Sally Cinnamon

Matthew slipped his hand free of Allison's grip once they reached the shed. A soft light filled the shed as Matthew stepped inside and hit a nearby switch. "Come on in," he called over his shoulder. "And close the door, sometimes it doesn't latch..."

"Holy SHIT." Matthew had been on his way to set his laptop down before Allison's exclamation stopped him in his tracks. He turned around to see Allison with an awestruck look on her face. "This is your practice space? Color me fucking jealous."

All four walls of the shed, as well as the door Allison was closing behind her and the ceiling were covered with makeshift soundproofing in the form of egg cartons and padded foam. A five-piece drum kit sat in one corner along with a stereo and a crate of CDs. Wires ran from the stereo to two speakers that sat high on the walls. The rest of the shed was more akin to an apartment than a backyard storage space. A refrigerator and deep freezer were pressed against one wall. A card table and four folding chairs were situated nearby while an L-shaped sectional couch was in the opposite corner, facing a two-shelf cabinet that held a DVD player and a small flatscreen TV. In the final corner was a twin-sized bed along with a nightstand and dresser, the bed made, and pillows recently fluffed.

"Dibs."

"Dibs?"

Allison motioned around her. "Dibs. This is my new practice space. My mother is always bitching that my rehearsing is interfering with her attempts to be the number-one Younique saleswoman in Pitkin County. It's either find a new place to practice or crack a guitar over her head. And I love my guitar a lot more than I love my mother."

She took a step towards the drum kit as behind her Matthew went to set up on the card table. "I'm thinking I could plug my amp in there, put my stool over there...yeah, this could definitely work. So, what do you want to rent this place out," she asked, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Say, a handjob a week? Sundays work best for me but I'm willing to shift payment day around if it fits your schedule better."

Matthew's eyes darted about the shed as he did his best to look anywhere except directly at Allison. When he finally did, she was looking back at him, two fingers pressed against her lips, staring expectantly at him.

"I...are you being serious," he asked, hands out, shoulders up in confusion.

"We're negotiating? OK, fine. I'll go up to a blow job. But just to warn you, you might not be able to walk right for the rest of the week." Matthew's jaw fell open at Allison's statement. The sight caused the rocker's composure to evaporate. "I'm KIDDING," she laughed heartily. "You should see the look on your face right now."

Allison's laughter struck Matthew as genuine, that she was teasing him in a friendly manner as opposed to a taunting one. "Sorry," he said, cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment. "I didn't know if you were joking or not. Not that I think you're easy," he quickly added. "I know how hard it is for a musician to find a good practice space."

Motioning to the amateur soundproofing on the walls ceiling, she asked, "did you do all this?"

"The soundproofing? Yeah, my Dad and I did all that the weekend I bought my drum set. But the rest of the shed was my older brother and my Dad...ten years ago." Matthew was leaning over his laptop as he spoke. "He lived out here when he went to high school and he still crashes when he comes to visit from Denver."

"Damn," Allison said, her words accompanied by a low whistle. "That must have been fucking nice. I'd kill to have a place like this to crash in. How come you don't live out here?"

"It gets drafty during the winter. Plus, there's a toilet and a sink but no shower. Fun place to practice and hang out, not fun for long-term living. And...alright." He looked up from the laptop. "We're on the WiFi and the Sharepoint site. Good to go when you are."

Allison gently waved one finger in the air. "One question. Who's your guy?" She turned and pointed to the drum kit. "I'd bet ten bucks it's either Neil Peart, Dave Grohl, or Travis Barker. Every high school and college drummer I've ever met, it's one of those three. So, which one is it?"

Matthew felt himself standing a little taller at Allison's question. "Alan Wren," he answered confidently. He had the pleasure of seeing Allison tilt her head in confusion. "Alan Wren," he repeated. "From the Stone Roses?"

"Never heard of them."

"Oh, wow, you're missing out," he told her. "They're a British band from the late '80s. They only released two albums but the first one is a genuine masterpiece."

"How about a band whose stuff I might have actually listened to," Allison snarked.

Matthew thought for a second. "Ronnie Vannucci from The Killers?"

"There you go." Allison crossed her arms and gave Matthew what he thought was a look of approval. "I never took you for a rock drummer. I assumed you were some limp-wristed Drama geek. You learn something new every fucking day."

