15. Jace
fifteen
Jace
I guess it’s safe to say that the music gene that ran in the Jones family for the past sixty-five years, died with Sienna Jones.
Standing inside of Mulligan’s, a coffee shop-bar duo, wincing as Sienna tries her own rendition of her grandmother's hit song, Twilight , was not how I expected tonight to go.
As Sienna hits her second high note of the night and the patrons of the bar wince, I clap, cheering for the tone-deaf woman.
“Woo! That’s my girl!” I shout, pumping a fist in the air while my brain battles with the urge to explode from her horrible singing.
I’m pretty sure a run-over hyena could produce better vocals than her, but I digress.
On the small wooden stage, standing under a lone spotlight, is a girl who is allowing herself to be free. I won’t stand in the way of Sienna’s happiness. Not now, not ever.
She giggles as her voice cracks and shakes her hips off beat to the melody she’d concocted on her own fruition.
My brows raise, amusement littering my body as she somehow nails one note before failing every single one afterwards.
It’s an art, truly.
But when Sienna bows, happy with herself, smiling brightly…I can’t help but to do the same .
If she has no fans, then I am dead because in a fraction of a heartbeat, I’m standing. My smile is bright and proud of her as I clap for the pink-haired singing “aficionado.”
Sienna bounces off of the stage, her hazel eyes greener as excitement takes over her. She’s giddy by the time she reaches me, taking a sip of her Shirley Temple.
“How…Was that?” she asks between sips of her straw as she looks up at me, her eyes round and expectant.
My mom always instilled in me that honesty is the best policy, but how do I honestly tell her that she sounded like a mother cow giving birth to an antelope? Impossibly horrendous…
“You were great, angel! The crowd was amazed!” I exclaim, my voice raising an octave. Sienna’s eye twitches slightly as if she’d heard my lie clear, but her smile doesn’t waver. Instead, she grabs my hand and holds it up as if to guide me.
“Woah—”
“We have to sing a duet!” She grins playfully.
Mulligan’s is on the other side of Summerfield, closer to another school, Nolince University. It’s a smaller university with a population of around twenty thousand students to SFU’s eighty thousand students. Their Men’s Hockey and Women’s Basketball teams are impressive, but not as good as ours.
I brought Sienna here because I know that this is NU territory, and most SFU students stick to our side of town. She must’ve sensed that when we first entered the place because she immediately lowered her inhibitions and let herself be.
When we get to the stage, Sienna is a ball of energy, bouncing as she looks for the next song for us to sing. Meanwhile, I’m silently dying inside.
She was supposed to be the only one “performing” tonight, yet I’m finding myself on stage, standing next to her like a dumbass.
Sienna doesn’t care, though. Instead she smiles at the small crowd and waves as the beginning chords of Start of Something New from the movie High School Musical begins to play.
I groan inwardly immediately .
The girls used to force me to watch High School Musical every summer before high school.
Sienna nudges me, an annoyingly pleased grin on her face as I grab the mic.
Sighing, I roll my shoulders back, taking in my environment. I mean if I’m going to do this, I’m going to give it my all. We sing and dance around each other, shimmying back and forth and twirling one another as the music plays.
Sienna’s smile is brighter than the sun as she giggles while I spin her in my arms. For someone who's been a trained dancer her entire life, Sienna’s moves are wild and carefree as we move around each other.
We’re getting into the last chord of the song, my body thrumming with excitement as we attempt to hit a note together. A tugging on my shirt pauses my singing as Sienna ducks behind me.
“Why are we stopping?” I ask, twisting slightly to see her nervous face. Sienna looks as if she’d seen a ghost.
“There’s people here…from school.” She frowns, pushing me completely in front of her. I squint at her, not understanding the problem until it dawns on me.
“Don’t let them dim what we have going on. C’mon, angel.” I pull her back to the front of me, nodding my head, and together we finish the song.
I don’t waste any time, hoisting her into my arms fireman style, carrying her away. Sienna’s body shakes in my grasp, sending a chill down my spine.
Maybe I pushed her too far, I think as we approach my car, but it’s then that I realize she’s laughing… not crying.
“That was so freaking fun! You should’ve seen that old guy in the front dancing to our song.” She cackles as I place her in the car.
Our song.
I like the sound of that.
I stare at her, watching her as she speaks animatedly about the past hour and a half we spent inside Mulligan’s.
Even though I was there with her, Sienna spares no detail in her tale.
She talks about how she’d gotten nervous seeing a guy from her Dance course with some girl, but then slowly stopped caring about them in total and it was like music to my ears .
As Sienna’s eyes grow wide and excited the longer she talks, the more I realize just how much I’ve missed this girl.
This is the same girl who used to run me around downtown and had me dress up for whatever “showcase” she wanted to put on in the theater room of her uncle’s house.
This is the same girl who begged her parents to let her come to Maryland one winter to see my first ever Junior Hockey game, and stayed until I walked out of the locker room just to congratulate me.
This is the same girl who I’ve dreamt about for years , painting and sketching her from memory because of how much I missed seeing her face.
This is the same girl who kissed me on her eighteenth birthday, and then left me in that spot, heartbroken.
This is the same girl who I had a crush on at eight-years-old, became obsessed with at twelve, and now at nineteen have no idea what I’m doing with.
Seeing her now, I realize that that girl that I used to know is still inside her. She just needs to be taken out of her shell.
Sienna senses my inner turmoil; she always can. She grabs my hand and all breath comes back into my lungs, stilling me in my spot. My eyes flicker to the clock on my car's dashboard.
“We’re going to be late…” My voice comes out like an avalanche of words as Sienna tilts her head to the side.
“For what? I thought that this was—"
"I’m going to take you somewhere special.”