.

“ Did you get hurt, Lonelle?” asked Dana, glancing up at me from her food.

Danny kicked my knee under the table and I gasped. “ Ow…yes. I fell.”

“ That’s too bad. Did you use the spray? You don’t want to get infected.”

“ Yes, I did.”

“ Good.”

Dinner ended quickly for me, mostly because Danny had most of the food. “ May I be excused?”

“ Yes.”

I quickly rinsed my plate and left it in the sink, jogging into my room in the basement and locking the door behind me. It had been Bo who had furnished the basement for me and put the lock on the door. Despite the protests of Dana he knew that as soon as Danny started to walk he’d be bothering me. He was right.

My bed was the same as it had always been, a single with a worn quilt. I had a dresser and shelves and a small television. The basement was where I spent seventy percent of my time. Ten percent was school, ten percent was roller skating around town, and the other ten percent was at the park and in the upstairs for meals.

I laid down and snuggled my head into pillow, hissing as I bent my knees so I was in a ball. I wished it was Friday.

**input would be appreciated.I know I'm not very good, but I hope I can improve through this site**