Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE NEXT MORNING - JULY FOURTH
SHE SAT ON THE GUM AND DIRT-RIDDEN SIDEWALK, as cruelly optimistic music blasted from the parade whilst it filed past her.
She chewed harder on her own bubble gum in an effort to dwindle the musical clatter in her ears.
As it became too much, her hand reached up to her head as it throbbed from a mixture of the raucous tunes and her subsiding illness. This was the last place she had any desire to be. The heels of her sneakers squealed against the concrete as she dropped her achy legs to the scratchy surface, arms crossed over her chest.
Chew.
Chew.
Chew.
A flash of annoyance tore suddenly across her scrunched face when she found Richie - who had sworn to Eddie that he'd wait at her side in his absence to get ice cream - capering in the midst of the street wrangling with a teenager and his trumpet. Amelia rolled her eyes as the band member looked far past irritated at the brunette boy, that endeavored ( quite miserably) to equal the beat of the surrounding instruments.
Chew.
Chew.
Chew.
"Kid, it's my trumpet," the teenager groused loudly as Richie persisted on with his attempts to create some tune from the trumpet, "Come on and give it to me already."
Richie fixed an awkward stance on the trumpet and puffed a heavy gasp of air into it, his cheeks blazing slightly in crimson. A sputter of a tune, surprisingly, emitted from the instrument, and he smirked upon the mouthpiece. However, the aggravated band member clinched his two hands on the base of the instrument.
He then forcefully strived to wrench it from Richie's hands, "Let go."
"No, fuck you, dude," Richie sniggered in return, and shifted the trumpet aside from his prying grasp.
The teenager moved forward, and with a swell of might, hauled the instrument from the boy's hands. He elbowed him down to the curb immediately after with an 'oof'.
