Glitch

"If you think about it, fame and fortune are really one and the same. With one, the other soon follows. Unfortunately, we aren't any closer to either." - Kimberly Anika Mitsubishi, age 17

June 16th had become the day our lives changed forever. After a while, we even started to celebrate it as such. That was the day Kei made the models for our new, er, persona, I guess you would call them. IT was the day Ethan got the call back from his record company, saying they loved our songs. It was the day that everything finally went our way for once.

Can't remember for sure, but I think I spent the day watching Kei play around on his computer. Like a painter, he created the perfect image of Poppy, the girl who'd become my alter ego. Like me, her skin was an in between colour, not quite dark enough to say she was black, and not light enough to say she was white. Somewhere just in the middle. After all, I was a little bit of every race, so I couldn't have Poppy varying too much from that.
“Why'd you pick Poppy?” Kei asked, not turning away from his computer. “What kind of name is that, anyway?”

I pulled off my cropped jacket and pointed to the pin clipped on the left side. “That tiny little poppy there. Dad gave it to me when I was a baby, just after he retired from the army, so that we'd never forget his friend and other guys who died at war. Since I never took the pin off, everyone started calling me Poppy,” I then pointed to the screen, “If her name was Poppy too, I wouldn't get confused. Besides, Poppy's a different name, and I'm different too.”

He nodded, but I don't think he understood. Most people don't.

I smiled as he finally began to work on Poppy's face. Her eyes were a dark shade of brown, almost black, unlike my own green ones. I had wanted them red, it'd look so cool, but Kei said it'd be too unnatural, and people wouldn't buy it... Except he'd used bigger words when he'd said that. Her lips were full and coated in red lipstick, similar to mine, but shaped different, less of a “bow shape” as Mickie had called it. Her nose was upturned, like Margret's, not short and round like mine, and her jaw was less defined than mine, she almost looked younger.

“She's kinda a hottie, if I went after girls, I'd date her.” I said jokingly, actually laughing at myself to make sure the serious Kei could actually figure out I was joking.

In his stupidly serious tone, he replied, “She's not real.”

In the same tone, I replied, “I know, I was joking, for, ya know, fun. Don't you even know what that is?”

“Something I don't have time for.” he said.

After that, he really didn't say anything else, just quietly worked on his computer, taking my suggestions every now and again.

Once Kei had finished designing Poppy, I hopped off the couch we were sitting on and ran back over to my friends in the entertainment room, where they had set up the old video game console and were loudly playing some sort of melee game.

By loud, I mean Kimi was standing on the couch, the remote in her hand, yelling at Laney, who's eyes were locked on the screen like a snipper. “You're just jealous I chose the best character in the entire game and you didn't!”

“Oh please!” Laney said sarcastically, “I picked the best character in the whole game! She's a friggin' princess with magic powers, what can you do? Jump? Yeah, I'm sooo jealous!”

I threw myself down on the couch next to Willow who seemed to be unaffected by the fact she was losing, and asked, “How long has this been going on?”

“Probably about an hour.” She replied, “Neither one of them wants to let the other win.”

“Typical.” I said, taking the controller of Willow, knowing she wouldn't mind. She probably didn't even want to play. Willow wasn't a gamer like her sister Margret.

Kei called the next girl, Kimi, out about 10 minutes into the next match. In frustration, she shut the controller off and ran out before she could see if she'd lost or not. Laney turned down the volume of the TV, and we all pressed our ears to the door to see if they'd start fighting and needed us to break it up. To our surprise, there wasn't any screaming, but still, we kept one person on watch, just in case.

One by one, over the next five hours, the rest of the girls got called out, coming back with a full written out biography for their alter ego, and a printed off picture.

Laney had gone for a platinum blonde look for the pretty young rhythm guitarist, Daisy. She was wearing a teal dress, white sneakers, and a teal headband, something similar to wait Laney herself would wear. She had Laney's tiny dancer build, but instead of forest green, like her real eyes, bright blue-green eyes in their place. She was a simple, happy looking girl, almost as if she'd grown up in a little town, sharing Laney's big dreaming aura.

Kimi had gone for a more glamorous girl, to keep up with her overly done, charismatic self. She'd been named Sakura, a name Kei had picked, based on Kimi's nickname Cherry. Going along with the name, which, according to Kei, meant cherry blossom, Sakura wore a short, pink skirt, trimmed with white, a pink head band in her long, curly chocolate brown hair, and a tight white top worn under a pink cropped jacket like the one I always wore. All of which was covered in rhinestones and sparkles. I can only assume that the curly brown hair was because of Kimi's desire to have hair like Mickie's.

Moving on. Mickie was a diva, there was no denying that, she wanted to be the center of attention, just as Kimi did. So, obviously, Mickie's auburn haired alter ego, Rose, reflected this. She wore a sequined white gown, that would no doubt pick up all the light it could. If this wasn't enough, a golden metal belt sat low on her hips, and a matching, tiara-like hairpiece was placed in her hair.

Willow must have been hard to model. I mean, the girls almost six feet tall, it had to have been nearly impossible. She and Kei were out there for about an hour longer than the rest of us had been. Somehow though, he'd done it. Willow had asked to be made shorter, but he couldn't do it, said something about the movements not matching up to her own naturally.

In the end, Iris, the name Willow had given her, was a tall girl, with long black hair, tied back in two long braids with purple ribbons. She wore a pair of jeans, and a ruffled purple top, and about two dozen bracelets in random colors on her wrists. Plain and simple, just the way Willow seemed to like things.

Last but not least was Margret. She'd picked the name clover, said she thought it'd be lucky. Her clothes were green, being a pair of denim short shorts and a forest green tank top. Her hair was long, sleek and brown, something Margret herself had always wanted. Her eyes were green as well, and her face was covered in freckles. Margret had said she didn't want the girl to be “perfect” by common standards, and she had always wanted freckles herself, but never could get them, despite having fiery red hair and pasty skin.

It wasn't until about an hour later that we'd clued in that we'd all chosen flower names. Kimi had been the first to point it out, but we'd just shrugged. It might make an interesting story for an interview. We could say something about how we'd become friends in the first place because of our flower names. I dunno, it was a start.

“What about a band name?” Willow asked as she flipped through a stack of CDs.

At that point, we didn't have one to begin with. Wed pretty much just been called “that band who played last year's fundraiser,” or names like that.

“What about Six Chix? Ya know, with an 'x' instead of a 'cks'” Margret suggested enthusiastically.

We all groaned.

“That's lame Margret! We need something, cool, edgy, new, irrelevant! Because irrelevance is so in these days!” Mickie announced, acting out each of her adjectives in a weird way.

“Gypsy?” Kimi suggested.

“Lame!” Mickie shouted back.

This went on for about an hour, with “Trix,” “Falling stars,” anything that we could possibly think of.

Laney was the only one who hadn't suggested an idea, but we knew she had one. We could tell by the way she tapped a pen on her pink and thumb as she wiggled it between her fingers.

“What have you got Lane?” Kimi finally asked.

She nervously shrugged, and mumbled, “It's not all that great, but maybe, just maybe, Glitch?”

Margret, who was still stuck on Six Chix, said “You sure that won't jynx us?”

“Positive!” She said brightly.

“I like it. It'd different.” I said with a smile. I wasn't lying to make Laney feel better, I really did like it, it was new, cool, edgy, and irrelevant if you didn't know our little secret. It was perfect.

“Me too!”

“Me three!”

“Me four!”

Margret was the last to sigh and admit. “Fine, it's perfect. So from now on, we're Glitch. You better hope this won't jinx us Laney!”