Half Wit

Andrea looked at the television in the living room, her head propped up on her hands while she was laying flat on her stomach. Emelie was sitting on the couch, her legs curled up underneath her while her foot stuck out from the side. Lyra had chosen to lay down on the couch entirely, resting her head on Emelie's lap, of which Emelie took advantage of to mess around with her friend's hair, braiding it and making small ponytails in it with her hands before letting the hair fall down again so it framed Lyra's small face perfectly. Lou had chosen to lay next to Andrea in the exact same position as the girl next to her.

Earlier on the day, Adrienne had chosen to bring the girls some snacks, which were greatly appreciated by all of them as they pulled their gazes away from the television for just a moment to look at the snacks and take some before looking back at the screen. But right now, commercials were on and the girls were just trying to waist time as they waited for the top 10 to play. Andrea sighed and sat cross-legged on the floor, stretching her arms above her head and yawning a little. Her trademark sunglasses were covering her eyes but she had chosen for another simple band-shirt with some loose black pants, leaving her long coat on the rack in the hallway.

“How long have we been watching TV already?” Lyra asked sleepy. Emelie smiled and looked down at her friend, still playing with her hair. She shrugged and kept her focus on braiding several strands of black hair. Andrea sighed and rubbed her equally tired eyes.

“Too long in my opinion,” she muttered as she looked around the room and watched her friends lay around. “Can't we do something else?” Andrea groaned as she let herself fall back so she could face the ceiling, her arms were spread wide open over the carpet just like her legs.

“Like what?” Emelie asked, raising an eyebrow at Andrea and hoping she would give a suggestion or some sort. Andrea however shrugged, choosing to turn her head back to the television as the top 10 of the day started playing. Emelie sighed and leaned back a little on the couch, making it more comfortable for herself but still making sure that Lyra was also in a good position to watch the television without straining her neck too much.

“I have been thinking though,” Andrea started, frowning to herself as she was back to facing the ceiling instead of the music video playing on the television.

“About starting a band. You know, we talked about it earlier,” she continued as the other three girls faced her and fell silent.

“It'll be hard, I know but...if we work hard enough we can make it you know?” Andrea kept talking, still looking unsure if they should even start a band in the end or not. But the thought was on her mind right now and she had to put it on the table, you never know what might come from it. Lou looked at Andrea and blinked a couple of times before opening her mouth to say something

“I call guitarist!” she said, putting her hand in the air as soon as she could, afraid someone else would take in the position of guitarist before her. Andrea giggled and shook her head. Emelie chuckled and looked at Lou, knowing she had been waiting to blurt something out like that.

“You don't even have a guitar!” Lyra said frowning at Lou, wondering why she wanted to be guitarist if she didn't even know how to play the instrument. Lou turned to Lyra and stuck out her tongue in a childish way. Emelie rolled her eyes and sighed at Lyra as she copied Lou within seconds.

“Emelie can sing and be second guitarist...” Andrea said, frowning to herself and probably more saying it to herself than to the group. Emelie looked up in shock and started to shake her head.

“Oh no, I am not, and I repeat, not, going to be the singer nor the guitarist. Especially not at the same time!” Emelie said, pointing at Andrea and glaring at her slightly as she stated her point. Andrea sighed and knew she should've seen this coming, as she kept pointing out herself, Emelie was nothing like her father except the ink on her skin and some small characteristics.

“I can be the singer,” Lyra said, putting up her hand with a shy smile, “I don't know if I can sing but everyone keeps saying it whenever they hear me sing to myself,” she quickly added, a small blush creeping up her cheeks as she admitted that little fact about herself. Andrea smiled kindly and nodded.

“So that would make Emelie our beloved bassist,” Andrea nodded to herself, “since I chose to be the drummer!” she said right after that with a smirk on her face. Emelie shrugged and felt fine with it, knowing that she could handle being a bassist in a band, anything is better than to sing or play guitar, or both of them together. Which was even worse.

“All I can think of right now is my dads reaction if he finds out I might follow in his footsteps of a career in music,” Emelie said dryly. Lyra chuckled and sat up, giving Emelie a small kiss on the cheek before winking and laying back down on her lap.

“Have you already looked at those sketches I gave you earlier?” Lyra asked curious. Earlier on the day, she had given Emelie a few papers full of designs, claiming she was bored the night before and started doodling. Those doodles however, turned out to be looking alike to the first design and so she had given them to Emelie as possible designs for her tattoo.

Emelie shook her head and smiled at Lyra, knowing that there would be at least one design between those doodles that would attract her attention enough to maybe eventually end up in ink on her arm. No doubt that there would me several of them too, making it much harder for the girl to choose the final design when she had too.

As the girls were currently ignoring the television and not seeing that the countdown had reached the last video, their eyes were averted from each other and back at the screen the moment they heard the first notes of the new Green Day song, which was clearly in favor with the requesting watchers. Emelie smiled as she saw the recorded video with her father, as usually, done by Sam Bayer (who had even tried to get Emelie, Joey and Jakob as extras in the video but failed at it) making sure that it was another video that they could be proud of.

