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Davide wasn't all too happy about leaving Mabel, and neither was she, to be honest, but as soon as they returned home, into the warmth, and he had his dinner, he just curled into his bed and fell asleep. Anyone passing by would have thought he was dead.
"So when are you meeting Jade?" my dad asked as we had our dinner, lasagne with garlic bread, on trays on our laps, as we watched The Chase on TV.
I swallowed my mouthful and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand (I refused to get this hoodie dirty) and answered, "Six. I shouldn't be back any later than eight."
As soon as I was finished, pretty much, I set out on my commute to the library, getting there in about fifteen minutes, give or take. I found Jade in the music section, absorbed in a thin-looking book with her reading glasses on.
"Oh hey," she said when she saw me approaching, closing the book with her thumb still inside to mark her page, smiling at me. "You're early."
"As are you," I noted, flopping into the beanbag chair. So satisfying. "So, how was school and all that shit?"
She shrugged. "Oh, y'know. School-like. Shit-like. Went as well as any people-y activity can go. You?"
"Much the same," I shrugged, peering at the title of the book she was reading - 'Guitar Basics'. "Told two of my friends about our little plan."
She raised an eyebrow. "Wait. Were we telling friends already?"
"I mean, no, I just wanted to."
She nodded in understanding, leaning against the shelves. "OK, cool. Maybe I'll have to tell my friends. So how did they take it?"
"Well, Emmy did the classic Emmy thing - acted very over-excited despite having absolutely no idea what I was talking about," I said, to which Jade laughed. "Then Alex just made me realise, in that incredibly annoying way she does at times, how much we have to think about before we can actually do any of this."
Jade frowned to herself, and I knew she was thinking about the same thing I was thinking about when Alex bought it up. We truly had absolutely nothing properly thought through here. And yet, the moment Jade suggested it, I somehow knew it was perfect. We were definitely doing it... just how and when and every other question word we didn't know. "Hm. Yeah," was all she replied.
I stood up and joined her by the shelves, looking over the stuff on there. Jade and I were both exactly the same height standing up, maybe just less than half an inch difference in our heights. Five feet and two inches of emo BMTH-obsessed teenager-ness. This meant neither of us could look at these shelves like normal people - our eye level was perfectly in line with the shelf itself, rather than the books which were supposedly eye-level, meaning we had to look up for the higher shelves and down for the lower shelf. That did, however, leave me able to easily spot a little book nestled away where a normal person wouldn't be able to see it.
"Ooh, hang on, what's this?" I muttered to myself, pulling out the little book. A dust cloud billowed out with it. I stared at the title for a while, not sure if I'd read it right to start off with. Then I realised I had. "Oh my gods, look," I half-laughed, showing it to Jade.
The book's plastic covering had cracked and was peeling away, the pages were yellowed and some were haphazardly stuffed back in, peeking out at odd angles, but I was more interested in the title, which I read aloud. "A Guide to the World of Tribute Bands. Now how freaky is that?" I said, as Jade met my eye.
"Beyond freaky," Jade agreed, nodding. "We should definitely borrow that one."
"Yep," I agreed. I gestured at the book she was holding. "So, you're gonna be Lee then?"
"Hm?" She looked at her book and understood. "Oh yeah. I'm gonna need a guitar to practise on, but I think I'll get it. I played guitar a little when I was a kid and loved it apparently."
"Awesome," I said. OK, so that was one instrument down out of four. I could tell Alex that anyway. "I'm sure my dad will let you borrow his guitar if you ask nicely. In fact, he'd probably be overjoyed that someone wants to learn it."
Jade brightened up, smiling. "That's be great, thanks. So-" she walked over to the table and sat down at it, as did I, like we were about to have a meeting "-what other points did Alex bring up that we need to think about?"
I sighed, slumping across the table. "What didn't she bring up? How are we going to find time to be in a band with everything else going on? Mocks? GCSEs?"
