BILLIE JEAN ( eddie munson.. ) ✔

001. Just Like Footloose..

Noise.

Humans are born into a loud world, doomed to die in the same constant sound. This feeling of inevitability stimulates the mind, gets the brain to shut up for a moment and just take it all in that "What the hell? If I am truly doomed, then what is there to lose?"

Desperation sparked creativity from the earliest stages of civilization and copying from our surrounding nature, humans began ordering noise into music.

As controversial as that may seem, all songs are the same. Sure, it's arguable that they have different arrangements of words, that they create different emotions to the listener and so on, but it's a reason behind why one dance move can be repeated on a loop throughout the twenty songs a bar might be playing on their dance night: all music is the same at its core.

One simple beat sequence, at the base of most of the popular tunes of the age. That is the root of the answer to why music stimulates humans unlike anything else. You don't really need to know the language of the singer to understand the song. You don't need to know the singer themselves to feel what they feel when they're singing.

Music is the ordered noise with which we control the already set life.

But Hawkins High did not just have a single song playing during breaks. In fact, there was so much music that it all spiraled right back into plain noise which Billie Carter was aware her walkman was not going to be able to cover. Those old headphones rested around her neck, hitting her collarbone each time she turned her head or skipped her step, as part of the hearty conversation she was having with Austin.

"I'm telling you," Austin scrunched his nose to force his glasses back up its hunched bridge. His bangs haven't been cut in a while, so he counted on that transparent frame to hold the ends of his hair from poking his eyes out with their roughness. He was a tall fellow, benefiting from long legs, unlike his friend from the science club. Yet, Billie was still somehow leaving him breathless with her normally fast pace during their daily walk to the cafeteria.

"If we really put our minds to it," Austin continued, holding on for his breath and to the notebook hugged at his chest, over a plain blue shirt. "You and I could finish that rocket this spring break and get NASA's attention before they even see our resumes. We ran the math, it's going to work."

Spring break was just around the corner and it was showing, most distinctively on the halls of Hawkins High. Effervescent anticipation of a short holiday purged the minds of every student now roaming the halls as a homage to the chaos theory itself. That translated to having to dodge people, but nevertheless expecting to be nudged every ten steps.

"I don't know," Billie mumbled along, holding on to her own notebook as well. After their last class, she didn't waste a second with cramming that thing into the red backpack weighing on her back. The absenteeism of her voice was naturally caused by her taking in the noise: the school orchestra rehearsing for tomorrow's school gathering in an open classroom they just passed by, the radio static blocking some news spoken into the speakers on the hallway's every corner, Austin's ranting on about their end of high school project...

He was a nice guy. Austin. He led the science club for their year and as soon as she showed her skills on a physics problem during her first day in the institution, he approached her with this bold project. To his luck, it turned out Billie was more than familiar with rockets thanks to her dad.

"You don't know?" Austin exclaimed his perplexed need for clarification. "What do you mean you don't know? We are beyond certain with the math-"

"Oh, no, the math is correct," Billie rectified, turning herself towards Austin without really pausing her walk. She put on the kind of smile she learnt how to showcase, how to work and take full advantage. There was a certain privilege Billie learnt she could gain sometimes, from the usual hell of being a girl with an inclination to science, depending on what people she was around. On Austin, a picture-perfect smile always worked.