Page 9 of Hey Girl

“Just let me send it to you and you can listen to it first-”

“No!” I screech like a harpy into the phone at the thought of listening to that cacophony he calls music. My little bro is tryingto break into the music scene, but can’t decide if he wants to be the next Calvin Harris or the next Machine Gun Kelly, so he came up with his own sound that is so God-awfully annoying it even gives me a headache, and coming from me, that’s saying something. Seriously, it sounds like someone put a Speak-and-Spell, a Fischer Price xylophone and a nineteen-year-old cat in a box and pushed it down the stairs.

“No,” I try again, more calmly so as not to hurt the poor creature's feelings. “I mean uh, I think you should just stick to your day job, it’s more solid you know, and it sounds exciting,” I try baiting him with exaggerated enthusiasm in my voice.

“It sucks! It’s nothing like Grey’s Anatomy!” He moans like a little bitch and his complaint singes my tail feathers.

“Listen, you little shit!” I snap my head to the side to bring my mouth closer to the phone as I try to discreetly snarl at the skinny bastard. “I paid good money to send you to the best surgical tech school in the tri-city area because it was the only thing that would get you off Mom and Dad’s couch. It was only going to be about one more month of you getting baked out of your skull, watching that show’s marathons on Lifetime and drinking chocolate milk through a swirly straw before they were going to drag you out onto the lawn and let the Earthly Spirits do their will!”

“Psshh!” He scoffs. I can hear the cavalier smirk I know he’s sporting. “They would never…”

“You know those drifters that kept sniffing around? They were ready to let them take you if you didn’t go do something with your life. And don’t forget our deal. You chose what you wanted to do, and I paid for it, and now you have to stick with it for a minimum of five years. And if you don’t hold up your end, I will come over when you’re sleeping and give you a fecal facial!”

“You wouldn’t!” He grinds back through clenched teeth sounding about as scary as an asthmatic chihuahua.

“But what you won’t know is where the mask will come from – me… or Dad’s cow.”

“You sick fucker-” Sequoia is cut off by a beeping noise and a garbled voice on some overhead intercom.

“Damnit, incoming trauma,” he grumbles. “Why do people have to crash into construction sites on my lunch break?”

“Go get ’em, Tiger!”

“Eat shit.”

Rebecca

I keepmy body stiff and straight and rigid until I hear the doors completely close behind me, before I puff out the breath I was holding in my chest and fall slack against the nearest wall. People… why are people so hard?

A fucking rockstar was being nice to me, and the only eye contact I made with him was to correct him on my name. It’s just that I hate being called Becky. For some fucked up reason when I was small and still struggling with the stammer, Rebecca was easier for me to say than Becky. I know, it’s weird. But whenever I tried to say Becky I struggled and stuttered and ended up sounding like a chicken going through heroin withdrawals. And then the kids at school would mock me, flapping their elbows, calling me ‘Beck-Beck-Becky!’

Kids are dicks.

But anyway, things went easier the following year when I decided to just stick with Rebecca. I never was much of a Becky anyway. That was one of my core memories of finding my senseof self. Little things like that were what I latched onto, and I never cared to make friends after that. It didn’t matter if other people knew who I was so long as I did. My speech impediment, just like my name, belonged to me, and this was the key to my survival to this day. The only problem is it backfired a wee bit, and the self-isolation led to having full blown social anxiety, which can be an annoying little bitch. So now, I have to take steps to push myself and correct that pain in the ass. And that’s what I try to do, every day, with little challenges and targets that others might not notice, but I do.

And, I realize as I push off the wall I’ve been having a love affair with for the last few minutes and continue on to my office to gather my belongings, I certainly did today. Having a meeting with four famous rockstars? I’d say I’ve definitely earned three to five days of holing up in my house with the blinds drawn and my laptop fired up with my favorite Reddit forum up. There’s nothing like verbally handing cyberbullies and keyboard Karens their asses the only way I can with zero hindrance. On the good ol’ internet.

I smile wickedly to myself as I sling my laptop bag over my shoulder and lock up my office. Bring it, trolls.

4

CHRIS

Itouch down at London Heathrow and waste no time on my mission. I’m going to make this motherfucker fix what he did to me, for free, and I’m going to make him regret what he did for the rest of his stupid burly life. I try to rent a top-of-the-line crotch rocket, but none are available, so I have to settle for a ridiculous kitschy Vespa to get me from the airport to Foxton-on-Sea. No matter. I’ll just blast some renegade death metal in my earbuds to keep me in the vindictive mindset, it’ll be fine.

A few weeks ago, my buddy Leo teamed up with my assface bandmate Matt to pull a prank on me in the form of a monstrosity of a tattoo on my back.

Leo, the gifted tattoo artist that he is, drew my panther with perfect precision to my specifications, and it would look badass and beautiful, if it weren’t for its fucking head. Oh, and the added text above it that I didn’t ask for. Yes, I flew to the UK to have my tattoo fixed, this is why you don’t give stupid rockstars money.

Besides, this is personal.

I pull up to Wishbone Tattoos with a tiny screech of the scooter’s brakes and yank my helmet off, darting inside.

At reception, I greet the sweet and delightful Emily with a monster polar bear hug before taking brisk and deliberate strides towards Leo’s studio in the back. I kick open the door for effect, trying to come off intimidating, but without actually meaning to knock the thing off its hinges.

Oops.

“What the fuck?!” the Momoa-looking fucker looks up from his desk, his scarred eyebrow raised in a threating mask before he realizes who stands before him. “Chris! Mate, what in the bloody hell are you doing here?”

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