Jade shrugged. "We just won't procrastinate. If we take out all the procrastination time we both will begrudgingly admit we have too much of, we can do anything."
I spluttered a laugh because that was true. "Easier said than done. And I guess we don't have to do everything immediately either. It's a long-term thing. Doesn't matter if we don't donate twenty four hours a day."
"Well, exactly. Plus it'll be a pleasant break from revising and it gives us more excuses to meet up," she added. "What else did she say?"
I clearly my throat. "She said, and I quote, we're two girls making a five man band. And with four instruments. Even if we grew extra arms, there's no way we could manage that."
This had her stumped. "Oh. I was thinking this too, to be honest. There's only two ways around it really."
I raised an eyebrow. "Music on speakers? Nah. Bring in new members? Like, who, my sister?"
"Exactly," she nodded. "It's not like we have a load of secret musician friends hanging around the place either."
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Hi, yes, it's Alice, I'm breaking the fourth wall again. You should be honoured. Don't tell the author, I'm hoping she overlooks this.
I bet I know what you're all thinking - yes, I can read your mind, of course I can, idiot - why don't we just play the music on the speakers? Pre-record it maybe? Well, let me remind you of the time when we did this in our first band - PPB Rainbow. We used to play music off the Nintendo DS in Tomodachi Life. As kids, this was fine.
We're not little kids anymore. Honestly, being in a band is more than singing to a backing track. I feel like you have to have the actual instruments with you - it's the reason I despise a lot of modern music. Just having a backing track while singing is so basic, but if you can play instruments whilst singing with a backing track all at the same time - that's talent. Lining it all up to create a song, not relying on the backstage guys to play your pre-recorded music.
I mean, obviously, there should be an element of pre-recorded music, but it shouldn't make up your whole performance.
It's also because you have to get artists' permission to use their songs and if we ever got through to Bring Me The Horizon we might have actually screamed and or fainted on the spot. I'm not foreshadowing anything at all by the way.
And then there's the other thing you keep wondering - when are we actually going to meet my sister, Holly? I'm constantly mentioning her, so clearly she's an important character to this plot. And why does everyone speak of her like she's another species? Why am I asking these questions when I know the answers? And when will she actually enter this story?
Well, to that, I say two words.
Brace yourself.
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"What are you both talking about?" said a loud, familiar voice behind me, causing me to nearly knock my chair over as I jumped out of my skin. Jade did much the same, both of us suffering a mini heart attack at the loud noise cutting through the relative silence of the library. Especially when we turned around and saw a wide-eyed, crazed-looking girl with long, blonde, curly hair, who looked much younger than her age, especially with that wide toothy grin and the way she was rocking on her heels like she was about to take off. Even her dress sense was childish - her mismatched winter-pattern leggings with a Stranger Things t-shirt and vibrant pink varsity jacket clashed horribly, and she was almost hard to look at. This girl radiated energy - she'd stolen all of mine.
And she wasn't done speaking (shouting). "I can't believe you didn't invite, me, you're both such birds. Ugh!" Her voice went really high and squeaky one second, then she practically growled the next. All the time, it had some strange American accent mixed in, and something that was entirely her own accent. "Anyway hi Jade and-" her face screwed up in contempt as she looked at me "hi, sister."
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I present: The one and only Queen of Birds, Destroyer of Birdish Enemies, Legend Among Birds, Holly Sykes. Aka, the sister.
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"Hi, Hol," Jade half-grinned, getting over the shock quicker than I would. "I didn't know you were coming."
"She wasn't," I said, staring at Hol. We never really called her Holly - she was either Hol, or Queen of Birds, Destroyer of Birdish Enemies, Legend Among Birds... you get the idea. She thinks she's a bird. "Where the heck did you come from?" (Apparently, according to Hol, I wasn't allowed to swear in front of her because it was bad language, despite her being thirteen years old. This made the combination of "hell" and "fuck" very useful, since she didn't realise that's what it was.)
