BAD OMENS ✬ luke hemmings

3.2 | music room

Luke always says that he does nothing after school, except today, he's literally doing nothing. The school had nothing for them to do, so they stuck them both in the band room for the hour. The music teacher did stop by, asked him to change the strings on the guitars – his own fault since he mentioned he played.

She also gave Aria a pile of sheet music to lay out on the stands for tomorrow morning's class. Though that all got sorted in the first five minutes, leaving Luke with wire cutters and new strings to weave through and tune.

He sits on the ground, an electric guitar in his lap with rusted strings that look like they haven't been changed in years. Part of him dies at the neglect of the instrument, still, he cuts off the rusted strings – since it's quicker than unwinding each individual chord.

Aria lays on the floor, scrolling through social media – the sound of the videos cutting through the silence in the room – to pass the time. And just like she said, she has completely erased the little chat she and Luke had on Saturday night... as if it never happened.

There's no denying the awkward tension between the two. They haven't even spoken to each other, not even Luke wants to speak up. There's no petty remark, or cause to bicker in his mind, like all the shelves are empty.

He grabs the winder, using the other side to pop off the post from the bridge of the guitar, and pull out the other half of the strings.

Aria, who's bored and doesn't want to drain her phone battery, sits up. She glances around the room, stands and walks towards the storage closet – filled with staple band instruments. She notices two bass guitars with rusting strings sitting in the corner.

Shrugging, she takes one, and carries it out. There are two massive amps sitting in the room, and she's bored. "What are you doing?" Luke asks, watching the girl carry a guitar to the other side of the class. Does she even know how to play?

"I'm bored." Aria replies, grabbing one of the cords and feeding the jack into the instrument. She plugs in the amp to an outlet, switching it on hearing the loud boom sound throughout the echoey classroom.

"So, that means you can pick up any random instrument?" He questions, not wanting to hear a strain of notes that don't even go together on full blast for the next hour. "Can you even play?"

"Hell, yeah I can." She says, sitting down on one of the blue plastic chairs. "I started in tenth grade," she had no real reason to choose the bass guitar. No passion was driven towards it, just that she saw it hanging on a wall one day and thought, I could play that.

It helped out during the CAS experiences, gaining a solid creative strand and lots of evidence to dump into her portfolio.

"How come I didn't know about that?"

"Duh, because we're not friends." She reminds him, grabbing her phone to go to the tuning app she has. Knowing the school, this guitar must be heavily out of tune considering it hasn't been touched in months, or maybe years. "And it's not something I talk about."

"What are you going to play?"

"I'm not sure I want to anymore, you're here." She jokes, plucking a string before tuning it accordingly – including adjusting the volume and tone controls. "You're judgy and this is a sensitive topic," she laughs.

"Me? Judgy?" Luke gasps, bringing a hand to his chest to feign shock. "And since when have you cared what I think?"

"I don't care what you think, I'd rather not put myself into a position where I can get judged." She corrects.

"What do I have to judge you about? It's not like I'm any better at playing bass." He shrugs, "Still, I won't hesitate to call you out if you're shit."

"Do you hear that?" Aria says, plucking another string, "The rattling, extra noise? That's not a good sign, why? Because my nails are too long, it won't sound good either way."