Don't Sleep With the Drummer

♤ 1. Kayla ♤

"I got them for free at a clinic."

"Clinic? Why even bother if you're not having sex?"

She stumbled on her next words.

"You're not having sex, are you?"

"I'm not pregnant," Kayla interjected, answering her question in a way she knew her mother hated. "I'm not going to ever be pregnant with the way this family is."

"Don't curse yourself like that."

Kayla had shocked the entire Chambers family when they discovered she smoked marijuana. It was California, though. Most either got drunk or got high off some greenery. You picked your vice and you didn't shame others for what theirs might be. Kayla brothers all smoked, too, but hid it better than she did with the linger scent of cigarettes.

"Be grateful I'm not some deadbeat mom like her. She forced the man to take care of her kid, and he forced that poor kid on to his grandmother. Can you imagine that? Not being wanted by your mother or your father—and they both brought you into this world. I bet Nora hates herself."

Nora was twelve. Kayla didn't think actually hated herself—she hated the mother so much so that she painted this painful image for her own mother to swallow. Didn't they feel shame? Didn't they feel regret in abandoning this girl with her grandmother and not letting her live with her actual parents? Both were very much alive and willing to be a parent...but opted out of it as though having a child was something you could forget about so easily like that. 

"What did you say about my daughter?"

The door slammed open, and there stood Mary.

Snatching the laptop sitting on Kayla's lap, she snapped it in half and flung it on the floor.

Kayla was a loudmouth, and that was surely going to be the death of her. The two sisters chased around each other, screaming profanities long enough till Mary flung a chair in Kayla's direction. To this day, most say there was an indent where you could make out where the four legs of the chair banged against the white walls.

"Stop it you two!"

Her mother came between them, falling on the bed in the process.

"I'm gonna come back. Lemme get something."

Mary was shorter than Kayla, but still, Kayla debated on if hiding under the bed was her best bet.

She picked the window.

That was when she saw her neighbors, begging them to call the police for her.

That, in all, was how she ended up in the back of a police cruiser, heading down the I-110 on fourth of July. The birth of the country could now mentally be noted as the death of her family.

I have to move out, she thought. I can't stay here another night. Where am I supposed to go after tonight? Where am I supposed to stay once school starts up again? I'm a junior only.

"How are you holding up back there?" the female police officer asked.

"I'm doing better now that we're leaving."

"That's good to hear." Her partner noted.

"Have you heard of Exodus?"

"No."

"Did you have a panic attack like that before?"

She had called it a panic attack on the phone and that she needed to be removed. 

Kayla found outlet in music, movies, and theatre. She sensed a fascinating awakening surround her spirit whenever she was in song. She wished she could ask them to turn on the radio. 

"What do you do to release your anxieties then if this has happened before? Where the cops necessary to call?"

"I know I could've done something else," she whispered.

"Huh?"

"I..." she sighed. "I sing whenever I need to calm down."

From the backseat, she gave them a snippet of the Minnie Riperton song she loved humming to herself. The woman, who wasn't driving, clapped after only the first couple of lines in.

"You have quite the voice," she complimented, "Did you ever think about going to Ramon C. Cortinez? It's a performing arts school in Chinatown."

"Oh, that shiny silver building that's over the Hollywood freeway? That's a school? Wow, I always thought it was some sort of institution for adults."

"No, it's a high school actually."

"I didn't know."

"You should consider applying for their fall semester. They have sponsorships to help leaving close to their campus as well – away from home," he added in, which enticed the process of applying even more. "Here we are. Exodus."

The mental health center they had driven up to was attached to a planned parenthood. Kayla took note of the surrounding streets. Kingston Street. Margene Ave. She had to remember the cross streets because her mother had taken away her only stash of birth control. She needed another supply if she was planning on getting her period back on the schedule it was used to.

There was a man sleeping in a plastic trash back directly outside the facility. Kayla didn't see him at first, jumping in fright when she saw the black bag move up and down. The sun was high in the sky – most likely noon by now. Kayla had come with a sack filled with clothes to change into, handed to her by her mother, a water bottle, and a cell phone so that she could be picked up.

The police officers spoke to the man at the door. Kayla was still in handcuffs, so she didn't move that much.

In that hazy moment, dehydrated and barely holding on a string, that was when she set eyes on the two of them.

One boy.

One girl.

Both breathtakingly stunning and entirely out of place.

She didn't know how it was possibly, but Kayla was sure she was in love with the both of them after that first sight.

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