Login with:

Facebook

Twitter

Tumblr

Google

Yahoo

Aol.

Mibba

Your info will not be visible on the site. After logging in for the first time you'll be able to choose your display name.

The Diary (Sequal To The Pact)

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

When I was five years old I wanted to have long hair so badly. I had seen The Little Mermaid and Aladdin about three hundred times and at least once a week. I wanted to be like the princesses in those movies so much. They had flowy, endless hair that shone in the sun light.
So, when my mom finally let me grow it out, I was super excited. I was finally going to be a princess. From then on, I had gotten very attached to my long hair. I had it all the way down my lower back ever since I was seven. It had become a piece of my identity. Now I was 33 and I still had the same length of hair. I had never dyed it and I never cut it further than the dead ends.
But things would be different now. I needed to break with the old me. I am aware that it makes me sound like I’m writing some stupid self-help book, but I just needed to do this. I was going to face a very difficult time and I needed to find my strength somewhere. Cutting it off seemed like a small thing, but maybe it was a small thing I could lend some power from.
To get back to the Disney princess references: when I was fourteen the movie Mulan came out. This Disney princess was different from the others because she cut of her long shiny hair to fight in the army disguised as a guy. She broke from her cycle of self-pity and took faith in her own hands. Maybe I needed to be more like her instead of the other princesses. Obviously I wasn't a little kid anymore when that movie came out, but it still spoke to me as much as the movies I watched when I was little. She was one of the reasons why I wanted to do this.
Thinking back at the moment I had re-watched that movie a few weeks ago, I sat in the hairdresser’s chair. I had my hands before my eyes so I couldn't look in the mirror. It was just so scary, it seemed like such a big step for me.
“Are you ready?” The hairdresser asked me and she sounded concerned. I bet she didn’t have a lot of customers freaking out about their hair so much. I probably came over like a big baby.
I slowly let down my hands, looked at myself in the mirror and took a deep breath. It was going to be fine. “Yes” I said confidently.
“Okay then.” She said and she took up my hair that was in a long braid. She placed her scissors right at the top of the braid, right where the strands of hair crossed into each other. She started cutting into it and I was surprised at the lack of strength it took to cut all my relatively thick hair. Within a few seconds she was holding my braid into her right hand. I felt a flow of wind across my shoulders as my hair swung back over them. I looked with open mouth at my hair and realized just then that I had actually done it. It was actually gone now.
The hairdresser put the braid of hair on the side table next to her stool and started cutting my remaining hair into model. It only took a few minutes for her and she finished off with putting a little mousse in my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror. Normally my hair was pretty straight, but now it had some slight curls. It was cut until a few inches above my shoulders. It would probably take a while for me to get used to this and I wasn’t sure if I liked it yet, but I was still happy I did this. I did actually feel like a completely different person. Maybe this new person could face what was about to happen with strength.

