It was hard to look back on her past, when she was just a carefree teen laying in the grassy knolls that were her backyard, looking up at the elm leaves as they danced in the slight breeze, serenading her in a peaceful, rustling sound. It was hard for her to remember why she would have resented her young life so much, hard to remember why she tried so hard to grow up. Why couldn't she go back to secretly watching episodes of Dynasty after her parents went to sleep, go back to calling her friends and screaming over Motley Crue on MTV. When she reflected on it all, as much as it pained her, she couldn't believe how foolish she was. If only she could go back and do it all over again, just have missed that bus...
Brandi picked at the scabs on her arm, tired of scratching off the dried blood in the palm of her hand. A current edition of the Los Angeles Times sat before her as she leaned against her bed in the run-down, murky apartment room. A needle lay over part of the headline so that it read, "HOW FAR CAN A WOMAN-," and a burnt spoon covered the heading right under it that she had memorized. "Sinner fails to please all fans, possibility that men don't like womens' rock." She stared blankly at the gray wall opposite her, her lips parted for air as she tried to sort out her life.
Van Halen's 1984 scratched in the corner on the turn-style, replaying the line, "Ease the seat back," from Panama, but Brandi didn't care. She couldn't hear it. All she could hear were the leaves rustling outside, the sound of a lawn mower in the distance, friendly conversation between Papa George from down the street and Frita from next door. She heard M*A*S*H reruns on the nineteen inch in the front room, Frita's Great Dane barking at some treed squirrel in the back yard. She heard all these things so clearly, until reality hit her like a speeding car. She blinked, listening as the traffic below screeched and honked, the constant hum very off-setting. Angry apartment neighbors shouted at each other down the hall as the static of the scratching vinyl became intolerable.
She couldn't do it. Brandi couldn't do it. She had to fix this. She had to fix herself. No, she had to prove herself. How dare the Los Angeles Times publish such blasphemy, such lies about her, Alex, Debbie, and Rizzy. There was no way she could redeem herself after that, but there was a way that she could prove to the world that Sinner wasn't just some "Girl Band," and that Sinner was just as great as, if not greater than, bands like KISS or Guns 'N Roses. They would pay, without a doubt. But first, she'd have to find a way to get herself off the ground in her state of mind.