Ten & Levan

40. Forty

***

When I return to my room, having recently put up with dad's same old slurred speech about me being useless and every other connotation attached to it, I take a deep breath and shrug it off. I hop around the room shaking the bitterness off until I'm able to smile again. I walk over to the window and draw the curtains to let the moonlight in, but as if it wasn't lit enough, I turn on the lamp on my desk. When my dark cave is bathed in a soft yellow light, to my surprise, it looks like a completely different place.

I find myself ducking down to pull a stack of blank sheets from under my bed. As I carry the sheets to my desk, I take a deep breath and imagine everything I'm going to write about. Strange as it can be, I imagine how life would've been if mom was alive. I imagine having fun with Ava when we were kids, I imagine smiling every day, all the time, and never getting tired of it, I imagine dad taking us to picnics, I imagine sitting in the sun for hours, I imagine happiness, I imagine life with mom, life with Ava, life with dad, life with a family.

When I do stop imagining, I take a moment to myself. But when I die, Levan...I don't want to regret that I didn't even live, I hear Ten say, her voice floating in front of my eyes, painting the air golden, Make sure you don't either.

So I bring the ink to the blankness of the cloudless sheets, and write about Ava for the first time. I write about everything we can be, everything we can do even though mom's not here and dad doesn't want us. I write about how we can still have fun, how we can still smile every day and not get tired, how we can still go to picnics, how we can still let the sun seep into our skins, how we can still be happy...how we can still be a family.

Before I'm finished writing, I jump off my seat and instinctively rush to Ava's room when I realize I haven't really said what I wanted to. When I reach the hallway, Ava's returning to her bedroom with a bunch of granola bars. I frown at her, wondering what she needs them for. Her eyes go wide when she catches sigh of me.

"Levan..." she says, trying to hide them behind her back.

"What are those for?" I ask her. She lets her shoulders fall.

"I'm planning to stay up and finish my sketches..." she admits.

"Do you mind showing me some of them?" I ask her, trying to make awkward conversation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. Ten has told me a few times that she's caught glances at Ava's work and she really seems to like them.

"Um..." Ava's eyes wander around for a while before she lets me in. Maybe that's all we have to do, the both of us, let each other in...give it time and we'll be okay.

I spend a long time observing her pieces of art and I'm surprised by how amazing she is at it. Each one is better than the other. Most of them are abstract pieces, some are portraits of her friends at school, some of strangers on the streets, and some fictional, but none of them cease to amaze me.

I tell her I love them all. She smiles at me proudly, I can see it on her face. Ten was right, she's lilac; bright and bounce. She goes ahead to gather up all of her sheets and form a stack. I hope someday I'm able to share my work with her. Maybe this is how we'll bond, who knows?

"Ava?" I say, as she places the stack in a drawer, she turns to face me with her brows in the sky and her smile lighting up the walls of the room.

"Yes, Levan?"

"I want you to come with me, to watch Ten perform tomorrow..."

***

So here's the thing about Ten; I can't get over all the amazing things Tenerife Cohen is. I can't get over how adventurous she is. I can't get over how warm she is. I can't get over how happy she is. I can't get over how determined she is, how confident she is, how gloriously gold Tenerife Cohen is, and god help me, I believe I'll never get over the perfection she is.

I wonder how I'm ever supposed to get over her, as her voice soars around the theatre, painting the air gold. It's as if she commands this power, as if she demands attention, and all eyes in the room, in the town, in the country, in the world, in the universe...she's given. I'm enchanted by how tall she stands and delivers her voice to those in need.

With her hands, arms and dress covered in random splatters on paint, her long dark hair tied up messily, she projects sheer perfection. Blown away, wonderstruck, in awe, is all I am. There's nothing Ten can do that wouldn't amaze me. She laughs, I'm amazed. She talks, I'm amazed. She sneezes, amazed. But the moment she took the stage and opened her mouth, the moment from her throat her voice slithered out, I lost all the balance I never had.

She sings about everything she wants to do, everything she wants to be, everything she wants to hold and everything she wants to see, with the amount of passion that you never really witness. She sings about dreaming, yes, dreaming but with open eyes. She sings about how there are always distractions, and hurdles, and bumps along the road, and about falling but standing up again. That's when I realize, it's not Lucille singing, it's Ten.

It's almost as if she wasn't cast for the role, but the character was built around her, and that's why she fits like a glove into all of it; the lights, the sounds, the audience, the story. She belongs here, destined for the stage.

I realize how I've been floating above my seat all this while when I thud back down. The final shreds of Ten's voice still echo around me even when the lights have gone out. For several moments, it's so quite that I rejoice, realizing I wasn't the only one hit hard by her tidal wave. It's so silent that I almost hear Ten sighing on the stage, maintaining her composure.

The lights come back on.

And the crowd bursts into a thundering applause.