Spontaneous musical numbers in the middle of the hallways and cafeteria were an every day occurrence. It didn't matter if you were on the Academic Team, the Basketball Team, or in Marching Band. When the backbeat started, at pretty much every pivotal moment in our lives, you got up and started dancing, singing when your cue came. It was always a mystery who would sing next, but for the most part, important conversations, instead of being shouted, were sung.

I remember arguing with my parents the week before the big game, the same week as the Academic team competition, the same week as callbacks for the Spring Musical. I don't remember what it was about, but I remember we sang it, meaning it was important. You sang (and sometimes danced) for every important moment in your life. First kisses, homecomings, changes in the status quo… it was always sung. Music was an intrinsic part of our world.

And then the new girl turned our set world upside down.

I didn't really pay attention to what was going on. Apparently she and the star basketball player had some thing going on, and then they got into drama, which made the drama president mad, and suddenly everyone is coming out and telling random secrets about their lives. That basketball player bakes. That skater plays the cello. My best friend, a tuba player, came up to me one day, anxious and obviously dying to tell me something.

"Hey, Dylan," he said, rubbing his hands together.

"Yeah?"

"You know how Troy Bolton is gonna be in the Musical? I uh, I have something to tell you."

I rolled my eyes. Honestly, I always felt like keeping who you really were a secret was silly. But everyone around me was so concerned with fitting in and "sticking to the status quo" that for him to be telling me this, it had to be important. "What is it," I asked, faking concern.

"I… I love playing the tuba and all, but really, what my I love doing the most, what's in my heart… is knitting."

Okay, great, he liked knitting. If that was what he enjoyed, who was I to say anything? Sure, I didn't tell the other guys on Drum Line that I was a fantastic sitar player (although explaining the black groove on my index finger from playing it was tough – I had to wear gloves to homecoming my freshman year), but it wasn't like it was a big deal or anything.

Of course, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, six other so-called band geeks had jumped in and surrounded him, busting out in song. And true to the laws of my world, I was singing along with him.

Stick to the status quo.

When it was all said and done, when the drama club had stopped its snit-war with the two "rule-breakers," life returned to exactly the way it had been. Those of us in Drum Line and Marching Band went back to being in the background, playing at games. The Basketball Team went back to winning games. Everyone went back to exactly what they had been doing before. But we all were more open about our hobbies.

Unfortunately, the status quo also meant that me and my friends were still getting picked on.

"Well, well, if it isn't Dylan Dyme and the other band geeks," sneered one muscular football player, rounding the corner near the band room on his way to the locker room at the end of the hall. He turned to his friend. "What say we warm up by benching these losers?"

My friends and I exchanged nervous glances. Elizabeth, a clarinet player who was still sucking on her reed to warm it up for practice, blinked and rushed into the band room to tell the conductor something was up. I squared my shoulders and faced the football players. I was Drum Major, I had to stick up for my friends.

"Aw, come on, we didn't do anything," I said, grinning and trying to diffuse his belligerence. If I could talk my way out of a pounding, I would do it. Next option was running like hell. Barring that, it was fight back – although I doubted that I could actually win. "It's not like we can fight back or anything."

The football player sneered, and grabbed my shirt and shoved me into the wall. "No, I guess you can't," he said, shaking me a little. I covered my head with my arms, wincing. He wasn't really hurting or intimidating me, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to provoke him into actually trying to hurt me. "Wuss," he snapped, letting go and gesturing to his posse to follow and leave us alone.

"Nice going, Dyme," said Wayne, bass drums. "Why don't you make them think we're weaklings some more?"

I dusted myself off. "Hey, they didn't try to beat up ANY of us, did they? So long as they think we're not worth picking on, then we're all okay. Better than actually getting hurt, right?"

Wayne obviously didn't understand the concept of self-preservation, but he picked up his mallets and went inside. I followed, grabbing my own drumsticks and marching block.

After rehearsal, I walked home by myself, humming the song we had rehearsed last. It was upbeat, cheerful. Had we sung it at the basketball game, as an entire school? I couldn't remember, we sang so often in high school that it was difficult to remember exact melodies. You just went with the flow.

I came home to more screaming. Great, mom and dad were fighting again. Their fights were never the kind that you sung. Their fights were serious, angry, spiteful. Shouted, not sung. I simply mumbled "I'm home," and trudged upstairs to my room to grab my sitar.

Once I had told Mike, the trumpet's first chair, about my sitar, he joked and teased me about it, calling it my "baby" and saying it matched me. Sure, I had blue eyes, and it was blue, but that really had nothing to do with it, did it? Even so, it was comforting to me, to sit in my room and strum out languid, wailing songs from a far-away land.

The shouting in the kitchen got louder. I decided to go somewhere else with my sitar, perhaps to the pool in our backyard. At least with a wall of patio glass between me and my screaming parents, I wouldn't be able to hear them.

So I sat at the edge of the pool, dangling my feet in the water and coaxing melodies out of my instrument. This kind of moment was usually when another song in the musical of our lives would start – but not today.

Finally, I set the sitar down, and plunged into the water. Swimming was almost as relaxing as playing music. I sank to the bottom, holding my breath as long as I could, and then I resurfaced, gasping for air.

And then I noticed the things. Little black creatures were scrambling close to my sitar. I had been stupid and forgotten to bring the case outside, and I was afraid those things would ruin it. "Get away from there!" I yelled, clambering out of the pool and dripping all over the patio as I ran towards them, kicking at them.

