AN: My nutty boss is still with us. How I have no idea. HR has been called on them more than once and the acting DM yelled at them. They will fire people over absolutely minor bullshit but be a toxic boss and that's okey-dokey.
Chapter 3
"So no sex or drugs? How are we supposed to rock and roll?" Brian asked Jon and Sammy from his spot on the couch in the basement. Their instruments were set up around the piano and the drum set.
"There's got to be stuff we can play that fits the bill." Heather insisted.
"It's mostly going to be older stuff." Jon warned them.
"We could play jazz." Lori said hopefully.
Sammy and Lynn grinned.
"No!" The guys told them together.
"Band geeks, I swear." Jason grumbled from his spot flopped on the pool table.
"You guys suck." Lori told the boys.
Jason good naturedly flipped her off which made her snort in amusement.
"Anyway…" Heather said, trying to get her weird new friend group back on track. "We need something that needs an ensemble singing group."
"I can do a fair John Lennon." Jon said in a nasally tone that sounded almost entirely unlike John Lennon.
Sammy snorted behind her hand.
"What?"
"Nothing." She insisted and bit her lip.
"Critic." Sammy gave him an extremely evil smile that took him by surprise until he realized what she was about to mention and, in a single swift motion, he clamped a hand over her mouth as the other was placed at the back of her head. "Don't you dare!" He ordered her, looking her directly in her eyes.
With her wicked grin hidden, Sammy licked his hand.
"Gah!" Jon exclaimed, pulling his hand away in horror to everyone's laughter.
"What? What?" Lori asked, bouncing a little.
"Aunt Sam has a really funny video of Uncle Jack when he wanted to be in a band." Sammy explained.
"He'd kill us. Starting with me." Jon said of that video seeing the light of day ever.
Sammy pouted.
"Not gonna work, Carter. I like living." He said and pointedly looked away so she couldn't use whatever weird voodoo power her eyes had over him to that always got him to cave.
"Rats." Sammy mumbled which made Brian chuckle.
"You can't win them all, Pipsqueak." He said with a shrug.
Sammy stuck her tongue out at Brian and Lynn cuffed him on the arm as she'd been sitting in his lap anyway.
Heather rolled her eyes. This wasn't getting anywhere. She got up and went to the wall of bookcases full of movies and CDs with a thoughtful look on her face. After a moment she smiled and pulled a case and walked over to her two hundred disk CD changer. She fiddled with the balance a little before popping in the CD, selecting the track, and hitting play.
A delicate piano melody began to play that was soon joined by a guitar that you almost missed if you weren't paying attention.
She sat back down in the leather lounge chair and smiled as the lyrics started. "The band name is Porcupine Tree." She said as the strain "Pass the cheerless town past my window..." sang out softly from the speakers above them.
Jon's hand crept into Sammy's as the lyrics described a dead mother's message to her son to be the wonderful person she knew he could be. By the end of the song Jon had unshed tears in his eyes and Sammy was sniffling.
"We can't play that." Jason admonished Heather. "Those two both lost their parents."
Sammy shook her head though. "No. I love it. It's almost exactly what dad said to me before he died."
Jon nodded. "Yah. Same with my mom actually." He turned to Sammy and said, "If we practice enough, we should be able to disassociate a little bit."
Sammy knew the truth of Jon's words. After all, they had plenty of practice over the years. Lynn looked at them skeptically.
"We should have a couple of alternatives too, see which thing we do best together." Lori suggested. "There can't be much use for a flute so I guess I'm a backup singer?"
Sammy nodded and said with a grin. "Well, we need someone to harmonize with Lynn's killer alto."
Lynn blinked.
"Jon squealed." Sammy explained.
Lynn sighed and rolled her eyes. "I should have known. You two couldn't keep a secret from each other to save your lives." She said to them.
Sammy and Jon looked at each other and cracked up.
"What? What did I say?"
Sammy shook her heat though. "Inside joke. It's not important." She said still chuckling. "For our alternates I think we should stick to classics. Journey, Styx, Fleetwood Mac, that sort of stuff. All of it requires harmony and most of the instruments we play." She continued.
