If I were You (Based on a True Story)

Chapter One

Nine years earlier...

Marina

The number five on a billboard had me searching for another one. There had to be one somewhere. If I didn't find another five before the bus arrived, I would be anxious all day, maybe all week. A woman walked by with a buggy and I eyed her and the contraption on wheels, but I still didn't see the number five. My heart raced and my palms sweated. If I didn't see a matching number soon my chances of getting in a band could be slim. I had to see it.

Lydia, my best friend, was talking to me, but I couldn't hear a thing. Well I could, but I was busy trying to search the bus stop for the blasted number five. I was running out of time. I wasn't sure what the limit in my thought process was in finding it, but I sensed it had to be quick, otherwise my OCD warned me every meeting with a group of musicians could end up like today: a total flop.

Lydia had come with me to another band audition. We couldn't even find the place, and as usual it was in middle of a rundown industrial state; the kind where only crows kept you company. We found the rehearsal room, but there wasn't a chance in hell we were heading into a boarded up building. No matter how much I'd decided I wanted to be a singer instead of an actress.

A bus promoting the local bingo hall drove by with the number five on it. I exhaled and slouched back against the glass behind me. Two boys on the bus waved and I waved back, feeling slightly better. Our bus arrived and we hopped on. I had no idea how I was going to get in a band at this rate. Lydia used to sing with me five years ago, until she decided acting was still her niche. Last year after quitting my three year stint at acting, I decided I hadn't stopped wanting to be a singer, so I began practicing in my room and searching for audition online. Lydia supported my decision and came with me to meet every gang of pot smoking, tattooed rockers.

So far, I'd auditioned for three bands. The rest I either couldn't find, or I turned back around and left when I saw the grimness of the rehearsal room. I was desperate enough to go there in the first place, but I couldn't risk my life. What would be the point? It wasn't just my life I worried about. There was poor Lydia to think about. She traipsed around Manchester with me for hours, trying to find all these places. Not once did she complain. She really knew how much it meant to me.

A health poster to my left had doctors and nursed smiling at me. I tried not to look at it, and breathed out the negative energy I sensed from it. My OCD wasn't usually so constant. It got this way when I was nervous or when I was setting my hopes on something. Everything that was important to me I fretted about. The anxiety was eased with ridiculous rituals that included doing things by particular numbers. I'd had it since a child, after my nineteen year old brother was run over by a car when I was nine. Ever since then it had escalated. I was too afraid of every unpredictable thing. It hadn't helped that some throat muscles had been damaged a few years back . The doctors said it was due to my singing. They hadn't done much to help, since it was self inflicted.

Once I recalled my mother wiping away my tears and telling me that giving up on a singing career was for the best. She hadn't believed I had a chance anyway. I was Pakistani and came from a muslim family. The entertainment business wasn't exactly considered a real career. Lydia had been there, and had said nothing. Just watched tv even though I knew she was listening. I felt helpless and frustrated. I wanted to sing. Instead I had to listen to Lydia tell me how she was auditioning and applying for pop groups without me. She avoided it, but I made her tell me. Even if it made me cry uncontrollably everyday, alone, in a room that I locked myself in so no one would see me have a meltdown.

My mother did all she could to help, and sometimes even bathed me (fully clothed) when I was too zonked out from the drugs she fed me like happy pills. I later learnt they had been anti depressants not muscle relaxers. She argued with the doctors to help me, but they said I was imagining it. They couldn't see anything in the xrays. I needed a throat scan and I think they knew it, and so told me it was harmful to my thyroid gland to attempt something that was unnecessary. One morning when I couldn't breathe, mum convinced the doctor to arrange a camera to be sent down my nose. They found nothing wrong. I was just told to prop my head up with a pillow at night to help.

I knew I was alone with what had happened, and so I tried to get through it. I would sweep in the middle of watching tv and everyone would ignore it. They didn't know what to do. It was one of the worse times of my life. My loneliest.

As soon as things improved, I began singing again, but eventually decided to try acting. I was twenty five, but still determined to get ahead and fulfill my dreams.

"Oh before I forget, " said Lydia. "I've booked that medium, Jodie for a reading next week."

"I thought you'd forgotten."

"No. It's perfect timing, what with all these life changing decisions you're making. I still want to know if I'm going to meet my Mr Right and you still want to speak to your brother right?"

"I guess so. But do you really think it will help?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because you live too much in the past. You need to let go of some of it. Your brother being the first and most important." She placed a hand on mine, much like she always did when we talked about Ameel.

She was right. I had to change. My life had to change. Maybe my OCD and constant fears of the unpredictable would sod off if I finally put what happened to him behind me.

"Okay." I agreed.

"Good, because I seriously think this is the start of a new adventure. I can feel it me bones."

I hope so, I thought. I really did.