The Major Lift. Rewrite one.

Briefly Three.

The early evening sun lit the sky on fire as it began to set over the sprawling campus grounds. The activity of students and staff was dying off for the day but Chris and Blake had only just begun rehearsals and had the run of the schools music studio thanks to Blakes carefully cultivated relationship with the head of the music department. They each had a few pages of sheet music and lyrics on a music stand in front of them. Blakes bass was tethered to one of the better amplifiers and an effects board footed a microphone where he stood slapping his lowest two strings in a snappy rhythm. Chris held together a three-by-four time signature and occasionally sang a harmony with Blake into her own mic that hung over the drum set.

'Crashing! See my heartbeat in lights!" Chris sang with along as they played. She could tell from his shifting stance that he thought it needed something, though he had yet to say what. He'd tried to add as much depth and space as he could to his effects loop with just his bass but even she could hear the absence of the guitar in their song. It was glaring, and painful. There was only so much you could do in rock and roll with only two instruments.
"Drag me back to shore!" Blake sang, dragging out the last vowel in a quavering sustained up-bending note that made Chris shiver. His vocals were always haunting especially when he sang what he wrote himself.
"What if we recorded a basic rhythm over us and ran with that? We could fix it up with a noise gate so you can click it off when it isn't needed. Or better yet, we could use your looper to layer up the string instruments ourselves" Chris suggested as she brought the drum rhythm to a standstill. Blake turned to her with a smirk on his face.
"Yeah! That's an idea. Now all I have to do is learn how to play the guitar and master a looper!" He spat at her with withering sarcasm.
Chris bristled. "Alright man. Calm down! I'm not saying you. I'm alright at the guitar and I'm an expert on keeping time" she reminded him, twirling one of her drumsticks around like a baton and grinning at him despite her frustration. Blakes shoulders sank as the sardonic smugness drained out of him. He looked down at his effects loop and then knelt down, beginning to rig up the looper. Chris groaned, she had hoped he wouldn't take her seriously because she wasn't quite as good at the guitar as she let on.
"Okay then, go grab that Les Paul over there. That's got enough humbucking power for this line. You can layer up the loops. Come on" he urged, having set up the looper and beckoning to Chris. She shook her head, glancing over at the guitar he'd suggested and thinking of aurora. 'If only she'd been even a little bit open to playing with us' she thought bitterly to herself.
"No man! I lied! We need a guitarist!" She insisted, sticking her sticks in the bun her hair was restrained in and trudging across the room to pick up the guitar.
She didn't bother tuning it by ear, just used the tuner on the pedals board after plugging it in. Blake stood back, a look of smug satisfaction on his face. Chris scowled at him.
They ran the looper over a basic strumming rhythm Chris knew and they listened to it intently, trying to decide if it needed anything else. Blake began to play over it, slapping and plucking the thickest two strings of his bass.
"It's better than you said it would be. We can work with it today. I'm sure" he said as Chris doffed the heavy instrument and slunk back to the drums.
They carried on, Blake managing to fit his lyrics around the new guitar rhythm that she'd created on the looper. As Chris drummed, neglecting the vocals, she let her thoughts wander back to Aurora.
She could have easily done the guitar loops, not only that, she could easily have played over it, adding layers to their set while keeping solo fills going in between and doing backup vocals without breaking a sweat. She privately lamented not getting Auroras number, not that she thought she'd give it to her, or that it made a difference. She wondered whether she had actually had her wound stitched or dressed properly and whether anyone else cared enough to ask her if she was really okay.
"Chris. Chris!" Blake yelled over the loop they'd created. Chris yanked her attention out of her head. She was getting sloppy.
"Yeah! Sorry man" she muttered, bringing her drumming back into time.
"What's wrong with you?" He asked, stamping on the looper pedal and silencing it.
"I should have gotten Auroras number" she mused darkly.
"What makes you say that?"
"I spoke with her yesterday. Actually, I came in here hoping to get some practicing done before class and I found her in the restroom. She was in a horrible way, man" she explained, remembering with excruciating detail the image of her newest friend, clutching the toilet bowl with bloody hands.
"What was wrong with her?" He asked, taking off his bass and setting it on the stand beside him. He crossed his arms across his chest and squared his stance, his face taking on a vaguely concerned look.
"I think she might be ... uhhh I think she's hurting herself" she stammered, not really knowing how best to phrase what she wanted to say to him.
"Like you think she's what? Shooting up or using lighters or something?" He asked, coming to sit on one of the piano chairs close to her.
"I found her with a badly lacerated arm and suffering what looked like the worst panic attack ever. She was puking her guts up and there was blood everywhere. But when I asked how she injured herself she refused to tell me, and when I suggested that it needed to be treated, she refused, steadfast. She didn't want to eat anything either like she was afraid" said Chris urgently, feeling a vague sense of relief from finally telling her housemate what had been on her mind the entire day.
"You think she might just have been sick? People get sick all the time, especially on a campus like this" Blake asked.
Chris shook her head, "no, I'm sure she lacerated herself. Did it on purpose. And then began to panic about it. I'm also sure that at home, she's in the closet and it's driving her crazy. But I don't know why I think this. There's just something about her whole countenance that says queer to me. Love it, don't get me wrong. But I think it might be causing problems at home" Chris said, as she spoke her thought process was becoming clearer.
"So ... what can we do about that?" Blake asked, his tone slightly rhetorical, as though he was silently urging Chris to see what he could see, what Chris knew he could see. That there was basically nothing either of them could do without Auroras implied consent and neither of them had it. Until something worse happened, neither had any right to but in.
"Maybe she just had a bad day and you just saw the worst of it, and the worry-wart in you is running its mouth as usual" Blake suggested, leaning back in the chair and putting one leg over the other.
"I hope you're right" Chris mused through gritted teeth, tapping on the plastic rim of the drums in front her her nervously.
"Let's carry on with the rehearsal and get something down. Got this studio for another hour and I wanna make the most of it. You can worry to your hearts content latter" Blake suggested, getting up and returning to his bass and his microphone. He shot Chris worried looks as he fiddled with its height and clicked back on the looper.
Chris sighed, perhaps he was right after all. They carried on with their song, Blake improvising and Chris adding a kind of stripped down beat for their bridge. They wrote down some improvised lyrics which he seemed happy with and Chris was just about ready to wrap it up when she looked up at the producers window and saw Aurora sitting languidly in one of the swivel chairs.