*

“Woah! What happened to you?” Danny said dramatically as I entered the studio. He pretended to fall of his chair with shock and almost hit his head at the table behind him.
I rolled my eyes and put down my purse on my desk chair. “Well, I got a haircut.” I said pretending like it wasn’t a big deal. A day had passed since I had cut it and I had started to get used to my new look a lot more. I was still quite scared of what other people would think, though. But at least I felt like a badass now.
“Wait, wait, wait” Danny said, still in the same dramatic tone as before. “So you’re telling me that nobody actually forced you to do that?” he said and he moved both his hands up to his mouth in sarcastic shock.
“Stop joking!” I said and I hit him with the empty water bottle that was still in my purse from yesterday. “I’m actually really nervous about it! I had the feeling like everyone was staring at me on my way here.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.” Danny said laughing and he remained to stare at my new hair.
I got really uncomfortable with him, because I still didn’t quite know what he thought of it. I knew he would think that it was a stupid idea. I should’ve never cut my hair off. “Does it really look that bad?” I asked, the nerves hearable in my voice. I took a strap of my short hair between my fingers and started twirling it around.
“Are you kidding me?” Danny asked me like I was crazy. “You look hot!”
I got a slight color and took my fingers out of my hair. I had never been called hot before. I had been called pretty or cute before, but never hot. Granted, this was Danny we were talking about. A gay man in his mid-thirties with severe commitment issues, but still.
“Hot?” Was all I could say out of confusion and I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Yeah!” Danny said enthusiastic and he made a spin in his chair. “You finally don’t look like a scared little teenager anymore. You look grown-up! And hot!”
I laughed at him and looked away towards the panel before me. “You’re messing with me.” I said as I started up all the equipment. As always all the little lights on the panel flickered a few time before remaining on.
“I’m not! I mean, I understand why you would think that, but I’m actually not kidding!” Danny said offended.
“Yeah right.” I said, putting a strand of hair behind my ear.
“It’s true!” he said. “Back me up on this, Vic. She looks hot, doesn’t she?”
I turned around to see Vic standing in the doorway. He must’ve just arrived. “W-what?” he eventually said after a short silence. He was obviously confused about what discussion he had just fallen into.
“Well, as you can see, Luna has gotten a haircut for like the first time in twenty years and she actually thinks it looks crazy. I already told her she looked very hot, but she won’t believe me. Please tell her she looks sexy with short hair!” Danny said grinning. He looked very pleased with himself.
I had to seriously remind myself why I was actually still friends with him. He had a tendency to make people feel extremely uncomfortable on purpose. During college he once entered a catholic church during a field trip and told most of the very pious visitors that he was, and I quote, “as gay as a unicorn high on glitter”. Most of the time it was funny, but it stopped being fun when he did it to you. Let’s just say that he didn’t have boundaries.
“You don’t have to answer that, Vic. He’s just in a very hilarious mood.” I said sarcastic and I shot Danny a death glare. It didn’t seem to matter much to him, though. He had achieved his goal of making us feel uncomfortable.
“Well, you do look good.” Vic said matter-of-factly.
I turned away from Danny to look at Vic and he seemed to be serious. Still a little bit confused and uneasy, but serious. “Really? I still have to get used it, I guess.” I said.
“Well, I liked your old hair too, obviously. But this suits you. You look really good.” He said as he walked into the room and sat down on the coach.
“Thank you.” I said softly and the red color returned to my face. I turned back to the panels so he wouldn’t see it and so I could ease the butterflies dancing around in my stomach.
“Not totally what I meant, but at least she believes me now.” Danny said as he took up his phone and started scrolling through it.
I was just about to say something back at him when the other guys entered the room. “No, I’m not kidding!” Jaime said to Tony and Mike as he stepped into the studio. “There has been a study about it and apparently elephants have the same kind of brain activity when they look at us as people who look at puppies. What means they think we’re cute! Elephants think we’re cute!” he said, so excited that his voice shot up an octave. I laughed at the weird conversation as I turned up the volume of the microphone.
“That’s amazing.” Tony said laughing.
“Really Himes, this information has seriously enriched my life. I can now die in peace knowing that elephants think I’m cute.” Mike said sarcastically as he dropped next to Vic on the couch.
“I know right!” Jaime said, like he hadn’t even noticed the sarcasm in Mike’s voice.
I turned around and coughed so they all noticed I wanted to say something. I ignored the fact that Jaime’s, Mike’s and Tony’s eyes got big when they saw me and I started talking. “So, first time after the holidays. Let’s record some backing vocals for the one we started working on before Christmas and…”
“Oh my god, you look hot!” Mike suddenly said, totally ignoring what I had been saying.
Before I could even open my mouth to say something, Danny stood up from his chair and pointed me in a dramatic gesture. “I TOLD YOU!”

