Suzie’s House 440 : Emma’s Song I

Emma got to the practice room before any of the other band members. She sat on the chair in front of Kate’s drums for a few minutes. She was tempted to give the drums a thump, but Kate would probably have a hissy fit. She didn’t even like it when her boyfriend, Justin, borrowed them, and he actually knew what he was doing.

Emma made her teeth unclench. It couldn’t be helped that Justin liked Kate more than he liked Emma. Who would rather a girl who stuttered and used to run to the bathroom to throw up every few minutes to someone as confident and friendly as Kate? Well, beside bullies like Bruce. Having Bruce like her was like being a mouse loved by a cat.

She gave the little drum in front of her a whack. Then her foot slipped and squashed some pedal type thing underneath and the big drum went “boom”. Maybe it was better to not sit here, even if it was the only chair in the room.

She got up so fast the chair almost fell over, then went wandering all over the room. Where was everyone else going to get here?

“This is like an o-o-omen,” she muttered. See? Even when there wasn’t anyone around to make her nervous she stuttered. It was disgusting.

“It’s not like I’m madly in love with him,” she assured herself. “I just k-k-kind of like him.”

She was lying to herself. She had fantasized about him too much to consider it “kind o”. It burned that he picked Kate over the lead singer in the band.

“I am too!” She sang on and up-rising trill. “Look at me, look at me! Even someone like me deserves your love.” The music flowed out naturally, but felt lonely in one soundproof room.

She thought she heard a thump from the hall. What if someone heard her? She poked her head out. Not a soul occupied the long, dark corridor.

“Like a nocturnal world,” she said, imagining the space filled with video game style zombies. She quickly closed the door to the practice room.

Where was everyone? Did she get the wrong time or day? But she was so sure….

She’d give them another fifteen minutes. Then they could just call and ask why she was late if they showed up when she was gone. It wasn’t like they didn’t care about the lead singer.

She wandered over to where Bruce had left his sound synthesizer set up. Most of the time the only one who didn’t put things away was Kate. But Bruce said something about meeting some people and ran out the door yesterday. Look. He didn’t even turn off the synthesizer. She knew because one little light glowed.

She pressed a key. Sound came out of the speakers, making her jump and nearly knock everything over. “Ack!” Her heart beat way too fast. She bent over and panted for a little while. When her body got back to normal, she pressed the key again.

It was kind of loud, but she was in a sound proof room, so why not? She pressed a couple more keys.

“This is easy!” Like playing a piano. She would guess. Ok, she was playing with two fingers, so there was more to it, but it still sounded pretty good.

Maybe she could write a song while she was waiting. She pressed a few more keys, and got a drum track going by accident, then decided to just let it run. But what should she make the song about?

Well, there was that eviction the other day. All that great stuff in perfectly good condition before they tossed it into a dumpster gave her ideas. She could guess a lot about him. Like he was probably going to the U of W because of the text books, so a college student. That plus the neighborhood. It must have been a guy, because how many girls want a lamp the shape of a woman’s leg, even if it’s from a movie. And he traveled a lot because of the tour guides and stuff they found.

So probably he was a student traveling somewhere and something happened to his rent didn’t get paid while he was gone and boy wouldn’t he be upset when he got back and all his stuff was gone.

But what kind of song would that make? So pathetic. She needed something bigger. More dramatic. Why else would he get evicted?

“He’s dead and gone, killed in a plane crash.” Emma’s voice rose in a lamentable song. “The bright, fresh hopes of a young man turned into trash in the can.” She paused, savoring the moment, then said, “Well, it’s a start.”

She dug out a pencil and paper, and started to write. Half an hour later the first of the other band members showed up.

“Wow, you’re early.” Tracy glanced at the time read out on her cell phone. “Bruce did call you about the time change, didn’t he? Don’t tell me you’ve been here a whole hour.”

“That’s all right. I got good use of the time.” Emma smiled. Bruce could hardly complain now if she got caught using his sound synthesizer.

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