haverford chronicles: an alex g story.

2. nothing wrong (09/08/09)

As I quickly ran out of my house, I saw Sam waiting for me, lying down on the grass for some reason. "Thanks for actually showing up. But, uh, why are you lying down on my lawn?" I asked through laughs. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with this guy. He chuckles and stands up.

"You took like 20 years. I got here twenty minutes ago."

Does he not know he can ring the doorbell? He's so dumb sometimes. In a good way, though.

"Whatever. Let's just go now. If we're late on the second day, I'll cry," I said, sarcastically.

As we were walking and talking about some TV show we were watching, I remembered the boy from yesterday. Zach was his name, I think. I decided to ask Sam about him.

"Hey, uh, you know Zach? Blonde dude?" I asked.

Sam looked at me and replied, "Colin's friend? He's over at our house all the time. What about him?"

"I talked to him yesterday. He was helping me with that one demo I showed you the other day. He seems pretty cool," I said, waiting to see what Sam would say about him. I don't really know why I'm so curious about him. He just seems cool.

"I'm pretty sure he has a band with Abi. I remember seeing them play over the summer at the park down on Parkview. The one we played at sometimes." Huh. I've never seen him at any shows at the school. Probably a small acoustic thing. He doesn't seem like a hardcore dude, really.

We then changed the subject and started talking about our show later. Me, Sam, and Colin were performing tonight in our school's auditorium. They have music nights sometimes where local bands come to play, and they invited us, which was pretty cool. Even though I should be worrying about the show, I was strangely really excited to see Zach later. I don't usually get like this over anyone, especially this early into meeting them. It's weird. Probably just me being strange or something.

As my free period came around a few hours later, I ran down to the library and quickly grabbed the guitar from Mrs. Bohl and sat at the same table. This time, I brought my notebook where I write my chords down for songs so I can remember them. Suddenly, the guy I've been waiting for all day barges through the door.

"Hey, Mrs. Bohl! Hey, Alex!" he says, walking over to me. Without even saying another word, he takes my notebook off the table and starts flipping through it, which kinda annoyed me.

"Thanks for asking before going through that," I said, half joking.

He just laughs and says, "My bad, just wanted to see what we were working with here." I was kind of a dick to him there, and he didn't care. Dang. Seems like he's the kind of guy who doesn't get bothered by anything, really. He flipped to the page with "GNAW" and handed me a piece of paper with some lyrics he wrote.

"Soooo? What do ya think?" he asks, waiting eagerly for my response.

I pick up my guitar and start playing the ending part, singing the lyrics over top. I changed them a little bit each time, but after 5-6 plays, I finally decided on some I liked based on his.

"I think that sounds pretty cool. You agree?" I asked, hoping for his approval.

He just smiled and said, "Hell yeah." Seems like he liked them. This feels really nice, having people like my music. I've always been really insecure about my own stuff, so it's really cool to have someone liking my work and helping me with it rather than just The Skin Cells stuff. I did have one question for him, though.

"You doing anything tonight?" I asked, looking at him. Shit, that sounded weird. I quickly added on before I even saw how he reacted. "Not like, in a weird way. I mean, like, The Skin Cells got a show tonight here, and I was wondering if you could come or something like that," I said. Or something close to that. I stumbled over my words like twelve times trying to say that, but who's counting. He starts dying laughing at me for like ten seconds. Not cool.

After laughing at me (ugh), he looked up and said, "Yeah, of course. You having a little trouble talking?" he asked, teasing me. I got a little embarrassed and red and rolled my eyes, shoving him lightly playfully. He's pretty funny, I've noticed. I'm hoping he comes to the show tonight.

"Anyway, do you guys have any CDs or anything? Haven't been able to find anything you guys have recorded. Didn't know if you were just a live band or...?" Zach looks at me. He's interested in listening to us? I mean, our music is like, really bad. I don't know what he hears. And I haven't made any CDs at all, like, ever. We've recorded stuff, but that's just in my GarageBand files. I could probably burn them on a CD or something.

"Uhhh...not really. They're on my computer, though. My sister Rachel's got a CD burner I could probably borrow and burn a few files on if ya want. Just so you know, the recordings are, like, really bad. I'll just put some random ones on there." I hope he doesn't mind them sucking, like, really bad. I've only listened to each recording once, and there are, like, only 3 or 4, so it won't be very interesting.

"Hell yeah! I'll come to the show tonight, and if you could give me one of those, that'd be really cool. You don't gotta or anything. Just if you have the time. I know you guys probably need to practice."

"Yeah, I'll do that. Hope you like them," I said, nervously. I really didn't want him to think our music was bad. As the bell rang again and we said our goodbyes, I walked out of the library and sat in the hallway for a minute.

Why do I even care what this guy thinks? I mean, we play for people all the time. I have lots of friends, and I don't really feel nervous around them. But this dude I've known for two days—I worry about impressing him? I'm probably just reading too deep into this. I'll just go and put some random files on a CD and give it to him. I have a pretty good friend group, and I don't like branching out too much. All it is, is I'm probably just nervous talking to someone new.

Right?