Wanna Live It Up Just Because

Arpeggio gripped her cup of decaf coffee in her hands, slouching in her seat at the faux wooden table. The band had arrived at Hopeless Records no longer than five minutes ago. The first thing Arpeggio had done was pour a cup of decaf coffee, politely asked the secretary for a sugar substitute and non-dairy creamer, and slumped in her seat.

Neon sat on Arpeggio's right, close to the head of the table. She dug through her backpack and extracted a tiny laptop, placing it in front of Arpeggio.

"You may as well get some schoolwork done while we wait for Grim," Neon instructed.

Not only was Grim looking for food to give the diabetic drummer but he was also finding out why the other band had yet to arrive.

"You're making her do homework?" asked Dorian from his seat across from Arpeggio.

"Well she has to keep up with her schoolwork while we're here."

Dorian grimaced, "That's torture."

"Dorian, it's necessary for her to graduate from high school," Dante stated, sitting on Dorian's right.

Much to Arpeggio's displeasure, he was right. She did have to graduate. Her sister wasn't giving her the option to dropout. If Neon didn't dropout, Arpeggio sure as hell wouldn't. The only time school was ever enjoyable for Arpeggio was when the band was on tour and she took online courses. Not because the work was easier but because she wasn't around so many people. On tour, she could lock herself in the tour bus, avoiding meeting any new people. At school, she was almost forced to socialize with group projects, presentations, and the lunch period.

She could handle the work though; it was always easy for her. Since she wasn't much of a social butterfly, her days were spent at home, besides band practice and work. The candy store she worked at was never busy so she could do her homework on the job. There was always time to complete school work.

Arpeggio opened the laptop in front of her and pressed the circular power button. The computer turned on and asked her to pick a user profile: Neon's or her own. She of course chose her own and the computer immediately opened it. There was no password protecting her account; Neon needed full access to it to check her schoolwork making a password useless.

Grim walked through the door as Arpeggio opened up her English assignment, distracting her from her task at hand. He stood at the head of the table.

"The other band performing with you isn't here yet. Apparently, they ran into some bad traffic while leaving their hotel. They'll be here in another ten minutes," he explained.

"They're already settled in their hotel?" asked Lestat, across from Neon.

"They got here a week ago."

"Do you know what band it is yet?" asked Jazz, seated on the other side of Arpeggio.

"No clue."

"Better question, did you find food for Arpeggio?" Neon asked.

Arpeggio resisted the urge to groan.

"I sent someone to pickup food for her."

"Stuff she can eat, right?"

Grim nodded.

Fast food, the immediate breakfast option for most bands, was out of the question for Arpeggio. Some of the choices on the menu were edible but she had to be careful about what she picked. It was too much of a hassle and she didn't want to risk her blood sugar spiking or lowering because one McDonalds makes their food different from another.

More like Neon didn't want to risk it.

"Anymore questions?" Grim asked.

No one replied.

"Good," Grim grabbed a doughnut from one of the various containers in the center of the table.

The label provided a mass amount of doughnuts for the bands. A box of a dozen doughnuts had already been consumed by Dorian alone. He still wasn't hyper beyond his normal level.

Dorian reached for another box from the large pile.

"You fat ass," Lestat stated.

"Don’t make me rip out your bridge piercing, stab it into your eye, and let the Smurfs have their way with your dead body," Dorian threatened, opening the box and shoving a whole doughnut into his mouth.

Lestat's eyes widened at the rhythm guitarist's outlandish threat, his hand covering his bridge piercing as well as his septum piercing.

"How do you eat so much without gaining weight?" Jazz marveled.

"I'm blessed," he shoved another doughnut into his mouth.

"Is being capable of shoving whole doughnuts in your mouth another blessing?"

Dorian smirked, "That's not the only thing I can shove into my mouth whole."

Arpeggio immediately blocked out the conversation, returning to her English work. Listening to her band mates discuss their sexual escapades was not on her agenda. Neon would probably tell them to stop talking about sex around her little sister anyway. "Virgin ears" was a term she used constantly when telling the band to keep their stories to themselves.

The term "virgin" on its own would probably be more appropriate.

But it wasn't Arpeggio's fault that she was still inexperienced. No one was ever interested. Or they never showed their interest.

Maybe it was because she was so shy. Maybe it was because everyone knew her outgoing sister and knew said sister would hurt anyone who dared touch her younger sibling. Maybe she was just unattractive to the male species; enough people at school put her down.

Whatever the reason, Arpeggio had never had a boyfriend, experienced her first kiss, or had any form of sexual relations.

She didn't know if she minded that much.

Arpeggio stared at her half-written, term paper. She silently willed it to write itself. As much as she loved English, papers were always hell, especially when they had to be fifteen pages long.

She'd much rather be playing her inherited drum set.

Her fingers flew over the keys, adding sentence after sentence to her analysis of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. She had to admit she enjoyed her topic.

With a slam, the door opened. A group of men no older than their early twenties walked in with smiles on their faces. Grim stood to greet the man at the head of the pack. The faces of a majority of the members of RxN dropped, all except Arpeggio. Arpeggio couldn't quite figure out where she had seen their faces before.

"Matt, how have you been?" Grim asked.

"Alexander, I haven't seen you in ages," Matt replied.

"I thought I told you to call me Grim."

"Sorry, dude, old habits die hard."

"What are they doing here?" Neon yelled.

Arpeggio took in her sister's angered expression and looked back at the group of men now smirking in Neon's direction. The inner workings of her mind dragged memories from her childhood.

And then it clicked.

That was the group of boys Neon hated in high school.

She remembered them coming to the house on more than one occasion for a school project. She remembered the tall, lanky one calling her "cutie" at every one of those occasions. She remembered how much Neon despised them.

She figured, by the look on her sister's face, that she still did.