Sober

[Yugikun]

Standing outside the music rooms for over twenty minutes wasn't really Roxanne's ideal way of spending her free period.

((Anna "Roxanne" Herbert, continued from Life on Mars?))

But it was for a good cause, at the very least. If she had to lose one of her many precious moments of freedom, if she had to get called by the wrong name over and over again, it was at least worth it to become better at the bass. It was at least worth it to have fewer issues when playing for her band. The fact that Mr. Faust was running seriously late sorta cut into the point of this, but that was negligible, in her eyes. He'd mentioned that he had to do something the lunchtime before now and that that could make him late and while Roxanne wished that that wasn't the case at least it was expected. At least she didn't have to go on and on and on about how she might be waiting here for nothing.

Waiting still sucked, but, y'know. Couldn't win them all. There wasn't anything she could really do while she waited but at least she could look at her bass case? Hope that Beryl hadn't messed with it when she transported it to school?

She sighed. Looked around the hallway. Hopefully this wouldn't take too much longer.

…

She'd asked Mr. Faust if she could do this around two weeks ago. As Friday recess had started, as everyone else had headed out the classroom to hang out or practice or whatever, she'd finally worked up the courage to ask Mr. Faust if he could help her with this one bass piece she wanted to get together. Even though she'd expected a no — given how Mr. Faust was like, given that she wasn't intending on doing a bass piece for AP Music — she'd… actually gotten a yes, as begrudging as it had seemed to be. They'd figured out a time, he'd given her both his reminders and his warnings, and now she was here. In the hallway. Waiting for Mr. Faust to show up so she could finally find out what his private lessons were like.

Because, like, she'd heard the stories. She'd heard that having a private lesson with Mr. Faust was apparently a super harrowing experience or something and while that probably scared off other people — while it was probably just because they were pussies who couldn't handle getting criticism — that sort of thing really appealed to Roxanne. Getting told directly about where her problems were, being told directly about how she could improve was what she wanted. What she needed. What she could definitely deal with if it was really as bad as everyone made it out to be.

She looked down. Looked around again. Scanned the hallways trying to see whose footsteps she was hearing and-

"I am here now," Mr. Faust said, looking at Roxanne as he headed down the hallway. "Are you ready, Anna?"

She nodded, a slight pang of revulsion going through her body. As much as she seriously didn't want her teachers to use that name, it was better that way. Easier to not risk Roxanne being used during a parent-teacher interview. She picked up her bass. Waited for him to come to the door.

"Good," he said, as he opened the door. Walked in, motioning for her to follow. "Let's not waste more time than we already have."

"R-right," she said, opening the door as their world came back.

As she became Anna again.

As she walked into the room, knowing that she wasn't supposed to be free here. It was an odd feeling, admittedly. Given that she was no longer free, given that she was supposed to be what Mr. Faust, her parents thought she was, why did she feel so different than normal? Why did she feel like she wasn't what she was supposed to be? She was scared, yes, she wasn't planning on stepping out of line for this lesson, but it still felt different from normal. It still felt as if there was something of her still there, still in her head.

Maybe it was the bass guitar.

Maybe it was the fact that this time she'd chosen to be like this.

Didn't matter either way. She was Anna. She was here. In their world.

And depending on how these next few years went, that might be all she'd ever be.

---

"Did you practice what I told you to practice?"

"Yes," Anna replied, as she took the guitar out of its case. To be honest, this week hadn't given her a lot of time to put practice in, but since that was the case she'd tried to make it count as much as she could. Made every minute count as two, if she could. She knew the problems that could emerge with over-practising, but this was one of the times where it was justified. This was one of the times where trying to push herself was for the best.

If her parents knew, if her parents approved, Anna knew that they would be so proud of how hard their pet was exerting itself.

She almost grimaced, at that.

"Good," Mr. Faust said, his eyes on the book his fingers were ruffling through, her thoughts at a pitch it seemed he couldn't hear. "Let's start with Walking On The Moon. That should work as a warmup for your higher grade repertoire."

"R-right," Anna replied, stretching out her hands on the bass guitar and plucking the strings to make sure they were in tune. Her check would have been more thorough, she would have tried to listen in further, but she had already tuned it during the time she'd spent waiting for Mr. Faust and she didn't imagine there was anything between then and now to-

"Check your A string again," Mr. Faust interjected.