Instead of running away, they skittered toward me. One grabbed my bare leg, and instead of feeling warm, like a living creature would, its fingers were cold, clammy, unliving. I screamed in terror, and hefted my sitar off the ground, swinging it at the thing and batting it into a nearby tree.

Another one was behind me, yellow eyes glowing in the twilight. I backed away from it, and the other ones swarming around me in increasing hoards.

And suddenly, without warning, music started up again. I was NOT in the mood for a solo song, not now, not when black monsters were trying to eat me.

He who lives to run away, lives to fight another day

Yes. That. Running away sounded good. I spun around, and found more of the black things behind me. I was surrounded.

I'll fight today and find…

And for the first time in my life, I fought my own vocal cords and didn't sing along with the words forming in my head, with the music that surrounded me. I did what no one in my world had ever done before: I went against my heart and very nature and I didn't sing. Instead, I swung my sitar again, this time knocking three of the monsters away. "You like it?" I hollered, swinging again and again.

I never realized until my foot slipped off the edge of the pool that the things had me backed into a corner. I eyed the other edge of the pool; maybe I could swim faster and run…

They had surrounded the other side as well, antennae wriggling, eyes gleaming.

Suddenly, with a silent screech, they pounced. I found myself knocked backward into the pool, sitar still in my hand. I knew it would be ruined, but saving my life was more important than a new sitar.

I struggled fiercely, trying to get out from under the things. For being so small, they sure were heavy underwater. Before I felt my breath leaving my lungs, I saw one of the creatures dig its hand into my chest. I screamed underwater at the excruciating pain, and then everything went black.

I woke up floating in another pool, in another twilight. At first I thought I had imagined the whole thing, but as I righted myself, I found that the water I was floating in was less than two feet deep. My sitar was floating off to the side. I strode over to it, and realized that I wasn't in a swimming pool, I was in a fountain.

And since when had my sitar been so weird looking? I bent down to pick it up, and caught my own reflection. Since when had I been so weird looking? My eyes were now blue-green, and my once-dark hair had turned a sort of dirty blond. I had no idea what to make of the style, other than it was some kind of mullet-mohawk, and totally uncool. The guys in band would never let me live it down. It also felt like I was a little taller, but I had no way of telling.

And then I realized that I didn't care.

I climbed out of the fountain, inspecting my sitar for damage. It seemed fine. I gave it a cautionary strum, and it sounded the way it should have. It was much larger than it had been before, large enough for me to lean on it as a kind of support. I did so, to survey my surroundings. I was in the back lawn of what appeared to be a very large mansion. Without warning, my sitar collapsed into splashes of water. "Wha?" I heard myself saying. "Where'd it go?"

I paused, thinking about my new surroundings. I was still dressed in my swim trunks. I had woken up in a fountain, with a new sitar and a new appearance. I was at a mansion. Sure, all of this was weird enough, but there was something about this place that had me completely at a loss.

Then it hit me. Where was the music? The music that had been a part of our very beings, the music that, without warning, would suddenly manifest and force us all into song and dance. I struck a pose, generally a good trigger for starting a number. Nothing. I struck another, more dramatic one, arm raised above my head, hip cocked to one side. Still nothing, although I did note with interest the shower of bubbles and reappearance of my sitar in my upraised hand.

That was interesting.

But where was the music? Where was… my heart? Was that even possible? Everyone on my world knew that music came from the heart. If you could sing, dance or play an instrument, it meant you had a heart. Right?

Right?

"What the crap are you doing?" a gruff voice behind me asked. I whirled around, and saw a man in a black coat behind me, his hood obscuring his face. "I mean, dancing around in your underwear with a giant guitar is totally lame."

"It's not a guitar!" I spluttered, ignoring the insult.

"Whatever," he said, stepping toward me.

I held the sitar in front of me. This guy was scary. "I don't want to fight you," I said meekly, using my self-preservation tactics to keep this guy from being interested in me.

"No, you don't," he replied, suddenly in my face and grinning. I could see a scar running up his cheek, now that he was so close. "Listen kid, I don't want to hurt you. In fact, I want to help you. I'm with an organization, made of people like us."

"People like us?" I repeated, lowering the sitar and relaxing.

"Yup," he replied, smiling. Okay, it was more like a sneer, because he was still pretty intimidating, but I could tell he was trying to be nice. He poked me in the chest. "People like us. People with no hearts."

"No heart?" I found myself saying dumbly. "That's impossible, nobody can exist without a heart!"

"Ah, and you've just answered your own question. You, me, my… companions, we're nobody."

I scowled at him. "How can you say that?"

"Why do you care?" he retorted. And then, like a two-ton weight of obvious, I realized he was right. I didn't care.

"I guess I don't," I answered.

"Alrighty then," he said, extending a hand. "Name's Xigbar. Welcome to the Organization."

And so I went from Dylan P. Dyme, Drum Major of the East High School Wildcats Drum Line to being Demyx, Organization IX, the Melodious Nocturne.

Three years later, at the castle gates of Hollow Bastion, I faced a boy nearly the same age I had been when I joined the Organization. I was supposed to fight him, bring him to the Superior. He refused. I couldn't help but see some of my former self in him. In another time, maybe I could have been friends with him.

But now was the time for self-preservation. Run away and fight another day. Except this time there was no running.

"Aww, we do too have hearts," I said, smiling and hoping to win his favor, so he'd go easy on me.

"Shut up!" he snapped, brandishing that giant key of his. "I know you're lying!"

That did it. This punk was going down. I narrowed my eyes, and pointed at him, daring him to speak further.

"Silence, traitor."