Hello Little Girl

Chapter 9

John nervously scanned the growing crowd of onlookers. Already, his hands were sweaty with mounting anticipation. The rest of the guys twitched with nerves, trying to chatter among themselves coolly or tune their instruments even though Julia had already helped them with that.

If he’d cared, John would have had a good laugh at their clumsy antics. But something was obviously on his mind. Even as they’d started to prepare a few hours ago, the rest of the Quarrymen suspected funny behavior out of their leader. He was being quiet, too quiet; like he was thinking about something else constantly. That on top of everything did not help the trembling in their knees.

John glanced back at the boys. They were looking at him expectantly, waiting for something to be said, for him to tell them what to do. He cleared his throat. “Got a staring problem?”

They looked away.

He turned back to the crowd.

Part of John’s being weird was nerves because of the performance; getting sick earlier had been enough to show that, but most of it stemmed from a certain dark-eyed, dark-haired bird that kept creeping into his thoughts.

Since she stormed out of Mendips last week, John had not seen hide nor hair of Wendy. Even if she remembered his late night invitation to the gig, John was sure she wouldn’t. All the same though, he couldn’t help but scan his surroundings all day, half-hoping he’d see her hips sway into view with a lopsided smile on her face…

Even though he hadn’t seen her in some time, John still thought about her quite a lot. He still craved to win her over, he was in too deep to back out now. He wanted her stamp of approval before he drowned his feelings for her in a bottle of vodka and moved on. Her opinion of him meant more than anyone else’s right now.

John scanned the audience lingeringly, trying to appear like he was nonchalantly squinting at something a mile away that had caught his attention. Not missing the lad’s strange behavior, Griffiths lightly shoved John’s shoulder. “Alright mate?”

John glanced around at him and nodded, coughing a little. “Yeah, gear.”

He looked back at the large gray house where he could have sworn he saw a flash of mahogany hair dip from the shadows just a second ago, but there was nothing now.

Come on Lennon; get your head out of the fucking clouds.

He looked down at the flatbed truck the group was standing on and fumbled to put his fingers on the right chords for the opening song.

She’s only a bird.

And not a very pretty one at that.

He smirked at the other lads with the familiar mischievous air he always held. “Ready men?” He barked. They nodded, professionally and perfectly in sync, murmuring in consent as they mimicked his actions of preparing for the first tune.

“To the toppermost of the poppermost.” John muttered to himself.

A pretty bird in the front caught his attention and before a thought crossed his mind he winked at her. With curly red hair to accompany the growing crimson in her cheeks, the girl looked like her entire head had been set ablaze. The image nearly made John laugh out loud.

He turned slightly towards the lads, a little more relaxed now.

The band had practiced hard for this gig and if it all went well there would be more like this to come.

He smirked reassuringly at them and then turned back to the mike, facing the crowd and the red-headed girl up front. His heart pounded in his ears. He took a deep breath.