October, First Account, chapter 1
---
You think I can't hurt you, but you fell in my trap
And you say you believe me, but you're watching your back
---
Anna sat huddled up by the window in a chair at the back corner of a coffee shop with her only friend who wasn't a girl: Josh. He liked boys over girls, so that was a good thing for the both of them. They were sitting identically, facing each other, slumped over, drinking chamomile tea in pretty little teacups against the windows, both of them looking outside into the chilly, Toronto night. They were at the Second Cup at the corner of Queen and Front St., right at the corner you'd see the MMVAs. Right on the corner, people seldom passed at night. Maybe a few college kids, maybe some people Anna recognized from her Art Studies Class at the University of Toronto.
"He tried to avoid the subject whenever I brought it up last night. He turned away everytime I asked. Obviously proving to me to an extent that it was true," Anna spoke, so calmly that it would take an expert to hear all the sadness in her voice, and Josh was just the guy.
"Anna, you're seeing this the wrong way...Anna...Anna...I-I-I...just look at me, Anna."
She was definitely not looking at him, but at a poster on her wall, trying to seem nonchalant about it all. She looked at him. The melancholic expression on his face ate at her, but she was sure as hell not going to give in.
"Okay, Dylan, keep on going..."
He looked at her like she was crazy.
"This all amuses you, doesn't it? You know, I wouldn't do things like that because I want to, Anna. She was...thereand...so was I, you know."
"No, I kind of don't."
"I...I barely even knew her."
"That's the worst part, Dylan. That's the worst part."
"It was sad because he was being so typical, like his lines had been planned out beforehand. It seemed unnatural, and you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because he was just like everyone else. You'd be waiting for something to hit you like a pile of bricks, but everything was so soft, so typical. It wasn't honest, It didn't come from his heart...or wherever feelings come from."
"It was that bad?"
"It was worse," she said and shifted in her seat.
Anna's voice tended to change a lot. Sometimes it would be soft and timid, and sometimes it could be dark and sarcastic. Her wavy, dark brown hair hung off of her head like drapes off of a metal rod, swinging with every movement, her hazel eyes shining greener than ever before. Her green, army-style jacket was tossed off onto the back of her chair, leaving a fuzzy, gray scarf hanging loosely around her neck with a tan thermal, lightly grazing the 24-year-old's skin gently.
Anna looked at her other half: Josh. He was that sad-looking guy who could always make his girlfriends feel better. "Girlfriends" as in girl friends. His brown and bottle-blonde hair hung over his left eye, leaving only one of his deep blue eyes that were so famous between the pair visible. His eyes could take you swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Like her, he was wearing a scarf, a navy blue one, and quite frankly, he was also wearing a thermal, gray in colour. His black blazer was in his lap, keeping it warm. Josh took notice of Anna's stare. He took a sip of his tea, and she followed.
"So then I wanted to know what happened...he told me everything. Everything I didn't want to know. It just left me so awfully struck that I seriously thought about yelling at him."
"Why did you ask him, then?"
"Just a little nosy, I guess." She shrugged and sipped her tea.
Anna sat on her bed, Dylan leaning up agaisnt the white walls, telling her the big story. Everything she didn't really want to hear. But something she felt she did want to hear. But when she heard it, she wasn't so excited. Or impressed.
"I seriously can't believe you," she said to him after he was done.
Josh grinned. "It's done? That's all you said? You should have at least tried to make it longer...for me. It's done?!"
"Calm down, it's not done, Joshua Tyler Harrington."
"I like it just 'Josh'; surnames are for suckers, Anna Tennessee Aldridge."
"So I'm a 'sucker'?"
"Nope, and that's why you're just Anna to me."
"Whatever, so...I left the room..."
"Oh my God! I can't believe you! You're Batman!"
"Don't you see the irony here, Josh? I was in my own house."
"Oh," he said plainly, and started grinning. "Look who's here."
Anna turned around and caught sight of the man, talking to the waitress and digging deep into his pockets. Anna snickered and just kept watching. "I wonder what brings him to Toronto," she whispered at the lowest of decibels.
