Money, Power, Glory. Those were the three pillars this world was built upon. If you had one, you were doing well. If you had all, you were a god. Elizabeth Dunham had spent too long living under somebody's thumb. She wanted it all.
But nobody can get those on their own, you need to have something to build upon and, unfortunately for her, Elizabeth had never been great at making friends. From screaming when a boy borrowed her pink crayon without asking to accidentally spilling paint water on a girl's uniform, her standoffish seclusion and social ineptitude seemed to follow her like a curse.
Until one day, stuck in isolation after getting in a fight in the school canteen, she met a likeminded girl called Marlene.
Marlene never began that initial stage of friendship where you're sickeningly sweet just to gain favour, instead, she looked Elizabeth dead in the eyes and told her that her eyeliner was ruined. Instead of feeling anger or insult at that, Elizabeth smiled, and told Marlene there was ink on her chin, and they decided they trusted each other with their lives.
Music was one of the only things that kept them sane, with Elizabeth feeling alive behind her drums and Marlene seemingly born to pluck at a bass, the pair ended up spending every lunch break tucked away in the music classroom, thankful to every saint and star that the music teacher was one of the few who didn't hate them.
But that sweet escape only lasted so long, and before her sixteenth birthday, Marlene's parents split, and she moved to London to live with her mother's side of the family, leaving Elizabeth with the fear she'd be forgotten in favour of the girls Marlene grew up with.
She should've known better, because Marlene McKinnon wasn't someone easy to get rid of and just as the girl had wormed her way into Elizabeth's heart, she refused to leave. Over the years and summer holidays, they stayed in touch, occasionally taking trips down to London or up to Newcastle to visit.
Marlene kept her updated on her urban life, how she'd formed a band with her friends, Lily, Mary, and Emmeline, that they called Reverie, and how they'd established a rivalry with a band whose members she'd also grown up with—The Marauders, they called themselves—because their lead singer kept calling Lily fit and their guitarist kept talking ( loudly ) during their set at one of their local record shops.
So when Marlene's newest update is about a renowned battle of the bands and the fact that Emmeline, had unfortunately moved to America for university, indirectly begging Elizabeth to join them and save them from the humiliation of not applying, she can't quite find it in herself to say no.
