Baby Blue Eyes

Chapter Three

It’s the day of the auditions. I eat my breakfast feeling nervous, not sure what to expect. I dreamt last night that nobody turned up to the auditions, and I woke up, panicking, convinced that it was true, convinced that Matt would be proved right. Thankfully, it hadn’t even happened yet.

Luckily for me, my first lesson of the day is Art, which is easily my favourite lesson, and is also very relaxing, so it might help calm my nerves and stressfulness. I always love the soothing atmosphere of the painting room, the smell of paints, the neatly stacked pastels and the canvases.

I slide into my seat, next to Tasha, who also does Art. She’s texting under the table, but looks up at me with a mischievous grin.

‘Alright?’ I ask, not at all worried by Tasha’s roguish look. She’s almost always up to something.

She nods. ‘Kieran just texted me,’ she tells me, gesturing to her phone. ‘I’m just thinking of a suitable reply.’ She bites her lip, her eyes sparkling cheekily.

Kieran is Tasha’s boyfriend, who is two years older than us and has an apprenticeship as a stone mason in our town. She was rather relieved when he didn’t go off to university, as she wasn’t sure she could deal with a long distance relationship, but this was perfect for her. And Kieran is also Levi’s brother. Yeah. Awkward.

Although the pair of them look quite similar, they’re entirely different, with Levi being a musician and Kieran preferring to work with stone. Kieran’s also rather anti social and unfriendly, though Tasha says this is all a front.

‘Don’t tell me what it says,’ I say quickly, knowing the sort of exploits that Tasha gets up to with Kieran and their tendency to text each other rather cheeky things. She’s given me a few examples before, and that was enough to severely damage my innocence.

‘I won’t,’ Tasha answers, laughing. ‘I know what you’re like when it comes to outrageous things.’

I open up my sketch book with a half smile. When I first starting dating Levi, Tasha had pressed me for details of what we’d gotten up to, but when she realised I wasn’t being coy, and that I really wasn’t going to do more than kiss him, she gave it up. I think she’s always been daring and out there, and sometimes she forgets that not everyone is like that: not everyone is as scandalous as herself.

But bless her, she’s scandalous in the nicest way possible. Thankfully she now keeps most of the juicy details she has to herself, which is really the best way forwards, as Willow and I went through a stage of not being able to look Kieran in the eye whenever we met him, thanks to Tasha’s rather detailed account of what had happened between them. Actually, I don’t think I could look Kieran in the eye. Those tales have scarred me for life. Thank goodness I don’t see him very often.

Tasha shakes back her dark hair as she sends the message, and as she shoves her phone back into her pocket grins at me. ‘So, reforming the band, huh?’

I nod, sketching lightly across a new page in my book. ‘Yeah. I can’t wait.’

‘What would you do if Levi did rejoin?’ she asks curiously, opening up her own sketchbook.

I chew my bottom lip. ‘He won’t.’

‘But if he did?’ Tasha persists. ‘What then?’

‘Well, I’d have to live with it, I guess. If it was for the best in the band, then I guess I’d have to just put up with him.’ I sigh as I think of how awkward that would be. ‘But fingers crossed that that doesn’t happen.’

‘It could be interesting if it did, though,’ the irrepressible Tasha comes out with. ‘Imagine the scenes!’

I raise an eyebrow at her. ‘Or, we could get a really hot new guitarist for the band? That would be better.’