"Drew?" Jane called in a singsong voice voice as she came in that afternoon.
I was cleaning my room, the sudden urge for change springing me from bed a half an hour earlier.
She stepped in the doorway and watched me make my bed before she finally said, "Don't forget, you have a session with Dr. Garcia tomorrow."
I gestured loosely in the direction of my whiteboard, equipped with a calendar, reminders, and random song lyrics.
"Also," She walked to my desk and picked up a container of medication among several others. She shook it accusingly. "These should be empty."
"I forget sometimes." I answered, going into the closet to fold clothes and avoid her eyes.
"Sometimes?"
"Please, Jane." I said a little sharply. I closed my eyes and tried again. "They just make me paranoid, okay?"
"Ben..."
She might as well have set me on fire. "Don't call me that!" I nearly shouted, looking around as if the walls had ears.
"I don't think you should blame the pills for being paranoid." She answered, resigned.
"Can you just leave me alone, please?" My voice cracked severely. I bit my lip to stop it from shaking and threw down the shirt I had been trying to fold.
"I just want what's best for you, Benjamin."
"Well, right now, what's best is you leaving." I snapped with my head in my hands.
She shrugged as if to say, "Well, I tried" and turned to leave.
Even though I felt like screaming and throwing things at her in the moment, I managed to add, "By the way, I'm going out."
"Huh?" She said, halfway out the room.
"Yesterday, I asked--"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Remember, midnight." Then she was gone.
I'll spare sharing how many times I changed my outfit. I didn't want anything that said, "Hey, look, I care about this occasion." But I also didn't want to say, "I'm just here for snacks."
I decided on a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt with my black hoodie and red jeans. This was cool, right?
As I looked in the mirror, I heard my dad's voice reprimanding me, and as shitty as it was imagining all the crap he'd have to say about my fashion choices, I suddenly couldn't breathe, because I'd give anything for it to be real right now.
I got a text from Elijah saying he was outside. I took a deep breath and told myself, "You are not a mess right now, Ben."
I felt a little thrill saying my name aloud, but also like I was putting a target on my back. I told myself I was safe. I would be okay.
"Hey, Andy!" Elijah greeted as I walked up to his car. It was strange seeing him behind the wheel. He had to drag the seat up pretty far in order to reach the gas and looked like a little kid pretending to race in his mother's ten-year-old Suburban.
"Hey." I said tentatively. Cole was in the back with his huge guitar beside him. He was a lot taller than I thought, maybe 5'7. I felt a tinge of annoyance. Hanging out with Eli the Hobbit had temporarily made me forget I too was a shorty.
Cole patted his case like a loved pet and gave a small wave and smile as I set my own guitar next to his before getting in the front seat.
"Are you okay?" Elijah asked as we pulled into the road.
"Yeah, why?" I answered a bit too quickly, a bit breathless.
He raised an eyebrow. "Uh, I don't know, maybe because you weren't in school today?"
I pulled at my sleeve and shrugged. "Oh, that.... I mean, yeah, I'm okay."
"Can I just say," Cole piped up from behind us, his voice as melodic and smooth as if he was still singing, with the slight lilt of what I concluded must have been a Swedish accent. "That you are totally not what I was expecting?"
I frowned, eying my reflection in the sideview mirrors. Curly black hair, frighteningly pale skin covered in freckles, dark eyes. I remembered a professor from intermediate school saying, "I can tell you have a flavor of Asian in you, so I expect your papers a week earlier." My friends had teased me about it for ages, but the moment had thoroughly pissed me off.
My ethnicity was a bit ambiguous, so I just stuck with half-Korean, half-European to simplify the mess.
"What exactly were you expecting?"
"I dunno. A Hozier type, I guess. You sound a lot like him."
"Avi Kaplan." I responded.
"What?"
"I would've expected Avi Kaplan if I hadn't saw you first."
"I'd've said Jamie N. Commons." Elijah chuckled.
I snorted. "Please tell me you're joking."
"I'm just going to throw this out there, but I have no idea who these people are." Cole said.
Elijah gasped dramatically. "Andy, tell me I heard that wrong."
I shook my head sadly. "Don't worry, man. We will educate you on your bass brethren."
"By the way, Raj's mom is kind of scary, and she'll probably want to know everything from your blood type to your favorite Friends character." Elijah began as we pulled into the driveway of large blue house.
In the front yard, a boy and a girl, maybe kindergarten age, were playing in a pile of leaves. An old Corgi snoozed lazily on the porch. A picket fence completed the imagine of homeliness.
"Do you come here often?" Of course he did. Like calls to like, ammaright?
