"For some people, they were just ... always there.
And that was Rory."
Aurora "Rory" Marquez was a teenager with stars in her eyes and a book full of songs in her pocket when Graham Dunne approached her in 1968. He wanted to start a rock band and n...
┏━━━━ •❃°•°❀°•°❃• ━━━━┓ chapter sixteen "So hard to find my way now that I'm all on my own I saw you just the other day My, how you have grown " ┗━━━━ •❃°•°❀°•°❃• ━━━━┛
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NOW PLAYING: "BROWN EYED GIRL" by VAN MORRISON (1967)
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THE MEDIA IS NOW obsessed with the fact that award-winning songwriter Aurora Marquez and chart-toppers The Six are close friends. Before Rory knows it, her boss at the grocery store approaches her during her shift and asks, "Is this you?" while holding up a magazine. It's open to a spread about the Grammy Awards, labeling Rory as the "songwriter responsible for blowing out speakers and tearing into our hearts with the Sticks 'n' Stones hit single, 'Bloodshed'." There's a photo of her making her acceptance speech, teary-eyed and white-knuckled at the microphone while she grips onto the statue.
Then she starts getting recognized at the store and decides to quit for her safety. To her surprise, her boss pulls her into a hug after she clocks out of her last shift, telling her, "You're gonna go far, kid... Well, I 'spose you already have."
It's a bittersweet moment when she makes her way out. She'll never walk the squeaky linoleum tiles as an employee ever again, never climb a shelf to stock merchandise, and never fill her arms with song lyrics as she mindlessly moves through her routine aisle after aisle. This is a place of so many memories. When she glances down aisle fifteen, she can see the ghosts of her and Graham dancing around with their hands clasped, chanting, "AL — BUM! AL — BUM!" She can hear the dull thunk of the can of diced pears hitting Teddy's foot. She'd secured this job when they hardly had enough money to feed themselves, and now they have more than she'd ever imagined.
Rory passes the magazine section, remembering when she'd seen Fred Weisz's face for the first time on one of the glossy pages. Now she startles upon seeing her name on a headline: "WHO IS AURORA MARQUEZ? The songwriter who took everyone by surprise at the Grammys is friends with The Six." She almost laughs at the absurdity of it all. When she skims the article, nothing of substance is written other than her involvement in the SevenEightNine album with "Heartstopper" and the time she replaced Graham onstage in Austin. Not that she'd expected anything interesting; neither she nor the band were interviewed, so there isn't much of a story to tell. They even refer to her as a "Pittsburgh native".
