A Face in the Crowd [Andrew McMahon]

Old. I felt old. It was my birthday and it wasn't that I was turning an old, it was just that nothing had happened in my life worth noting. I was average in everything. School, looks, friends, popularity, talents, it all. I was average.
My friend Marissa was supposed to come over and we were going to send the day together. I wasn't sure what were going to do, but I was just happy to get out of the house. My parents hadn't even remembered it was my birthday. My mum was sleeping away her hangover in the other room and my father---if he even knew I was still alive---didn't care enough to call.
I left our small apartment and sat down on the steps in the front. I waited for Marissa even though she wasn't going to be over for another hour or so. I couldn't stand waiting in the house more. I hated hearing my mum's sleep talking and snoring. Not even the TV could drown it out, not blasting music, either.
I took out my diskman and pressed play, not even knowing what CD was in. "I have, I have you breathing down my neck, breathing down my neck, I don't know, don't what you could possibly expect under this condition."
I smiled to myself while I quietly sung the words to myself. I listened to the CD almost two times before Marissa arrived. "Hey, Addison," she said, reaching out her hand to help me up. I took it and before I knew it we were in the car driving somewhere.
We drove for hours. I mean this completely literally. We talked the time, but it still felt like we driving since the beginning of time. It was night before we stopped.
I got out of the car and looked up to where we were. A tall, old building was standing before me. Marissa pulled me along while I just kept looking up. The building was so horrible looking. The ceiling looked like it was going to fall down on me; the paint was peeling and was faded almost completely.
Once we entered the building I noticed where we were. A venue. Marissa was taking me to a concert. I wasn't sure for what band or why we had to come all the way to a completely different town just for some concert. I highly doubted that it was anyone I liked anyways.
No offense to Marissa, but she had horrible tastes in music. She liked whatever was popular. Where as I, liked stuff that no one else knew, the stuff that I could sing to for hours with out getting sick of it.
I loved it so much that it would just hit me and me overflow with emotion, weather happy or sad. I just loved being able to feel something just because of something someone, whom I didn't know, who didn't know me, would say. I loved how someone could understand me so well, even when I was only a face in the crowd.
"Who's playing?" I asked Marissa as we made our way to the front. Marissa just smiled a knowing smile and continued to walk. She didn't say a word to me. I was starting to get annoyed, I just wanted to have fun with my best friend, not watch some guy rap or sing or whatever.
We reached the front and I looked onto the stage. There was a drum set and a keyboard set up, that was a good sign. Not too many rappers used keyboards or drum sets. I let out a sigh of relief and waited.
Twenty minutes later people were walking onto the stage. There were five guys, none of them familiar looking. One went to the drum set; one went to the microphone, a guitar strapped onto him. One of the other two had a guitar, the other a bass. The last sat down at the keyboard. So far, I wasn't not enjoying myself.
The man at the microphone said, "We're All Safely Crashing." After that they started playing. They were good. Not the best thing I had ever heard, but they were good enough that I was starting to enjoy my birthday.
They played five wonderful songs before they were done. As of right now, even if some rapper come on to the stage, I wouldn't have been mad. All Safely Crashing had put me into a good mood, I felt a smile on my face and I knew that it wasn't going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
It was ten more minutes before anyone got back on the stage. This time, I knew who it was. He sat down at the keyboard and started playing and singing right away. "Oh, oh maybe, we made, we made for each, is it possible for the world to look this way forever?"
I think I died. There was no way I was at a concert, let one alone a Jack's Mannequin concert, with the guy I had wished to meet since the day I heard him sing for Something Corporate. He finished the song and started smiling.
"Thank you all for coming," he said, adjusting the microphone. "Before I continue, I was told that a girl by the name of Addison was having a birthday today. Addison, this one's for you."
He started playing a familiar tune and then sung "Happy birthday". If I had thought I died before, then I don't know what was happening now. I couldn't think, I could only breathe ever so slightly, and everything seemed to be disappearing around me.
Everything except a piano and a man singing a song to a girl he didn't even know. He had such a happy smile on his face. He looked beyond gorgeous, beyond anything the world could have ever known.
At that moment, it was just him, his keyboard, and I. Oh how magical it all felt. No, magical wasn't the world. If it was magical, I would wake in a moment. But this, this was real. This was perfection.
The song ended and the world reappeared around me. Marissa was next to me, the same knowing smile on her face, while everyone else around us was asking and wondering who in the world this Addison was.
I smiled a knowing smile to myself. Now that something had actually happened in my life, I no longer felt so old. I felt anew. I felt almost perfect. Thanks to a man who would never know me. Because to him, I would always just be a face in the crowd. But he, he would be so much more.
Jason Mraz has stolen my heart.
<3