𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 (𝙵𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙱𝚡𝙱)

Track 38 | 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

➤ ➤ ➤

"Hey! Stop!"

Having several people reaching for your earlobe, all at the same time, is not exactly the most comfortable position to be in, but at least I was the center of attention, I guess? Either way, I managed to swat all their grabby paws away, but that didn't stop them from blabbering on about my piercing.

"Does it hurt?" Andrew, my classmate, asked while seated in the gymnasium bleachers to my left.

"That's a stupid question," Harley mocked in the bleachers behind me. I smacked his paw away for good once he went in for another poke.

"I'm just glad your mom didn't ground you for eternity," Rian noted, seated next to Harley in the same row. "We can't perform next week without our lead guitarist."

"You kinda can, you have me," Torrence butted in, a few rows ahead, although he wasn't exactly a part of the conversation since he's been chatting with Fiona the entire time.

"Okay, first of all, ouch," I finally found the opportunity to speak, "and secondly, my mom would never ground me, even if she wanted to. She doesn't have the heart."

"Oh, to have a mom like yours," Eden grumbled sarcastically, sitting in the row directly in front of me, focused on the event that was currently going on in front of us.

We were all cooped up in the gymnasium again, but this time, we were joined by the entire high school. The gymnasium had four different bleachers, two on either side, and each bleacher was inhabited by one of each grade, from freshman to seniors. We'd all been called in for the spring sports pep rally—which none of us really care about, but at least it gets us out of class for two periods. High school pep rallies are supposed to be these stupid useless hype ceremonies for the seasonal sports teams, but since the only sports that people actually care about are in the fall, the winter and spring pep rallies really only celebrate the less exciting teams—like volleyball or, I dunno, bowling. I really never pay attention to these.

Currently, we were all watching as four students from each of our grades were competing in some dumb game of musical chairs (because, for some reason, they also host games at these pep rallies). Henry Gable was our grade's contender, and don't get me wrong, that guy is fierce. He's a football player, so of course, when it comes down to him and one other person, he'll be the one fighting to the death for the last chair—

The resonant noise of the simultaneous 'oof!' coming from the mouths of each and every senior all around me already cued me in on what had just happened. Henry was, somehow, the first guy out of musical chairs. All of my friends and classmates had jumped to their feet, screaming and booing out of anger and disappointment.

"HENRY, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!" Eden shouted at the top of her lungs.

"This fuckin' guy," Jaden, my other classmate, bemoaned loudly with disgust on my right.

The seniors are supposed to be the leaders of the school, so of course, our disappointment and embarrassment will be immeasurable when the younger generations beat us at our own game. The other grades on the surrounding bleachers were all cheering and taunting us, which fueled our anger even more.

"Henry is the first one out!" Daya, that one tall blonde who's part of the student government (and is basically the one good apple here that's plastered all over as the face of our school), screamed into the microphone, connected to the gymnasium speaker system with her high-pitched, ear-rape soprano voice.

"Man, fuck this shit!" We could all hear Henry growl down at the center of the gymnasium where the competition was being held, making us seniors laugh. He stormed back over to our bleacher, where he was met with all the other football guys, who attacked and goaded him and shit.