"Everyone's got their something, right? So, who's your guy...or girl...when it comes to guitars?"

"Marissa fucking Paternoster," Allison answered with nary a hint of hesitation. "Look her up when you get a chance. Come on," she said, moving towards the card table and hanging her leather vest on the back of a chair, "let's sit down and get this project started."

X X X X X

Allison leaned back in her chair. Tilting her head, she proceeded to blow a bubble. Matthew picked up the faint hint of cherry as Allison let the bubble sit against her lips for a moment before pulling it back inside of her mouth. "These poems fucking suck," she said to Matthew as she resumed chewing her gum.

Elbows on the table, hands folded underneath his chin, Matthew looked down at the computer screen. "I'm in total agreement. There's no spark to any of them. No life. These poems Mr. Warren has here are just...bland. How much do you want to bet the ones that are already claimed were from groups who picked three poems at random and called it a day?" A dejected sigh escaped from Matthew before he gave Allison a weary smile. "Sorry to have wasted your Friday night."

"My night wasn't wasted." She motioned to the empty box sitting by the door. "I got free pizza. That's a win in my book Drummer Boy."

About five minutes into what became a ninety-minute session, Allison had dropped the moniker 'Drummer Boy' on Matthew. His initial discomfort at the nickname had only served for Allison to use it several more times. At first, Matthew believed that Allison was making fun of him, however, he quickly came to realize that even though she was teasing him with the nickname, Allison meant it in a quasi-friendly manner. Accompanied by a pizza loaded with extra cheese and pepperoni as well as a cold six-pack of bottled water, the high school seniors had gone over the variety of poems, sonnets, and ballads that Mr. Warren had placed on the school's Sharepoint site. The steady tap of rain against the shed's roof filled the air along with the cherry scent of Allison's bubble gum. The two students put their heads together as they attempted to find a piece of poetry that grabbed their interest.

And came away wanting.

"You think maybe Mr. Warren is just playing it safe," Matthew suggested. "Nothing on the list that could rock the boat or make the school board upset?"

"Possibly. But one of the main things about poetry is NOT playing it safe. You know," Allison said, waving her hands in the air, "fire, passion, life, death, sex, love, all that crap. Everything on this list is about as tame as a Dr. Seuss poem, but at least his stuff is FUN."

"Just want to pick three poems at random then?"

"Whatever...yeah, go for it." Allison snapped her gum while Matthew started scrolling down the list. "Too bad we couldn't do songs for this project. I'd be a lot more interested in pulling apart a song than I would any of these poems."

"...so why not pick some songs then?" Matthew glanced up from his laptop with an eager look on his face. "I just locked our three poems down. There's nothing stopping us from choosing three songs and presenting them to Mr. Warren." Tapping the screen, he added, "this list was just a guideline, right? We could pick any poem we wanted as long as it's school appropriate. I think between you and me we could come up with three songs without breaking a sweat."

Allison pressed her lips together. She put her hands behind her head and tipped her chair onto two legs. "Think he'd go for it," she asked after a moment.

"I don't see why not. Mr. Warren is notorious for being easy going. I'll bet that if you and I run this by him on Monday he'll say yes as long as we show we're taking this project seriously and not looking for a cheap way out. If he says no, we'll still have our three poems."

Allison was quiet for several seconds. She blew and popped another bubble before a black-hearted smile touched upon her lips. "Think of the look on everyone else's faces when they realized we gamed the system." She nodded. "OK. I'm in."

"Awesome! Let me pull up YouTube on my laptop..."

"Fuck that." Matthew looked up as Allison reached into her black satchel. "I got Spotify Premium on my phone and a Bluetooth speaker," she said as she set a small round speaker in the center of the table. "Your idea, Drummer Boy. You get to suggest the first song. Show me what you got."

Instead of drearily reading poems that held no interest to them, Matthew and Allison now dove headfirst into a vast sea of music. Initial attempts at finding three songs quickly turned into a game of "Give This Song A Try." Their initial tastes in music were wildly different. Matthew went with the '80s and '90s music his parents had exposed him to while Allison introduced him to bands he had never heard. As time passed, the music began to blur together in a simple back-and-forth as the two 18-year-olds learned each other's musical likes and dislikes.

