Angelica

She doesn't know what good music is. She thinks that all that top 40 crap you hear on the radio- what's new, what's hip- is where it's at. But for some reason today when Angelica drives home she can't stand listening to anything that's playing.

Distracted, she flips through the stations two times over, eventually turning the radio off completely with an annoyed sigh. Those weren't songs she particularly disliked, but just the sound of them made her want to punch their producers in the face. Why? It's as if everything these days just ticked her off.

She tried again a few moments later, deciding she needs to stop being such a bitch all the time. But no, the minute she heard what was playing the same feeling crept over her. Instead of using the numbered channels, she decided to use the dial to find a new station. She randomly tuned in to each one for a couple of seconds each, eyes pointedly on the road in front of her as she neared a familiar turn. She took it, despite it not being part of her designated route.

Country music, religious bands, rap... nothing was catching her. She gave up on a station and continued to drive, passing the empty schoolyard of her old elementary campus. So many memories had been made there...but as the days go on it's harder to remember all of them. She would be graduating high school in less than a month.

She found herself feeling surprisingly pleasant all of the sudden, it took her a moment to realize it was because of the song. She'd never heard it before but sure liked the way the sound of it made her feel. Turning it up, she passed the school in a wide circle, rethinking her ultimate destination.

She pulled into Chuckie Finster's driveway and parked her car, but stayed put listening to the song and trying to find the courage to go inside.

The last time she'd spoken to him directly she was demanding he deliver her the homework she'd expected he to for her. Granted she'd asked him several times throughout high school, she never really took such a heavy advantage over him until the second semester of her senior year, when things really started to heat up. He'd tried to push back at her demands a few times as well, but it never really startled her in such a way until the last. He looked at her with such anger in his eyes that it was if he'd torn her in two with a simple wave of his hand. She didn't know if she'd already been so fragile that the first strike of rebellion against her had shattered her resolve, or if Chuckie himself only really held the power to make her feel so guilty for something. No one had ever made her regret doing something so much, and she'd done far more awful things than force an 11th grader to do her homework. She's not prepared to deal with the ramifications of either of those options.

The song ended and she turned the car off, sitting only for a moment in the silence before taking a deep breath and opening her door. She was startled to find Chuckie leaning against the frame of his doorway, arms crossed and watching her with a peculiar look.

"How long were you watching me?" She demanded angrily as she struts up the sidewalk, trying to cover up her embarrassment. Surely he must know she's nervous now, and the thought of anyone seeing anything but her tough exterior is hard for her to handle gracefully. He doesn't say anything, he simply sniffs a bit, a reflex, and pushes his purple rimmed glasses higher up on his freckled nose. Shaking his hair a bit he coughs and finally looks away from her.

"10 seconds?" he says over his shoulder, shrugging as he enters the house. He leaves the door open behind him. She groans softly to herself in reluctance as she follows him, wishing she'd only gone home.

"What's up?" he wonders as he wanders aimlessly into the kitchen. Angelica notices how dark it is in the house, none of the curtains are opened and quietness echoed through the halls with an eery click of her heels.

"What are you guys vampires now?" she mutters more to herself than to him, taking in the mess of dishes in one side of the sink. His thick auburn eyebrows pull together as he follows her gaze.

"We were watching a movie last night. I just got home." He seems slightly irritated, as if she should know this. He says nothing more after that, looking away from her at nothing, thinking something Angelica couldn't figure out for the life of her. The silence tore away at her for a moment longer and she finally rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh.

"Look Finster I'm sorry, okay?" She blurts out a little too quickly. "I'm sorry I forced you to do my homework for so long." As she says it she still can't believe she's apologizing for such a mediocre act of bulliness. Why this, when she should be apologizing for replacing his allergy meds with pollen capsules when he was twelve? It nearly killed him!

He just looks at her as if she'd asked him a complicated math question that he has no idea how to respond to. She grows more anxious and an odd tugging sensation forms in her gut. Suddenly he breaks the silence.

"That song you were listening to," he starts, trailing off, not knowing how to finish his sentence. He looks away as he's thinking, finally just shaking his head as he scratches his ear bashfully. "Nevermind."

"What about it?"

"You like it?" he wonders. She nods timidly, wondering what he's getting at. Does he not realize how hard this apology was for her? Unsatisfied, he continues. "But did you really like it? It wasn't...weird?"

"Well I've never heard anything like it, but I think that's why I liked it." She thinks to herself further about the songs as she moves about the living room, opening the curtains and letting the bright afternoon sunlight flood the room. When she turns around he's already pulling out his notebooks from his backpack with a noticeable grin plastered across his face, surely to get started on next week's homework. She's beginning to remember why she felt justified having him do it.

"Did you happen to catch the talent show?" he wonders as he flips through the pages of his textbook, all the while not looking up at her. He sniffs again, another reflex as he's not had allergies so bad in quite some time now. She'd dropped out to avoid competition with Suzie this year. Since she'd lost the resource of Chuckies labor she'd needed the extra time to get work done.

"No, why? Did Suzie win?" Angelica wonders out loud, casually glancing around the familiar living space, empty of it's current residents except this one.

"No, actually," he murmurs halfheartedly, already engrossed in the text. It seems she's otherwise lost his attention. Sighing, she decides to leave, having done what she'd came for and him being occupied.

"I'll see ya at school, Finster," she mumbles quickly as she leaves the house, not really waiting a long enough for a response before shutting the door behind her and reaching for the keys to her car in her purse.

At home

Angelica supposed she felt better after apologizing, however awkward an encounter. And a trip to the Finster house with homework still to be done, and not by the redhaired lad. She can't find the same station her radio in her bedroom, but she hopes she'll hear the song again on the radio.

Two weeks passed and she'd heard nothing, forgetting about it entirely until she heard it playing, late one night. She was at the boys house, as she was going camping with them for memorial day weekend the next few days. It was a tradition for her, even when she was less fond of her two younger cousins. Chuckie hadn't started camping with them until recently. He was never able to go before because of his allergies; complicating things with nature wasn't his forte.

Looking up from her laptop she follows the sound up the stairs. She doesn't bother to knock for fear the song would end before she could find out where it's coming from.

She finds Tommy and Chuckie hunched over one of three lit up monitors, each dressed with expensive looking editing equipment. All the colors and bars and pages, it looks so complicated. The soundwaves mimicked the rhythm of the song she recognized. It sounds even better than she'd remembered. Neither of them bother to acknowledge her presence, murmuring small things to each other and pointing to certain things on the screen. Chuckie nods and Tommy continues speaking inaudibly. They're creating something.

Her first choice of words would've been "you nerds like this song too?" She was so distracted by the fluidity of the instruments with the voice singing, she dozed off on the thought and let herself listen to the rest of the song without another interruption. That is until she realized she recognized the little sniff at the end of the recording.