I woke to the sound of my best mate and roommate, Daisy, banging on my bedroom door as if her life depended on it, and for a moment, in my paranoia, I feared the worst. Jumping from my queen sized bed, and sprinting to the door, I quickly opened it and looked at her, my eyes wide.

"What? What is it?" I asked her, my voice breaking.

"We got it!" she squealed, almost jumping up and down she was fidgeting so much, "we got the gig at the pub that we auditioned for the day before yesterday! He wants us to play Friday and Saturday night!"

Realizing that the news was nowhere near as dire as my early morning panic had led me to believe, I released a sigh of both relief and aggravation.

"Really Dais? You couldn't have waited until I woke up on my own to tell me this?" I asked her, frowning slightly, "You scared the crap out of me banging on the door like that, I thought the flat was on fire or something..."

Daisy's look of joy and excitement quickly turned to one of guilt, at my words. Of my friends here, she was the only besides our friend Ivy, who knew about what had happened to me in my past. And so she knew how easily I tended to panic, realizing that she had just unintentionally caused that, it was all over her face how bad she now felt.

"Shit Ember... I wasn't thinking," she said, "I'm sorry love. I was just really excited, couldn't wait to tell you. Cause I mean, this is huge, this is our first real gig, its a big deal."

I nodded, a small smile forming on my face as I did so. Now that my initial worry and anger had worn off, I was intensely excited myself. Our band had been working towards this for months now, practicing daily, and auditioning and playing anywhere we could. But we hadn't landed anything this awesome before, the pub we would be playing at was one of the favorite hangouts in the city, tons of people would hear us play, it was going to be amazing.

"It is pretty damn awesome, that's for sure," I said, my smile now firmly planted on my face, "we should get the girls and go out for breakfast to celebrate, yeah?"

She nodded enthusiastically, as she pulled out her phone and began to type as fast as she possibly could.

"That is a brilliant idea!" she said, "I'm texting them now."

A moment later, the sound of three nearly simultaneous beeps sounded from her phone, which was still clutched in her hand. And after glancing at the screen quickly, she turned back to me, giving me the thumbs up.

"They're in, they'll meet us at that diner that we went to the last time we had breakfast out.... the one with the amazing omelets."

"Good. Right then, I need a shower now if we're going out," I said, "how about we all meet there in about an hour?"

Daisy nodded brightly, before beginning to type again. "Sounds good, I'll let them know."

"Cool, I'm gonna go get ready now then," I said, "see you in a few."

I turned and headed back into my room. Grabbing some clothes from my dresser, and placing them on my bed, I then made my way to the connecting bathroom. Turning on the shower, and allowing it to take the time for the water to heat, I slowly began to strip off my pajamas. As usual, I tried hard not to look at the faded scars that were scattered across my body for too long, The memories that they represented were something that I have worked very hard to try and keep locked in the back of my mind as much as humanly possible, but every now and then an image of those terrible days would flash in my mind against my will, making my entire body shudder.

Throwing my clothes in the hamper in the corner of the bathroom, I quickly walked back to the shower and got in. The feeling of the hot water against my skin felt good and calmed me as I forced myself to think about everything and anything but my past. After about 20 minutes, once i had washed up and shaved, I stepped out of the shower, and pulling a towel off the hook on the wall, wrapped it around me, before making my way back into my room. It didn't take long for me to get dressed, and then after quickly brushing my teeth, and doing my hair and makeup, I grabbed my coat and headed out into the living room.

Daisy reached the front door just as I did, grinning, Looking each others' outfits over critically, we each gave each other a nod of approval before heading out the door and making our way to the diner.

---

As we entered the small family owned diner, I was not at all surprised to see our three friends and bandmates already sitting in our usual table. Waving at them, Daisy and I quickly walked over and sat down in the seats they'd left open for us. I ended up sitting next to Ivy, while Daisy was in between Keysha and Ruby. I absolutely love these girls, we'd met just after I had moved here 6 and a half years ago, and had immediately become inseparable. I had been pretty damaged back then, and hesitant to let myself get close to anyone, or let anyone in. But they had been pretty stubborn, and hadn't allowed me to push them away, the harder I tried to do so, the harder they had pushed back, until before I knew it, I had no longer wanted them to go anywhere.

Not long after we became friends, we all realized that we all had an incredible passion for music, and that each of us played an instrument and sang pretty well. And before we knew it, we'd started the band. Ruby plays drums, Keysha plays keyboard, Ivy plays the saxophone, Daisy plays bass, I play guitar, and we all sing, though Daisy, Ivy and I normally take the lead with solos. We called ourselves Psychotic Squirrel, in honor of the squirrel from the Ice Age movies, which were our favorites, and of course, we wrote all our own songs. Of course we all had jobs on the side, but the band was our true passion and priority.

I was brought back from my thoughts when the waitress came to our table, asking us if we were ready to order, and we all nodded before ordering our usual choices. As we waited for our food and drinks, we excitedly talked among ourselves about the shows, and which songs we would perform or not perform on which night. Eventually we moved on to other subjects, how Ruby and her new boyfriend were doing, Keysha's recent promotion at her job, whether or not we wanted to go to the club that night or not. By the time we had finished our meals, we were pretty much caught up on everything new that happened in each other's lives in the past couple of days, and we'd decided that we were going to hit the club that night, as an extension of our celebration. After leaving the restaurant, we parted ways, heading to work and promising to text over our lunch breaks as we usually did. If only I had known that that night my past would come back to haunt me in the worst way, I never would have agreed to go out.

Notes

Sorry it's a bit of a short chapter guys, and also sorry that the boys haven't shown up yet, but don't you worry, they are coming in chapter two.
I really really hope you all like my story so far. Comment and vote and subscribe and stuff :)
--LalaGurlinaBox