Can I just say that having a Beta Reader is friggin' amazing? I still edit it myself to an extent, but to have someone who will read over my crap and make it not crappy is the BEST. Thank you so much, Kerapal Bubbles! Also, she did this while she was sick. T_T
…. That face looks like FNaF to me now. Horrible video game…
What was I writing about here?
His sister's pink head was bent over her iPhone with the redheaded waitress from yesterday. They looked completely absorbed in whatever they were watching.
"Merle?" his voice cracked.
Her neck snapped up and she gasped, "Bro! What are you doing here!?"
"I could ask the same about you," he said weakly. His stomach churned horribly as his groin throbbed in pain again. "I came to see the owner because he drove me yesterday fr-"
"This is perfect! I was trying to text you before, but your phone is dead or something! Look!" Merle rushed over with her phone, her dark eyes wild with excitement. "Everyone in school is talking about it! I can't believe how fast this has spread! I just had to come and actually see the place with my own eyes!"
"What's spread?" Van asked bewildered. "What are you talking about?"
"You're still going on about that?" The pixie waitress complained as she grabbed a washrag and bucket from behind the counter. "I had to deal with harassment all day! I couldn't even teach properly. I deal with enough crap in my life."
"It's kind of cool," her friend chimed in from behind Merle's head. "Admit it, Hitomi. We've gotten more business today than ever."
"No, it's stupid."
Balgus came from the back door with a bag of frozen hash brown patties in hand. Heading over, he scowled at Merle as he handed the cold bag over. Van gently placed the bag on his crotch with a wince.
"I told you to go home if you're not going to eat anything, Pinky!"
"I'm here with my brother now!" Merle stuck out her tongue and Van's eyebrows rose.
"She's been bothering you, sir?" Van asked.
"She's been making noise and disturbing my customers!"
"My brother's the reason you've had so much business today!" Merle shot back.
Van frowned at Merle. "Mind your manners, kid. What business? What are you talking about?"
Merle shoved the phone in his hands and pressed play. A shaky video of a dark street appeared. A heavy-jacketed figure was crossing the street. Van's painful stomach gave a jolt.
It was him!
"Someone taped the entire thing! They even got you throwing up on her! It was uploaded last night on Twitcher and this morning everyone was talking about it! It's gone crazy viral!"
Van watched as Hitomi tackled him to the ground just as the car turned left on the street and winced. "This… isn't good…"
"How!?" Merle cried out. "Van, this is perfect! You're trying to boost popularity with White Dragons, right? This is what you want!"
"I thought you said horrible viral was a bad thing?"
"It's not when it gets you the attention you need! Think about it! Everyone will figure out who you are and when you drop a new single, it's going to be raging!"
"Please, speak normal. I can't handle any more weird slang today." Van made a face as the video showed him projectile vomit all over Hitomi's uniform. It was awful. "Who taped it?"
"Someone with the username Dilly_flames69. Stupid name if you ask me." Merle's hands were on her hips. "He's getting so many hits off of something you did. But it was his recording equipment, so he owns it. Totally ridiculous."
Yukari stood and looked out the window. "It looks like it was taped from higher up. Maybe the apartment over that bakery across the street. We could figure out who lives there and ask about it."
"'Dilly_flames69' doesn't sound like a stable person," Hitomi injected, wiping a table with her washcloth. "The entire thing is dumb. I would leave the weird stalker alone."
The video ended to show the emblem of a computer generated robot shooting fire from its hands. Van felt weak as he handed the phone back to his sister.
"It's got over 800,000 views and I haven't refreshed it in a couple of minutes. I bet it's at one million now!" Merle chirped happily. "You could use this, Van. This could be something you add on your music video or something. We have to buy the video from him!"
"What?!" Both Hitomi and Van exclaimed together. She dropped her rag with a splat and he almost dropped the frozen hash browns from his crotch.
"You guys are writing more music!?" the pixie waitress rushed forward. "The White Dragons are coming back?!"
Van groaned and wanted to hide underneath the booth. "Not really…"
"You know about them?" Merle asked with a frown. It was strange to see the delighted smile on the waitress' face as she nodded, her wide eyes glowing excitedly.
"Of course, I do! I have a ton of their old music!" she confessed proudly. "I still rock out to 'Killing in the Rain' when it comes on the mix station."