"You've done this before." Brian said.
"Kind of?" Sammy said. "Actually Jon used to play in a band in his hometown."
"Why yah gotta tell 'em that, Carter?" Jon whined.
"Wait, Jon was in a band in junior high?"
"It was some fancy music school my grandparents talked me into. My dad was paying for it so we figured what the heck." He said with a dismissive shrug, trying to talk his way around the truth. It had in fact been a very fancy and expensive music school and he'd been high school aged at the time. "It wasn't that big of a deal." He told them with a frown that deepened the brackets on either side of his mouth.
Sammy patted his hand reassuringly. "That's part of how we became friends really. My dad had me taking piano lessons and we both hated practice at the time." She said with a grin. They had had that conversation and she supposed in a way it was how their inner child had identified each other and bonded.
"Hey, that's pretty cool." Jason said. Still not sure his best friend was ever entirely telling him the truth. "So, we going with this schmaltzy grunge or something more up-beat?"
Jon exchanged a long look with Lynn.
"Oh no."
Jon grinned a little.
"No way!" She insisted
"Do it for Gracie." He suggested.
Lynn screwed up her face at him and glared. "I hate you." She told him, admitting defeat. She adored that munchkin.
"Would anyone like to explain to me why my girlfriend is having a wonder twins brain conversation with my best girlfriend's boyfriend?" Brian asked plaintively.
"He's not your teammate first?" Heather asked him in confusion.
"Not when he's using the psychic network connection with my girlfriend."
Sammy snorted in amusement. Jack used to do something similar with Janet. Have whole arguments with facial expressions.
"Want me to tell them?" Jon offered.
Lynn huffed. "You're going to anyway." She grumbled ungraciously.
Jon grinned smugly. "Lynn has a solo in Sound of Music."
"What?!" Jason all but yelled.
"Holy shit!" Heather exclaimed.
"Seriously?" Brian asked her, a little hurt that she hadn't told him.
"Sweet." Sammy said with a huge cheesy grin.
"Ms. Nora needed 'acts' for the 'talent show' at the end of the play and found out Lynn can speak German."
"Wait, you can?" Jason asked her in a surprised tone.
Lynn shrugged, hunched her shoulders, and blushed. "A little." She admitted.
"How did she find that out?" Brian asked her.
"I made a joke in German to my German teacher when he brought me the class work I missed the other day when we were practicing for the play and Lynn laughed at the punch-line." Jon said smugly with a grin.
"What was the joke?" Jason asked.
"It doesn't translate well." Jon said dismissively.
"Wait, how do you know enough German to tell jokes?" Jason asked him suspiciously.
Jon shrugged. "My grandma was Pennsylvanian." He said as though that explained it.
"Last I checked, bro, they speak English in Pennsylvania." Jason pointed out.
"The Amish don't, though." Brian said thoughtfully. "They speak German."
Jon nodded and pointed at Brian. "Exactly." He then started to explain. "And she grew up right outside of Amish farming communities. Most of them speak English fairly well but a few old timers in her day didn't speak any English and Grandma was quick at languages."
"That does not explain why you know German." Jason pointed out.
Sammy decided it was time to intervene. "Jon's grandparents were really big into cultural enrichment. Took him to the opera and taught him a lot about art and pivotal Americana stuff like the Harlem renaissance and the Detroit riots too. His family was 'society' in the 1800's and his great-great something grandfather was a famous journalist and author who fought in the civil war." She grinned at Jon before continued as if reciting from a book report. "Most of the generations of his family have been very educated and lots of them have been artists, authors and even a great something uncle designed board games."
Everyone looked at Jon with their mouths open except Heather who had figured out he'd come from money by the way he pretended he didn't but was still a snob about some very weirdly specific things.
"Wait so you're like… classy and shit?" Brian asked.
Jon looked up at the ceiling.
"Well, that explains a lot." Jason grumbled.
"Why do you say that?" Brian asked.
"He recognized some art in my dad's house. I thought it was just because he likes art but being classy and rich explains it a bit better." Jason said to them.
