𝘞𝘦'𝘙𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘛 𝘴𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘕𝘨𝘦𝘙𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘠𝘮𝘰𝘙𝘦

ɪ'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴀɴ ɪᴛᴄʜ ᴛᴏ ᴘᴇʀꜰᴏʀᴍ

Finally some band practice! Only ten chapters in... And if you're uncultured, the song in the YouTube video is 'Doomed', that's the song they're playing in this chapter, by the way :)

♪♫♭♬♩♪♫♭♬♩♪♫♭♬♩

My dad had loaded up the trusty Hyundai with the guitar amp and microphone, and we managed to squish Jade and the guitar on the backseat, and now we were practically quivering in our seats as dad turned the car into the music hall. We hopped out and unloaded the car, then dad unlocked the front door and we stepped inside, footsteps echoing around the open hall. Woah.

My eyes landed first on the stage at the back of the room, which had huge heavy red curtains, which probably hadn't been drawn back in years, and the old-fashioned spot-lights hanging overhead. It made me immediately want to find the control panel.

Looking around, I noticed a piano in the corner of the room, which we wouldn't need, but it'd still be fun to tinker with it if we had time. There was even a mini kitchen through an archway - albeit with ancient stuff and it was falling apart, but that didn't matter.

The echo in here was sick.

"This is amazing," Jade said, as dad put his amp down. We put the microphone and guitar down near it. "I can't wait to get started."

"Neither can I," I grinned, and we were both practically bouncing up and down.

Dad smiled and passed me the key. "Keep that somewhere safe, I'm going to go shopping, and I'll be back to collect you both in an hour."

"Thank you," Jade and I said in unison, and he left.

We turned towards each other, the grins not leaving our faces. "Shall we get set up?" I asked.

So we opened the floor panel with all the wires - holy shit, that was a lot of wires - and figured out how to set the amp up. It took a while, but we didn't stop talking the whole time.

"So how did your friends react to your band announcement?" I asked, re-plugging-in the microphone for the fiftieth time.

Jade half-sighed, half-laughed. "Sal is probably still sending messages."

"Ah, yes, I bet he was a tad excited when you told him," I nodded.

"Excited isn't the word. There aren't any words," Jade sighed. "Bhavisha and Storm were pretty chill about it, though neither really believed me at first, but they're supporting it. How about your friends?"

"Mixed bag. Emmy isn't a rocker by any means, but she wants to come to every concert and has actually threatened to shout and sing along even if everyone else in the room is silent," I laughed. "I'm not sure if that would make me feel better or worse."

"It's nice of her to offer," Jade shrugged. "You said Alex was cool with it?"

"Yeah, she's cool with it. Still doesn't really get how we're gonna pull it off but I s'pose we'll figure it out," I shrugged. "But Rose reacted exactly how I expected her too. I'm hoping she warms up to the idea eventually."

"Hopefully. But I'm sure she will," Jade said, testing the guitar by strumming it - finally, she'd got the amp to work. "And we do need to talk about the finer details of this band. Name and drummer being the two key issues at the moment."

"Yeah," I said, my voice magnified as I tested the microphone. "There's also the keyboard issue. We'll need to borrow some big speakers. Then wire up some kind of laptop to it that you can control with a pedal or something while you're playing guitar. We'll find some kind of app to record it with. Does your keyboard have USB?"