Vic’s POV
By the time we were done recording for the day, the sun was already beginning to set and shone an orange light through the windows of the studio. The vocals that we had just recorded for, arguably my favorite song on the album still echoed through my head. It was so different from the songs we normally did, it had a little bit of an old sound to it. Like 90’s grunge songs. But it still had that familiar Pierce the Veil sound that we’ve had since our first album. I don’t think we would ever lose that and I was happy about that.
Luna was turning off some of the equipment by turning some buttons. I would lie if I said that I knew what all of the buttons did. Through years of recording I had gathered some basic information, but I knew it was way more complicated than that.
As she reached over the table to grab some forms, the sun light fell on her hair and gave it a golden glow. I liked her shorter hair, but it felt a little unnatural. Ever since I knew her she had very long hair. I wouldn’t even recognize her like this.
I wondered if she had cut it off to feel stronger. I could only imagine how she felt regarding recent news. I thought back to the time she just came back from the shed. For weeks she had been a zombie and if you looked inside her eyes you could see she was reliving it all. For some reason I had expected her to be like that again after hearing Ryan was a free man again. But she seemed much stronger than back then. She was even smiling and having fun. She was joking around with Danny like nothing had changed.
Something told me she wasn’t feeling as good as she looked, though. The thing about growing up is that you learn to hide your feelings a lot better. I knew that from my own experience. You simply just couldn’t get things done if you broke down all the time.
Yeah, that must’ve been the case. When I thought back to the moment I got to hear the news, I just couldn’t believe that she didn’t feel as terrible as I did. And I felt straight-up awful.

*

My phone slipped through my fingers into the gravy on my plate and made stains all over the white tablecloth. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t holding it anymore.
“Vic?... Are you okay?” Danielle asked me as she carefully put down her fork. She sounded far away. I wasn’t looking at her, I was looking at a point in the past. I was taken back to the time I was a lonely teenager with no one to talk to. To the smirk on that psycho’s face when I had found out that he had kidnapped the girl I loved and the pure hate that I felt when I saw it. I was taken back to the time I saw one of my best friends being rolled out of a crime scene with a sheet over her and realizing she had been killed. And to the time that I had held Luna into my arms after she had passed out from cutting herself.
The reason for all those nightmare memories, he was out there now. He was free to ruin someone’s live after successfully ruining mine and the lives of everyone around me. That demon was out there now.
I was shaken out of the nightmare I had lived by the feeling of a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at Danielle who had a worried expression on her face. I hadn’t even realized that she had left her chair. “Vic, what’s going on?” she asked me, fear slightly hearable in her voice.
I tore my eyes away from her and shook my head, not being able to find the words to express myself. I looked at my phone that now had brown splatters all over it and still heard the cop at the other end of the line trying to reach me. “Mr. Fuentes? Mr. Fuentes, are you still there?”
I hung up on him and took the soaking phone of my plate as I walked out of the dining room. Danielle didn’t follow me, she probably sensed that I couldn’t talk about it now. I knew that I had to talk about it, but not with her. The band, they needed to know this. They probably wouldn’t be called like I did, but they were just as traumatized as I was.
As I walked into the hall, I slit down the wall and sat down on the floor with my knees up. I knew who I had to call first. My hands shook heavily as I searched through my contacts and chose the one I needed. I took my greasy phone up to my ear and waited until Tony picked up the phone: “Hey Vic, what’s up?” he asked. He still had the same softness in his voice that he had all those years ago. He had taken it so hard when Leah died. Probably harder than anyone had realized.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. How would I ever be okay with saying this out loud? How would I ever be okay with Ryan’s existence?
“Vic? Are you there?” Tony asked confused. He probably thought that I was shitting him or something.
“Ryan’s out.” I said softly, but I knew he had heard me. What followed was a piercing silence. I looked up and saw Danielle standing in the opening of the door with a shocked expression on her face. The way she looked at me with pity, made me tear up and I felt a tear fall over my cheek.
After the silence that seemed to be dragging on forever, I heard a bang from the other side of the line. A sound that seemed very familiar, as it was the sound of a phone sliding out of someone’s hand and falling on the ground.

