Kim Pine's Precious Little Knives

Chapter 4

You'll probably think I'm being a super lazy storyteller when I start out with "And that's how it went for a week or so." Fuck you, I do what I want. Besides, I'm going to give you some summary stuff, so don't get too bent out of shape.

And that's how it went for a week or so. Knives would disappear for a couple days, then pop back into my life to just chat and hang out, come with me to the library or work, digging through albums at Sonic Boom. Literally a stray dog. None of my attempts to be acerbic and grumpy could drive her off. Sometimes she wanted to get food together, sometimes she wouldn't bring it up. Eventually, she stopped asking about the "challenges" though, which was fine since there weren't any. One thing I had to wonder about, though...

She never invited herself back to my apartment, or asked me to go to her place. Probably the second one is because she's living with her parents while on break from uni. But it was weird; she was spending all this extra time finding me and following me, wanting to have enforced bonding time, but never wanted to see where I lived or make the night longer. It's not so much that I was disappointed by that, of course. Just surprised. Like people who jumbo-size their fast food meal, then order a diet soda. Why go for broke with the eats but then stop short on the drink? Just not logic that I can follow.

Anyway, that was about it until the night Steph and I were going to play an actual show instead of being stuck in the corner of a café. I hadn't been thinking too much about it, because to be honest, the idea of playing this kind of music in front of an audience that actually came specifically to hear live music was terrifying. It took all night for me to psych myself up to not chicken out, since this wasn't exactly my comfort zone with live performance.

"We can do this," she was whispering backstage as we waited anxiously for the emcee to call for us. "We can. We totally can, and we totally will."

"You're going to talk both of us out of it at this rate."

"Shhh." Adjusting her ironic beret, she glanced over at me. "Almost showtime, that guy with the six harmonicas seems close to done."

Nodding, I pushed my coppery bangs out of my face. They were growing out, and finally just long enough that they were almost normal hair. I was just sick of bangs. "Yeah."

"You okay?"

My entire body bristled. "What? Fine. Shut up."

"You've been kind of weird since last week at the Other Cup. Like... we don't talk much outside of band prac-"

"I really don't want to, either," I lied. Sure, it'd be nice to have someone besides the hyper ninja chick to talk to, but Steph didn't have to offer friendship out of pity. We were both above that.

"Suit yourself. Oh, this is us."

Shaking off the vague feeling of nausea, I made myself follow her out onto the tiny stage. The announcer just said our names and encouraged the audience to "give it up", which they did, politely and quietly. We didn't have a band name yet since Steph said she was "over labels" and I didn't want to argue with her. Naming it would be accepting that this was actually the shitty excuse for a band that I was currently part of. The latest of many.

"This one's called 'Garland of Cornelia'," she said into the mic. "And it goes a little something like this."

What a cheeseball.

We played our set, and people actually didn't boo us off. We sounded as good as we possibly could given the kind of crap Steph writes, and dare I say it, we might have been ready for the big time if we could find a flautist. Or a thereminist; that seemed about right for this pretentious bullshit. It made my skin crawl and I really wanted someone else to be playing the bongos instead of me, since really she could play bongos as well as I can — just not at the same time as the zither. But I could fill in with her for now until she found someone who hated the music less than me. Or until I found another rock outfit that wouldn't implode like the others.