"Me too. I was never attracted to him, though. He's in all those teenie magazines," Josh said, shrugging. "Just get back to your story."
"Okay...so, I left, right? Well I left the room..."
Anna found herself in her little kitchen, messing things up, placing all the cereals crookedly. She caught sight of Dylan, putting his jacket on, moving towards the door.
"I should leave," he said, his head down.
"Yeah. You should. You could go see her." Her as in Brandi. The girl.
"How many times do I have to tell you? I didn't do it because I wanted to! I did it because I needed to!"
"Fuck that. He can jack off," Anna said dryly, twisting his words in her mind.
"And then I told him I loved him," Anna said in a drop-dead way, "but in the most bitingly sardonic way you've heard me say anything."
"Sardonic?" Josh asked, not quite sure that she was using it right.
"I'm pretty sure," she said and brought the delicate little teacup to her lips.
"So, as you might have been able to predict," she started, "he didn't like my sarcasm."
Dylan looked at Anna tiredly. "It sucks that you feel that way, because I actually love you."
"Then you wouldn't have done that to me, now would you have? How do you explain that?"
His lip quivered as he bit it and opened the door out to the chilly street.
"Goodbye, Anna."
"I didn't die."
Anna looked at Josh. He was staring beyond the top of her head. "What?" She asked him.
"Nothing."
The man sat in the corner of the booth across from them, reading the Toronto Star.
"Have your eyes been training on him this whole time? I told you the end?"
"The end of the relationship?"
"Yeah. The. End."
"Oh my God, you are Batman!"
"I prefer Superman."
The waitress came by. "Would you two like me to fill this up?" she said, pointing at the teapot. Anna and Josh were always there recently at the same time of night about three times a week, so they knew the the waitress, and she knew them. Sometimes she'd even talk with them.
"Yeah, Echo, that'd be really nice," Anna said to the waitress in her nicest tone.
"Echo, guess what?" Josh asked the waitress with a goofy grin.
"What, Josh?"
"Anna and Dylan are over."
Echo looked shocked. "Over?" she asked Anna.
"O-V-E-R. Over."
"Good! Okay, guys, I'll be back with your tea."
Anna looked over at the guy in the booth across from them. He set the Star on the table and started to read 'the Onion', part of the U of T paper.
"I'm asking him for the Star."
"Anna, you can't just do that. He's famous."
"Watch me. I'll just pretend he's you. Except from out-of-town."
Anna got up and went to his table, "Hey, dude. You done with that?" she asked him, pointing to the newspaper, lying on the table.
He just stared at her, obviously shocked. She was confused.
"Uhhh...yeah, I'm done." He had a nasaled, snotty-nosed nosed voice.
"I'm Anna," she said and stuck out her hand.
"Billie Joe." He nodded slowly and shook it.
"Yeah, me and Josh here were wondering what you're doing in Toronto."
"Oh, well I've been thinking about buying a place here for a while, and I decided to come now."
"Cool. So you done with the paper?"
"Yeah, take it."
"Thanks," she said and turned to leave.
"Uh, Anna?" His voice said.
She spun around, "Yeah?"
"Could you guys kinda show me around, tomorrow?"
Anna looked at Josh, then back at Billie Joe. "Uh, yeah. I live on College. You know that street? The Cannabis Festival was held there back in April or May...uh, near Queen's Park?"
"Yeah the long street in a weird shape, there's a guitar store called the Twelfth Fret, right?"
"Yeah, that's it. I live in the area near the College Towers...127 College if it helps. If it doesn't, there's always Josh's loft at 1 King at the Sapphire Towers. Yeah, let's meet there, it's less confusing. Josh, that's okay, right?" she said quickly, and looked at Josh; he nodded. "Okay. His last name's Harrington, buzz him at noon or earlier, we like to be out on the town at a resonable hour."
"Okay, cool."
Anna went back into her huddled pose against the window, Josh smiling at her. "Like I said, you're Batman."
"Uh-huh..." she said, looking through the paper.
Echo approached the table. "Here's your tea, guys," she said and set it down onto the table.
