The Redhead, and The Dreamer.

I, as a person, am a complete drama queen, so I suppose that’s why the next night instead of just simply using the front door after I was sure my mother had crashed for the night, I had to be so big and bold and use my bedroom window. Let me tell you, trying to climb out a second story window and down a tree with a guitar strapped to your back is not the easiest thing I’d ever attempted to do in my life. The guitar was awkward and kept whacking into different branches on the tree to the point that I almost literally fell to the ground a few times. In the end though, I made it to the ground safely, not even wanting to think about how much fun I was going to have trying to climb my way back in later that night.

One of the greater things about living in a smaller town is you can essentially walk anywhere that’s worth actually going. I mean, a fifteen block trek wasn’t all that far up there on my list of ‘favorite things to do in the middle of the night’, but it was a lot easier than having to try to catch a ride from someone to get to some disclosed location twenty or so miles away. The streets were dark and quiet as I started walking, but the closer I got to the festival, the more light, crowded, and lively things got. People littered the streets nonchalantly for a good five block radius around where the main show would be taking place. Most of them were drifters who’d heard of the show on the road or kids from other towns or bigger city’s who snuck away to find some new music worth listening to every year. Of course, there were some locals, but they seemed to be incredibly sparse in the vast sea of completely unfamiliar faces. I looked at everyone with suspicious eyes. In places like this it was almost always impossible to spot your average party person from a potential talent scout.

I wanted to ‘set up’ somewhere where I knew I’d get seen and heard by as many people as physically possible, so I kept walking more torwards the center of all the chaos. I stopped before I got too close. The closer you got to the main stage, the more musical competition you found wandering around. I didn’t want competition. I’d gotten more than enough to tie me over for a good while from Cyrstal lately. I slipped my guitar off my back and began fumbling with it nonchalantly. I always liked to play a few random chords before I got into anything serious whenever I did something like this. It always seemed to get people’s attention.

I wouldn’t plunge into anything personal right away. I wasn’t that confident. I started with a simple cover by one of my favorite bands. I knew the song so well any other time, but tonight my fingers were clumsy, and I kept scolding myself for screwing up one chord or another. People were watching. Most, just barley giving me a glance as they walked by, but some, actually stopping to listen and tell me how good I was. None of them really seemed to be hearing all my little mistakes that were driving me insane, and that boosted up my confidence enough to start strumming a song of my own.

The first couple original songs I played were pointless ones that not even I liked all that much anymore, but then I started my latest song, playing the intro a few times first, trying to build up the courage to sing the words for the first time ever in public.

Ironically, that’s exactly when Ethan popped up to the front of the crowd out of nowhere. He flashed a small half smile at me and I just rolled my eyes at him. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your big set, Batman?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I will, after you play me something Skylar?”

“And why exactly should I do that?” I asked him smugly, still nonchalantly playing the chords of his song on my guitar the whole time.

“Because someone needs to impress me tonight. It might as well be you.”

He smiled, and I smiled too.

“Wow,” I said then opened my mouth and began singing his song, right in front of him. I couldn’t look him in the eye while I did it, and my voice shook a little through the first verse because I was nervous, but hey, I did it.