*

I couldn’t imagine Luna not reacting the same way to the news. But I wondered if she was either working through it really well or if she was actually dying inside. I didn’t want her to do things on her own anymore, but at the other hand, I already got tired of just thinking of forcing her to open up like I used to do when we were together. Besides, I wasn’t the most important person in her life anymore, like I used to be. So, I decided not to ask her anything about it. I wanted to be her friend again and I didn’t want to ruin the little bit of trust we had built up again.
“Okay so, I think we’re done for today.” Luna said as she turned off the last pieces of electronics. She turned around and shot us a wide smile. “I think we really made something great today.”
“It’s definitely going to be the hit song of the album.” Mike said, sitting next to Tony and Jaime on the couch.
“It’s catchy, it’s fun…” Tony said.
“Sounds like a description of me.” Jaime said with a wide grin on his face.
Almost like we had planned it all of us rolled our eyes at Jaime’s comment. Except for Luna who simply chose to ignore it. She jumped up and down with excitement. It’s one of the little quirks I remembered from years ago. For a few seconds it seemed like she was the Luna from before the shed again. Her enthusiasm was so contagious. I saw that it made the other guys smile too.
“Finally, something is going right in my life.” She said laughing as she stood still again. I knew it was supposed to be a humoristic comment, but I couldn’t help but feel like there was a little bit of truth in it.
“You okay, Luna?” Danny asked. He had a smile on his face, but one eyebrow raised. So, I wasn’t the only one noticing it then.
Luna looked around the room and realized that we were all looking worried at her. She waved it away lightly. “Yes, of course I am.” She said followed by a short chuckle. “It’s just that my car has a flat tire. AGAIN. It’s like the sixth time in a month.”
“Sounds almost like someone is puncturing your tires.” Mike said.
“I don’t live in a very good neighborhood, so it’s probably one of those teens that throw bricks through windows and stuff. Believe me, they’re everywhere” She said with annoyance visible on her face. I thought back to the times I had been at her apartment and it did seem like the kind of neighborhood something like that would happen.
“Do you want a lift home?” I asked her. It would be quite a detour to drive her to LA, but it was already getting dark and there were a lot of lowlifes in this area around this time.
From the corner of my eye I saw Mike and Jaime wiggle their eyebrows at each other. I chose to ignore it, but Luna had obviously seen it too because she turned a little red. Did they actually have to do this? Where they twelve or something?
“No, it’s about two hours to LA and back, I can’t ask you to do that. I’ll just take the bus.” She said, pretending like she hadn’t seen the childish act of my little brother and his spikey-haired companion.
“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to not let my annoyance towards Jaime and Mike seep into my voice. It did seem like a long trip, but it didn’t feel right to let her go out on her own.
“I insist.” She said and she put a strain of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been with the bus a couple of times before, but thank you for offering.” She said and shot me short but warm smile. The piece of hair that she had just put behind her ear fell in front of her face again, making her repeat her gesture. She seemed a little annoyed with her new hair length, but in a way that it was cute.
I don’t know, maybe I could get used to short-haired Luna. She looked more playful and energetic and, whether it was real or not, she also looked a little more confident. It was almost like she had become more herself. She was more like the girl I had once fallen in love with.

Notes

I. AM. DETERMINDED. TO. FINISH. THIS. STORY. NO. MATTER. HOW. LONG. IT. TAKES!

No, but really I do. I've been so neglecting my writing lately and that's not what I want. I'm gonna try working on it more from now on, but you guys know me by now: it will probably take a while. but I'll do my best to post sooner! I just really want to keep writing this story. For the hand of people that stuck around for this story and want to know what will happen to Luna and Vic, but also for myself. It's just a project I really want to finish.

xxxx

Comments

@Jesse Provau
Aawww that's so sweet! It means a lot that you like it!

I have a lot of work to do at college lately, but I promise as soon as All that is over I will comtinue writing this! I haven't forgotten this story!

I will definitely follow you on ig btw! You seem like a very sweet person!

For starters : this is a wonderful story. i spent the past few days beige reading this a work (thank god for slow days at an office job). secondly, you have great writing skills, i hope you continue to explore those further. lastly, please update soon; IM HOOKED

- Jesse a 22 year old HUGE PTV fan and new fan of YOU(:

follow my IG @_provau

Jesse Provau Jesse Provau
5/8/18

@Iwannabemorelikeme
DON'T FORGET THAT ONE GUY WHO DECIDES TO CHECK OUT WHAT THE NOISE IS AND GETS KILLED!

@freedom_writer
Omg! I'm so sorry! But I'm happy you thought it was worth it :)

I waited so long for an update and it was worth it

freedom_writer freedom_writer
1/21/18