She did. She strummed it, checked it with the E string, and-

Oh.

She moved her left hand up to the tuning pegs, altered the position of the A peg until it sounded correct, in tune with the other strings again.

"It's fixed now," she said.

"You should've noticed that earlier," Mr. Faust replied.

The words threw themselves from her larynx to her throat. The urge to open her mouth and respond was present in the front of her mind. She didn't usually interject when getting critiqued but in this case she didn't know how she was supposed to prevent the strings from going out because-

...Because there was probably a way that that had happened. Mr. Faust was probably right about that. He was the music teacher and she was still fairly inexperienced with playing the bass so all Anna could really do was try to not mess up while packing/unpacking next time. Make sure she was just that one little step closer to the perfection she and everyone else expected of her.

She swallowed the words back down. Nodded. Brought her left hand back to where it'd been beforehand.

"Okay, should I start now?" Anna asked.

"Please do."

She nodded, again. Breathed in. Looked at the music Mr. Faust had put in front of her.

Breathed out. Got her body ready to play. Breathed in.

One. Two. Three.

Breathed out as she played the anacrusis. Began the song. There wasn't much within the introduction — only the ostinato at the end of each bar — but she still kept her guard up, treated this section with the same amount of focus she was going to give the rest of the song. There was no metronome for this, nothing she could play between phrases to make sure she stayed on beat, so she imagined the rest of the song in her head; guitar, drums, and all. Anna couldn't really say that this was one of her favourite Police songs (that had to go to either Can't Stand Losing You or her partial namesake) but at the very least — even if it hadn't been absolutely committed to memory — it'd been one she liked whenever it came up in a playlist.

The song moved to its first verse, and she was happy she'd been putting focus in before. Although the intro (and the other parts of the song that emulated the intro) only had the bass part, the first verse decided to add the chords from the electric guitar for her to play as well. That wasn't too difficult, though. Maybe even easier than the intro. As the quiet, syncopated chords filled the space between the gaps of the bass ostinato the drums, the backing in her head vanished, got replaced by the noise all around her. She didn't know whether she stopped thinking the rest of the song in because she didn't need to or because Sting's vocals were too incomprehensible to actually get an auditory image, but it didn't matter to Roxanne because she was moving on to the next part of the song and that was the fun part, cause…

Some.

Three quick crotchets, a quaver rest, followed by a higher note.

May say.

A mixture of quavers and crotchets, alternating between one another as the F note played over and over.

...She was wishin' her dayyyyyyyyyyys aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaway.

The pattern began again. Roxanne repeated the first bar of the chorus.

No way.

Roxanne repeated the second bar, and if it's the priiiiiiiiiiiiiceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

"Stop."

And Anna came back into the room. Saw Mr. Faust, behind her music stand. His arms were folded. The expression on his face was mild. Slightly displeased.

"You were speeding up. Repeat the chorus, and pay closer attention this time."

"I… right," Anna replied. "Sorry, sir."

No response from Mr. Faust, as she began to play again. She wasn't going to make her mind sing the lyrics, she wasn't going to break her focus, she was just going to get it right. Make up for her mistake.

So she went through the familiar bars, one at a time, and tried to make sure she didn't mess up. Tried to keep the voice in her head singing from gaining any prominence. It was hard not to, it was hard to keep her focus totally on the sheet music, but-

"Stop clicking your teeth."

She stopped playing. Looked up from the guitar.

"What?" She asked.

"You're clicking your teeth to the vocals. The sound is audible."

"I…"

"Please take this seriously," Mr. Faust said, sighing. "This is my time you're using as well as yours. I would rather you not waste it."

His time.

His time, as well as hers.

And there was some comparison she could make there, couldn't she? He was using his free time to do this for her. She was using her free time to do this for herself and regardless of the way she looked at it regardless of what side she saw this from it was true. She was wasting both his time as well as hers. She didn't really know what his situation was, she didn't really know what was going on inside his head but it was clear from the way he acted, clear from how he could get angry that there was something going on, some reason why his free time was so important. She knew her own situation. She knew why the times where she could be Roxanne were so important. She'd told the story so many times before that it no longer bared repeating. She knew she needed her free time. She knew that doing this was a sacrifice.

So she knew why her messing up, why her wasting time was an issue.

Because Mr. Faust had a use for his time. She didn't know what it was, but she knew it was important and that for every time she messed this up she would be denying him from that.

