Just a quick note: The disclaimer in the first chapter applies to all the chapters. I would also like that add that about two weeks after I posted the first chapter, I was looking around for other School of Rock fics outside of Fanfiction.net, and I came across one that had a main character name Amber! I just wanted to let everyone know that, no, I did not copy this piece of fiction. I haven't even read it, really, just glanced over it (I was in shock, you see). If there are any similarities between my fic and anyone else's, I promise that it's pure coincidence.
A/N: I was planning on making this chapter longer, but it was taking longer than I expected, and I wanted to get this up before anyone forgot about my fic here! Answers to your reviews are at the end. ~Kris
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Katie stared up at the building before them. "Since when have you lived in an apartment?" she demanded of Amber.
"Three years ago. Let's go up, shall we?"
As they waited for the elevator, Kerry tugged on her young Aunt's skirt. "Please don't do that, Ker," Amber said, absently brushing away the girl's hand as she stared at the elevator doors, willing them to open. "My skirt might fall down."
"Auntie Ambuh, Unkoh Michoh was bein' naughty today," Kerry said with a very serious face.
"Oh, really? And what did Uncle Michael do?"
"He say-d bad words about Nick."
"Kerry!" Michael clamped a hand over his niece's mouth and smiled innocently at his sister. "She must have heard me talking about Nick from the studio, and thought I was talking about our Nick."
Amber raised an eyebrow at him as the doors opened. "I'm sure."
They were silent on their way up, and when the doors opened on their floor, Amber linked her arm through Katie's and led the way. Summer sullenly followed directly behind them, with Michael carrying Kerry bringing up the rear. When they reached what Katie and Summer figured to be the door to the Kirst's apartment, Amber turned around and called, "Keys!"
Michael dipped a hand in his pocket, brought out a set of keys, and tossed it at his sister, who neatly caught it. "Welcome to paradise," she said dramatically, unlocked the door, and opened it to reveal a rather large apartment. "To your left you will find a pile of shoes. Please do not put yours there, or it will be lost. On your right, you will find a coat rack—but please don't use it unless dust is your favorite accessory."
The entrance to the apartment, sitting area, and dining area were all one huge room, separated only by the different throw rugs beneath the furniture. The kitchen was open, separated from the dining area by two counters and a tiled floor instead of the rest of the apartment's wooden floors. Across the room was a hall that separated into a number of different rooms. Everything, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, seemed to have been done by an interior designer.
A blonde woman looked up from where she was seated on the couch, reading a magazine. "Stop trying to be funny, Amber."
"I'm not only trying, Mary, I'm also succeeding."
Mary closed her magazine with a smile when she saw who came in behind her sister-in-law. "You've brought home some guests, I see."
Amber motioned for the two girls to follow her closer to Mary. "Mary, this is Katie and Summer. Katie, Summer, this is Mary, my brother Gabe's wife and Kerry's mom."
"Katie used to go to Amber's old elementary school," Michael explained from where he was closing the door with his foot.
"I think I remember her from a party." Mary stood, shaking hands with one girl and then the other. "It's nice to meet you—and to meet you again." She turned slightly and called, "Mai! Gabe! They're home!"
"Coming!" was the faint answer.
"Mommy," Kerry said in a demanding tone, holding out her arms.
"No, stay with Uncle Michael." Michael bounced her, trying to make himself as appealing as possible.
"Mommy," Kerry repeated stubbornly, leaning forward dangerously as she reached for her mother.
Mary laughed, and caught Kerry just before the small girl fell and just as two other people entered the room. The first was a man that looked exactly like Michael, with straight, black hair and piercing green eyes. He was dressed much more professionally than his twin, however, and had the look of someone that was in charge, while Michael seemed much more carefree.
The girl with him was around Amber, Katie, and Summer's age. She had on a uniform that was only slightly different than theirs in the aspect that the neck was cut differently and instead of their blue and green, hers was black and red. She had ash-blonde hair, with long, wispy bangs just brushing her light blue eyes. "Hi, Amber," she said.
"Hey, Mai. Parents out again?"
"Pff…" Mai rolled her eyes. "Yeah. For a week this time."
"Great."
Mary sighed. "I guess I'd better start making dinner for eight." Handing Kerry to her father, she went into the kitchen.
Michael's twin turned to look at Katie and Summer. "Hello." He paused, and then blinked in surprise. "Katie?"
A grin spread across Katie's face, and she was obviously please that he remembered. "Hi, Gabriel." Looking at the other girl, she added, "Hey, Mai."
"Katie!" Mai rushed to hug the brunette. "What have you been up to?"
"Living. Kind of."
"Summer, this is my brother Gabriel and Mai. Mai, Gabe, this is Summer."
They all greeted each other accordingly, and Gabriel glanced at his twin. "How was work, Michael?"
