Main Stage

Chapter 4: Samson

Thank you for reading!

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Nella walked through the garage and into the main house to her obnoxiously large bedroom to begin packing. All she truly needed were clothes and bathroom essentials. She wore her BT21 hoodies during the winter as well, so it didn't truly matter what she wore underneath. Throwing t-shirts, jeans, and various colored vans into different bags, Nella sighed out her frustration. 

"How can I feel so alone in this place and still want to be here?" She whispered to herself. "I don't make sense, even to myself."

In the corner of her room was a glossy, dark piano, which commandeered much of the space. It was one of the few things she and her mom had kept from their old house, their old life. Running her hands over the wood, she made a mental note to call for its semi-annual piano tuning soon. A desk was juxtaposed to the piano, against the far wall. Loose paper and journals were strewn across it, filled with half-written lyrics and music covered in a thin layer of dust. An unfinished scholarship application lay in the middle of it, almost mocking her. She had an entire binder of applications her mother had sent through the mail, which she expected to be done a mere few days after Nella had received it. In reality, Nella was just reaching the middle of the overflowing menace. 

She crouched to pull open one of the bottom drawers of the desk to sift through her stored song journals. She noticed hot pink fur and took out a small Hello Kitty notebook with a bejeweled heart in the center. She hadn't seen this dirty thing in quite some time. Flipping through the yellowing pages, Nella saw the faded, almost illegible writing of her first grade self. The journal was filled with small, immature poems about sunny days, friendship and puppies. She smiled at her former joy, immortalized on the page, and wished she could go back to this happiness.

She flipped to the last page in the journal, where she had stuck a few loose pieces of paper about a year ago, stowing them away to hide her shame. Compiled in the papers were some of the songs she had written for last year's Main Stage, the original, original ones, before they had been doctored by Gareth to fit his vision for Underscore 3.

She pulled out the song that had gotten them to Final Stage last year, Samson. It was a private song she had written, expressing her anger and constant turmoil. She had never meant for anyone else to hear it, especially not an eavesdropping Gareth who had stumbled across her playing it in the choir room at school. 

Nella picked up the page and smiled slightly. "Samson, I had faith in you."

Nella had written this her freshman year of high school when Gareth had cut off his long hair and gotten his first girlfriend, Delilah. She wrote this as a way to let go of her unrequited feelings. Her angst, her broken heart, her guitar, they were the only things that defined her. Reading the lyrics, she visibly cringed at her past self. She looked toward the corner of the room where her long-neglected acoustic guitar sat propped against the wall. Since starting up Underscore 3 with Gareth and Andre--Stacy came in about a year and half ago--Nella had mainly focused on her skills as a pianist. She was the only one among her friends who could play the piano, but the guitar had always had a piece of her heart. She loved the versatility of the guitar, the smokey tones, the hollow weight against her body.

Dust flew into her nasal cavity as she grabbed the guitar case from the wall, making her sneeze violently, almost knocking her glasses from her face. She did not have a "cute girl sneeze"; her sneezes were more "sport-spectating, middle-aged dad" sneezes. She unlatched the case. There was no telling what condition the strings were in, never mind how out of tune they were. They hadn't been changed in a couple of years.

Nella sat cross-legged on her bed and painstakingly tuned the old strings, hoping they wouldn't pop. She placed the sheet in front of her and unhooked the pick from around her neck. All she had to go on were some chords written above the fading words and her hazy memory, but still, she sang.