Tommy

My best friends have always been the people I got to know in books I read. Call me weird, whatever, but that's how I see things. If I think about my sister Caro and her friends, it makes me cringe and feel ashamed instead. They're so stupid. Caro is different when she is alone, or when we're at Granna's. When around her friends, she acts so unbelievably dumb. Anyway, I wanted to tell you I decided to join Facebook. Curiosity might have killed a cat or so, but it probably won't hurt me. There was no problem signing in and all that. And it is safe. Nobody can see you unless they're your friends. I found Pamelia Kurstin. And she is my friend now in there. WOW!!! The things she can do with the theremin, it's just amazing!!!

And I can now talk to her if I want. Wow. And also the writer Armistead Maupin. Mom has some of his books and I read most of them. Made me think of our year in San Francisco. And how different the books are compared to my own memories of the city. But I was very young, then.

I mentioned the one friend I had, who took his own life? His name is Tommy and I decided to write a note about him on Facebook. It's about how we met. I figured he could date my mom. But things didn't turn out the way I thought they would. Instead Tommy and I became friends. Which was better, because if he'd dated my mom and they'd split up, I probably would never have seen him again. I know I won't see him now he's dead, but at least he's been around for a while. Tommy, Tommy. I hope you found what you were looking for.

Nightmare on Octavia Street (1)

We lived in San Francisco for about a year. My parents had just split up and my mom took us to stay with some of her flaky friends. I was like eight and my sister was nine. I don't know what it is that makes people go crazy and change their entire lives when a relationship ends. Big deal. My dad was never around much to begin with, always away for work. And when he was home, they argued all the time. But they often kissed and made up. Passionate souls, that's how they liked to refer to themselves when laughing it all away with friends. Until my father told my mom he'd fallen for another woman. One he also had kids with already. Say what?

Even though he turned his back on us, I don't hate him, never have. My sister still misses him a lot. She used to wait for him to come home so he'd take her for icecream down the block. I never cared much about icecream. And now I also think I understand it wasn't the icecream that made my sister so happy. It was being in the company of dad.

Anyway, we moved into the basement of a building on Octavia Street. My mom grew up in San Francisco, so she still had ties there. When she met our dad in Europe, they stayed in London. Both my sister and I were born in London, by the way. Somehow my dad insisted we were better off born there instead of in the States. Before we arrived, they had apparently been living in two homes, one in London and the other in Los Angeles, because that's where dad worked a lot at the time. We basically lived in L.A. and spent our holidays in London. And when my parents split up, we left L.A. for San Francisco. My dad moved away to a small town in Delaware. Don't ask why. If he could have kept having kids with another woman a secret for so long, who knows what else we have no clue of, right? Granna says he hasn't forgotten us, but that my mom's attitude makes it tough to somehow stay in touch. I do know he pays a huge sum of money each month, and that my sister and I will get a lot of money when we turn 21. I don't know. There's plenty of rich kids around, like those students from #49? One of the guys OWNS the building, can you imagine. His dad bought it for him, because he didn't want to stay at the dorm he was in. But does money make you happy? Our family didn't stay together and we had money. It can't buy happiness, but it can buy diversion, that much I know.

The basement in Octavia Street was a horrible place to live. It was damp, dark and it smelled like something had died in there. My mom's friends had used it for their seances and you''ll sympathize with me when I tell you they said there was the possibility of some ghosts still lurking about from time to time, even though there wasn't anyone summoning them with an ouija-board. Great. My mom was emotionally on the rocks and on top of that, we had to deal with her crazy friends.

Next blog, please

Random things in life make my blood run faster. The kids in my class are so stupid. So childish. The girls become like their moms, too loud and too keen on finding a suitable guy. The boys in my class are exactly that. Boys. So if I want to know what a man is like, I'd have to focus on our teachers. But they suck too. They're either too old, too ugly or just too interested in young girls. I don't know. If I were my mom, I'd not trust my daughters to be a minute alone with our history teacher Mr. Wilson. Frank Leonard Wilson. He is 37 years old, married, no kids, no pets, no life. All he seems to do is teach, go home and come back to school again to teach. But like many of those guys, he has secrets. And Frank Leonard has a secret life. I found out by chance, when my locker got stuck and I had to wait for Karl to fix it. Karl's our janitor. Anyway, it was hot so I went outside. Karl knows how to reach me, I mean, what would life be without a mobile right? And that's when I saw Mr. Wilson. You want to know what he was doing? Hm. I don't know. Would it be safe if I just wrote it down here? What if his wife finds out? I mean, anything can happen. I clicked the next blog button on top of this blog and found a weblog of a woman who calls herself Angel. All of a sudden you walk into a stranger's life. But it does feel kind a cool too! So, I'll be clicking the next blog more often. Who knows what I'll find. Even if I can only look at pictures and don't understand a word that's written!

The wind keeps whispering his name

For a while now it's been eating me away inside. I don't have a computer of my own, so I need to be careful when using my sister's disposable gadget. Because that's all it is to her. She uses it for school, or to chat with her silly friends but that's about it. She doesn't mind me using her notebook and is not interested in what I do. Still, her friends might be nosy enough. So I try to erase every trace each time I use the damn thing. Everything has its price.

There's a party going on somewhere down the road. They're loud. Not sure, but I think it's the students from #49. My sister sometimes goes there as well, to hang out with some of the cool guys she doesn't get to meet at her own school. She looks older than she is. She acts older, even. Our mother is away most of the time so she can't control her daughter anymore. If ever! We have a neighbour watching over us, a sweet elderly woman we call Granna. Her name is Anna and she is like a grandma, so that explains it. My sister loves Granna. I love Granna too. Never knew our own. The rest of the family lives far away, so my mom told us. Our father left us for another woman with whom he has children too. I think we have about three or four little brothers and one baby sister. But we never see them. Nor dad. Granna tells us about all of this, because a cousin of her brother-in-law is married to a relative of my father's new wife. Mom doesn't know we know and we promised Granna we would never say a word about it. At least not to mom. To her, our father is the enemy. I guess he hurt her real bad.

It is weird to write this down now. As if turning my thoughts into actual words makes it less surreal. But my heart is pounding just the same. I don't know. I see his face and can hear his voice as if we spoke only yesterday. But we didn't. Sorry. I am not talking about my father. I realised you might think I was. No. I need to write about a friend of mine who took his own life not long after his birthday. It didn't come as a real shock, but when I found out, I was still shaking all over and felt sick. It wasn't the first suicide in my life. I have lost so many people already. Truth is, I am in a younger body and in a new life myself for the last seventeen years. But I have lived for ages already. Sometimes I remember parts of my previous lives, but the flashes never last more than a few seconds. As if they are not significant enough. I don't give it much thought. I know that when I need to remember, I will. So that is why I know my lives have been filled with loss before.