Nowhere
 

(She looks over at the phone.)

Avril figures she should stick Evan's postcard up somewhere. Like on the fridge or something, instead of leaving it wedged beneath the designer ashtray. No magnets though. Magnets, yeah, she thinks maybe she'll write that down on the shopping list for the maid service.

Probably, though, she'll just forget.

The front of the card has a picture of one of those bullfighters, matadors they call them, because he was in Spain doing promo last month. She hears the album's gone double platinum there already. Flip the card over and on the back is the scrawled message she's read a million times now.

The tour is going great... fans really like the new material... blah blah blah...

(She looks over at the phone.)

Avril doesn't meant to flick her wrist as she puts it down, but she does. So instead of the postcard landing on the coffee table it spins across the room and disappears somewhere under the couch.

Oh, she thinks, well. Is it three thirty already?

She lights up a cigarette and flips through a magazine to pass the time. What's funny, Avril thinks as she thumbs past Evan's one page in Rolling Stone, is how they keep talking about him like he's someone totally new. The boy from nowhere, kid with guitar makes it bigtime, as though he hadn't been playing and working and trying to make it over half his life already.

They used to say the same stuff about her, too, and it was about as true then as it is now. Like always, the media have it backwards - no matter what they say, no one just turns into a star overnight. Maybe from a distance it could seem that way, if all you see are the photo shoots and LA Reid's hand heavy on her shoulder and the stupid ties she used to wear.

But Avril knows different.

(She looks over at the phone. She just can't help it.)

She remembers getting up at three in the morning so her mom could drive her what felt like a hundred miles to industry showcases that led to nothing. Hours curling her hair and practicing in front of the mirror, mouthing the words. Sometimes, at night, she cried.

There used to be that feeling, this wanting, so strong that she'd get this pain, right in her gut.

The pain thing kept happening, even after Let Go blew up, all the way through the tour. Anxiety, the doctor said, and gave her some pills and stuff. Quit being such a goober, Evan said, and gave her his cigarettes. It went away.

Lately she's been thinking that maybe it'll start to come back, now. She's almost ready for it. Almost waiting.

(The phone does not ring.)

See, no one comes from nowhere. Avril knows this.

(It never does.)

Nowhere's the place you end up afterwards.

By Ro, December 2003

[Home]