Lukey Kid

So about the whole contract issue.

Turns out, none of us were of the legal age to sign a serious contract like that. In the end, we had to ask one of our parents to come out for a day (paid for by the record company, of course) to sign for us. That meant they’d also be handling our money, which was actually smart knowing what the Veins brothers - Brendan and Joey - would do with it.

And guess who flew out?

Yeah, Ren’s mom took three days out of her busy schedule just to sign a piece of paper. Man, when she walked out of her car, we were smothered by her more than ever before - even if it was only half a week since we’d seen her.

I cringed at the thought of our return after just a few months.

Nonetheless, she read the contract inside and out, explaining the results in detail. She seemed pretty concerned about us, and that was cool.

She signed it finally after half a day, and then, we were officially a part of the Not Listening family.

It would be another week until we’d actually start laying tracks for an actual album. We’d just recorded our demo - we knew how tiring that was. Though, with a more refined studio, we would clean up the audio better and make it one heck of a debut. And that was just one thing I was totally excited for.

The very next day we got to Miami, Rai sent the tutor to our hotel. We really weren’t expecting Brianna…she was a fellow musician, a singer for her punk band Violence Ladies. As it turned out, she had degree in astrophysics. She was a genius.

But not all of us were geniuses. Sure, Ren, Soria, and I got decent grades. Brendan and Joey kind of…lagged. And it didn’t help that they always just stared at her boobs. We did fine, I presumed, but without electives and teacher variety, it made me miss school a little bit.

“Forget school!” Joey had assured. I had to wonder if he was for real.

Nonetheless, recording our music became an even bigger priority than schoolwork. Still, we worked hard, since we’d be doing homework in the studio and Olli would help us out.

“See, if something has a zero exponent, the value is…” he trailed off expectantly.

“Zero!” Joey shouted.

Olli blinked. “No, it’s one. That makes it easy - before you even begin a problem, you can just get rid of the -”

“I don’t get it,” Soria stated, “How is it not zero?”

He shrugged. “Beats me. That’s just how I learned it.”

While we were studying for the quiz Brianna was giving tomorrow, he was fooling around with the studio computer - something Rai would have yelled at him for. Poor Joey was two years older than us, and we were learning the same stuff. Maybe it was for the best, though - he did seem challenged.

“Laaaa,” Olli sang into the mic. Then he played it back over and over just to bug us.

“Dude,” Joey grunted.

“Hm?” he countered, smiling innocently.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“That singing.”

“I wasn’t singing.”

“Yes you were.”

“Really? I don’t recall.”

Joey kicked him in the shin. He shut up fast.

I got an unnerving feeling in the pit of my stomach.