Andrea kept her eyes on the screen, mouthing the lyrics by heart and clearly enjoying seeing some good music on the television for once. Emelie felt a strange sense of pride coming from seeing her father and her uncles on television, still rocking like they were 20 years old again.

“You have to admit, Tré does look good in drag,” Lou muttered, nodding satisfied at the part of the video where Tré was once again, dressed up in drag (claiming that he had forgotten his suit and that was the only costume left but Emelie knew otherwise).

“Mm, I don't know,” Andrea shrugged, “I'd kill to have legs like him though. They look really feminine..almost too feminine just to mention it,” she frowned, looking at the shaved legs coming from under the rather short dress that could cause a disturbing mental image in Emelie's mind and prevent her from sleeping a couple of nights.

“I'll remember to tell him that,” Emelie said with a small smirk on her lips. Andrea's sighed and shook her head, muttering something under her breath that sounded a lot like 'I knew you would say that.', at least, that's what Emelie understood from it.

“Also don't forget to ask him how he does it,” Lou added quickly with a sly glint visible in her eyes. Emelie nodded and made a mental note to ask Tré about it, even though it would only amuse the drummer before he would change the subject and eventually hang up, leaving Emelie to realize that he hadn't told her at all but managed to distract her for the rest of the conversation so she couldn't ask again.

“While we're on the subject anyway, any more questions you want me to ask them?” Emelie asked, knowing that there had to be some more but the little fact that they were afraid to ask Emelie to question the guys about it stood in their way of eventually asking her.

“Could you ask your dad how he puts on his eyeliner and makes it look so pretty on him?” Lyra asked with big eyes. Emelie raised an eyebrow at the girl before she tried to remember her father's answer to that question.

“Well, I already asked him that..long time ago actually. He just said that it was his female side that made it look pretty on him,” Emelie frowned, “but on how he puts it on is a different story and I quote. 'I put the eyeliner stick under a match for a few seconds, then I draw it all over and squeeze my eyes together. The aim is to make it look like I put it on during an earthquake.'..of course that was 3 years ago so he might have changed it already,” Emelie shrugged.

Lyra looked a little surprised with the answer but accepted it, knowing that she should've expected an answer coming from Billie Joe would sound like that.

*

Emelie smiled and leaned against the door frame as she watched Lou, Andrea and Lyra (after much complains and shouting of 'I love you!' and 'please don't leave me like this!' coming from the young girl) leave the front porch. She shook her head a little at the antics before she turned around and closed the door behind her, yawning a little.

Sometimes, she wondered if she spend too much time in the kitchen, near the coffee machine that is. A small stack of papers was laying next to it (forgotten by Emelie when the girls had arrived after Lyra), drawing attention to the designs quickly sketched on them. Her slender hands picked up the stack while her other held the coffee cup safely clenched in her hand, occasionally bringing it to her lips so she could take a sip.

The designs were all different from each other, one of them had more color, the other one thicker lines and even one of them had color, which surprised Emelie since Lyra wasn't someone who used a lot of different shades of colors whenever she drew something.

So many different sorts of designs, yet all had the same base. Emelie looked in awe at the drawings, not knowing which one she was going to end up using in the end. Vaguely, she could see hints of her mothers tattoo in some of them, others didn't look alike at all.

Emelie sighed and took a sip from her coffee, this was going to be hard. By the time she had chosen a design, she'd have to eliminate all the others first. Perhaps she should just scan these in and send them to her father, perhaps he could help her choose. A frown appeared on her face, now that was an idea, even though there was a big chance that he might just pick out the colored one, just because he loves colors.

Picking up the papers, Emelie walked towards the other side of the hallway, away from the basement and the living room until she reached her mother's (and sometimes her fathers even though he considered the basement as his) office. Her eyes scanned the small room, a drawing tablet could be seen on the desk, half hidden beneath some papers. The computer screen was the only thing that lighted the room.

A smile crept up her lips as her eyes found their way towards the scanning machine. Carefully, she placed the drawings on the machine and turned the program on, waiting for the computer to connect with it and start scanning the drawings. After doing this 8 times (since there were 4 papers, all of them clad in designs from front to back) Emelie attached the files to the email she was writing to her father and smiled at her message.

Now all she had to do was wait, and she truly hoped that he would be so smart to check his email regularly, something that was seriously lacking whenever he was on tour. Then again, he was a busy guy nowadays so that was to be expected. Taking the papers back, she walked back out of the room, leaving the computer on for when her mother needed it (which was rather often since she used it to draw some new Adeline designs whenever she wanted).

Entering her plain white room, Emelie yawned and placed the papers on her desk before she picked up her book instead and laid down on her stomach on the bed, her cellphone next to her in case someone wanted to call her. That someone being her father after he saw he had a mail from his daughter.

Not five minutes later, her cellphone started ringing the familiar sound of “Straight To Video” by Mindless Self Indulgence, always known to make people jump out of their skin randomly and unexpected. Emelie smiled and held her hand on the page she was reading so she wouldn't loose it while her other hand picked up her cellphone.