"'Killing in the Rain' was Van's song! He wrote that!" The pink girl announced loudly. Balgus grumbled audibly from the back counter. "Bro, she's your fan?"
"You wouldn't have known from this morning…" Van said darkly feeling a heat of embarrassment. "Look, it's not what you think. I just signed on to 'help' Allen out. I need the money and he needs the music, so we are mutually helping each other-"
"He's going to be performing again, too!" Merle interrupted excitedly.
"No way!"
"That hasn't been decided yet-" Van injected.
"They're going to go on tour and take me with them! It's going to be awesome AF!"
"You're going on tour!? That's so cool!" Hitomi grinned. "I can't believe you guys are back together."
"Is anyone even listening to me?" Van asked in defeat. Yukari smiled kindly at him and shrugged.
"When are you going to release the new album? I want to buy the first one!" Hitomi said happily.
Merle glanced over at Van with a smug look. "Told you I could sell albums."
Van sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Songs about food that had to be sexy, performances dancing to hip-hop, and a music video of him projectile vomiting all over a poor girl. He groaned as his newly charged phone whistled in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw the text message and groaned again.
'W8ing on da new digs. Come tmw. Recording Quesa dis weekend. Bring wat ya got.'
Van set the phone back down and glanced over the three year's worth of songs. Binders and binders organize by style, rhythm, and theme were stacked high in front of him.
"Something about food… sexy food…" Just saying the words out loud made him shudder in the ridiculousness of it all. Reluctantly opening the first binder, Van's heart sank even further at the name of the first song he saw.
'Sweet as a Fairy'….
Picking up his pencil, he crossed out the title and wrote 'Sweet as a Cherry'.
Seven cups of coffee and five hours later, he finally finished revising twenty songs. Clipping them all in a binder, he looked over his destroyed masterpiece of ballads. A sharp burn hit his throat and he went to the kitchen to pour more coffee. He kept his back to the table.
He couldn't look at it.
He hated himself.
His grip shook on the cup; he put it down on the counter next to a pen and pad of paper.
High on caffeine, lack of sleep, and self-hate, he bitterly pulled the pad of paper closer and began to write. Hardly glancing over the lyrics once he was done, he tore the paper off the pad and shoved it roughly into the book.
Why the hell not?
"THIS IS TOTES AMAZA!" Allen cheered as he flipped over the twenty songs Van had brought with him. Tearing them apart for money was bad enough, but having the blonde man read each of the titles out loud was the worst. Lifting a hand to scratch under the red bandana wrapped around his forehead, Allen nodded his head in approval.
"'Her Pink Plum', 'Gobble the Cobbler', 'Packaged Meat', 'Cheesy Sandwiches'… Brah, you're a wizard."
"Yeah, sure," Van murmured, biting his thumbnail. "You can pick whatever you want for the single."
Allen reached underneath the couch and brought out a small lap keyboard. Turning back to 'Her Pink Plum', his expert fingers flickered through Van's written notes. Despite the horrible words written underneath, the music itself was so familiar that Van's spirit actually lifted a bit. He remembered how he wrote the original song, 'Her Pink Hair,' for Merle's change of hairstyle several months back. He never told her he wrote song about her extreme makeover.
It didn't matter anyways. The song was no longer about her.
"We can totes swerve this part to get a build-up and then when the chorus hits, we can drop the beat. That's when ya can start a chant of 'Pink Plum' that the crowd will join in with, brah. You've got the lower vocals to get the stir! You're on fleek wit dat, amirite?"
"Fine." Van's thumb was almost bleeding as he chewed the skin around the nail. "Just tell me what you want to do."
"Wait. What's this one?" Allen's fingers had moved back to flipping through the book and landed on a simple piece of lined paper.
The one that Van had jotted down just last night.
"Oh, that," he said a grimace. "I wrote it last night. It's not any good. Don't use it."
"'Parked in a booth;
A sweet hits my tooth;
Pancake on my plate;
Don't care that it's late;
Olive green eyes;
Perfect shaped thighs;
Short yellow dress (Pour more syrup);
Girl, I'm impressed'."
Allen read the lyrics with a grin. "Braaaaah, this is good!"
