Indifference (boyxboy)

15. The Thrill of a Bad Boy

Elijah

As I sat on the floor in Alicia's basement music room, I couldn't help but analyse my emotions.

Last night, I'd sneaked out of the house late at night, ordered myself a taxi, sat on a park bench with a partly drunk guy from school, then sneaked back in, way beyond my usual bedtime, yet I felt fine. Anxious but fine.

Now, while I sat with my fellow musicians, in the house just next door, with the full knowledge and consent from my mum, I felt like a nervous wreck!

Maybe it was like I told Ryan the other day. Maybe it was the accumulation of things that made me feel so bad right now. Maybe last night was too much, and now I was living the consequences.

Yet I felt fine this morning. Especially after I received a text off Ryan, thereby confirming he'd got home safely last night.

"Elijah!"

I snapped out of my thoughts at the sound of Alicia practically shouting my name.

"I asked what you thought?" Franz said, addressing me.

"Oh," I replied, looking round at the four faces in the room. There was Franz who played violin and cello, Alicia who played piano and the flute, Beth who played saxophone and Ben who played trumpet.

It was an odd selection of instruments to put together, and I think that was why we were struggling to pick a piece to play.

"I don't know, I'll play whatever you think's best."

The odd look they gave me made me realise that probably wasn't the question they asked.

"Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night," I said, hoping they wouldn't be offended that I clearly wasn't listening.

"Don't worry about it," Beth said kindly. "We were all saying that it might be good if the concert had a theme this year."

"Ok, I like the sound of that," I said, trying to show an interest, "what ideas have you come up with?"

"I like seasons or colours," Alicia said.

"I like emotions," Franz said, "like anger, love, happiness, loss, that sort of thing."

"I suggested a night at the movies," Beth added.

I nodded along. "They're all good ideas. Maybe we should pick our favourite two or three and see which we can actually draw up a programme for. Mr Jackson would need to confirm if the other groups had the music to be able to do it."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Alicia said. "Let's take a vote. Everyone is allowed two votes."

We all voted and Emotions came in first with 4 votes, and both Colours and a night at the movies got 3 votes putting them joint second.

"Ok, so let's go away and try to come up with some ideas of pieces that would fit those themes," Alicia said.

"Great, does that mean we can go and get Pizza now? I'm starving!" Ben said.

Everyone started getting up so I followed suit. There was a pizza place about a 15 minute walk away and so we headed off to there.

It wasn't until we were sitting down at a large round table that the conversation switched off from music.

"So what's going on with you and Stone?" Franz asked.

The group had been pretty silent as we studied our menus, but now all eyes were on me.

"N-Nothing's going on," I said quickly.

Franz laughed. "I didn't mean anything by it, but just for future reference, when you deny something that quickly, it always means you're lying."