"Thanks, Echo. You're great," Josh said earnestfully.
"Look at it out there, man. It's gonna snow soon. Okay--maybe not, it's just October, but Halloween is around the corner."
Josh looked out the window to the CityTV building, then he looked beyond, onto Queen St. He could see Groovy. They sell a lot of shoes. Thus meaning A LOT. He started bopping his head calmly, causing Anna to cock her head to the side and open up her ears.
He looked at her and began to sing, "Would you call my name..." Anna started to sing along with him, "If I saw in heaven..."
They both broke into smiles and giggled. Anna shook her head, while smiling a smile. One of her first real smiles of the night.
"I'm so glad," she said, wistfully.
"Why are you glad? Your two-year relantionship just ended."
"That means we can do more things together. And if I can get that internship at Fashion Magazine, you know I'm dropping out of school."
"I'm proud of you."
Anna smiled. "Hey, whatever happened to your boyfriend Harry?"
"We're still together," he said and grinned, "but I'd like to be free like you.
"Yeah, love's great, but it sucks, too."
Josh took his teacup up in his hand and waved it in the air. Anna recognized this move and brought her cup up, too. "To sardonism and love," he declared.
"Sardonism and love," Anna repeated. They clinked their cups together and sipped the hot, sugary substance. After that, they looked at each other; then they giggled.
Echo was watching them from afar, gazing at their openness with each other while Billie Joe was watching in amazement from his booth, wondering how a girl and a boy could talk like that without the prospect of sex. He had come to Toronto to get away from everything. To be honest, things weren't going perfectly at home. Anna and Josh looked like the kind of people who were always "away from it all". He saw them as perfect. A gay guy and a bitter girl sitting in a coffee shop. It was like it was taken right from Shakespeare.
Anna looked at Josh. "Wanna split a cab uptown?"
"But you live downtown."
"I'll take the ride for you." They got up and put on their coats and finished off their tea. Once outside, Josh brought his trembling fingers to his mouth with a cigarette and lit it. Anna looked around. "2006 is dead, dude. Dead."
You think I can't hurt you, but you fell in my trap
And you say you believe me, but you're watching your back
---
Anna sat huddled up by the window in a chair at the back corner of a coffee shop with her only friend who wasn't a girl: Josh. He liked boys over girls, so that was a good thing for the both of them. They were sitting identically, facing each other, slumped over, drinking chamomile tea in pretty little teacups against the windows, both of them looking outside into the chilly, Toronto night. They were at the Second Cup at the corner of Queen and Front St., right at the corner you'd see the MMVAs. Right on the corner, people seldom passed at night. Maybe a few college kids, maybe some people Anna recognized from her Art Studies Class at the University of Toronto.
"He tried to avoid the subject whenever I brought it up last night. He turned away everytime I asked. Obviously proving to me to an extent that it was true," Anna spoke, so calmly that it would take an expert to hear all the sadness in her voice, and Josh was just the guy.
"Anna, you're seeing this the wrong way...Anna...Anna...I-I-I...just look at me, Anna."
She was definitely not looking at him, but at a poster on her wall, trying to seem nonchalant about it all. She looked at him. The melancholic expression on his face ate at her, but she was sure as hell not going to give in.
"Okay, Dylan, keep on going..."
He looked at her like she was crazy.
"This all amuses you, doesn't it? You know, I wouldn't do things like that because I want to, Anna. She was...thereand...so was I, you know."
"No, I kind of don't."
"I...I barely even knew her."
"That's the worst part, Dylan. That's the worst part."
"It was sad because he was being so typical, like his lines had been planned out beforehand. It seemed unnatural, and you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because he was just like everyone else. You'd be waiting for something to hit you like a pile of bricks, but everything was so soft, so typical. It wasn't honest, It didn't come from his heart...or wherever feelings come from."
"It was that bad?"
"It was worse," she said and shifted in her seat.
