Hey there! Well… I'm Zahra Smith and I am 15 years of age. I'm originally from Australia the most awesome place on the planet but 3 years ago my mum had to come her to America for work. My mum is more like my sister and my best friend rather than a mother. She is the most down to earth caring person I know. She is completely understanding of things that I want to do but can put her foot down hard when she feels the need to. I always go to her for guidance and I take in everything she says to me.
I have never met my father he left us when I was a kidlet and hasn't made any kind of contact since. I don't have any brothers and sister mainly because my mum never remarried. She has had a few boyfriends along the way but always has said that I'm the most important thing in her life and she doesn't need a man. My mum is really successful at what she does so we have a fair bit of money, but we have a tiny, old house. We could have a gigantic mansion on the beech but then we would never get to see each other and this place feels more like a home than any mansion could ever. Mum has always said the smaller the house the closer the family. Nothing is more important to us then spending hours and hours in the living room talking and just enjoying each others company.
I go to the public school about a 10 minute drive from where I live. I have 1 best friends Amber she is a real girly girl and as she calls it "own the school". I am sort of completely opposite to her, I'm kind of a tomboy but not a complete tomboy I wear shorts but girly type shorts and I only wear t-shirts. I am totally and completely obsessed with drums and anything drum related. I always have my favourite set of drum sticks in my back pocket and if they aren't in my back pocket I either using them or sitting down. Amber is really into music but more listening to others play then playing her self. I prefer to play my self, I don't know it's just better.
Ok now to my current life!
'Hey Zahra. Where are you going?' Amber said as she came walking into my room with out even knocking. Must remember to ask mum to get a lock on my door.
'I got that music video thing today. Didn't I tell you?' I answered as I put the last of three drink bottles into my backpack.
'No you didn't. But you got in that's amazing.' She said as she scooped me up into a hug. 'Wait when did you find out?' She pulled away from the hug and looked at me as if she was disappointed.
'Yesterday.' I cringed slightly as she slapped my shoulder.
'Why didn't you tell me? We were together all afternoon.' She crossed her arms across her chest and scrunched up her face.
'Must have slipped my mind.' I answer innocently.
'Something else will be slipping your mind later, and I'm telling you it isn't soft and fluffy.'
'Is that a death threat.' I said with a fake gasp.
'It might be.' She smiled mysteriously and sat down on my bed. 'So where is it. Can I come?'
'Is in town some where. And yes of course you can come.' I sat down next to her on the bed and we both let our selves fall onto our backs as were stared up at the ceiling.
'When are you supposed to be there?' She asked after a few minutes of silence. I sighed lightly and brought my watch up to my face. You know if I look closely enough in my watch, I can see the reflection of my watch, in the reflection of my eye. How cool is that. I finally stoped looking at the reflection in the reflection and realised the time. I gasped loudly and sat bolt up right, I felt the bed move slightly as Amber sat up as well.
'I meant to be there now.' I almost shouted as I jumped up grabbed my bag and bolted out my door. I didn't hear footsteps by the time I got to the stairs so I turned and ran back to my room. I poked my head in to the see Amber still sitting on my bed. 'Are you coming?' She seemed to snap out of her thoughts and ran over to me. I shouted out to my mum that we needed to go now and she answered and followed us out to the car with the keys in one hand and the paper in the other. Once we were in the car I pulled my hair back into a pony tail and turned on the radio. I was pleased to find that my favourite song ever was playing, All The Small Things by Blink-182. I cranked it right up and me and Amber blasted the lyrics at the top of our lungs. My mum was laughing at us and telling us we were crazy. We just laughed back at her and by the end of the song she was joining in, such a cool mum!
'Well where are we supposed to go?' I asked my mum as we all got out of the car in front of this, what looked like and empty run down building.
'Well this thing says there should be someone waiting.' She replied while studying a piece of paper.
'Well we are late.' Amber added.
'Look there's someone.' Mum shouted out and pointed towards the doors. A tall skinny man was walking out the doors with a small woman right behind him. Mum walked over at a fast pace towards him and me and Amber struggled to keep up.
'Excuse me.' My mum shouted out when she figured she was hearing distance away. The man looked up from his clipboard and raised and eyebrow at my puffing mother.
'Can I help you?' He asked as if confused.
'Yes, my daughter was supposed to be..' She started to say before she was cut off.
'Ah, Zahra I presume?' He said cutting my mother off and not even caring that he had done so.
'Yes that's her.' Amber said as she stood behind me and put both her hands on my shoulders. I smiled as convincingly as I could as he looked me over once.
'They're looking for you inside. And a word of advice, don't say you were late, say you were lost.' He said in a kind tone. And I thought he seemed like a mean man, wow how you can be wrong about someone. 'Go in this door, turn left at the end of the corridor, then turn on your first right, and keep going its on your left you can not miss it.' He explained using his hands to motion left and right as if drawing a map for us. We all smiled nicely and thanked him before walking into the studio and followed his instructions. We got there ok with only one tiny bump when my mum turned right instead of left, she has never really been good with her left and rights.
The room that we were standing in front of was gigantic. There was a whole house set thing stuck on one side. A skate park on the other side and playground plonked in the middle. To me it looked a little odd but cool at the same time. A lot was going on too. People were running around as if they had just been alerted that the sky was falling. I looked around to see if I could Chicken Little and when I didn't looked over to my mum and Amber and both of them we standing and staring with their jaws dropped. I closed both their mouths as they seemed to snap out of it and look at me excitedly.
'This is Awesome!' Amber shouted out and put a hand on each side of her face.
