Tell Me a Story | ✓

Phenomenal

Phenomenal.

I meet her at a concert.

Not the Christian rock-band ones where everyone holds hands and sways back-and-forth, chanting the same line of lyrics that came straight from the Bible.

No.

This concert is heavy metal, and I'm there for all the wrong reasons. I knew she's going to be there; hell, everybody did - she's the lead singer of the band that was playing on stage. No one's really paying attention to her though - she's only the opening act.

But, unlike everyone else, I am. I'm paying attention to her - every second of every song. I don't care for the main act. I'm there for her. Her shaved blonde hair, her short flare skirts with her concert t-shirts, her muddy brown eyes that gleam under the stage's hypnotizing lights. Everything about her is magnetizing; stunning; remarkable. But, most importantly, phenomenal - just like her band's name.

Phenomenal. I feel the name on my lips, but hers is unattainable. No one knows what her name is; at least, not her fans (though there are very few of us). She keeps herself anonymous, but I just can't understand why.

Everything about her... and no one is looking her way. I take my eyes off her for the first time tonight and take a glance around the bar we are standing in.

It's in the middle of nowhere, but the place is packed nevertheless. I guess there aren't many bars in the small town we live in. People are crowded at the front bar, ordering drinks and just calling at the bartenders to put it on their never-ending tabs.

I almost growl in aggravation at the unobservant people flailing absentmindedly around me. It's as if they can't see that the most beautiful woman is singing to each and every one of us? I shake my head, sickened by these people surrounding me. Sick, sick people.

I look back up at her and find her staring at me. Her eyes are clear and her words are sincere as she sings them to me. (At least they feel sincere.) Her lips are stained red and her face is powdered down with some kind of makeup that I most likely will not be able to pronounce, covering up the "flaws" that rise above her skin. But even then, she's still so perfect. Even with all her flaws being melted off under the heated stage and the fiery dancing from the past hour of performing, she's flawless.

But maybe she isn't flawless. But there is beauty-inexplicable beauty-within the flaws that she so relentlessly attempts to disguise. Beauty that cannot be denied.

But no one sees it. At least, not in this room. Everyone is concentrated on the hard-rock, main course band that's performing after her; she, to them, is only a dust-mote compared to the world playing afterwards.

She sees it too. She looks around the bar, her eyes straying from mine after simply a second of holding our locked gaze, and finds that no one really cares what she's singing about. But I do. I do. She's singing about pain - how it can affect people in the strangest of ways. There's lots of screaming in the songs she plays, but after coming to watch her perform various amounts of times I'm use to it. At least, that's what I convince myself.

Her eyes shine brighter, and for a second I think it's from tears that are brewing. But, once again, I'm wrong. It's from rage. For a few seconds I brace myself for more unplanned screaming in the song she's singing, but she suddenly switches it to a more slow-tempo-ed beat with softer words but with a hidden, angry meaning.

It's about love, and its ignorance towards the people who deserve it the most. But, in the song, she says she's not one of those people; that she's in the "crowd of insignificance" where "love should not be found."

But it's too late.

I've already fallen.

When the song ends, it marks the beginning of the next band's performance. These people appear much angrier and more upbeat, but I know that it's only because they know they have an audience to play to. Phenomenal didn't. She lets go of the electric guitar that's strapped around her body and holds the microphone in her hands.

"I don't know these guys that are playing after me," she speaks into the red microphone that has been with her in all her concerts (at least, the ones that I've been to), not really speaking to anyone in particular. The guys in the band yell in excitement and those from the front bar sprint towards the foot of the stage, yelling along with them.

The girl winces at the sight, pain clear in her eyes. But she doesn't stop.

"But I know that they have many fans," she whispers. The audience yells; I don't. She finds me in the crowd and smiles, her red lips curving towards the heavens and her hands grasping the mic rougher. And then she looks away, and holds her hand out towards where the next band is walking up the wooden steps to the makeshift stage. "So here they are, and I'll be on my way."

The packed bar roars, she purses her lips, and the next band jumps onto the stage.

Her time of "fame" is over now. But she doesn't know she's got a fan out there. She doesn't know about me.

I find her jumping off the opposite side of the stage the other band walked up on, turning back and picking up her instruments to take in tow. I'm sweating from weaving through the drunken crowd of misfits, my neck smeared wet as well as my underarms. So much for deodorant.

Her skirt rises as she leans over the stage to reach her equipment, and I keep from watching and push myself to help. But I wait; not because of the cheeky slyness of her legs being premiered right in front of me, but because I want to savor the moment of her anonymity. I don't know this girl... but I want to.

And that's when I walked up to her, hands brushing up against my khakis to reduce the amount of nervous sweat, mind murmuring encouraging remarks to pep up, and lips curving up into a delirious smile.

This is the moment where it all ends.

My virtue.