Only Once

Chapter Fifteen: Inspirational Times

Chapter Fifteen: Inspirational Times

Spencer was in what he liked to call his inspired state.

Hardly aware of anything, he had his forearms placed on the kitchen table and was crouching over the sheets of paper in front of him. Delicate markings of precision and insight were made on a particular page as his pencil frantically flew it.

After a moment, Spencer looked over what he had written and frown grew on his face. He frantically erased in disgust.

Funny how it had seemed so right only seconds ago. He thought to himself as he leaned back in the chair and stared at the sheets of almost blank bars and measures, his inspired state having disappeared like the pencil markings.

The previous night, Russell had called Spencer to tell him to write the last song necessary for the band slam. Although he hadn’t necessarily given a time to have it done by, it was obvious that Russell wanted it as soon as possible. It was for this reason that Spencer was spending his Saturday afternoon sitting in his strangely dark kitchen with a pencil in hand and struggling to think of what to write. He had somewhat done the chorus and was working on the rest of the song. A difficult task since he had yet to decide on lyrics to use.

“You make me feel like an empty can. So just go and kill a man.” Spencer said out loud and made a face at how bad it sounded. Maybe he could just write the melody and get someone else to do the lyrics.

Spencer then sneezed and blew his nose. He felt like crap because of his allergies. To make matters worse, it was as if the dumb dog knew that Spencer was allergic to him and as a result, it wouldn’t leave him alone.

Spencer glanced down beneath the table to find that, sure enough, the dog was there lying by his feet. Heaving out a sign, he started to move his foot toward the dog at an attempt to make it leave.

The dog, however, growled in return.

“Hey kid, what are you doing?”

Spencer turned around to find that Joel had entered the kitchen; his beady eyes eyeing Spencer and the sheets of music on the table. So he hadn’t noticed that his stepson was seconds away from kicking the family dog.

“Nothing,” Spencer replied.

“Well at least pull up the blinds so you can see, for god’s sakes.” Joel muttered as he marched over to the window and pulled up the shades. The room suddenly lit up as the sun shone in and Spencer temporarily squinted. No wonder it been so dark. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he turned back to the music.

Joel said nothing and instead prepared himself a bowl of cereal while Spencer tried to think of what to write.

“There’s something I gotta talk to you about.” Joel suddenly said and sat down across from him.

Spencer collected the scattered sheets of music so Joel wouldn’t accidently spill any milk on it and peered up at him.

“What?”

“You need to get a job. You have to save up some money so you can stand on your own two feet after high school. I mean, you don’t want to end up like your father, right?” Joel blurted out. 

“There’s nothing wrong with my dad.” Spencer said through gritted teeth, he hated whenever Joel degraded his father like that.

“Oh yeah?” Joel was cynical.

“Yeah!”

“Then why won’t you go visit him?” Joel demanded as he stuffed a spoonful of cereal in his mouth.