Nell Johnson was just your average girl. Average home, average parents, average life. People often said she was pretty, but she thought of herself as just, well, average. She had messy blonde curls that framed a petite face. Her eyes were a brilliant shade of grey, and on some days, blue. She was shorter than most girls her age, but her hair made up for some of that lost height. She never wore makeup, and her clothes were generally jeans and an old t-shirt. She felt like just your average high school girl.
Boys never paid much attention to Nell, except when they asked to play with her hair. It was a joke in her high school, "Nell's hair!!" But she never really paid much attention to the attention her hair drew. It was just hair, after all.
Nell's general attitude about life sometimes concerned her parents. They tried taking her to therapy, family sessions, and more therapy. But Nell wasn't unhappy, she just wasn't happy. She was just, well, you know. Average.
Nothing bothered Nell either. She was never annoyed, never frustrated, never angry. Nothing really made Nell happy though either. The only time Nell's parents had seen her smile for real was when they bought her a new guitar. She played it every day and every night since her parents had brought it home. The therapist had told her parents to try and get Nell involved in something, to try and give her a hobby. They had tried everything from dance to soccer to tennis to swimming. They tried bowling, racquetball, even tried getting her to play video games. But nothing worked until they finally tried music.
To Nell, music was a way to escape. She could let loose her bottled-up feelings in a non-verbal way. She could just sit there on her bed and play for hours, never singing, but still letting go of all she had come to build up inside herself.
People often wonder how Nell got this way. Well, here's her story.
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