I wrote a long chapter cause I have to go to Mexico for about 11 days, so I might not be able to write till the 4th of July. I probably will be able to give you one more chapter besides this one though, before I go.

Change of Mind

EMMA POV

As usual, I left for school a few days early, since I needed to get settled in, so I started packing me stuff. Jake started packing his stuff too for his freshman year. "I'm so excited!" he exclaimed, throwing bunches of clothes in his suitcase. "This is going to be so cool!"

"Why?" I ask. I don't see why he would want to go to school. It's not like Iliana was coming or anything. He'd just be away from the folks in a crowded apartment complex-like place!

"I'm not so sure. I'm gonna miss Mom and Dad so badly, but maybe this will be an exciting experience!"

"Just be aware that the Freshies always have counselors constantly breathing down their necks. You can't go anywhere off the school grounds without letting them know."

"Oh, that'll suck," he says. "But at least we can explore a new city and I'll be with my new sister!" he smiles and looks at me. I smile back and screw up his hair, which he quickly tries to put back in place.

"I gotta finish packing," I say. "We have to bring everything we'll need and we only have until tomorrow to do it!"



Darien POV

I sat down at a small table with Arleen at my right and some girl named Jem at my left. Arleen was really pretty. She wore different clothes than people in Rohan wore. She wore mostly flared jeans with tight black shirts with band logos on them and she had black tennis shoes that kinda looked like shoes I might wear! Even though her clothes were average and kinda plain and she hardly ever smiled, she was beautiful. She had these bright blue eyes and long soft-looking brown hair. She seemed to always be really deep in thought, almost completely out of it a lot of the time.

Ha, I looked pretty bad, I guessed. My hair was in this screwed up ponytail [yep, it's shoulder length] and a lot of it is just all over the place. I'm wearing a Belfalasan [our Hawaiian] shirt, tan chords, and flip-flops.

Then there was Jem. Um, wow. She was wearing really expensive, stylish clothes and she seemed to have a good body, but her face just looked kinda fat...it just didn't look right. Her makeup was done well, probably professionally, and her hair was frizzy and red.

Despite how unattractive she was, she seemed to be stuck up and to think she was drop dead gorgeous. She had actually talked a few times, but it had only been about one of her loose fake nails and her shoe starting to fall off...okay?

"You should probably take your hair down," Arleen says. "No offense, but it makes you look like you slept like it like that."

I try not to look too embarrassed and pull the ponytail holder out. I won't mention that I HAD slept with it in. I wonder why I've just hardly cared what I look like anymore. Well, I can't have Emma so who would I look good for anyways? "Much better!" Arleen says.

I glance at her and smile shyly. I'm usually not so shy, what's wrong with me? I haven't really talked to many people besides the grocery store workers in a month so I must just be used to that.

"Okay, so one by one, people are going to come in. You'll be able to play a little guitar up on that stool over there and the person will get a chance to listen to you, then try to play with you. You'll have a piece of paper to write which ones you like and we can call them after the audition is over..."

"Oh, please, Arleen!" Jem snaps. "You don't have to bore Darien with all your rambling. He can handle it."

I roll my eyes at Jem, and then lean over into Arleen. "Thank you. I did need you to tell me that."

She smiles a little. "Your welcome."

I sit over at the stool and grab my guitar. One by one, people start to come in. First there is a guy, probably about thirty that comes to play the bass. I play the hardest song I can think of and start to play around with my guitar, but the bassist has trouble keeping up with me, plus his style is so much different than mine.

I give Arleen the "He's killing me" look. "Um, thank you, Jon, we will call you as soon as we can and give you an answer."

He nods sadly, seeing that he wasn't liked very much. Then we moved onto the next person. The next person that came in was a guy about twenty-five, I'm assuming, with just about every inch of his body was covered in tattoos! In his forehead there were these eyes and fangs...it was pretty scary. Even when he blinked, I saw tattoos on his eyelids! He played the drums pretty good, but he talked with a lisp and spit all over when he talked. He just didn't seem like the kind of person I needed in my band. Why couldn't I just be my own music artist?

"I been in lick ten bends man," he spats. I'm guessing that means 'I've been in like ten bands'?

"Um, thank you, um...Crudhead, was it? We'll give you a call with our decision," Arleen says, trying her best not to scowl. The guy finally leaves. Jem sighs and leans back. "We'll never find anyone."



Emma POV

"You guys packed?" mom asks.

"Yep," I say.

"I'm...packed," Jake says, bouncing on his suitcase and trying to zip it.

"Good, cause I though if you guys were packed we could go out to Gazini's for the afternoon!"

"Gazini's?!" Jake practically screams. "That's just the coolest place ever!"

"It's fun," I shrug.

"Just fun? No, it's gotta be the best place ever! Loads of fun! It has the biggest skate park in Rivendell and the best virtual video games that cost like tons and tons of money! Have you seen the commercial?!"

Mom laughs. "All right, then get in the car! I won't be able to spoil you both for a while, so lets go!"

We get in the car and start driving for awhile. "And they also have these huge slides that when you ride down them, your hair starts doing funky things cause of static electricity or whatever! And they have this really cool ride where this huge dragon attacks you and it's so cool! And there is this ride where..."