Eventually, the pair managed to choose their three songs. Two came from Allison's catalog of suggestions - "Flannel" by the Cardboard Swords and "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance ("hey," Allison had told him, "rep the fucking classics") - with Matthew's pick being "Motorcycle Emptiness" from the Manic Street Preachers.

Matthew volunteered to write the lyrics in a presentable fashion to show Mr. Warren. As he typed away at the laptop's keyboard, Allison took another look around the room. "Seriously, this is a really nice place you got going on here. You hang out here a lot?"

"Not really. Thomas' basement is the local Drama Club hangout." Matthew paused for a moment, chewing on his lower lip as he picked his words. "This is my space. Everyone needs a place they can go when they need to just chill out and decompress, right?"

"I got you," Allison nodded. "I could easily see myself hanging out in a place like this. So then what makes Thomas' basement so fucking special?"

"Sorry. Trade secret. Unless you want to join the Drama Club and find out."

"No way," she shot back. "I have enough drama in my life without adding it in a formal manner."

As Matthew continued to type away, he asked, "so what plans for tonight did you blow off?"

"Seeing a concert at a crappy dive bar up in Aspen. I was quasi-obligated to go but I really wasn't in the mood to make the drive and hear the lead guitarist sing about his secret crush on the bass player." She gave Matthew a casual shrug. "But it broke in my favor. I'm kind of having fun here."

Caught off guard, Matthew sat up in his seat, blinking with mild surprise at Allison's statement. "You are?"

"I didn't expect much of anything tonight but you're not bad. Halfway decent taste in music. Kick-ass suggestion to make a school project interesting instead of tedious. Your Mom appreciated my ink instead of freaking out about it. And don't forget," Allison said with a sly grin, "free fucking pizza." Leaning back in the chair once again, Allison proceeded to put her black boots up on the card table and locked her hands behind her head. "So yeah. I'm not ready to go home yet if I'm not keeping you up past your bedtime."

Matthew looked around the shed, chewing lightly on his lower lip as he did so. "I...we could watch a movie," he suggested, motioning towards the television. "Or if your speaker still has charge, how about some more music?"

"Maybe." She glanced around the interior of the shed. As she looked at the far corner, the grin on her face took on a mischievous bent. "Why don't you play the drums for me? Maybe some Stone Roses?"

Matthew followed Allison's gaze to his drum kit before nodding eagerly. "I can do that." He got up and crossed the shed, heading for his drum kit. Allison watched as he plugged a pair of protective in-ear monitors into the stereo and picked up a small remote control from on top of it, as well as grabbing a matching pair of sticks from a milk crate sitting on the ground.

Allison bent over and unlaced her boots while Matthew sat down onto the stool behind the drum kit. He spun the sticks between his fingers to warm up his wrists before tapping out a simple beat on the snare drum, quickly finding the timing in his head - left, right, left, right, left, right. The dull thumps resonated in his ear as he got the pacing down. Then Matthew switched it up. Left left, right right, left left, right right. He kept his wrists loose, letting momentum carrying the sticks back up before flicking them back down. After a few moments, he slowed back down to single beats for several measures before lowering the sticks.

A glance towards Allison revealed that she had pulled her boots off while Matthew had been warming up. They sat on the ground next to her black satchel. Her bare feet rested on the edge of the table as she balanced the chair on the back legs. She looked at Matthew with a keen interest in her eyes, waiting for him to begin. He hit "PLAY" on the stereo remote and settled in, eyes closed, silently counting in his head as a guitar began to play.

At the right moment, Matthew began tapping his sticks against the snares, joining in with the guitar. Both were followed several seconds later by the melodic voice of Ian Brown.

"Chimes sing Sunday morn, today's the day she's sworn"

"To steal what she never could own and race from this hole she calls home"

Matthew had been working with the song, "Waterfall" by the Stone Roses, off-and-on over the summer, having challenged himself as a Fourth-of-July resolution. The varied, complex drumline kept Matthew on his toes. There was no way Matthew would ever be able to play along with the song's intended rhythm and melody. He hadn't yet the skill or wrist strength to hit every single beat.

