All I Want Is Everything

Sophomore effort

You've got to believe in yourself
Or no one will believe in you
Imagination like a bird on the wing
Flying free for you to use

Ozzy Ozbourne, Believer

All in all, it took about two months after the tour for things to really get moving on the second album. The band had to agree on the songs to submit to the label, the label had to approve the songs, and it took time for Scott Lang to be freed up to work with them. In the meantime, the twins celebrated their birthday on the fourth of July by hosting a block party for the neighborhood and friends in the afternoon. Ella bought her twin an expensive Walkman as entertainment when they were on the road, and he bought her a bottle of the perfume that she loved but was too tight to buy for herself. Bucky gave her a stack of pretty little silver knuckle rings that he thought would look cool when she played; Nat gave her a leather-bound manuscript notebook with seven staves per page and some pretty fountain pen ink. There was cake, vanilla with raspberries between the layers and chocolate frosting. Later that night, the twins, bandmates and invited friends went out to less family-friendly entertainment in the bars and watched fireworks. Both Ella and Steve had always enjoyed the fireworks at the end of their birthday celebrations, but this year afterward they went back to the bars, collecting free drinks, dancing, and celebrating.

Ella woke up the next morning, hungover and a little sore from dancing until closing, when she heard shouting downstairs. She decided to go to the bathroom since she was up, and thus witnessed a scene in the second floor hall where both her brother and Bucky were trying to boot out their female companions from the night before. Ella tried not to grind her teeth at the sight of the women, apparently still drunk, pleading to be allowed to stay--including offers for blowjobs and other sexual acts. "Jesus," Ella muttered, rubbing her head and opening the door to her bathroom. The odor inside upset her stomach, and she blinked a few times before realizing that somebody had puked in her bathroom and not made it to the toilet.

"Who got sick in here?" Ella demanded to know, turning toward the unruly group in the hall. The women looked to be clothed, but her brother was in boxers and Bucky was bare-assed naked. "Goddamn it!" she yelled, then clutched her head, using the pain as an excuse to covertly surveil Bucky. Michelangelo would have wept to have him for a model, although his privates were on a considerably grander scale than David's. Ella thought that there was something about that, that big dicks were for barbarians and beasts in the Classical era? The details from her art history course were fuzzy just now.

"It's not a good time right now, Ella," Steve said tensely.

"There is puke all over my goddamned bathroom, Steven Grant Rogers. And one of you did it," she snapped.

"It might have been me," one of the women said timidly, raising her hand and wiggling her fingertips. "I puked somewhere. I'm not sure where."

Ella surveyed the group which was now silent. The woman's hand fell to her side. "Clean. It. Up," she said through clenched teeth. "NOW!" She stabbed a finger at the door.

It was too much. The women fled down the stairs, apparently taking a couple of wrong turns--what the hell? The door was Right In Front--before escaping.

"Whose 'date' was it?" she asked the guys. Bucky tried to inch back into his bedroom, covering his junk with his hands inconspicuously.

"It's not like I've never seen a dick before," she said testily. "Or even the first time I've seen your dick."

"We were seven years old!" Bucky fired back. "I was peeing in the woods. Things have changed since then!"

Ella remembered that incident pretty well. The Rogers kids and the Barnes kids had been taken on some nature walk somewhere--she couldn't remember, they'd only been in Brooklyn a few months--and the group of children had split up to look around. A lot of the plants were different to Ella, used to the more arid landscape of southern Idaho, and she'd wandered around looking at everything that was new. She'd almost literally stumbled across her new friend, who had apparently needed a pee break and been too far away from a bathroom. It was the first time she could recall seeing a penis and she hadn't been too impressed but was a little jealous that Bucky could aim his pee like a hose. "Snake!" she'd said eagerly, diverted, and trotted away to follow a garter snake that was doing its level best to get away from the kids.