Chapter Text
I climbed out of the car and ran over to the driveway, grabbing a basketball and holding in the air above my head.
“Not fair! I had to wait for everyone else to get out of the car before I could!” My brother Zack complained. He jumped up and tried to grab the ball out of my hands, but I held it higher than he could reach.
“Oh it’s totally fair, first one to the ball gets to shoot first,” I said tauntingly and turned to face the hoop nailed to the side of our house. It was falling pieces and rusting a little, but it was my favourite past time. I aimed and threw the ball in a perfect arc, getting it easily through the ring.
“Give me that!” Zack said, grabbing it and throwing it carelessly towards the hoop. The balls missed and bounced off the wall, making the metal hoop bounce slightly at the impact.
“Tsk tsk,” I said grinning and taking a few steps to catch the ball. I effortlessly shot another perfect goal. Zack frowned at me and squinted his eyes. He was never as good as me when it came to basketball. Zach stormed off and I turned to my other brother and my sister, Jay and Madison, who were watching.
“Show off,” Madison said jokingly as they both walked inside. I spun the ball on my finger for a while before practicing shooting from as far away as I could. I got almost every shot in, even though my mind drifted. We had just come back from church, it was coming close to noon on Sunday morning. My siblings don’t like Church that much, they’d rather be at home or out with friends on a Sunday, but I don’t mind church. It makes sense, why would anybody try and be good if not to get into heaven? Also it’s nice to have someone always believe in you, sometimes my parents can get a little caught up and don’t have enough time to be constantly checking up on four kids. It’s nice always have a guarantee that somebody loves you.
That’s one aspect of church that I like. The other: Jenna. She’s gorgeous. The Black’s also go to church every Sunday morning, so our families sit together. I try my best to sit next to Jenna, it’s the only time I really get to talk to her. Whenever we all stand up to sing in mass I try to sing loud enough for her to hear, my mom says I have a nice voice. Jenna and I go to the same school, there isn’t exactly a wide range of schools where I live. We don’t talk much though, she has her friends and I have mine.
I had been absently throwing the ball at the hoop on the wall for the past half hour, slowly moving forward without noticing it. I put down the ball and walked inside, we wore nice clothes to church and the shirt was irritating me.
“Tyler, honey, could you do me a favour? In the cupboard upstairs could you grab the old vacuum, I spilled some rice and tried to vacuum it up and well,” my mom gestured at the vacuum, now pulled to pieces with the bag full of rice grains.
“Sure, just don’t break the old one too,” I teased and ran up the stairs to get it. When I opened the cupboard door a small cloud of dust broke free. This was where we kept old, broken things. I had no idea what half of the stuff in there was. I pushed a few heavy boxes of school reports and photos that mom insisted we kept. As I pulled the vacuum out something covered in a plastic sheet fell over and hit my arm.
Grabbing my arm in pain I winced and dropped the vacuum. The covered thing fell on top of the vacuum, trapping it. I sighed and grabbed the plastic sheet, accidentally pulling it off. The sheet was covering an incredibly dusty keyboard. I remembered back a few years ago when mom bought it for me and the others, back when she had her mind set on at least one of us learning an instrument. I had figured that I should mainly focus on basketball, no use wasting my time learning and instrument I would suck at when I could be practicing to get the scholarship I wanted and eventually, hopefully, one day I could be a basketball star. Nobody ended up using the keyboard so it must’ve just been shoved into this cupboard. I pulled out the keyboard and freed the vacuum, picking it up and bringing it down to my mom.
“Took your time didn’t you?” My mom said, taking the vacuum from me and plugging it in.
“Yeah, remember that keyboard you got us a while back? It fell on me,” I said nonchalantly.
“Oh dear, are you okay?” my mom fussed, grabbing my arm to take a look. She let go once I assured her five times that I was fine. I left her to clean up the piles of rice that were covering the kitchen floor and went back upstairs to my room.