Anna's voice tended to change a lot. Sometimes it would be soft and timid, and sometimes it could be dark and sarcastic. Her wavy, dark brown hair hung off of her head like drapes off of a metal rod, swinging with every movement, her hazel eyes shining greener than ever before. Her green, army-style jacket was tossed off onto the back of her chair, leaving a fuzzy, gray scarf hanging loosely around her neck with a tan thermal, lightly grazing the 24-year-old's skin gently.
Anna looked at her other half: Josh. He was that sad-looking guy who could always make his girlfriends feel better. "Girlfriends" as in girl friends. His brown and bottle-blonde hair hung over his left eye, leaving only one of his deep blue eyes that were so famous between the pair visible. His eyes could take you swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Like her, he was wearing a scarf, a navy blue one, and quite frankly, he was also wearing a thermal, gray in colour. His black blazer was in his lap, keeping it warm. Josh took notice of Anna's stare. He took a sip of his tea, and she followed.
"So then I wanted to know what happened...he told me everything. Everything I didn't want to know. It just left me so awfully struck that I seriously thought about yelling at him."
"Why did you ask him, then?"
"Just a little nosy, I guess." She shrugged and sipped her tea.
Anna sat on her bed, Dylan leaning up agaisnt the white walls, telling her the big story. Everything she didn't really want to hear. But something she felt she did want to hear. But when she heard it, she wasn't so excited. Or impressed.
"I seriously can't believe you," she said to him after he was done.
Josh grinned. "It's done? That's all you said? You should have at least tried to make it longer...for me. It's done?!"
"Calm down, it's not done, Joshua Tyler Harrington."
"I like it just 'Josh'; surnames are for suckers, Anna Tennessee Aldridge."
"So I'm a 'sucker'?"
"Nope, and that's why you're just Anna to me."
"Whatever, so...I left the room..."
"Oh my God! I can't believe you! You're Batman!"
"Don't you see the irony here, Josh? I was in my own house."
"Oh," he said plainly, and started grinning. "Look who's here."
Anna turned around and caught sight of the man, talking to the waitress and digging deep into his pockets. Anna snickered and just kept watching. "I wonder what brings him to Toronto," she whispered at the lowest of decibels.
"Me too. I was never attracted to him, though. He's in all those teenie magazines," Josh said, shrugging. "Just get back to your story."
"Okay...so, I left, right? Well I left the room..."
Anna found herself in her little kitchen, messing things up, placing all the cereals crookedly. She caught sight of Dylan, putting his jacket on, moving towards the door.
"I should leave," he said, his head down.
"Yeah. You should. You could go see her." Her as in Brandi. The girl.
"How many times do I have to tell you? I didn't do it because I wanted to! I did it because I needed to!"
"Fuck that. He can jack off," Anna said dryly, twisting his words in her mind.
"And then I told him I loved him," Anna said in a drop-dead way, "but in the most bitingly sardonic way you've heard me say anything."
"Sardonic?" Josh asked, not quite sure that she was using it right.
"I'm pretty sure," she said and brought the delicate little teacup to her lips.
"So, as you might have been able to predict," she started, "he didn't like my sarcasm."
Dylan looked at Anna tiredly. "It sucks that you feel that way, because I actually love you."
"Then you wouldn't have done that to me, now would you have? How do you explain that?"
His lip quivered as he bit it and opened the door out to the chilly street.
"Goodbye, Anna."
"I didn't die."
Anna looked at Josh. He was staring beyond the top of her head. "What?" She asked him.
"Nothing."
The man sat in the corner of the booth across from them, reading the Toronto Star.
"Have your eyes been training on him this whole time? I told you the end?"
"The end of the relationship?"
"Yeah. The. End."
"Oh my God, you are Batman!"
"I prefer Superman."
The waitress came by. "Would you two like me to fill this up?" she said, pointing at the teapot. Anna and Josh were always there recently at the same time of night about three times a week, so they knew the the waitress, and she knew them. Sometimes she'd even talk with them.
"Yeah, Echo, that'd be really nice," Anna said to the waitress in her nicest tone.
"Echo, guess what?" Josh asked the waitress with a goofy grin.
"What, Josh?"
"Anna and Dylan are over."
Echo looked shocked. "Over?" she asked Anna.
