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Ben sat at his mother’s desk, hands on the keyboard, butt in the chair. Ms. Audrey called it Bic-hok, which kind of sounded like a swearword to him, but she said it really worked. But she also said you had to watch out for distractions.
Which was probably why he felt so guilty about surfing the internet. He was supposed to be writing a story for her, something with “banter”, whatever that was. Instead, here he sat, looking for Gene’s guitar. Or rather, he was looking for pictures that might tell them who carved the initials KC into the guitar before Gene bought it second hand from a music store.
Stupid. He already knew he wasn’t going to find it this way. Hadn’t he already spent about an hour googleing it? Lots of old rockers turned up, more than old guitars. Plus there were pins and logos, and weird stuff like a dog that didn’t have anything to do with it. But a lot of times there’d be a picture of someone holding a guitar, so he kept going.
Some of the guitars looked maybe kind of like it, but not exactly like it. Some were weird colors, like green or blue. Maybe someone striped the paint? But he could never find the initials.
It was hopeless, and besides, he was supposed to be writing.
“There you are,” Lisa said from the door. “Your mother said you were writing.”
“Yeah.” He quick clicked the little minus sign to make the web browser thing go away. Only now it showed what he was writing, and he didn’t really want Lisa reading it because she always said something about whatever he’d written and then for some reason it was harder to write. So he clicked that one down too. That left him with his mother’s wildflower screen saver looking stupid.
“Were you looking for Gene’s guitar?” She walked up.
“Um… yeah.” Might as well admit it. He made the web browser bigger again.
Tracy was walking by, probably about to go upstairs and see Gene. She glanced in, then backed up, looking into the office. “Gene’s guitar?”
“Ben is trying to find it on the internet, find out who carved K.C. into the back. Right?” She gave him that tell-me-I’m-right look.
He nodded.
“Ooooooh.” Tracy ran up, making the electric-green fringe all over her shirt swing. “Did you find it?”
“No.”
“You sound so depressed.” She wedged herself between Ben and Lisa to stare at the screen. “It cuts off at page 45? Google used to be better than this.”
“Yeah. I tried a bunch of different searches. Still nothing.”
“I know.” She pushed further, reaching for the keyboard. She fumbled a little when she had to push his hands away, but didn’t seem to notice. “You should set up a page on Facebook.”
“Facebook? I’ve never…”
“That’s ok. I have.” She started typing, even all squished up between them.
In a few seconds she had Facebook pulled up and a few minutes later had a dummy account set up and even had a few ‘friends’ linked up. The whole thing was about the guitar and asking if anyone knew anything about it.
“We need pictures,” she muttered. “Oh, let me borrow that.” She grabbed Mom’s digital camera from the corner of the desk and ran out before Ben could say anything.
“It’s like being trampled by a herd of zebra, isn’t it?” Lisa forced a smile as she watched her cousin run out with the camera.
“Yeah. I don’t know how Gene handles it.”
And to think there was a time when he thought maybe Tracy would be his girlfriend and Lisa Gene’s, instead of the other way around. Thank God it hadn’t worked that way.
If you enjoy Suzie’s House and would like to see more, please leave a comment. Suzie’s House is powered by its readers.
Neat idea, the Facebook thing. I’m trying to get better at Facebook myself. I am enjoying this story. It’s going to be interesting to see what gets posted on the “FB” page.
I also wanted to thank you for all the reading you did of my writing. I am very complimented by the time and attention. Of all the comments, the one about “Millard” where you read it to your Mom really means so much to me. It’s one thing to pick something up and read it, but quite another to want someone else to get to too; epecially someone like a Mom. That wasn’t waisted on me. Thank you, Alice.
I hope after they go to all this trouble, they get an answer that’s cool and interesting. It would suck to find out that the previous owner was some balding middle-aged nobody on the other side of town.
Ah! You took the words right out of my mouth. Well, I’m going to use them anyway.
Not that it is, though. Knowing me, it’s more likely to be a red head.
I am so enjoying this story I love the details you put in it.
Did Gene’s mom play the guitar?
I love it when you get in Ben’s head!
You pulled me in immediately… I want to know what happens next!
Enjoyed it. Makes me curious to know what will happen next.
Huh, this is a very interesting piece. Not a clue what’s going on but it flows pretty well. I’ll have to start digging! Thanks for sharing Alice and thanks for visiting!
This is starting to be addictive. Being an Aussie I was hoping it was Kasey Chambers. That is how daft your readers get!
Wow this was such a different idea…..and I loved the way u weaved this piece…brilliant
I like how the guitar allows you tell to tell the stories of each character..your writing is so effortless..Jae
Great short story. I want to know who KC is now, too!
Thanks for visiting me and the comment
Intriguing…
Hi again. Yes, you did already leave a comment at that 3WW about me shutting the door on Dennis’ hand. It is in the archive. That’s one of the posts I moved over from Blogspot when I was trying to get my stuff organized. I’m dumb about how to do things like that so the comments from there got archived.
I finally gotmy 3WW here for this week. I always appreciate your opinion.
Loved reading it… wanna know what happens next!!!
Sorry I’m late.
Like the others, I can’t wait to find out where you’re going with this.
Tracy IS a force of nature. Gotta love her. Now hopefully Gene can get some writing done.
Really like the attention to detail and the little crumbs you leave us. Would love to see what happens next.
This is quite intriguing. I just kind of feel like I stepped into a soap opera at season 6. I may have to read back in your blog a bit to catch up.
This is fun.
Mike