Standing By

Should We Be Friends?

(Tim)

"Oh. My. God," Adam moaned, eyeing the tall blonde, huddled together with the woman, the dark-haired guy, and now alongside some African-American guy and another guy with a silly-looking beanie on his head. "What are they doing here?"

    "They who?" Rob asked brightly, oddly enough, the widest awake of the five of us.

    "Those fools." Chance pointed at them. The dark-haired one caught him looking at them and pointed exaggeratedly back at him. "Oops," he muttered, then issued a louder "sorry" across the room.

    "What about them?" Rob asked.

    "Folks! Look alive!" Dave, the director of the Christmas program, shouted. "You're supposed to be working with your songs!"   

    "Sorry, man, there was a disturbance in the lobby last night that kept us up," someone in the front explained.

    "And the seventh floor!" the annoying blonde piped up.  "Complete with a naked drunk guy!"

    "He was not drunk," I remarked irritably, crossing my arms.

    The blonde's entourage laughed with him. Adam sent a spare rubber band flying in his direction.

    "Yeah, I had to," he murmured to us. "He is a jerk."

    We started our own chuckling.

    "OK! Guys! I need to see some rehearsing!" the director snapped. "Or I'm going to scrap you because you're not prepared!"

    "We'd better get it together," Chance remarked as the director eyed both Adam and the blonde guy's group.

    "Err, yeah," Adam agreed and quickly started dropping a beat.

    Rob promptly dropped the harmonica and Adam let out a giant sigh. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" He went dow on his knees and had to go fishing under the seat for it. "Got it- shit, no I don't."  The harmonica dropped down into the row below us and Rob stuck his torso under the chair to get it. It just hit the end of his fingertips and started a wild tumble down the tiered seats. The four of us took one look at each other and burst into laughter.

    "Uh, help," Rob muttered, kicking his legs frantically. "Think I'm stuck."

    Adam actually fell out of his chair laughing. Austin trotted down to try and find our harmonica, while Chance and I reached down and tugged at Rob.

    "Ow!" he squeaked.

    "Pull your stomach in," I advised.

    He grunted, but seemed to get a little smaller as the director started to come in our direction, probably to yell at us.

    "Hey," someone said above the three of us.

    We all righted up, Rob bumping his head on the seat.

    "We dropped our harmonica!" Chance immediately explained to Dave.

    "Drop something?" asked the African-American man from the blonde's group.

    "Err, yeah," I said, accepting it.

    "Will you people get it together?" Dave snapped as Rob decided to eye this new guy with significant distaste.

    "Can you tell your group to quit giving us the death glare?" Rob asked him.

    The man threw his hands up. "Hey, don't blame me. I slept right through whatever happened between y'all and Scott, Mitch, and Kirstie."