writers_loft | RAW Music: Children of the Legacy

'Lo, there, everybody. My name's Ashleigh, and as you can probably tell, I'm new here.

I've been writing just for fun for quite a while, but I've recently started thinking about it a bit more seriously. I don't think I'd ever pursue it as a primary career, but I might like to do it on the side.

I've written a few plays here and there, but I've been working on a bunch of short stories in the same little universe since I was a sophomore in high school. I'm a college grad now, so it looks like they're not going anywhere for a while. The stories document the lives of a group of friends who form a band, hit it big, and have to learn to deal with that. They begin with two of the members meeting at the ripe, old age of six, and they continue until... well, they're well into their late thirties in my head now, and I'm not done yet, so I guess I'll just have to see when they stop.

I've been reading through some of the work on this comm, and a lot of it's really good. But what I like even more than that is the fact that you guys are honest and tough without being cruel or brutal.

Wow. It's like Ayn Rand wrote this intro. Anyway, here's the first of the stories. Hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to any crit you guys can give me.

Oh! And the band that eventually forms goes by the name of Rise At Will, which is where the title of the whole shebang comes from: RAW Music.

Title: Children of the Legacy (Part of the RAW Music Universe)
Rating: G; suitable for all ages
Warnings: None for this chapter
Summary: On a dusky suburban street, the masterminds behind the Rise At Will phenomenon meet. Well, every story has to start somewhere.

The doorbell rang, and a few seconds passed before Theresa Campbell remembered exactly what that meant. Their apartment in Chicago hadn't had a doorbell, not the kind that ding-ed and dong-ed, sweetly musical. It used a buzzer, which echoed nastily and never failed to send her startled paintbrush streaking across her canvas, no matter how many times she heard it. This sound – she couldn't bring herself to call it a noise – barely stirred her attention at first.

But it got her the second time, pulling her from the box of baby toys that she'd painstakingly stacked and labeled in the dusty corner. Frowning, she poked her head out of the attic and wiped dust-covered hands on her ripped jeans. "Lou?"

"Busy, babe!"

Sighing, she scurried down the ladder and jogged down the stairs, ducking and weaving between the dozen or so boxes that they still hadn't unpacked. She stopped with a start in front of the bathroom mirror and did her best to smooth down the badly frizzed edges of her haphazard red pigtails. Either her sister was at the door, coming to check up on them, or it was a neighbor coming to be friendly and make introductions and spy on the neighborhood's newest additions. If it was the latter, Theresa was determined to look presentable. She didn't live in Chicago any more, where most of her neighbors were artists like her and often wandered out to retrieve their mail without pants. She lived in the suburbs of California, where things like pants and looking presentable were important.

She sighed, gave up on her obviously futile quest, and tried to stand up straighter than usual as she opened the door.

To this day, she swears that the plump but attractively made-up woman standing on her doorstep started speaking before the door even opened all the way.

"Hi, there, new neighbor!" The woman beamed and tossed her perfectly curled hair back behind her pearl-clad neck, and Theresa ignored the sudden desire to melt gracefully into the floor and magically reappear wearing a cocktail dress. "Welcome to Lakefield Park! I'm Lucy Debbs, live right over there in the big red brick, just across the street." She cheerily thrust a plastic box of cookies into Theresa's hands, and before she could stammer out a "thank you," the woman started up again. "They're store-bought, I know, but I couldn't come over here empty-handed, and, trust me, if you'd ever tasted my cooking, you'd thank me for this." She laughed, loud and full, and Theresa found herself warming towards the woman's undeniably contagious energy. She usually despised the chatterers, the ones that so loved to hear their own voices that they took no regard of what words actually spilled from their mouths. But somehow, this woman felt different to Theresa; the stream of chatter seemed less about proving herself or prying into Theresa's life and more about an honest attempt to make a slightly frazzled artist, one that obviously didn't belong in such a posh suburb without her investment banker husband, feel welcome.

"Well, ah, thank you – Lucy, was it?"

"That's me, Lucy Debbs."

"I'm, uh, my name's Theresa. Theresa Campbell. My husband, Lou, and I, we just moved here from Chicago."

"Ooh, wow, cold up there, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah, definitely."

"Yeah, Brian and I have been here with our boys for years."

Theresa shifted awkwardly at the door, her mind latched on the checkbook that needed to be balanced and the box of towels that needed unpacking, but she refused to let her smile fade. She would fit in; she would be the perfect hostess, and the perfect hostess was always prepared for guests, no matter how many other tasks needed completing or how many different shades of green spattered her otherwise white T-shirt. "Would you, um, maybe like to come in?"