"No, it stupid. Something that just popped in my head." Van shook his head quickly. "Look at 'Cheesy Sandwiches'. That one might work for the single-"
"Tangle in her thread;
Peanut butter spread;
Layer on the stack;
All over them flapjack;
Shakin' those hips;
Lickin' round lips;
Breakfast delight (pour more syrup);
Pancake all night."
Allen stopped reading and his blue eyes were wide. "This is number one. Does it have music set yet?"
"Stop! No! You're not using that one!" Van shouted.
He reached for the binder, but Allen's long arms grabbed the book before he could even try. Allen held the book to his chest and awkwardly read:
"'Forget the leftovers. We're all alone; (pour more syrup x2)
Get her dress soaked to the bone; (pour more syrup x2)
I'm using her body to make a platter; (More syrup x2)
And spray her with my pancake batter' - Brah, this chorus is gold."
"No, it isn't!" He could feel his cheeks growing red. "It's really not something you'd want to use!"
Allen put the binder next to him on the couch and played a chord on his keyboard. "This bottom part is the bridge?
'Lick the plate clean. Done fooling around;
No crumbs have fallen to the ground;
My desire; (more)
I never tire; (more)
Starvation; (more)
Temptation; (more)
The round shapes;
Of Pancakes;
The sugar taste;
Leave none to waste;
She's all turned up;
Now pour more syrup(pour more syrup x3)'"
The image of Hitomi's excited face at the prospect of their new album raced into Van's frantic mind and his heart sped up a mile. "Please… please, can we not do this one?"
"Van, this is cha-ching, brah! This is what I've been looking for! You made pancakes hot as heelll! Easy money! I think I can even rap the bridge part. Let's make this the first single, brah! Record it this weekend!
"I said I didn't want to use it."
"Brah, why not?" Allen's eyebrow quirked underneath his red bandana. "I thought you needed dough? This…" the blonde gestured to the paper. "This is it. This is our ticket in. It slays!"
Van's face dropped in his hands and he exhaled long and low. A headache was beginning to bloom.
Allen took that as a sign of surrender.
"You mad flex, brah! Let's slap some tune and slip it to Chid when he's back. He'll mix it real good."
It was a long day already, but Hitomi smiled as she leaned forward over the girl's desk and put her finger on the formula. "It's better when you make a song out of it. That's how I memorized the quadratic formula."
"Oh, my God, this is too looong," the girl complained. "It's already four! I want to go home."
"You're signed up for extra tutoring. Sorry, but you have to stay until five. And look, it's actually quite simple when you put the equation in the calculator. See?" Hitomi plugged in the numbers and showed the graph. "It's making a curve! That's how you know you got it right. Just plug the numbers in the right spot. You have to read the sentence and figure out through context clues what goes where."
"Here's a context clue: when will I ever use this shit?" She tossed her long blonde hair over one shoulder and crossed her arms.
Don't snap.
The pixie haired woman pressed her lips together and pushed down her inner anger. Taking a deep soothing breath she said sweetly, "To pass tenth grade, you have to use it. To get out of this school, you have to use it. It's important because in order for you to make it in this world, you have to know the quadratic formula. You may not use it after this grade, but for right now, this is your ticket to a diploma."
"Yeah, and what did getting a diploma do for you? A waitress who gets ralphed on by strangers in the middle of the night?"
Hitomi closed her eyes to quell her fiery rage. Don't snap. Don't snap. Don't snap.
"Let's just move on to number two…" she said through gritted teeth as a bead of sweat ran down the side of her face.
"No! I've had enough of this bull-shit! It's stupid as fuck! You don't even care! You just want to talk about fucking Quartzo Formula or some shit!"
Don't snap. Don't snap. Don't snap. Don't snap.
"It's called the Quadratic Form-"
"Why don't you shove a ruler up your ass and go back to your night job?! No wonder you're a pathetic waitress. Some basic bitch who can't get a proper job!"
Don't snap -
She stopped.
Her green eyes zeroing in on the blonde girl, she whispered, "What… did you just call me?"
"Basic. Bitch." The girl sneered.
SNNNNNNAP.
"Basic… Let's go over the word 'basic', shall we?" Her eyes grew wider as her anger flared hotter. "Basic: forming an essential foundation or starting point."
"What-ever," the girl scoffed. "Get over it and stop kidding yourself."
But Hitomi couldn't get over it.
Not yet anyway.
A crooked smile twisted on her lips and she leaned closer to the girl. There was a desk between them, but the girl backed away with a frown.