Jake went on and on about what he knew about Gazini's. I guess I couldn't blame him. The best thing he had ever got to do growing up was going to Chucky Cheeses before his mom and dad divorced.

"And like, there is this restaurant and they have Angus burgers, Gondor style! And..."

"He got into the soda cabinet again, didn't he?" mom asks as Jake keeps on going.

I nod. "Yep. Found him in the bathroom with five empty cans. He tried to hide them..."

"Yea, thought so," mom says. "We need to put a lock on that cabinet."



Darien POV

When we had gone through about thirty people and five hours had passed, we started to get extremely tired. Then TWO guys originally from Gondor came in, both pretty normal looking. They both had brown shoulder length hair, about my length; one with curlier, wavier than mine and then there was one with totally straight hair.

"We are trying out together," explained the curlier haired one, "Because we've been playing together since we were eleven and we met at the same Music school. We've been in only one band for a year when we were a lot younger, but the guitarist moved. We've been going to music school since we were eleven and we play together a lot, so we decided to try out together. I'm Connor."

"And I'm Blake," says the straight haired one. "I will be playing the drums and Connor will be playing the bass."

I found myself smiling. Wow, these guys were actually cool! They seemed to be a lot like me and they weren't bizarre psychos. I just hoped they played my taste.

I started out my favorite song I'd written so far called Love Lacked and Lost. It was a medium speed song, but actually pretty hard because of all the crazy twists I had in the song.

Connor the bassist looked carefully at what I was doing, then started adding his own stuff. It sounded really good! It wasn't exactly how I'd planned it to sound, but it was great! Then Blake, the drummer started doing his thing and it sounded amazing.

Considering I'd spent most of my day playing with all these weird music artists with weird styles, things had turned out really good. I couldn't help but beam as I heard my song being played so professionally and almost studio-worthy. And this was just the audition!

I played the whole song, and then when we were done I smiled at them. Arleen clapped, but Jem shrugged. "I must say, you guys are just what I want in a band," I say. "We haven't found anyone before you even slightly my style, but we all seem to play great together. This works. I'll call you guys up real soon and we can talk about it. What do you think, Arleen?"

"You all are so talented! It's like you've been playing together forever and I know good music when I hear it. Plus I got to hear Darien sing a little bit yesterday when I watched his tape and let me assure you boys, you have an amazing vocalist and song writer as well."

Conner laughed. "Wow, this seems to good to be true."

"I guess no one cares what I think," Jem says crossly. "But I'm authorized to give my opinion, huh?"

No one said anything in reply. I have a feeling she's gonna say how much she hates it and her father OWNS bigphat records. I now actually felt good about having a BAND and she was probably gonna smash all that and make the tryouts go again and again till she found something SHE liked.

"Well, I don't really like..." she looked at me irately and I gave her a hopeful smile.

"Uh...she paused, staring at me, her frown ceasing. "I mean, um, I love it! You guys are like SO awesome!" Even though she seemed to be lying for some reason, I felt relieved. Whatever had made her want to lie I didn't care! She agreed! That's all that mattered. Maybe she just felt like being nice.

"All right, man!" Blake says and slaps Connor's hand. Then they look at me. "Since you are our possibly new band mate, which plays awesome I will add, you get a high five too." I smile, finally feeling most of my worries leave me as I slap hands with both of them and laugh.

Arleen looks on and smiles and I look over at her, smiling as well. "Glad this is all working out!" she says.

"Me too," the three of us boys say together, then start laughing. I feel such a connection with these people; it's amazing. I just hope all this doesn't just fall away from me like what happened in Rivendell.



Emma POV

We let Jake do some skateboarding first, to wear off some of that energy. He starts tearing up the skate park, doing all this crazy handstands with his skateboard I never knew he could do!

"Who hoo! Whee!" He shouts just about every ten seconds. A lot of people just stop skating to watch him go back and forth on the half pipe, doing handspring kinda things...I don't know, skateboard stuff that I know nothing about. I know that it's amazing though!

"Whee hee! I am HYYYYPER!" he shouts. Whoa, that boy certainly had enough soda.

"Watch this, Emma!" he says and tries to skate really fast over to one side of the half pipe. He gets to the very top, but is still going too fast and he tries to stop, but hits this wall to stop skaters from totally falling off on the very top. I though he'd be okay, but then he fell back and did a few summersaults down to the middle of the half-pipe.

"JAKE!" my mom and me scream at the exact same time. We rush over to him and he smiles.

"Guess what?" he says smiling, though his eyes are like half lidded as if he were starting to pass out. "One, I have a helmet on. Two, I'm still HYPER!"

My mom and me laugh with relief and help him up. "Oh, Jake we though you were really hurt..." I start saying.

"AHHH!!!" he yells and falls flat on his back. "My arm, my arm, my arm, my arm, my ARM!!!!"

"Jake?!" mom starts panicking and hovering over him. "I can't move it, but it hurts!" he takes his right hand and points to his left wrist. It does look a little purple now that I look at it.

"I'll go call an ambulance!" I say running towards a payphone. Just before I am out of earshot, I hear my mom frantically say, "Your wrist is broken!" and I hear Jake's loud whines. Oh god, why does this have to happen right before we have to leave for Gondor?!

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