"Oh, no, I wouldn't want to bother you. I was just bringing Max here home from karate, and I wanted to stop in for a quick hello."

Theresa glanced down, and the small, dark-haired boy that she hadn't noticed before boldly stuck his hand up at her.

"I'm Max," he declared proudly. "I'm gonna be a rock star one day."

The boy looked so friendly, so cheerful, so sweet and polite that Theresa decided maybe she could put her hundred or so chores aside for ten minutes.

"That's a pretty big dream there, Max," she commented as she dutifully shook his tiny hand.

He shrugged and smiled the dazzling smile that he'd spend the next twenty years perfecting. "Yeah, but I know I can do it."

"He's adorable," Theresa commented, because that's what young mothers were supposed to say to other young mothers, but also because – this time, anyway – it was absolutely true. "How old is he?"

Lucy positively beamed. "Six."

"Oh, I've got a boy his age."

As if on cue, she felt a gentle but insistent tug at the waistband of her jeans. She awkwardly craned her head back to see her son staring up at her, lazily dangling a children's illustrated, abridged copy of Robinson Crusoe from his other hand.

"What, honey?"

"Will you teach me how to hunt?"

"Will I... what?"

"What if I get trapped on a desert island, and I don't know how to hunt? I might die."

"We'll, uh..." She smiled apologetically at Lucy and gently tugged the boy in front of her. "Lucy, this is my son, Noah. He's six, too, just like you, Max."

The boys stared at each other. Max wore an expression somewhere between curiosity and shock, like he didn't know how to handle the boy standing in front of him. As always, Theresa noted, Noah stared blankly with just the barest hint of interest, as though he were constantly analyzing and researching the world around him.

Lucy laughed quietly, nervously. "Max... doesn't get along well with boys his age. Adults, he's wonderful around adults, but..."

Theresa nodded. "Noah, I think, he just doesn't get how to interact with any other people, you know? He's always reading or watching TV or, I don't know, just staring at the other kids."

"You're weird-looking," Max finally declared. Lucy winced, but not too much, which proved to Theresa that she'd been expecting something along those lines.

Theresa expected Noah to stare and then walk back inside. Lucy later mentioned that she'd expected Noah to burst into tears, because that's what most kids did when Max inevitably insulted them.

But Noah simply replied, with absolute finality, "no, I'm not. You are."

Max's mouth dropped open, but he composed himself for the return serve. "You've got a big nose."

"You've got a squished-looking head."

"Your hair is a funny color."

"Your eyes are too tiny."

"You're stupid!"

"I'm smarter than you."

"Nuh-uh."

The two mothers paused, barely breathing as the two boys glared at each other, and Theresa briefly hoped that her son hadn't just insulted the son of the head of the neighborhood association or anything like that.

And then, Noah's face broke into a wide grin. Shockingly, Max grinned right back.

"Wanna come play Power Rangers?"

"If I can be the red one."

"I wanna be the red one!"

"No way! You can be the blue one!"

Without asking permission, the duo dashed into the Campbell's new home, leaving Robinson Crusoe in a sad pile on the linoleum.

Theresa stared at Lucy in silence.

"So, um... perhaps you should come over for dinner in a few days? I – ha, ha – I get the feeling that our boys are going to be spending quite a bit of time together."

Lucy managed a goofy, somewhat bewildered half-smile and nodded slowly.

"Yeah, I…...you know, somehow I think you're right. This is... it's just so not like Noah."

"I understand. This is nothing like Max."

Theresa glanced briefly behind her as Lou meandered into the foyer, carrying a rolled-up wad of used masking tape and frowning.

"You know there are two kids in our living room, right?"

"Yeah, honey, I know."

"And only one of them is our son."

"Yep."

"Huh. Okay."

Being naturally easily satisfied, Lou Campbell wandered back out of sight.

Theresa smiled again. "I'll bring him back to you in an hour or so, if that's all right."

Lucy nodded congenially. "Sounds great. Let me give you my number..."

As the two women exchanged phone numbers and schedules and laid out tentative dinner plans, Theresa and Lucy somehow knew that they'd just witnessed the birth of something beautiful.

But, as they would later tell Oprah and the Today Show and what's-his-face with the hair from that British MTV show, neither one had had the faintest idea just what that something would be.

This was very odd for me to write. Most of the stories are in first person, told from Noah's point of view, with Max occasionally stepping in if he's otherwise incapacitated. But I figured he was a little young to tell this tale himself.

Anyway! Thanks for reading, and have a lovely night. :3