Main Stage

Chapter 3: Boys of Fall

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Happy reading!

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 Nella's house was a mansion. Well, her step-father's house was a mansion. As a doctor, he was entitled to such lavish things. It wasn't that Nella minded living in a three-storied wonder of architecture, but she did mind the echoes in the empty rooms that reminded her of her absent mother and step-father, who were off in Ecuador to help with earthquake relief. She hadn't seen her mother's face in the better part of a year. She almost didn't remember what she looked like.

Nella loved being alone. She loved quiet, cozy spaces, curling up with a good book, and listening to music. But this house was a little too quiet; she felt a little too isolated. She had learned that being alone and being lonely were not one and the same. Having her bandmates over for practice every few days had become almost a necessity for Nella's sanity.

Because they were loud and they filled up the house to the point that Nella forgot why the hell she needed them there in the first place. Despite her individual undying love for each of them, by the end of every practice, she was practically begging them to leave and be obnoxious somewhere else.

She was reaching that point right about now.

Stacy Warnock, their talented bassist and newest member of Underscore 3, was unceremoniously clipping her toenails into the garage trash can. Nella never understood why they insisted on practicing in the garage when her house was littered with gigantic rooms that had wonderful inventions such as heating. It was October, after all.

Nella shoved her hands into her pockets to warm them up and pushed her feet closer to the small heater under her keyboard. She carefully observed her remaining bandmates. Andre Jimenez was twirling his drumstick absentmindedly around his fingers as he listened closely to the speaker on his phone. He was nodding his head, memorizing the beat of a particularly difficult drum part for the cover song they were performing for First Stage, the first round of three for Main Stage.

Gareth stood to the side, talking into his phone. Nella couldn't help but overhear the one-sided conversation.

"Nothing's wrong, babe."

Ah, he was talking to Cherry. Now that Nella thought about it, Cherry usually showed up to their practices, but today she was absent.

"I know. I wish you had been here, though. One-Act is always going to be your top priority, I guess."

Nella cringed at Gareth's painfully obvious guilt-trip. She knew Cherry would fall for it, though. Nella had done it plenty of times as well.

"Yeah. It would have been easier with you here, though. It's hard to lead people who don't want to go anywhere."

Nella visibly flinched, but it went unnoticed. She knew exactly who that comment was directed at: her. It's not like she didn't want to go anywhere; she just didn't know where to go. The direction she was trying to go was obviously not what Gareth wanted for Underscore 3. 

She caught Stacy, who had apparently also been listening, rolling her eyes. She met Nella's gaze before winking and going back to clipping her toenails. Nella tried to ignore the metallic noise.

And Nella couldn't help but not be into the music. She didn't care for Gareth's First Stage song choice this year: Boys of Fall. Not that the song wasn't good, but it was too modern country for Nella's liking. But Gareth's logic made sense: "this is a crowd-pleaser. It gets people dancing and South Creek is a country town."

Although Nella wasn't the biggest fan of country music, she had grown up around it and had knew how to perform it well. Piano never made a huge appearance, though.