"Fine. The models were so happy that they had Kerry to play with that I had an easier time than usual."
Amber motioned for the three girls to follow her down the hall. "We'll let the grownups talk—and Kerry, of course." She opened a door that had a large sign that said, "Don't knock and I'll knock you," accompanied by a picture of Amber herself. "Needless to say, this is my room."
The room she revealed screamed that it was inhabited by a teenaged girl. Posters and pictures of Amber and her friends plastered the walls, and clothes were spilling out of her closet and drawers. Her desk was covered with papers, CDs, and magazines, and her computer's screensaver flashed pictures of Amber's friends. There was something on nearly every surface, but it seemed to be a kind of controlled clutter. The only space in the girl's bright, flashy room that seemed subdued was a shelf on the wall above her bed that had a picture flanked by flowers and a number of figurines.
"Make yourselves at home," Amber said, motioning around the room as she took a seat at her desk.
Mai spread out on a throw rug and smiled up at them. "The bed's comfy," she suggested.
The two girls took a seat on the bed's crimson sheets, still looking around the room. "It just doesn't have a pattern, does it?" Summer ventured.
Mai laughed. "No way. That would mean organization, and Amber doesn't even know the definition of the word."
Katie glanced at the shelf above Amber's bed, and then did a double take. "Oh," she said, a little catch in her voice. "You still have it."
Amber was silent for a long while before she answered with a soft, "Are you insane? Of course I still have it."
Summer turned to look at the shelf. It was as long as the bed, and in the dead center was a portrait of a man and a woman. The silk flowers framing it and spilling over the edge to hand over the bed were white orchids, roses, and lilies, while the figurines scattered across the shelf were angels—each and everyone of which was facing the portrait. "Are…Are those your parents?" she asked hesitantly, suddenly getting the feeling that maybe her parents weren't exactly here any more.
Mai was keeping a careful eye on her friend as Amber stood and took the picture off the shelf. The last time she had ever "introduced" her parents to someone, the girl had gone nuclear and it took the combined efforts of her brothers, Mary, and Mai to calm her down, and even that had taken the better part of an hour.
"My parents," Amber confirmed, showing Summer the picture. "See? Michael, Gabe, and I look like an exact combination of them—Dad's black hair, Mom's green eyes…Everything. The angels are there because my mom loved angels, which is why we've all got 'angelic' names; Gabriel and Michael are two of the three angels named in Christian scripture, and Ambriel is an angel that inspires people to tell the truth and is an angel of protection."
"They're not here," Mai said, answering Summer's unasked question. "When we were in the second grade, they got into a car accident."
"I'm sorry," Summer gasped.
Amber smiled slightly, but she didn't say "it's okay" or "it was a long time ago." It went without saying that losing her parents wasn't okay, and no matter how many years had passed, it still hurt.
"Is that your guitar?" Katie asked quickly, wanting to change the subject She pointed at the dark red electric guitar leaning in the corner of the room with a wireless amp next to it.
"Yeah…" Amber carefully replaced the picture, then went to grab the instrument. "Why's it in here?"
"I was playing it while Gabriel uploaded some things to your computer," Mai said innocently.
"Why weren't you playing yours?"
"Because yours is soo much better than mine."
Amber began playing a random tune on the guitar as she took her seat again. "No it's not. We have the same guitar—yours is just a different color."
The blonde girl gave her friend her best, dimpled, sweetest smile. "Don't scold me, Amber. We have guests."
"I have guests."
"We have guests."
"I have guests!" Amber stood up, setting her guitar aside.
Mai also got to her feet. "We have guests!"
"I have guests!" Although the girl's tone was angry, Amber's eyes were joking. A quick glance at Mai showed that she was feeling the same. Katie and Summer relaxed when they finally realized the two were just fooling around.
"We have guests!"
"Maira Ann Weladay!"
"Ambriel Kirst! You know," Mai suddenly said, her tone switching from playfully-angry to quite calm, "it's not fair that you don't have a middle name."
"Yours doesn't exactly count," Amber answered, her voice as calm as her best friend's. "And I have guests."
"Come on, Amber. I live here half the time, and you guys don't even consider me a guest any more. I'm more like family!"
"She's got you there," Katie pointed out.
Amber lifted her nose with an air of superiority. "No she doesn't. My cousins are family, and they're here a lot, and Katie and Summer aren't they're guests."
Mai opened her mouth as if to argue, and then stopped. She looked thoughtful for a moment before she swore. "You win."
"As always," Amber answered cheerfully, and as she reclaimed her guitar and seat, Mai turned wide eyes on the other two girls. "What's a poor girl to do?" Her sad tone was laced with humor, and Amber laughed. "I'm being attacked by my best friend. You two love me don't you?"
"They don't even know you, hun."
"I do," Katie reminded her. "And sure, Mai, we love you."