"See the steeple pine, the hills as old as time"

"Soon to be put to the test, to be whipped by the winds of the west"

Instead, Matthew followed along as best he could, and where he couldn't follow, he improvised. His focus over the past weeks had been on trying to fill in or simplify the beat where he had to - double kicks on the bass drum, one-one-two on the snare, and so on. He still wasn't getting it quite right, but the ratio had improved since Independence Day.

"She'll carry on through it all, she's a waterfall"

While the chorus repeated itself, Matthew submerged himself in the rhythms. He felt the vibrations in his wrists and forearms as they bounced back up only for him to snap them down again. As he played Matthew tried to drive past muscle memory, finding his own beat as opposed to the one his body insisted he drum. A rivulet of sweat ran down the back of his neck, tracing a line to the fabric of his shirt. His entire focus was on the drums in front of him, sticks against the plastic drumheads, foot pressing down on the bass pedal.

The song flowed towards the finale before gently fading to silence. When the song ended, so did Matthew's intense focus. He became aware of his breathing along with the soreness in his arms and calves that came from the musical equivalent of a hard sprint. He grabbed a nearby bandana. While wiping the sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck, a voice called out from across the shed.

"Whoa." The chair was now back on all four legs as Allison leaned forward, hands between her knees, and gave Matthew a slight nod. "Here I was expecting some crash-and-bang ruckus and instead you hand me a complex, mellow drumline. I'm fucking impressed."

Matthew swelled with pride at the compliment. "Thanks," he said as he took out his ear monitors. "That means a lot coming from a practiced musician like you."

"I call it as I see it," she answered. "You're definitely better than any of the other drummers around here. The only halfway decent one spends as much time staring at my tits as he does keeping the beat. All the years we've been in school together, all the school plays my ass got dragged too, and I never once got a hint that you were a drummer. Believe me, I would have fucking picked up on it." A deviant smile crossed Allison's face, showing her teeth in an almost predatory fashion. She leaned back in her chair. "Don't suppose I could convince you to come play with us?"

A quiet laugh, one that Matthew hoped came off as polite, was his answer. "Sorry," he said, "Drama Club comes first..."

Matthew trailed off as he realized Allison was staring at him. Her grin was replaced by a look of curiosity. Her eyes roamed his body with the same wicked eagerness that had laced her smile. He felt as if he was being appraised, judged by criteria known only to Allison. She shifted in her chair. As she did so, the tip of her tongue briefly ran along the inside of her lips. The sight of Allison studying him set off a dueling pair of emotions inside of him - a tense, icy nervousness in his chest and a wholly unexpected stirring between his legs.

"Something wrong, Drummer Boy?"

Allison's words brought him back to reality. The musician wore a playful smirk on her face as she said, "you were drifting there for a moment."

"Sorry," he answered, a little more urgently and with a higher pitch than he had intended. "Friday night brain hiccup, I guess."

"I hear you. So, what do you want to do now?"

"Want me to play another song?"

"Nah." Allison waved a dismissive hand. "I know you're good, no need to brag." After blowing another bubble, she asked, "want to just shoot the breeze? We're project partners, good excuse as any to get to know each other. That, and I'm still enjoying hanging out with you."

"I'm having a pretty good time as well." Matthew stood up from the drum kit, stretching out his lower back in the process. Instead of joining Allison at the table, however, he turned and headed for the deep freezer. "I'll be honest," he said as he crossed his arms and lounged against the appliance, "I was nervous about tonight. I was afraid you were going to be pissed off at me."

"For what?" Allison leaned forward in her chair. "Why would I be pissed off at you?"

Allison's question caught Matthew off-guard. He had never expected to actually answer it. "Um...well..."

"Just spit it out."

His heartbeat had picked up, just enough to be noticeable, at the tone in Allison's voice. "Because...because you have a reputation for being a bitch," he spat out. "It's what I've always heard about you. I'm sorry, it's my fault for assuming it to be true."

"You should be. Don't you know I'm all sugar and spice?" Allison shook her head. "I know my rep. I'm capable of being a particularly raging thunder-bitch." She sighed. "My senior year resolution, as much as there is such a fucking thing, is to try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't enthused about coming over here either, but you've been a good host, you've got decent taste in music, and you haven't done anything to piss me off. So yeah, don't worry about me eviscerating you." Leaning back in her chair, Allison looked around the renovated lawn shed. "Change of topic. Ever bring any girls out here? Make this place into a little illicit sex den?"