"If used in chemistry terms, to say that I am basic would mean I have a pH greater than seven. That means if I wanted to, I could burn all your pretty hair off. I could shred your skin and melt your bones."
The girl's mouth fell open, but Hitomi still wasn't done. Leaning even closer, she hissed, "But let us use your definition of the word. In Urban Dictionary's terminology: an adjective used to describe any person, place, or activity involving obscenely obvious behavior, dress, or action, ie: unsophistication. Now let us compare the behaviors of the both of us during this tutor session. You have insulted me, refused to learn, and called me a 'bitch'. I am here to help you with basic algebra and you are the one who can't seem to muster the brainpower to learn it. Instead, you want the world handed to you on a silver platter. Newsflash, sweetheart, the world's not coming. Years from now, you will be left behind to rot; to fester in your own self-hate until you can't stand to glance in a mirror! And then you'll look back at this moment; this one moment when you had a volunteer tutor who wanted to help you! You'll see that I wasn't Urban Dictionary's term of basic or chemistry's definition of it. I was the first definition. I was forming a starting point for you to pull yourself out of your own ass and make something of yourself in this damn world! So, in that light, you're half right. I am basic. But I think we both know who the real bitch is in this room!"
The girl's chair had been tipping back through the entire speech. Blue eyes locked on electric green. Slowly, Hitomi straightened up and the legs of the blonde's chair fell safely back to the floor with a thump.
"Now, let's work on number two," Hitomi smiled.
"You got the songs together?" Merle asked that evening as she scooped up the takeout spaghetti onto her plate.
Van found that he wasn't hungry. His head still ached from the long day.
"We put together the album's list, but most of today was spent composing the first single. Allen scheduled the old studio for this weekend, so we can get started on it," he answered, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. "Merle, this was a horrible decision. I should never have come back to the White Dragons. I wrote a song and it's not what I meant… This is going to be the most embarrassing-"
"Yeah, okay, so listen," Merle interrupted flicking her pink hair out of her face. "I found the dude that taped the video."
Van's arms dropped to the kitchen table with a thump. "You did? How?"
"Don't be mad, but I ditched school and went to the bakery that the Yukari chick was talking about. I went in and they said a guy lives upstairs. He works the ovens part-time in the morning. I saw him leaving his apartment this afternoon. He's creepy looking."
"Come on, kid…" Van's head pulsed painfully. "I don't want you going to that bakery if there's a creepy guy there. And I said before that I don't want the video. And I haven't even started about you skipping school-"
"What does Allen think?" she asked, rolling her eyes and taking out her phone.
Van frowned. "No phones at the table and I haven't said anything to him. That lunatic doesn't need to know anything. He'll just make an already bad situation worse."
Her lips curled into a wicked grin as she rapidly typed on the screen. Then she put her phone in her pocket and picked up her fork. Twirling the spaghetti lightly, she caught his eyes and tilted her head innocently.
"What?"
"Meeerrrle…" Van growled darkly. "What did you just do?"
"Oh, you'll see… in about three minutes," she replied sweetly, batting her eyelashes.
It was less than thirty seconds.
Van's pocket vibrated and he checked the caller ID.
Allen.
He slowly looked at his sister, who was picking up her plate.
"I'm going to go eat in my room! Bye!" she giggled as she ran out of the room. A moment later he heard the door to her bedroom slam shut.
Van's eyes closed for a brief moment to steady himself before answering the call.
"H-Hello?"
"BRAH! We got a music video!"
The thing I love about this story is the simplicity. There's no convoluted back story – kinda. There's no mystery – kinda. AND I get to make the insanity just crazier and crazier. Which I plan on doing in the next chapter. They are short and fun and so easy on my poor noggin. Sometimes you want to drop all your other intricately webbed stories and just write a song about sexy pancakes.
Annnnd that's what I did. I wrote a song about pancakes. Sexy. Pancakes. I did it at work. So, essentially I got paid for writing a song about sexy pancakes. Lol!
I can see it now…
Boss: "So… what did you accomplish today as your mission for success, Mrs. Young?"
Me: "Well, I finished sorting the run tickets for the month, completed the weekly plan, and I WROTE A SONG ABOUT SEXY PANCAKES, DERP!1!1"
Annnnnnd fired.
Blue…