My Personal Hell, D. Richardson [ebook reader browser txt] 📗

say. Especially since it was my idea and I would have to perform just as much as the rest of them. So I took it just in time for Patsy to walk in with an older version of herself.

That wasn’t quite accurate. He was much taller than her, standing at about six foot one. His shoulders were stocky like he had lived a life of hard work. His sandy colored hair was cut short to keep it out of his light blue eyes. Which were mostly hidden behind wire rimmed glasses.

“Hey guys, this is my brother, Dylan. We just got done walking around the school.” That got everyone’s attention. But before he said anything he walked over to the middle of the room and grabbed a chair, spinning it so he sat on it backwards and eyed us all. Whatever he was looking for he must of found it because he started talking.

“Do you want the good news or the bad?”

“Might as well give us the bad,” I answered, and he leveled his eyes at me. He gave me a once over, not like he was checking me out, but like he was sizing me up. He was human. So the only reason I could come up with, was that he was testing to see if I was worthy enough to lead our little adventure.

“You must be Ailith.” It wasn’t a question and I just raised a brow in answer. Then he smiled and his shoulders relaxed. I had no idea what that meant so I just ignored it. “The school is in really bad shape. Some of the floors need to be leveled out, the lockers have made some of the walls unstable, and it needs to be completely rewired. Not to mention the termite and water damage in some areas. It looks like it’s going to need a new roof as well.”

“So how much is it going to cost?” I asked, dreading his answer.

“You’re going to have to hire an electrician, and a plumber, not to mention someone to take care of the roof and the inside work. With the building being so large, and with all of the work that needs to be done. It’s going to run you about a hundred and fifty thousand.” Anyone who had been standing grabbed the first available spot to drop down on. I was the only one left standing and I found the closest wall to lean on. Sympathy filled the man’s eyes as he watched all of our hopes go down the drain.

“That’s it, it’s hopeless,” Christine mumbled, everyone closest to her nodded in agreement. Out of desperation and the lack of knowing what the hell we were going to do next, I looked down at the papers in my hands.

The list of songs was about three pages long, front and back. I scanned the list and saw several songs that I knew and hit me personally. The type of songs that will bring you to tears or make you stand up straighter. Of course the majority of them weren’t appropriate, but that was why they gave it to me. To weed those out, and make the final say on the selection.

That’s what they’ve been doing this entire time. Looking to me for the final say and how to move forward. All I’ve managed to do so far is get their hopes up. I couldn’t let us go out like this. There had to be a way. If this music can bring out a physical reaction in me, then maybe it will with others.

I may not show a lot of my emotions, it was something I was working on. But that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t have a visible and deep reaction in others. If we did it right, we could very well give everyone in this town a performance they’ll never forget, and maybe want to experience again.

“What’s the good news?” I asked abruptly. His eyes landed on mine.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said there was good news. What is it?” I asked again.

“What’s the point? We’re never going to be able to raise enough money to fix the school,” Stacey replied. I was shocked that she had sunk so low. She was usually so optimistic.

“The point? Why does there have to be a point?” I asked instead, and she looked at me like I had lost my mind. I probably had. “We don’t know if we can raise enough money. And realistically it’s not likely. But we won’t know if we don’t try. Why are we here if we were just going to give up before we even got started?”

“Look, I know your heart is in the right place,” Jake stated, “but you said it yourself. It’s not likely that we’ll succeed, it‘s impossible,” he shrugged. “It’s beyond our limitations.”

“How do you know?” He opened his mouth, and then shut it, a confused expression taking over his features. “How do any of us know? We’ve set our own boundaries, or someone else set them for us. When in reality we don’t know our limitations, because we’ve never pushed those boundaries far enough to find out what we can really do.

“The truth is, is that I don’t even know what I’m capable of, because I’ve never bothered to find out. Allowing other people to dictate my own abilities.

“Because someone said that it’s impossible? What’s impossible? Almost everything until someone decided that they wanted to rewrite the definition. Is it really impossible for us to raise over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars with one performance? I don’t think so. It’s improbable sure, but impossible? We’ll never know if we don’t try.”

