Audiobook Sample - Intelligent, Conflicted Young Woman - Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Teen (13-17)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
places no one knows by Brenna Yordanov Waverly I roll over already resigned to my room in my bed and my frantic, shrieking alarm clock. I'm not in my room, though. I'm still on the floor and Marshall is out of bed, crouching next to me and shaking me by the shoulder. Hey, Waverly, what are you doing? I feel dazed to stupefied, to think clearly. I want to be tucked against his chest, warm and safe and far away from the grinding monotony of daylight. I turned my face into the floor and can almost feel it here, he says with his hand on my arm. Sit up, Sit up. When I do it, though, nothing is fine or better. Nothing is OK. I'm still chilly and untouchable. Still, me Marshall has me by the wrist, guiding me carefully into bed and climbing in after me. So he's pressed against my back. Don't do that, he says into my hair. Don't lie on the floor when you could be up here with me. His body is warm, inarguable. It feels better than any moment. In any given day, I pull away and roll over. I don't deserve to be comforted what he was personal. What are you doing? I addressed my head on the pillows, trying to see his face in the dark. Are you mad at me? He's lying on his back now, dimly illuminated by the light of the window. His silhouette looks up for a second, staring at the ceiling. Then he swallows and fumbles for my hand. No, you should be. Though I squeeze my eyes shut tight for a second before I say it. I mean for what I said for how I acted behind the bleachers, but it doesn't really matter. I could apologize for every facet and fiber of my being and it would still, he just is true. He doesn't say anything, just rolls over and pulled me against his chest. Pulls me right where I want to be. I broke up with Heather. He was present at the top of my head. His breath on my scalp makes my heart leap and stutter. Why? Because I don't like her that way. And I like you. I don't want to be with anyone else for a long time. I just lie there in his bed. Safe. Perfectly still. You wouldn't kiss me tonight, he laughs a small, helpless laugh. It isn't really a laugh at all. I didn't want to do it and still be pretending I was there for her. It was, it seemed, gross or like not the way I feel. The weight of his voice is unbearable, so heavy I can feel it like a change in gravity, the force of it pressing on my body, my rib cage titans and suddenly every strange and word was Thing inside me is welling up. He pulls me closer, squeezing tight. Are you crying? I closed my eyes, swallowed down the lump in my throat. No, and because I'm in control of it because I have stopped, it's not a lie. He tried to give me something honest, something true, he said, love. But there's part of me that still insists in cool clinical tones that he can't possibly mean it. And even if he did, I'm not mechanically designed to take it. My mother board is only wired for analysis and calculation. No place to plug it in. I'm not good at being loved. I whisper Mable, he says, barely audible. I'm good at being self sufficient. I'm touching his bare chest to this stomach now, tracing shapes with my fingers. That feels good. He was first back. I don't know how to make him see he size as I draw the shape of my own private geography. My list of confessions. Frigid, insensitive, narcissistic, ego centric. Fine. I know he doesn't understand. Can't read my secrets on his skin, but he pets my hair Anyway, he pulls me closer, close enough that I can almost convince myself This is the only thing that exists. I wish you could put your hand on my heart and feel it. He was first. I wish you knew exactly how much. I'm not gonna hurt you. I picture it. Surgical gory, distinctly unromantic. And stop tracing Science Waverly Reaching into a gaping chest, lifting a bloody heart and one latex gloved hand and fighting the urge to squeeze. I have never once worried about how much something will hurt. He's drowsy now, sinking into sleep, his body softens, forming to my contours filling in the jagged mountain range that constitutes my outline. He is molding himself around me, making a space for me that didn't exist before in the past. I've always thought the people's edges either lined up or didn't. Some days I didn't even have to work that hard. To overlook the fact that no one had ever lined up with me, I assumed it was a matter of time. One day I'd meet someone who'd counter act my chemical structure. We would compete for supremacy, collide until one of us was forced to yield or else to go forth together, suspended in eternal stalemate that my model is inaccurate. The poets are wrong. The opposite of ice isn't fire, it's water.