'Are you Zahra?' A tall man asked as he quickly ran over to us. I nodded and smiled at him as he gripped onto my arm and dragged me away from my mum and Amber. I looked back at them and bit my bottom lip as I was pulled further and further into the chaos.
'Your late.' He hissed at me.
'I got lost.' I said nervously remembering what the man told me to do. He considered what I said for a second or two then nodded his head about with a "yeah that could have happened" look on his face.
'You need to remember this spot.' He said loudly and pointed to a drum kit. I nodded again and he pulled me away from it again. He kept tightening the grip around my arm as people came flying at us in all different directions. I was amazed, he wasn't even looking where he was going, he was reading from a clip board and he didn't run into anyone or anything. After a while of walking at a fast pace he shoved me into a room and turned around a left. I rubbed my red arm where he had practically squished it into non-existence and move further into the room.
'Zahra?' A small woman question as she walked up in front of me. I nodded again. 'Follow me.' She said and then turned. I quickly shoved my hands in my pocket to avoid having my arm grabbed and did as I was told and followed her. She stopped in front of a large chair and motioned for me to sit. Once in the chair she started tugging and brushing at my hair until she was satisfied with a neat side pony tail. She was about to apply make up to my face when she noticed I had my glasses on. I quickly slipped them of my face and sat them in my lap.
'Do you have contacts sweetie?' She asked kindly referring to my glasses.
'No. My eye sight is too bad, contacts wouldn't work.'
'Can you see with out your glasses?' She continued as she dabbed something on my face.
'No. All I see is a blurry mess. Is wearing glasses a problem?' I asked hoping it wasn't. Having my terrible eyesight has stopped me from doing a few things in my life. She paused for a moment as I hopped and preyed that it wasn't a problem I really wanted to do this.
'No it's fine.' She replied and I let out a quiet sigh of relief. She finished doing what ever she was doing, then she pulled me off the chair and into a larger room. This room was covered wall to wall in clothes. Most of them on the floor with coat hangers everywhere. She looked through a few things throwing more stuff onto the ground and throwing stuff on the ground into other piles of mess. She finally walked back to me and shoved some clothes into my hands.
'Change in there.' She said and then left the room. I went into where she pointed at. I put on the black skinny leg jeans and a red shirt which had music notes and a picture of head phones on it with a white elbow length tight fitted shirt underneath. I guessed I would be wearing my own shoes so I pulled my bright blue cons back onto my feet and walked out of the room with my clothes in my hands. When I walked out of the first room I was in my mum and Amber were standing outside. When Amber saw me her mouth dropped because it was the first time she had ever seen my hair neat, with make up and something other than shorts. My mother smiled encouragingly at me as I passed her my clothes for her to hang onto.
Before I could say anything to them I was grabbed by the arm and pulled quickly away from the spot.
'Alright, look over this. There has been a few changes, but it is all pretty much the same.' The lady that pulled me away said as she handed my sheet music for the drum kit. I smiled at her and looked over the music. The changes that were made, seemed simple enough I just hopped I might have a little time to run over them before we started. The lady watched me as I looked over all the pages and then smiled broadly at me.
'Ok cool.' I replied feeling as though I had to say something.
'Good. Oh and there's a solo on page three.' She added before she walked away quickly. I stared at the place she was standing in as I slowly took in what he just said. Once I snapped out of my trance I quickly turned to page three, and sure enough in big bold letter… Solo. I gulped loudly as I checked it to see if I had ever played the beat or rhythm before. A sighed loudly as I realised it was just a simple rhythm.
'Child, what are you doing standing her. You got 5 minutes to go over the changes. Get going.' Another strange lady shouted to me as she walked past. I listened to what she said and messily folded up the music, and tried to remember where the drum kit was. Damn it, why am I NEVER paying attention. I was looking around the playground area when I accidentally bumped into someone.
'I am so sorry.' I said quickly not even looking at the person I had run into. They didn't say anything so I decided to look up at them. And I might just add he was really HOT. He had curly brown hair and was wearing a white shirt with a black waist coat thing over the top. He half smiled as his eyes looked me over once.
'My fault.' He finally replied and ran a hand through his hair. I stared at him for a second then remember I only had five minutes. I spun my head around a bit to see if I could see the drum kit. I mentally slapped my self a thousands times for not pay attention. I looked back to the boy and he was staring at me as if I was weird.
'You wouldn't happen to know where the drum kit is, would you?' I asked hoping and preying he knew.
'Oh yeah, it's just over there.' He replied and waved his hand in his left, direction. 'Are you the drummer?' Damn it he's staring a conversation. Four minutes and counting.
'Yes, and I have five minutes to learn a solo.' I said hoping he would get the hint and let me go. Not that I didn't want to talk to him because I did.
'Oh right. Um I'll see ya later then.' He sounded kind of sad when he said that but I just brushed it of and smiled at him and went to my right to find the drum kit. I finally found it and sat down behind it after taking my sticks out of my pocket and put the music on the stand. I flipped to page three and started to play the solo bit over and over. Once I was convinced it was good enough I ran though all the changes that had been made. After about 3 minutes a lady came over and took away my stand with my music on it not even mentioning that was what she was going to do.
'Alright. Everyone ready?' A tall man shouted out from the front of the room. No one seemed to answer they just all nodded. 'We are just going to run through the song once with the boys just singing out here. Then we are gonna get into it ok?' He continued.
Three boys came up from behind him with microphones in their hands. I had to take a double take and I realised the boy I was talking to before was one of the three. I stared at him in shock before I was broken off by a man shouting a count down out. That was my que to slap my sticks together as hard as I could four times then start to play.