Getting It Right (BOOK THREE)

Chapter 20

For most of the week, Keenan occupies his self by working on his music. He stays in his room for hours, writing and rewriting, coming up with beats in his head, getting frustrated and starting over. Sometimes he forgets about eating actual meals and instead settles for whatever snacks he can find around his room. He's been in this room so long he's forgotten what daylight looks like.

His door creaks open and footsteps enter, he barely acknowledges his guest as he focuses on the song at hand.

"Keenan you've been in here for days." His mothers voices carries over to him but he doesn't let it interfere with his writing. "Seriously it's a mess in here and smells like a boys locker room." Keenan continues to ignore her as his hand flies across the page. Suddenly a piercing bright light cuts through the room, almost blinding him.

"Ahh, ma!" He exclaims throwing his hands up to cover his eyes.

"Well that's what happens when you don't leave this room." She says, opening his other blinds too and letting in more natural light. "You need to take a break."

Keenan opens his eyes and sees yellow dots swimming around in his vision. "I'm making art."

"You're making a mess." She stands in the middle of his room looking around. "Clean up."

"I will, right after I finish this line. I swear I'm almost done with this song." He says, picking up his pencil. His mother looks over his shoulder as he writes, her eyes skim the page and she's pleased with what she's reading. She's always known Keenan had talent and this year he's really been tapping into it and working hard on his music. She thinks that part of it is because he had...or had...a little girl that was going to look up to him and Aubrey was always the biggest supporter of his music. Even with them out of the picture, Keenan only works harder for what he wants. Which is a career in music. It's a hard industry to get in to and even though his mother believes in him, she doesn't want him to get hung up on making it big.

"This is really good Keenan." She massages his shoulders that are stiff from being in this position for so long.

Keenan squints at the paper, his vision is getting blurry from staring at the same thing for so long but he's determined to finish. "And now...I'm...done!" He puts a period at the end of the sentence then drops his pencil and throws his head back. "Finally done, I've been working on this one for months." He flexes his throbbing fingers and they let off a round of cracking noises.

His mother picks up the notebook and reads the words scrawled across the page. "So what's next?"

"Bring it to Marcus so we can add a hot beat to it, then we'll discuss plans from there." Keenan stares at the notebook in her hands like its pure goal.

She places it on the desk and applauds. "It's really good, I'm so proud of how hard you've been working." She rests a hand on her chin. "I was worried that you were holed up in this room because of what happened with Aubrey but...you've made some great work in here."

"I'm over the Aubrey thing, I just want to focus on music for now." Keenan replies. Truthfully Aubrey has crossed his mind every now and then but he forced the thoughts of her out of his brain in order to get his song done. Plus, it saddens him to think about her and Neveah too long.

Janine told him all about how she ran into Aubrey out with her ex-boyfriend, he didn't want to know what he looked like in case they ever ran into each other on the streets. It wouldn't be pretty for him and Keenan doesn't want to get his self involved anyway, staying away from all of them is a much better idea.

"I'm going to take a shower." He stands up and cracks his back.

"Alright, then clean up this room." His mom gives him the eye which means he'll probably get consequences if he doesn't listen to her. Keenan heads to the bathroom and adjust the water temperature to warm, then locks the door behind him.