Did You Get What You Deserve?

~*Alecsandra’s Point of View*~

I tightened a string on my guitar and played a chord. James twisted around in his chair to look at me.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Learning a song.”

I played a succession of chords. James, recognising the song, grinned.

“Sixty years old and still good.”

He grabbed the guitar leaning against his desk and began playing the intro.

“I think I’m gonna be sad, I think it’s today, yeah!
The girl that’s driving me mad is going away...”

He stopped, laughing.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“We’re so John and Paul.”

“How so?”

“With our writing and our singing, and all that.”

“Okay... who’s who?”

He paused, considering.

“You’re Paul,” he said.

“How come?”

“Because you’re the cute one.”

“Thanks. But that does mean you get shot.”

“Damn. Didn’t think of that.”

“Don’t worry, I shall protect you.”

He laughed again and turned back to face the computer screen.

“Come see the track listing.”

I peered over his shoulder.

“Wow! I never realised we had so many of our own songs.”

“Well, considering we’ve been writing for two years I’d actually say we’ve been rather unproductive.”

I grinned.

“Have you got Sasha, Matt and Lindsay on MSN?”

He nodded.

“I’ve already sent them the listing,” he said. “Sasha and Matt have okayed it. Sasha agrees we should put some covers in there as well.”

“What about Lindsay?”

“She still has issues with some of the songs. She doesn’t think we should have ‘Everything I Never Wanted’ in there, and she wants to replace ‘Ex-Rabbit’ with ‘Hamburger Moustache.’”

“What?! ‘Everything I Never Wanted’ is my baby! That was the one song I wasn’t embarrassed about showing you guys. And ‘Hamburger Moustache’ is crap. We wrote that at two in the morning, it’s gibberish.”

“‘Ex-Rabbit’ isn’t much better.”

“At least it’s funny.”

“It’s the ‘Eight Days a Week’ of Invisible Invasion. We’re never going to perform it live because we don’t like it, but we’ll put it on an album anyway.”

“Exactly.”

James’ conversation with Lindsay bleeped.

Why bother with everything I never wanted? It’s just another one of Alec’s weepy songs.

“What?”

He bit his lip and typed back furiously.

FYI, I happen to like Alec’s “weepy songs.” At least they have more feeling than your meaningless songs about drugs.

The answer came back almost instantly.

You’re biased coz she’s your gf. What a spoilt brat, she doesn’t deserve you.

I pushed James out of the way and sat down.

This is Alec. Lindsay, you’re a conniving bitch. Consider yourself no longer my best friend (why didn’t I say this ages ago?) and consider yourself ejected from the band. We won’t need you when we go to record on Saturday.

James sat up to read what I had just sent. He whistled.

“Jesus, Alec, you’ve got more balls than any of us.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been wanting to kick her out for a while. She’s not committed, she’s negative, she resents the rest of us, and she’s dragging us down.”

I opened the list of songs again.

“So from this list we can remove... four songs. Be gone, Lindsay! Be gone, and take all your songs with you!”

I sent the updated track listing to Sasha and Matt.

We revised. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

What happened to the other songs? said Sasha.

They left with Lindsay,I replied.

She’s gone? Woohoo!

I grinned.

“Thank God,” I said.

James placed his chin on my shoulder.

“You know, you’ve just caused more problems than you’ve solved.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we now need a new drummer. By Saturday.”

“Oh. Shit.”