I shut the door behind me and flopped onto my bed. I reached over and grabbed the phone which I had left on my bed. Most people had a cell phone nowadays, but my parents decided that even if I was seventeen, I didn’t need my own phone. I dialled up Chris’s number in a matter of two seconds. I had dialled it so many times I thought that it would be impossible to forget. I pressed the phone into my cheek and wandered over to my shelf of trophies while I waited for him to pick up.
“’Ello,” Chris answered. I was jealous that he had his own phone and could see who was calling, I had to answer with a formal ‘Hello this is Tyler Joseph’ in case someone important was on the phone for my parents.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked, knowing full well once I asked that question there was no stopping him, Chris could talk for hours non-stop.
“Well funny you should ask,” he joked. “I just got off the phone with Nick, you remember how he’s been getting guitar lessons? Yeah well we were talking about music and stuff and we were both talking ‘bout that Christian hip hop group that we saw a couple weeks ago. Get this- Nick wants to be in a band now,” Chris rambled on.
Nick and Chris were my best friends, honestly my life would suck without them. The hip hop group we saw had been stuck in my mind for a while now, how they put their faith into music was amazing, I’d never even thought of music that way.
“Funny you should mention music, I just found that old keyboard I got from mom a while back,” I said.
“I forgot you had that, aw yeah, now we all play instruments!” Chris sang out loudly.
“I don’t play it, I just have it. You don’t play anything either what are you talking about?” I laughed.
“Well, my rhythm is fantastic, bet I could play drums easy!” Chris bragged. I snorted and played along.
“Well I suppose we better start a band now, shouldn’t we?” I said, chuckling a little. The other end of the line went quiet.
“Genius!” Chris yelled into the phone and I heard a beep as he hung up. I shook my head and threw the phone down onto my bed, flopping down on it as well. A band huh? Seemed a little far-fetched, I was better off sticking to basketball. But that Christian hip hop group was really stuck in my mind. How hard could it be? Writing and performing. I grabbed a notepad that was beside my bed and searched around for a pen. When I found one I put the tip to the paper and stopped. What could I write songs about? I had no lyrics, I didn’t know how to play a single note on any instrument. I put down the pen and notepad. No this was a stupid idea. But maybe Jenna wouldn’t think so? I had seen her at school sharing earbuds with her friends, listening to music. Maybe she would think it was impressive I was in a band, maybe she’d come to my shows, maybe I would write songs about her…
I picked up the notepad and pen again, this time I let words flow onto the page. I wrote about Jenna, how beautiful she was and how I wanted her to think of me the same way. Before I knew it I had a chorus and two verses. As I read over them I ended up changing it so much you couldn’t see the words past the scribble. I dropped the book, but then picked it straight back up, turned to a new page and started again. This time I tried writing about my faith, about God.
I went in circles writing, reading and flipping pages. Eventually I got to writing about feelings. I tried to make everything a metaphor like the songs you hear on the radio. I went down for lunch then back up to write. Before I knew it I was called down for dinner again. I ate quickly then went back to my room to write more. I had pages and pages of scribble and crossed out words. I couldn’t stop writing, everything seemed to come naturally.
I went to take a break, I laid back on my bed and shut my eyes, the words still floating in front of me, the melodies in my head as I sung them to myself were swirling and twisting, getting mixed together. I fell asleep, dreaming of fantasies where I really could be a musician.
I woke up in my clothes and ran my hands through my hair. I stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast before school. My whole family was already gathered in the dining room, everyone looked up at me and nobody smiled.
“What’s going on?” I asked, suspicious of the looks everyone was giving me. Madison had wet cheeks and Zack and Jay both looked mad.
“Tyler, you were a bit late to wake up, so, I decided to break the news without you. Sorry,” my dad said with a blank expression. I began to panic, what was going on, why was there bad news?
“We’re moving. And we’re not coming back,” Madison said in a shaky voice and left the room. I stared at the doorway she left through. No, no this couldn’t happen. I had friends here, I had a life here. Jenna was here. A lump formed in my dry throat, I tried to swallow it but instead tears filled my eyes. No, why now? No, no, no.