The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

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I HEAR SOFT PLAYING MUSIC and quiet giggles.

My neck feels weird, the kind of weird that's like painful while also not. The kind you get when you wake up in the morning to realize you slept in an odd position. I fell asleep on Rosalie's desk, or might once have been Maeve's or Klarise's. Honestly, maybe none because there's so many rooms in this place.

I notice that this time there's no blanket around my shoulders. I wake up to find Rosalie's empty glass and bottle on her small round table, next to it a recorder. How long have I been asleep for and when did I even fall asleep?

I rub my face, running my hand through my bangs. They're getting longer than they should, although my bangs have seemed to always find a way to make me look pretty. When I was younger, I used to split my hair in the middle and curl it into waves to look like Maeve Sun Lively's. It technically wasn't an act only I did, back then, maybe even now still, girls all tried to look like her. I'm embarrassed to say I was one of them. Look at all that now, she just happens to be my birth mother. Isn't that ironic? But anyway, this girl in middle school was trying to be some hair stylist and she offered me a hundred bucks to get my hair cut. I was reluctant at first, but I really wanted to buy a first edition Klarise Kong music album way before her death (It was this anniversary of her death hosted thing and I had to get it, I had always somehow been a big fan of her okay?) and my parents wouldn't give me the rest of the money I needed. Moral of the story, I was desperate enough to let this girl chop off my hair. And because I forgot to tell her what I wanted, she gave me bangs. I hated it at first. But that is until when I took an hour bus ride out of town to buy my precious first edition Klarise Kong music album, the guy there told me: "Kid, not gonna lie, but you look so badass with those bangs. Just like Klarise Kong."

Yeah, and I kept it for all these years. I don't know, sometimes, I guess I just...feel more like myself like this, not because the guy told me I looked like Klarise Kong with it (at first it was, obviously, what do you expect from a crazy-seventh-grade-fangirl?). Believe it or not, I somehow felt like I found more of me because of bangs.

It's eight p.m..

I feel groggy from this sleep. The only thing my body wants is to go up to the room I've been staying at and slip into an actual bed and let myself completely pass out. But then, the music playing and murmurings outside gets the better of me. I wonder if Maeve ever had a problem with curiosity, because I swear this could be genes.

The music starts to get louder as I make my approach. The more I walk, the more I feel like I'm invading some kind of privacy.

And then I'm here, in a zone where I know at once I don't belong.

The living room's lights are dimmed to a somewhat calm and romantic orange/red. There are candles lighted everywhere, the smell of lavender. And then it's the music, which I don't know how I did not recognize until now, is Klarise Kong's cello album that was never published until she died; a series of songs that's her cello as the main source and then her soft voice humming along. It's a masterpiece of an album, but so underrated.

This isn't really my scene. My scene is not leaving my room and hearing from the distance and watching from afar the party and fun in life that goes on without me. That's my scene.

Carlise and Rosalie are dancing in the middle, Rosalie's arms are wrapped around Carlise's waistline, while her head resting gently on Carlise's shoulder, eyes closed as they sway around the dance floor. Carlise herself has on a soft smile, one that warms up your heart. Rosalie, in this moment, feels almost surreal, like an angel, or a force to maybe be reckoned with.

I knocked down a candle with my elbow by accident. Shit.

They both look up, Rosalie especially, jumping off of Carlise like she had oil all over her and will be alighted into a walking fire pit any moment now.