"Sometimes, yeah. All our parents have kinda been obsessed with each other since college." He answered, gesturing to Cole.
I felt like someone had just stapled a paper to my forehead with the word "outsider" written in bold.
"Oh, cool." I said meekly.
"Speak for yourself, Eli." Cole said as we walked up to the front door. He leaned towards me dramatically and stage-whispered, "I think Raj is a total douche."
The kids waved as we walked by, thankfully oblivious to Cole's language, and their dog gave a half-hearted growl as I stepped over him on to the porch.
Elijah knocked, but then let himself in anyway. The interior of the house had an open concept retro design to it, with a huge flat screen and a pool table in a small alcove beside the living room. Another dog, a Rottweiler mix of some sort, jumped off the couch as we walked in.
"Hey there, Messy." Eli said as she ran circles around us. She got bored quickly, though, and ran upstairs to start who knows what kind of mischief.
"So, if you've known each other for so long," I continued as they led me toward a door in the kitchen. "Why haven't you... um, you know, played together before?"
Behind the door was a staircase to the basement, where some alternative music was flowing from.
Cole shrugged as we made our way down. "We tried."
Elijah elaborated as he headed downstairs, "We all have really different styles, I guess. It never really worked out. But I feel like you're our missing piece." He made it to the bottom first and exclaimed, "Well, howdy do, Priya."
Priya was an unusually tall woman with a high ponytail of dark hair and big ears. She wore a suit and a look that said she had other places to be. It wasn't that hard to believe she was Raj's mother.
"Hey, boys." She gave a sharp smile as she patted Elijah's shoulder. "I was just telling Raj here to make sure he kept it down. His grandfather is in town and isn't feeling very well."
"You got it." Cole chirped.
Malik sat at a computer chair to the left of the stairs, beside a dresser and a futon bed. It seemed this side of the basement served as a room, and the other side a makeshift studio, where he had his drum kit set up along with some beanbags, a handful of mics and a keyboard.
At the same time he smirked at me, maybe thinking the same thing Cole had when he first saw me, his mom finally realized I was there as she headed up the stairs.
"Oh, well, hi there." She held out a hand to me with raised eyebrows. "And who might you be?"
"Andrew Taylor, ma'am." I replied, convinced her firm handshake might've broken a few bones.
"Now, Andrew, I'm quite certain I know every old face in this town, so you must be a fresh one, right?" I nodded, but she kept talking without the affirmation. "Are your parents on the PTA, Andrew? I highly suggest they join. Here, have them give me a call." She handed me a card, which must have appeared from thin air, and then left with a swift wave of her hand.
As first impressions went, I'm glad I didn't have time to make a bad one.
"Yeah, she's a little intense." Malik said, a slightly apologetic expression on his smug, chiseled face. He stood and made his way over to his drums. "Well, anyway, here we are." He hit a cymbal as he sat down and then held his hands out as if to say, "What now?"
Cole and Elijah collapsed in some beanbags casually, taking out their instruments. I settled in the bench by the keyboard, resisting the urge to run my fingers across the keys. I hadn't played in a while. I was always more of a piano guy.
"I think maybe we should go over what type of music we plan on playing." Cole piped up, tapping his fingers absentmindedly across his guitar.
"Well, I figured rock." Elijah offered quizzically.
Malik shook his head. "That's a really broad category, E."
"What about indie?" Cole suggested.
Malik sighed. "I was thinking something along the lines of Black Keys or Arctic Monkeys, honestly."
"Well, what a great start. Perfect for a group to have split opinions." Elijah mumbled sarcastically.
I sat there listening to them discussed other possibilities, kicking my feet against the bench. I didn't mention that I had been told this was supposed to be a simple jam session, or that there was no way in hell I could be in a band. After a few minutes, I threw up my hands. "Who says we need to fit into a certain genre?"
I didn't shout or anything, but I might as well have, because they all kind of jumped in unison.
"What do you mean?" Cole asked.
"Well, you know, music isn't about making things that fit into a certain definition. It's about expression. Do you think Kurt Cobain or Bob Marley or fucking Mozart sat down and thought, 'You know, hey, I really want to sound like so-and-so and want to be thought of as this-or-that'? No."
Cole frowned and raised his hand slightly. "I'm sorry, but you've lost me."
I shrugged and fumbled with my sleeve thoughtfully. "Well, you know, let's just stop searching for the music and let it find us instead." That's what my father had always told us. As strict as he was when it came to our lessons, he made sure we understood that music didn't have to be frigid.
"That sounds inspiring in prose and impossible in practice." Malik added.
"More like highly improbable." I pulled Vicky out of her case, running my palms routinely over her strings. I grinned. "Which makes the best kind of music, no?"
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