Chapter 7: Bad Band Names

As Amanda did my hair, I started to feel much better. The panic was gone now, and I had gotten some of my previous resolution back. I had never been the one to talk about my feelings, but Amanda never judged me and she had felt the same way I did. It felt good to talk with her about it, to get everything off my chest, of course I stuck to the subject of Jacob, not wanting to go any deeper at the moment.

"I tell myself that what I did then, that´s not the kind of person I want to be. So I prove everyday that I´m not that person by being the person I want to be. I have never had a single drink since that party," Amansa said as she was blow drying my hair.

"Do you regret it every day?" I asked here, wondering how long I would have to bear this pain. Not that I didn´t deserve it.

Amanda stopped the blow dryer, and I turned to look at her.

"Yes, I do regret it, when I think about it. But I don´t dwell on it anymore. I can´t do anything about it, other than proving that I´m not a bitchy, boyfriend stealing slut." We both laughed a little. It hurt to laugh, but Amanda looked so non-slutty at the moment in her high-necked, red sweater and baggy jeans.

Amanda looked at me with a critical look, and then smiled.

"Well, it really is a change, and it doesn´t look half-bad, if I may say so myself."

A little scared, I slowly turned around to look at myself in the mirror.

I didn´t recognize the girl staring back at me.

She had the same, pale skin as me, but it seemed to glow a bit because it wasn´t such a contrast to the long, fluffy blond hair that cascaded down her shoulders and her back. Her eyebrows had been waxed into two perfect lines above her tired, but alert brown eyes. I lifted my hand, and the girl in the mirror did the same.

It wasn´t me at all, it was another person. It was perfect.

"A change," I nodded, too stunned to utter a whole sentence. Amanda walked up beside me and smiled at my reflection. The girl in the mirror smiled back at her, and suddenly, the girl in the mirror was me again. That damage smile would forever belong to Bella Swan.

"Thank you so much Amanda. You must think I am a complete..." I didn´t know how to describe myself. A complete lunatic? A nutcase? A person that spilled her guts to anyone, anywhere, all the time?

Amanda just shook her head. "Oh Bella, don´t worry." Then she started to laugh. Her laughter was free too, just like Christopher´s laughter. She had healed. That stung a bit. I knew that I would never heal like that. But I wouldn´t let myself think about it.

"Actually, I was terrified that you were going to be a stuck-up, know-it-all musician with no feelings what so ever. I am very glad to be proven wrong," she smiled and put her own hair up in a messy bun on the top of here head.

I smiled back at here. What was it with these people? They all made me smile and feel better, no matter what I did, no matter how weird I acted. I shook my head as I started to clean out the bathroom, and the blond hair that moved with the movement took me a bit of grad.

"So Bella, what do you say? Time for a night snack and some gossip about the band?" Amanda asked as she walked out into the combined living room/ kitchen. She seemed to be a kind of person that felt at home no matter where she was. I liked it, and I had a feeling that Amanda and I were going to be really good friends.

I didn´t have anything exceptionally exciting snack to offer, but I had bought lemons, so we made lemon-water and put a bole of chips on the little table in front of the two chairs in the living room aria, Amanda consequently calling me "blondy" every opportunity she got. I wanted to call here something too, so I called here black without thinking about it. We both froze, stopping what we were doing, me cutting lemons, she poring ships, looked at each other, and laughed. My laughter was painfully wrong in a way I couldn´t put my finger on.

"So, tell me, the band! I want to know as much as possible!" I said as I sat down in the green chair, which was really comfy by the way.

Amanda dramatically reached out for a a glass of water, took a painfully long sip, and then put the glass down again. I just rolled my eyes.

"OK, so the band consists of the most important member, me, the bassist," Amanda joked, pretending she had a hat on her head that she flipped off. "And then there is Jack Carter, he plays the guitar. Nice guy, awesome guitar player. He do some back-up vocal too. Just don´t touch his guitar, he´ll kill you. "

"Jack Carter, guitar, no touching, got it," I repeated. Amanda laughed, and then continued.

"Our keyboard player, Johnny Dean, is our songwriter and composer. You can say he is the mastermind. And he has a sick sense of humor. We have Allen Promfry, he plays the drums, or kills them, depends on how you look at it. He is the sweetest thing ever, always have a smile on his face. He has a girlfriend too, and she is really nice and caring..." she said and I had a feeling Amanda didn´t really like this girlfriend.

"Johnny Dean, mastermind, Allen, drum-killer, girlfriend."

"Quick learner. I like that. Ok, so that leaves the most important member of them all, the one member that is the front face of our band."

I sat up a little straighter, wondering who this important person could be.

Amanda looked at me and winked. "You."

I was speechless. Me? How could she say that. She had never heard me sing, or...

"Bella, Chriss played your version of Free Falling for me, and you are just..." She waved her hands in front of her, trying to explain. I felt myself blush scarlet. There was only so much positive response a girl could take, so I quickly changed the subject.

"And you all call yourself the Mad Cows..." I said, disapprove coloring my voice. Amanda shook her head, laughing again.

"Our band was never meant to be anything serious, so we just picked a funny name," She explained. "But I agree with you, we really need another name for our band."

So I retrieved my notebook and we started to bouncing ides of each other for new band names.

"Something that reflects on us as individuals..." murmered Amanda and looked out the window.

"The Total Fuck – Ups?" I suggested, trying to be funny, but Amanda just rolled her eyes. I wrote it down anyway, so the page didn´t look so empty.

"What about HOPE?" asked Amanda. I wrote it down as I shook my head slightly.

"Too, I don´t know, happy?" I said, and Amanda frowned, but had to agree that if we were named HOPE, then that limited the kind of music we could play.

After several suggestions, bad ones I might add, I started to bang my head with the notebook. This was really hard! Then I got and idea.

"Amanda, do you have an iPod or something?" I asked as I retrieved mine from my back pocket.

"Sure, how come?" she asked as she got hers out of her purse. She looked quiet confused.

"Push shuffle songs or what ever, and the tell me the name of the first song that comes on," I said enthusiastically, quickly doing the same. The song that started to play was I´m still here by John Rezeznik.

"I got The Reason I go On," Amanda said disappointedly. I sighed.

"Mine sucked too, but I had to try. I wish the band name would just fall into my head."

Somewhere in the process of pondering a new band name, I think we fell asleep, because when I awoke with a start in what seamed as a second sleep, a red dawn was breaking in the horizon. Then, I knew what the band name was going to be:

Seattle Sunrise

AN: I had real trouble trying to figure out a cool band name, but I liked Seattle Sunrise, because they are so rear. I mean, it rains all the time there, right? Well, I hope you all liked this chapter. And just so people know: Bella is on the pill, so she will not be getting pregnant or anything stupid like that =P