Icarus

Blue

Blue

Philip's faded turquoise hair matched the dull cloudy sky. It was that time of the day where the sun was hiding and the lights of the room were still turned off. Tate stared at Philip while the boy played with Chester's hand. Mac was silently sliding his thumb across the screen, which lit up his angular face with a light blue light.

"Did they hurt?" Philip asked, examining each of Chester's tattooed fingers on his right hand.

"Eh, kind of... the thing is it only lasted a few minutes so I could bare it. I remember when I got the ribs tattooed... ouch..."

Tate pretended to pay attention but his mind was elsewhere, nowhere in particular, he was just gone. They all heard Cheese's story of how he got three of his fingers tattooed, images of an arrow, an anchor and his lucky number 5.

"Anyway, why are we here Tate unless it's to write new music."

"I- I think-" He looked at Mac. "We should be organizing the festival since it's less than three weeks away. Is the video edited yet... we have a lot to do."

"I gave the organizers the play list yesterday and we also have an interview tomorrow with the festival management to talk about the equipment and promotion."

"And also the money," added Chester. "Which songs are we going to play, by the way?"

"The demo intro faded into the first song: "Blackout Hearts," then "Midnight Machine." Mac started to count all the songs with his fingers. "'Delirium,' 'Passion' 'Poison' 'Will You Be Mine' and then we'll do the mash up between 'Riot' and 'Battle Scars' which would be the last song."

"Great," Tate replied.

"And Uncle Jon told me that tomorrow we'd have the video so we can upload it to our website."

"Double Great."

"We'll have the sound check two days before, on the fourth. They'll give us two hours to rehearse that day and arrange the lights and everything."

"Yep, Great!" Tate repeated, genuinely excited. "Everything is great... just great."

"Tate are you okay?" asked Philip.

"I'm just nervous that's all," he replied looking everywhere but at his friends, he realized he couldn't stop moving. He bit his lip and closed his eyes tight.

"Tate Hayes? Nervous? Well, that's something I thought I'd never see."

"Shut up."

"Listen, I heard there is a new record store in the Mainheit Street and I need to see if they have The Red Cross album."

"That band died out like twenty years ago and you're just getting around to buying the album now?"

"Don't be rude to the blue-haired kid," said Tate squeezing the words out between tight lips.

"I hope that doesn't happen to us," Chester added.

"It's not going to," Lips replied with a hopeful smirk.

➳

A rock song played in the background. The record store was practically empty. Mac was just browsing, hoping an album would catch his attention, but for the moment they looked all the same. Tate was in front of him, perusing another stand with older albums. No one was talking, but they sensed the rising tension.

Mac had not apologized yet, and wasn't planning to. All of the things he said to Tate were true. And the truth might have hurt Tate's ego, but his self-centered personality wasn't something Mac was about to put up with.