"O-V-E-R. Over."
"Good! Okay, guys, I'll be back with your tea."
Anna looked over at the guy in the booth across from them. He set the Star on the table and started to read 'the Onion', part of the U of T paper.
"I'm asking him for the Star."
"Anna, you can't just do that. He's famous."
"Watch me. I'll just pretend he's you. Except from out-of-town."
Anna got up and went to his table, "Hey, dude. You done with that?" she asked him, pointing to the newspaper, lying on the table.
He just stared at her, obviously shocked. She was confused.
"Uhhh...yeah, I'm done." He had a nasaled, snotty-nosed nosed voice.
"I'm Anna," she said and stuck out her hand.
"Billie Joe." He nodded slowly and shook it.
"Yeah, me and Josh here were wondering what you're doing in Toronto."
"Oh, well I've been thinking about buying a place here for a while, and I decided to come now."
"Cool. So you done with the paper?"
"Yeah, take it."
"Thanks," she said and turned to leave.
"Uh, Anna?" His voice said.
She spun around, "Yeah?"
"Could you guys kinda show me around, tomorrow?"
Anna looked at Josh, then back at Billie Joe. "Uh, yeah. I live on College. You know that street? The Cannabis Festival was held there back in April or May...uh, near Queen's Park?"
"Yeah the long street in a weird shape, there's a guitar store called the Twelfth Fret, right?"
"Yeah, that's it. I live in the area near the College Towers...127 College if it helps. If it doesn't, there's always Josh's loft at 1 King at the Sapphire Towers. Yeah, let's meet there, it's less confusing. Josh, that's okay, right?" she said quickly, and looked at Josh; he nodded. "Okay. His last name's Harrington, buzz him at noon or earlier, we like to be out on the town at a resonable hour."
"Okay, cool."
Anna went back into her huddled pose against the window, Josh smiling at her. "Like I said, you're Batman."
"Uh-huh..." she said, looking through the paper.
Echo approached the table. "Here's your tea, guys," she said and set it down onto the table.
"Thanks, Echo. You're great," Josh said earnestfully.
"Look at it out there, man. It's gonna snow soon. Okay--maybe not, it's just October, but Halloween is around the corner."
Josh looked out the window to the CityTV building, then he looked beyond, onto Queen St. He could see Groovy. They sell a lot of shoes. Thus meaning A LOT. He started bopping his head calmly, causing Anna to cock her head to the side and open up her ears.
He looked at her and began to sing, "Would you call my name..." Anna started to sing along with him, "If I saw in heaven..."
They both broke into smiles and giggled. Anna shook her head, while smiling a smile. One of her first real smiles of the night.
"I'm so glad," she said, wistfully.
"Why are you glad? Your two-year relantionship just ended."
"That means we can do more things together. And if I can get that internship at Fashion Magazine, you know I'm dropping out of school."
"I'm proud of you."
Anna smiled. "Hey, whatever happened to your boyfriend Harry?"
"We're still together," he said and grinned, "but I'd like to be free like you.
"Yeah, love's great, but it sucks, too."
Josh took his teacup up in his hand and waved it in the air. Anna recognized this move and brought her cup up, too. "To sardonism and love," he declared.
"Sardonism and love," Anna repeated. They clinked their cups together and sipped the hot, sugary substance. After that, they looked at each other; then they giggled.
Echo was watching them from afar, gazing at their openness with each other while Billie Joe was watching in amazement from his booth, wondering how a girl and a boy could talk like that without the prospect of sex. He had come to Toronto to get away from everything. To be honest, things weren't going perfectly at home. Anna and Josh looked like the kind of people who were always "away from it all". He saw them as perfect. A gay guy and a bitter girl sitting in a coffee shop. It was like it was taken right from Shakespeare.
Anna looked at Josh. "Wanna split a cab uptown?"
"But you live downtown."
"I'll take the ride for you." They got up and put on their coats and finished off their tea. Once outside, Josh brought his trembling fingers to his mouth with a cigarette and lit it. Anna looked around. "2006 is dead, dude. Dead."