“Hi there stranger. How is the tour going?” Emelie asked, putting her father on speaker so she could read further without holding the cellphone constantly.

“Well besides the fact that Tré is now making kissy faces at me at the other side of the room, pretty fine I'd say,” Billie Joe's voice rang through the room. Emelie chuckled and shook her head, turning the page in her book.

“So are you randomly calling or do you have some really stupid reason,” Emelie raised an eyebrow, looking briefly at the cellphone and knowing that her father couldn't see it anyway.

“Don't look at me like that young lady,” Billie Joe's voice said stern from the other side of the line “I called you because those designs you send me are fucking awesome. Which one are going to pick?”

“I don't know yet, that's why I send them to you. Then again, you could've known that little detail if you actually read the email. Which I doubt you did,” Emelie said, shaking her head negatively.

“Oh so now you're using my perfect tattoo design choosing brain to pick out your tattoo?” Billie questioned, making Emelie chuckle to herself briefly before she turned her eyes back to the printed words.

“Basically...yeah I am. So why don't you put your brain to work for once and actually help me choose a design!”

“Oh such hard words,” Billie Joe muttered, probably shaking his head at Emelie right now even though she couldn't see it.

“Emelie! I LOVE YOU!” Tré's voice yelled all of the sudden through the phone, causing the young girl to jump up slightly before giggling at the drummers antics.

“Damn it Tré! Get your own cellphone if you want to declare your eternal love to my daughter!” Billie Joe's voice came from the background. Clearly Tré had given up trying to annoy Billie through the faces he did and just chose to take away the singers cellphone instead, while he was on the phone non the less.

“I love you too Tré!” Emelie yelled back with a smile on her face before she continued reading in her book.

“Hey Em! How would Billie react if I suddenly hang up,” Mike's voice asked, clearly Tré had already annoyed Billie enough and had given the phone to Mike who didn't mind talking to his goddaughter on a random moment of the day.

“He would be...angry and then probably kill you,” Emelie said slowly, thinking about different ways of how her father would react to being stolen from his cellphone. Mike yelped up a little before Emelie heard the cellphone fall on the ground with some screams coming from Mike and Billie on the background.

“Yeah Emelie, I'm going to hang up and...try to save Mike from Billie's tight gay-loving clutches now. Talk to you later chick!” a voice, that Emelie recognized as Bill Schneider's, said quickly in the phone before hanging up.

Emelie looked at the cellphone in a daze of confusion and shock mixed, not expecting something like that happening all of the sudden.

“At least they're not having some kinky orgy,” Emelie muttered, shaking her head and trying to focus back on her book but she knew well-enough that it wasn't even worth trying because Billie would eventually call back. If not in a few minutes after he got in some other room away from Mike and Tré.

Closing the book, Emelie placed it carefully on her nightstand and swung her legs over the side of her bed. Running her fingers through her dreads and whipping some of her loose black hair out of her eyes.

Sighing, the young girl stood up from the bed and walked over to her desk, rubbing the back of her neck as she yawned and looked at the designs again. Emelie sighed, not knowing how she would be able to pick out just one design for her tattoo, and the appointment was coming nearer too.

All of the sudden her cellphone started playing the familiar sound again, making the girl smile as she once again pushed the button to put whoever was calling back on speaker. It was somewhat easier for her to do so, because then she had her two hands free and she could do other stuff while talking to the other person. A little habit she had taken over from both her father and Rob Cavallo whenever she was in the studio with them.

“I'm guessing Lyra drew these?” Billie Joe's voice filled the room once again. Emelie smiled at the familiar voice but kept her own eyes fixated on the drawings.

“Either that or you have a new friend with the same name that just writes her own name in huge letters at the bottom of the paper,” Billie Joe continued.

Emelie chuckled and shook her head, “what do you think of them?”

“I would pick the first one you showed me. You loved that one didn't you?” Billie Joe asked. Softly, Emelie heard a cup being put down, making her realize that her father was once again drinking coffee, or Mike was somewhere near him.

“Yeah but I love all of these,” Emelie muttered and pouted, wishing she hadn't forgotten to get a cup of coffee herself before her father called.

“Didn't you learn anything from me?” Billie Joe wondered, probably frowning and rolling his eyes at Emelie.

“Except from being a complete asshole and being a sarcastic little bitch. Not really no...” Emelie said, putting her feet on her desk and relaxing a little as her eyes scanned the different designs. She jerked her head back, causing some of her dreadlocks to fall behind her shoulder. Hearing her father sigh made her smile, knowing that he was the one to blame for it anyway.

“I'd say, go with the first design. Its not completely like your mothers and it still has something that makes me love it immediately,” Billie Joe said, probably smiling as he looked at the scanned pictures of the drawings, “Even though these drawings are pretty blurry so I'll just have to wait to see it somewhat better until you got me that picture of your tattoo,”

“Will do dad,” Emelie chuckled and knew that he was right. She looked at her wrist watch before her eyes widened at the time.

“Shouldn't you be getting on stage right about now?”

“I got a little bit of time left. So, how are things at home?” Billie Joe asked.