Just Like Tommy Lee

It was early, the seven year old girl noticed as she slowly woke up, looking out of her window only to see that the sky was still very dark. Perhaps it was too early for her to be awake; maybe she should just go to sleep again. But just as she was about to close her eyes, the little girl remembered why she'd woken up in the first place.

She had woken up because she had wanted to listen to a song.

She tried to go to sleep again, deciding that she could listen to it when she woke up later. But the feeling wouldn't go away. Her eyes wouldn't let her go back to sleep until she heard it again.

She grumbled as she pushed the blankets off of her body, immediately wanting to go back to sleep in the warm blankets; it was early December, and she was cold as her bare feet hit the wooden floor of her bedroom. But hearing the song was too important; she had to hear it now.

She walked down the hall that led to the stairwell, making sure not to wake up her brothers as she walkedby their room. The door was left ajar, and both of them were light sleepers. One of them; her oldest brother, was awake and sitting in his bed, listening to his walkman. Seeing her, he pulled the headphones off of his ears and looked at her.

"Leigh?" He mumbled quietly. She stopped in her tracks and looked back at him, not saying anything. In her mind, if she didn't move, he couldn't see her. Like an ostrich. "It's five-thirty in the morning. What are you doing awake?"

"I can't sleep. I'm going downstairs ." She replied, only telling a haf lie. She couldn't sleep; that much was true. But she wasn't going downstairs; she was going to the shop, where her mother's CDs were. Then she was going to the kitchen, where the main CD player was. But she knew he wouldn't want her going outside alone before the sun came up, much less in the middle of winter.

"Okay," He muttered, probably assuming she meant that she was going to watch the early morning TV shows"Just don't let Mom catch you watching MTV."

She nodded, knowing what he meant. Their mother wouldn't care if she watched MTV, so long as she was with Leigh as she did so, making sure that her daughter wouldn't be scarred by some rap video. Leigh wasn't like any of the other kids in her class, or even her school. She wasn't into Aaron Carer, George Strait, or the Backstreet Boys. Instead, she listened to the rock music her mother listened to; stuff that her mom had listened to back in high school.

As she reached the entry way, she smiled to herself. She pulled her snowboots on and the little purple jacket with faux black fur lining the hood and then opened the door quietly. When she got outside, she realized that it had snowed again last night--all the tracks from the day before were gone, in their place a crisp white blanket.

She trudged through the foot-and-a-half deep snow that was so customary for northern Montana to her garage, which was built out of huge, rough rocks that her parents had found in her uncle's pastures.

She knew exactly where to find the CDs once she got into the garage; right on the counter. She grabbed the black case and quickly ran back into the house, not wanting to be cold anymore. When she got back inside, she took off the jacket and snowboots, placing them back in the closet where she had gotten them from in the first place.

She then eagerly walked quickly back into the kitchen. She went through all of the CDs until she found the one she had been looking for. She read through the song listing, until she saw the name of the song she so badly wanted to hear. She popped the CD into the silver and black colored CD player and skipped through the songs until she heard the familiar beat hit her ears.

Ba-dun. Ba-dun., se heard the drums and some kind of guitar in her mind. As soon as the song started, she coudl't help but sing along with the singer.

"Sittin' in the classroom thinkin' it's a drag. Listening to the teacher rap just ain't my bag. When two bells ring you know it's my cue. I'm gonna meet the boys on floor number 2." She sang along.

When it came time for the chorus, she let the singer take over, just wanting to dance along to it now. Leigh continued dancing, until the solo began. Unable to control herself, she grabbed two of her mother's wooden spoons out of the drawer and began to hit the table and counter with them, pretending she was the drummer in the band and that she was the one so many people were cheering on.

When the song ended, Leigh was breathing heavily. She took a second to catch her breath before taking a sweaty bow to her fans.

"Bravo, Leigh! Bravo!" She heard her mother clapping from the side of the kitchen.

"I didn't mean to wake you," She said sheepishly. Her mother laughed, holding up a video camera.

"You didn't," She replied to her daughter. "And by the way, you were just like Tommy Lee."