Chapter 1
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Debra’s entire day has already been ruined by Gina, and they haven’t even unlocked the front doors of Empire Records for their morning shift yet.
“This is so unfair,” Deb drones, watching Lucas excitedly race for the staff stereo. She feels the minuscule impact of a lightly-tossed m&m at her back and turns to face Gina, who sticks out her tongue and pours more candy into her palm.
“All’s fair in love and music, Deb,” she says, and tosses one more m&m at her before throwing the rest into her mouth. She dances down the stairs and past Deb, and the sound of Kraftwerk’s most experimental and excruciating work fills the store as Deb watches her go to unlock the door and flip their sign to read 'open'. Lucas is dancing too, and as usual he’s making a damn fool of himself doing it, but while Deb normally would love to take the opportunity to chastise him for his general lack of understanding of all things related to normal human behavior, or to use her veto way too early in the day, she finds herself thinking about the Damn the Man show instead. Again. She watches Gina eat m&m’s and dance and thinks about how they should be listening to Bikini Kill or X-Ray Spex right now, listening to something that Gina would be able to sing along to, would be able to really give a performance of. Because Deb wants to watch her do it.
She goes to take her place behind one of the registers and sighs, and she places her own singular green m&m in the center of her tongue and stares at the register’s buttons as it melts in her mouth. Why, oh why, did God have to go and do something as stupid as giving Gina actual talent. And why, oh why, did She also have to go and gift Debra with such good taste in music. Deb shakes her head. Gina dances up to the second register beside her, tossing the empty candy box into the trash.
“It’s been like a month, I’m surprised I can still see your scalp,” she says absentmindedly, still snapping her fingers to the barrage of synthetic noise Lucas is blasting.
“Well I hope you stop looking because I don’t think it wants to see you back. It’s only been three weeks, anyways.”
Gina shakes her head. “Feels like a lifetime.”
“Sad you haven’t sang again since then?”
Gina looks up, seems surprised. Deb opens and shuts her register idly, waiting for an answer.
“Yeah,” Gina says after a few seconds. “How many wise-cracks are you busy crafting about how much I love the sound of my own voice?”
Deb snorts, “don’t get ahead of yourself there, tiger. There are no gossips columns about you yet.”
The bell on the door rings and she looks to see the first customer of the day infiltrating their aisles. Deb doesn’t even want to give Gina a chance to get more annoying about this conversation, so as an act of pure strategy, she says,
“It was a really great show, I liked watching you.”
She doesn’t have to look to know that Gina’s mouth is agape at the unsolicited compliment, but she does look anyways. And while she’s looking, she adds, “I’m gonna do some filing in the back, how about you go help out that lovely customer?”
She leaves for the back office while Gina’s still speechless, and starts mourning the day she could’ve had if Gina hadn’t decided to ruin it.
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