And because Anna was giving up one of the moments where she could be someone else so that she could do this. She was sacrificing one of the moments where she could possibly be able to be herself for the sake of her own advancement, so that she could achieve what she needed to achieve.

And if she wasted this, if this lesson didn't bring her forward in any way, then what would her sacrifice have been for, then?

And if she failed to do this, if Anna failed to get through this song without Mr. Faust finding a mistake, then what did that mean for her other goals? What did that mean for her future, that slim chance of being able to leave her old self behind, to figure out what she actually wanted to do?

No.

She had to do this. Anna Herbert had to get this right.

There was no other option.

"I'm… sorry," she said, an air of silence having taken over the room in the meantime. "I got sidetracked. I won't mess this up again."

"Good," Mr. Faust replied, looking at her. "Start from the beginning again. Make sure you keep your focus."

---

He'd left a couple of minutes ago.

And she was outside the room, her bass in her hand, the hallway empty around her and the soundscape dead, aside from her breaths. The lesson had ended, Mr. Faust had taken her out, and now she was here, letting the minutes tick down until the next bell rang.

And the lesson had gone well. It really had. He'd given her guidance and she'd been able to iron out the kinks in the song she was playing and she felt as if she was a lot closer to being able to do that AP Music performance now. It'd been stressful, it'd been everything all the other people said that the private lessons were, but worth it. She hadn't wasted her time. Maybe Mr. Faust's, but she doubted it. Given his satisfaction with her after that point, given how he seemed to be genuinely happy in the end, she imagined it went as well for him as it did for her. She imagined that it was worth the sacrifice, worth what she had to do.

Didn't mean that it hadn't taken anything out of her, though.

And that was why she was here, leaning against the wall, breathing as the clock ticked down to the next bell. The change — going between who she needed to be and who she wanted to be — was never quite clean, never quite as clear-cut as her mind made it out to be. Whenever she went out the door, whenever the time was right to be herself, it always took a couple more minutes for the change to properly happen, for her mind to properly adjust to the fact that she was free. Right now, she was waiting down that timer as well. Figuring out when her mind would properly realize that the lesson had ended. Dealing with the typical post-interaction exhaustion that came with talking to most people not very close to her.

Trying to become herself, become Roxanne again.

And she could do that. She could rest. It normally took more than that to get right back into the swing of being herself, but-

A buzz, from her pocket. Probably someone texting her. She took it out, lifted it up, and-

Freddy — 12:17 PM
hey, how'd your 1v1 with fausty go?

...She just sorta stared at her phone, for a few seconds. She had no fucking clue why her brother was texting her or how he knew about what she'd just done. Did that mean he knew about some of the things she did?

Did that mean that they knew?

...It was best to reply. Get the info herself.

Anna — 12:18 PM
How did you know about that?

Freddy — 12:18 PM
steve saw you when you asked mr. faust, told me about it
figured given the horror storeis i'd check up on u
make sure he didn't like
completely fletcher you

Fletcher her?

...Whatever. It was probably some reference she just didn't get. Freddy just kinda spoke like that, which tended to get him a lot of confused expressions at the dinner table. She was… honestly really jealous of that. He just sorta got to be himself whenever he felt like it. She, on the other hand, had to find workarounds.

But that was whatever. At least he stayed out of her face most of the time. He was better than the rest by far but honestly no family was probably the best type of family to Anna.

Didn't mean she just wouldn't talk to him, though.

Anna — 12:19 PM
I survived, yeah.
Wasn't too bad, aside from the beginning.

Freddie — 12:19 PM
neat
you think I should take them as well?

She smiled. Gave out a short chuckle.

She had the perfect answer for this.

Anna — 12:20 PM
I don't know.
Do you really think you're capable of surviving it?

No immediate response, other than the bell ringing. No buzz, other than the vibrations of students beginning to head out their classes. She put her phone back into her pocket, sucked in a breath as she pushed herself off the hallway wall. Her next class was… economics, maybe. Pretty sure. Not the greatest class — exactly the kind of class she needed that moment of mental preparation for — but that didn't matter. She could deal with it. She picked up her bag from the ground (remembered that her bass was now inside the music room, ready to pick up at the end of the day), looked around and started walking, as her world came back.

As she became Roxanne again.

As she headed to class, ready to take this moment of freedom, however small it was.

((Anna "Roxanne" Herbert, continued elsewhere))