Hol, or Queen of Birds, Destroyer of Birdish Enemies, Legend Among Birds, if you prefer, scowled at me. "I came from outside, obviously."
OK. I was going to have to dig a little harder. "And why are you here?"
She stamped her foot and looked at me angrily - well, she didn't, since this child didn't know what eye contact was and she was actually looking out the window. "Because you're a bird and didn't tell me you were going to see Jade, so I got Mummy to drive me here. It wasn't very nice of you not, not, not to tell me."
OK, so at least she hadn't walked, because my family had all decided Hol wouldn't be safe walking anywhere alone - not to say we didn't trust her, we were just terrified people would take advantage of her with her being so... strange. And there was that random stutter she sometimes got. That usually meant she needed calming down. "OK, Hol, it's fine, I was just asking. Why don't you go have a look in the other side of the library?"
Her scowl just got deeper. Her eyes had now flitted up to the ceiling, so the poor fly she probably fixated on must have been petrified. "No. I want to know what, what you're talking a-about."
"Hol, I saw a really cool book over there, you know," Jade cut in, saving my ass. "It's a book about all the bird varieties. All of them. Even the ones that are extinct."
Suddenly, just like that, her face changed to a look of childish fascination, even though she was looking to the bookshelf beside us rather than Jade. "Rea-really?"
"Yeah, it was like, this big," Jade said, holding out her hands in what I was sure was an exaggeration, but Hol was mystified, and getting excited. "Over in the Nature section at the back. Maybe you should have a look."
"I will! Thanks Jade!" she said excitedly, doing that little childish giggle she sometimes did, practically bouncing over in that direction. Though, she did turn back and tell us, "But actually, no birds are ever extinct, they just go to HollyLand. We have a whole paradise there for them!"
"OK, that's cool," Jade nodded. "But you should go find that book, before another bird takes it."
"Oh no!" she squeaked, before hollying (that's what we call it when she runs - she doesn't so much as run as half-jog half-bounce at about walking pace - accompanied by a noise which can't be described, really) away in the direction of the Nature section.
I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I loved that child but... well, she was a handful most of the time. A unique being.
It was clear to quite literally everyone who had ever met Hol that she had ADHD or Autism. Or both. Clear to everyone but my mum, that was, who refused to get her a diagnosis. That didn't really matter though, since everyone had kinda come to that conclusion anyway.
"Sorry about that," I said to Jade, my voice lowered as though Hol had superhuman hearing (she either heard you from miles away or had to ask you to repeat stuff five times whilst in the same room, so this wasn't inaccurate).
"Oh it's fine," Jade said, looking in Hol's direction. "I haven't seen her in a while, it's nice to see her every now and again. But what were we just talking about?"
"Band," I said, frowning. "Members. How it can't just be two of us."
We didn't speak for almost a whole minute, and Jade was the first to say anything. "Y'know what, we don't have to come to a conclusion immediately. Let's give it a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, and wait until mocks are out the way, after we have our results, and then come back to this. In the meantime, I practise the guitar, you keep practising your singing, and we try not to get our friends too hyped up."
I nodded. Jade really was the Voice of Reason. "Don't tell Sal then. He would get very hyped up."
Jade let out a laugh. "Yeah, he would, so that's probably a good idea."
We spent the rest of the time looking through the shelves, grabbing anything we thought might be useful, and ended up checking out four books between us - five if you count the book which Hol checked out. At first she started stressing because she hadn't "realised she needed money" before the nice librarian lady told her she didn't need to pay. Jade and I facepalmed in perfect unison when she exclaimed in delight, "So you're letting me have the bird book for free?" When the lady explained she would have to bring it back, she got a little upset, but cheered up again when she told her she could just renew it.
I don't think they would ever get it back for good. Like these that me and Jade were borrowing...
Well, I suppose at least we're using the library, which is more than a lot of young people can say.
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Heehee this chapter was fun. Next one is Monday because mocks start Monday and it makes me sad :')