Mai clapped and threw herself at Summer and Katie, giving them a long, tight hug. "I knew you'd understand!"
"Um, what did we just do?" Summer asked hesitantly, a little annoyed that Katie had just answered for her.
Amber gave her a pitying look. "You have no idea."
With that, the mood was lightened, and the night went on relatively uneventfully. At the end of the night, however, Summer still hadn't warmed to Amber, and Amber hadn't really made much of an effort to get to know her.
~*~
Walking up the steps to the front doors of the school, Freddy heard one of the girls leaning against the rail whisper, "Sizzle, ooh, he's hot!" to the group of girls surrounding her. Easily ignoring them, Freddy continued on his way through the halls. It happened all too often that girls whispered about him with their friends, watched him from the corner of their eye, or outright stared at him as he passed. Yeah, bow down to my sexiness, he thought. Pff. Yeah right.
All the girls watched him in some way—except for the one girl he wanted to notice him in that way.
"You've got your 'thinking of KKB' face on again," Zach greeted him.
"Step off," Freddy answered sarcastically. KKB, short for Kit Kat Bar, was their code for 'Katie.' Freddy had blatantly refused to let anyone but Zach know who he liked, and because he didn't want anyone overhearing them talking about her, they had come up with a codename. If anyone asked, they answered that they were just talking about food, although that was hard to do when Freddy said something along the lines of, "KKB was telling me…" One of the seniors was walking around convinced that he had conversations with his food. It was okay, though—as long at his crush was kept only between him and Zach, everything would be okay.
Zach waited for Freddy to open their shared locker. "Have you seen her?"
"Your 'her' or my 'her?'" Freddy asked wryly, grabbing out his books and then moving aside so that Zach could do the same.
Zach grinned, obviously thinking of his girlfriend, Elsa. "Both."
"No to both." Turning around, he stopped. "Actually, make that no to yours, yes to mine."
Zach, noticing that Freddy sounded slightly sick, looked curiously over Freddy's shoulder and nearly dropped his books. Katie was walking with a group of girls she had previously joked "follow the popular girl of the week around like sheep," and she didn't exactly look like Katie. She looked like a carbon copy of Amber, who was walking to the side and slightly in front of her. The first four buttons of their white shirts were undone, and their neckties were pulled loose, the knots having a half-secure, half-falling apart look. Their eyes were rimmed with the maximum amount of eyeliner allowed by the school, and the two boys could easily see that their lips were coated with glittery lip-gloss. It was a far cry from Katie's usual "classically beautiful" look.
"She doesn't look…bad," Zach said hesitantly.
Freddy choked. "She doesn't look like Katie any more! I'll kill Amber, I swear I will."
Zach shook his head. Over the past three weeks, Katie had been spending less and less time with Summer and the rest of her usual friends, and more and more time with Amber, Nick, and their crowd. "No you won't. That's still Katie, Amber hasn't changed who she is."
"Yet," Freddy snapped back.
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Thank you to everyone who reviewed! You all ROCK!
iluvnoodles: You were my first reviewer ever. Do you realize how happy that makes me? I'll tell you - extremely happy! I'm honored that you think my story is awesome. ^_^
fanficgirl1: During the second time watching School of Rock, it just suddenly hit me that Freddy and Katie would be perfect for each other! Then last week I found out that they had originally planned for a little romance between the two, and that sealed the deal with lead. I'm glad you like it, too. ^_^
audi katia: Oh, but Freddy and Katie are so perfect together… ~_^ I tried to update as soon as I could, but if it wasn't fast enough for you, don't worry! It definitely wasn't fast enough for me, and I'm the one writing it. -_-;
griff gal: That's how I want them, too - hence, I'm writing one where they like each other. And about Amber getting between them…Well. You'll just have to wait and see. ~_^
blue-eyed-stanger: Thank you, darling. ^_^
the fourth wheel: I'll tell you (and everyone reading this) a secret: I had originally meant for this to be a Freddy-likes-Katie fic based wholly on our favorite drummer. Then I realized that Katie is just too cool to not base the whole fic on her! But yes, Freddy likes Katie, and I'd like for you to read more, too. ^_^
Wistful Gypsy: I know, I posted and reread it and I was like, "Um…Whoops." I've read this chapter much more carefully, and I hope I haven't made as much mistakes. ^_^;
Princess642: Thank you! It's always fun to find that I'm not thinking too much of my own fic when other people agree that it's "adorable" and "cute" as much as I hope it is. ^_^
slazenger77: I don't plan on dropping this baby, but it's not going to continue on forever (unfortunately…). Eventually, that horrid last chapter will come, and I hope you and everyone else are still reading when I post it. ~_^
asd: Thanks for telling me, I don't know if I would have noticed in time! I'm kind of…ditzy like that sometimes. ^_^;
Again, thank you all!