Out of Tune: The Original 2015 Draft

chapter 14

Music is the shorthand of emotion

-Leo Tolstoy

We were a week away from our trip and everyone was growing...antsy. The guys walked around humming our songs as we tried to figure out what to play and were constantly tapping out new rhythms on any type of stationary surface.

As for me, well, I was trying not to freak out and I was trying not to punch Michael Black in the face. The reason for the latter was because I was being forced to sit beside him on the forty-hour long bus ride to New York City in just seven days.

We hadn't spoken to each other since the night of the party and I didn't want to speak to him either. The only reason we'd ended up beside each other was because my history teacher, Mr. Lafayette, was incapable of putting things in alphabetical order. By his understanding, B and P came right beside each other in the alphabet.

When I'd first broken the news to the guys, they were none too happy. Zeke and Charlie threatened to poison his water with chemicals that I couldn't come close to pronouncing. Miles swore that he would dig into Michael's past and exploit him on his bed-wetting habits if he brought up the incident and Spencer...well, Spencer said that he would punch Michael in the face. Repeatedly.

It wasn't as if I doubted Spencer's capability to punch someone, but thinking of him going up against Michael was like visualizing an ant going up against a bulldozer. It was definitely not one of the prettier sights I could imagine.

On top of everything going on with Michael and the trip, I'd finally been told of what my mother's secret was. I'd known that something was going on when we abruptly had a puppy, more like a little devil which would not stay away from my shoes, but it had taken two and a half weeks for my mother and Brad to finally confess what was going on.

My mom was pregnant.

It wasn't like I was adverse to the idea of having another younger sibling, but I hadn't been privy to the crying and the screaming and the fighting that I knew I would be forced to witness now. When my mother had given birth to Tyler, I'd still been living with my dad. But now I would be forced to witness the little monster first-hand, straight from the womb.

On the bright side, maybe my mom and Brad would be too distracted with baby stuff to overreact when they heard about me being in the band.

Somehow, I sincerely doubted it.

Truth be told, I was extremely worried about having my mom and Brad find out about me being in Imagine Reality. But, I was even more concerned about not telling the world and losing our shot. In my heart, I knew that this was the right thing to do. It was almost as if my father was with me, letting me know that this was the right thing to do. I was still scared, but knowing that my dad would have approved of what I was doing made it somehow more bearable.

As I walked into school on the Monday, five days before we left for New York, we left on the Saturday, which was the first of February, I was intercepted by none other than the boy Spencer wanted to punch repeatedly in the face.

Michael walked beside me, his gait slow and confident, though his hands clenched and unclenched in nervousness. He kept looking at me out the corner of his eye and didn't stop until I huffed, loudly, and turned to glare at him.

"What do you want, Michael?" I asked.

"To talk," he replied immediately.

I stared straight ahead, my gaze centred on my locker down the hallway. "I don't want to talk to you."

"C'mon, Aileen," he implored. "I just want to apologize for the night of the party. I was stupid and drunk—"

"I know you were drunk," I cut in. "That was the problem."