understated || a.i.

prolouge

I was fifteen when my parents told me they were getting a divorce.

Truth be told, I had seen it coming. I was even excited when my mother told me. In the end, while I may have been bitter about the fighting, I was never bitter about the split. It was relief to be able to escape the hostility that had been a default setting in my house.

Of course, moving to Australia to be with my dad and his new wife at the age of fifteen wasn't exactly what I had in mind for my "great escape". I begged and pleaded to live with my mom, but both of my traitors for parents agreed it would be better to follow my dad halfway across the world for some reason. (My mother told me it was because she thought I needed the experience of being in a new culture, but my dad slipped the fact that mom's new boyfriend had a problem with kids. See: traitors for parents.)

Karen was nice enough, but that didn't mean I started calling her mother as soon as I stepped foot in her home. My father encouraged me to refer to her as a friend until I became more comfortable with seeing her as a mother figure. It took me a solid two months to stop calling her "Mrs. Clifford" to her face and "homewrecker" behind her back (okay, so maybe I was a little bitter). I still haven't quite warmed up to calling her "mom", though I do think of her as a friend. Or perhaps a good acquaintance.

I was also encouraged to see my new stepbrother, Michael, as a good friend, but that didn't take nearly as long.

Michael was a year older than me and much, much cooler. His hair was ever-changing and he was in a band. It didn't matter to me that he had dropped out of school to pursue his career or that his hair was probably going to fall off by the age of twenty due to all the damage he'd done to it. He made me laugh when he wasn't trying and he was easy to talk to. He took me in as a friend and introduced me to all his bandmates, and while I didn't warm up to them as quickly as I had, and often feltl ike I was just the "little stepsister," I appreciated the gesture.

The thing was, I wanted to be friends with his band. 5 Seconds of Summer was a band of four guys, all the type of people others just wanted to be around. Michael, guitar player and backup vocals and my stepbrother, was always making someone laugh. Calum, the bassist and backup vocals, was the sweetest boy I'd yet to meet. Luke, the lead singer and guitarist, was serious and focused, but so easy on the eyes that no one seemed to mind. And Ashton, the drummer, was... Well, perfect.

And me? I was just the stepsister who went to practically every show. I followed them around like a clueless puppy. And though everyone claimed to like me, I always had the sneaking suspcious they just kind of put up with me. Not that I minded. It was nice to have friends as the new kid. Especially cooler, older friends who were in a band. Not a famous band or anything -- the most exciting gig they'd ever gotten was for the Anderson wedding a few towns over, because Calum knew a guy -- but a band. And even when I eventually moved from the grade school I'd attended halfway through my junior year (I was still accustomed to American ways of life) to an Austrailian university just down the road and made new friends, 5 Seconds of Summer's friendship was still a staple in my life, something I was always grateful for.

Of course, that all changed when I started falling for the drummer. 

//

Okay, guys, so I'm Maggie and this is my first story on Wattpad! I have some ideas for this and I'm super excited, so I hope you're excited as I am. :)

First things first, I don't see this story containing very many triggering subjects (besides language, drug use/abuse, sex, etc.) but if there end up being some, I will warn you guys! Second, I took some liberties with this story. Obviously these accounts are not real (I do not own 5SOS but boy, how I wish I did), and therefore I took some libterties with who wrote what songs and during what time period. Just so you guys know! 

I hope you guys love this story as much as I do!