Okay, I don't know if anybody still reads this story anymore because I have not updated it in over six months. The last time I posted, I said that it was a month until my sixteenth birthday. It is now eight months after my sixteenth birthday, four till my seventeenth. Hey! I'm going to be seventeen in fourth months! Wow! Anyway, I'm going to try to keep this thing updated from now on, okay? So if you like it, keep up with it because I'm certainly going to try.
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One day, about two and a half weeks later, Zan walked into the studio with Tomika and Summer and stopped short. All of the instruments had been cleared out of the way, but into storage closets or something. Fabric was everywhere, along with sewing machines and measuring tapes and pincushions stuck full of pins.
"What's going on?" Zan asked in confusion, dropping her messenger bag by the door beside Katie's cherry red backpack.
"We're getting new uniforms." Alicia explained, pushing her glasses up on her nose. "Didn't Dewey tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Zan was feeling stupid now for being left out of something that was obviously important.
"He figured that since the band had a new style, namely you, we should get new uniforms. We've basically been using the exact same uniform since we were in fourth grade." Zach explained.
"They still fit?" Zan asked stupidly.
There was a long pause as everybody debated whether to start laughing or not. Finally, Marta said sweetly, "We got them in bigger sizes every year."
"Oh. So what's wrong with them? I saw what they looked like and I thought they were awesome." Zan pointed out.
"They're boring now." Marta shrugged, unbuttoning her uniform blazer and tossing it on top of her backpack. "It seems like I've been wearing a blue jumper with STEP OFF on it my entire life."
"It's a cute jumper though." Zan murmured, untying her necktie and kicking her chucks off.
"Okay everybody!" Dewey sauntered into the room. There was a short, somewhat chunky boy from their school following him. "Zan, this is Billy. Billy is our stylist."
"I'm only doing the measurements." Billy rolled his eyes. "Dewey won't let me do anything else."
"There's a good reason for that." Freddy looked up from where he was untying his sneakers. He and Katie both snickered.
"Okay, let's see, who's first?" Billy mused thoughtfully.
After he had fully measured each and every one of them, practice time was almost over. Dewey gathered them together for a meeting real quick.
"Okay, as you know, our first performance since Zan joined us is a week from Saturday. The costumes should be done by then." Dewey said. "Now remember, there's no need to be nervous. Everything is going to go perfectly."
Zan's face paled when she heard these words. She was incredibly superstitious, and she knew that saying everything would go perfectly was just saying that it wouldn't. She gulped visibly.
"You okay?" Freddy asked her as everybody gathered their things together and headed out into the parking lot.
Zan wiped the terrified look off her face and nodded, forcing a smile. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine. No worries. Come on, let's go. I'm starving."
She was unusually silent on the way home. Generally she talked Freddy's ear off, but she hardly said two words to him.
Freddy had a tendency to speed, so he was going sixty in a forty-five mph zone. When the black cat darted out in front of his car, he didn't even see it.
"Look out!" Zan screamed, clawing at her face in horror. Freddy slammed on the brakes and the car did a 360 in the middle of two lanes of traffic. They finally came to a rest, with the smell of burning rubber all around them. Zan's chest heaved as she threw open the car door and jumped out.
The cat was slinking off into the woods on the other side of the street. The black cat.
She climbed back into the car and sank very low in her seat. She didn't say another word until they pulled into Freddy's driveway.
"See you tomorrow." She said shortly, and she was out the door and up the steps to her house before he could say anything.
The next night, Friday, she was sitting at her desk doing her weekend homework. She had candles burning on her desk as she was working. She felt something on her arm and looked down. A tiny black spider was crawling down her arm.
She squirmed and jumped. The spider tumbled off into the candle. She let out a small shriek and tried to save the spider, because everybody knew it was bad luck to fry a spider. But the spider was gone. It curled up in a little ball and began to smoke. She hurriedly blew out all the candles.
Sunday afternoon, as she was getting her things together for school the next day, she picked up a compact mirror off her dresser that Clare (it's spelled Clare not Claire. I've kind of gone back and forth on how to spell it but just for your knowledge, it's Clare.) had bought for her right after she'd moved in.
She carried it down the hallway from her backpack to her purse so she could keep it on hand should she need it. She was trying to shove it into a side pocket, but the pocket was very full. Without warning, the mirror popped out and fell. It hit the hardwood flood with a sickening thud and shattered into hundreds of pieces.
Wednesday during dinner, Brittany asked Zan to pass the salt for her fried potatoes. Zan reached for the salt, but her numb fingers accidentally knocked the glass salt container over. A small handful of salt spilled out onto the table.
"Oops. What a mess!" Clare said lightly, and she had scooped up the spilled salt and thrown it in the garbage can before Zan could throw it over her shoulder.
Zan just stared at the spot on the table where the salt had been spilled. Not a grain remained. What a bad sign…
She just knew the performance on Saturday would go horribly. How could it not with all these bad omens?
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Kind of a pointless chapter, but I have to get back into the swing of this story since I haven't written on it in like eight months. Anyway, review! Because reviews make me happy, okay?