“Yeah, okay, let’s give it a shot,” Jake answered.

“I’ve always wondered if I could ever make a difference, might as well find out,” Stacey put in. After a moment it was unanimous. So I turned to Patsy’s brother.

“So…about that good news.”

“Patsy told me you guys might have a place to hold your benefit. She said it was the old opera theater. It just so happens that I know the place. It’s considered a historical building, which is why it hasn’t been demolished. I’ve done some volunteer work for churches and other historical sites. Now I can’t afford the man power, but I can donate the materials you’ll need.” That was the best news I’d heard in weeks.

After that everything moved fairly quickly. Stacey said that her uncle was willing to meet us at the theater the next afternoon when school let out. Patsy was the one that ended up with the list of students willing to lend a hand. Only about fifteen of them were interested in performing. Twenty more offered to help with the back stage work. But we had the cooperation of the entire music department.

Which meant that the school orchestra and choir were at our disposal. There were roughly twenty five students in band, and twenty more in choir. Including everyone in the room that gave us a total of around sixty people. It took me a half hour to narrow our list of possible songs down to twenty seven. Which Cassie informed me that they all added up to ninety four minutes and thirty seven seconds.

Jake, Stacey, Jen, Camilla, Christine, and Samantha all decided to get together at Stacey’s house to brainstorm on the songs I approved. In the meantime, I had to go to the bank and then to my combat lesson. After that I was going to talk to Rob about giving me a few more hours. If I knew anything it was that we were going to need a lot more money to pull off the kind of performance we would need to in order to do any good. And we would have to fund it ourselves. I didn’t think everyone’s allowance would cut it.

Chapter 20

Asher

 

 

 

 

The kitchen was dark, the only light coming from the clock on the stove. I sat there waiting. Everyone else had gone to bed a couple of hours before. Things were changing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how. However, I could feel a difference in my everyday life.

Things weren’t going as smoothly as I had planned. I tried everything in the last month. I’ve flattered her, made out with her, taken her on romantic outings, and yet she still texted me to tell me that she was going to be late. No matter how hard I tried to monopolize her time she still managed to slip past me.

And what’s worse is that everyone seems to be on her side. Dad had told me to be patient, that she was just starting to get her life back. He said to let her live her life for a while and she would eventually make her way back to me. Mom said something similar, stating that she was a young female and needed some space to figure out who she really was. Even my friends were looking at me with disapproving glances when I spoke about her. When normally they would be making bets on how long it would take me to get her in my bed.

But I wasn’t giving up. She’d eventually succumb to pack life, she just needed some time to get all of her rebellious energy out of her system. She was the most extraordinary female I’d ever laid eyes on. She was powerful, strong willed, intelligent, stoic when she needed to be. She was the perfect alpha female.

I couldn’t run from taking over the pack for forever. So if I had no choice then she was the one that I would settle with. She would eventually fall back a step and stand behind me like a proper female, I just had to keep working on her.

“You’re up late.” I looked up just in time to see her drop her keys on the counter. She let her bag slide down to the floor and took a seat in front of me.

To look at her it was like she never needed sleep or sustenance. She always looked the same, even her clothes always laid perfectly against her skin. Her hair never left that immaculate braid. But if you looked closely you could see the dark circles under her eyes. See the way her shoulders drooped ever so slightly. She was exhausted.

“I just wanted to see you before the sun rose,” I answered softly. A slow smile spread across her face.

I was beginning to recognize it as her waiting for the other shoe to drop. She never took a compliment as anything but a tool for someone to get something from her. In our world it wasn’t a bad attribute to have. If I were being honest, her constant distrust was one of the reasons I wanted her at my back. Her eyes were always searching for that knife that so many people held.

But it didn’t bode well for my endeavor to get her to trust me before anyone else. We’ve been seeing each other exclusively for the past month, and we had yet to share more than a few kisses. However, she was finally starting to get past the silence. I had never met a female as quiet as she was. Most of the time I felt like it