pilot
It took Marlene ten minutes to realise Peter wasn’t late. He simply was not coming. Flakey asshole . She’d only signed up to this elective because she knew he would be here. Stealing a glance at the white clock hanging above the door, she decided It was probably too late to sneak out now… right? A quick scan of the room confirmed her suspicions. There were only four people in the class, including her - her absence would most likely be noticed. She was gazing longingly again towards the door, her ticket to freedom, when a girl with strawberry blonde hair bounced up from where she had been chatting to her friend.
“Well, I think I’m just going to start now.” she blushed a little, smiling, “Thank you all for coming! I decided to start this club as more of a support group than a teacher-student thing, you know? So anyone can ask for help or opinions on lyrics that they’re writing and so on.” she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously, “So, I think we should all start by introducing ourselves. My name is Lila Kilster, and this is Nicole Gladwell.”
Nicole turned around from her desk, her smile dimming a little when she locked eyes with Marlene. They hadn’t really talked since last year. Her and Marlene used to be really good friends, sleeping over at each other’s houses almost every night. It was a right of passage, she supposed, for every woman who wasn’t straight to have an incredibly intense, incredibly non-platonic but incredibly short friendship. Nothing had ever happened between them, but it hadn’t exactly ended very happily. Marlene tried her best to avoid Nicole when she could.
Lila turned to look at Marlene eagerly.
“I’m Marlene Mckinnon.” she said with a nod as she leaned back in her chair to get a better look at the other person left in the room: a boy, who had chosen to sit right in the middle of the desks. He slouched, feet on the chair in front of him.
“I’m James Potter.” he grinned.
*****
By the time Marlene got home it was dinner time. She opened the shutter door to see her father’s shoes in the entrance, signalling that he had arrived home before her. The house was noisy - as it always seemed to be - with various people running down stairs, shouting at others to make way for the hot dish they were carrying, or shouting at each other for some reason or other (Mckinnons never really needed a reason to shout). The noise was soothing, like TV static was for babies. It soothed over the tetchiness of the day, the way that school made her skin itch. Being one of the few people scouted from a low-income area was… difficult, to say the least. There were few specific incidents she could put her finger on, but it was the day-to-day atmosphere that got to her. She was always so conscious all the time. Conscious of her accent, conscious of the way she dressed. Hogwarts was technically a public conservatoire, but all of its students were scouted around the age of 11. By that time, most gifted kids with no (paid) music tutors had fallen behind. So in reality, almost everyone there was from a wealthy family.
Still, it was a source of pride that Marlene had gotten into Hogwarts. It was one of the few ways she felt she made them proud. That and the fact that she was a girl.
Marlene’s parents had really wanted a girl. Unfortunately, their chromosomes simply didn’t cooperate. It had taken six tries for them to finally get the girl they wanted. Laurence, her younger brother, came four years after her. Marlene was sure he was an accident, and when they were younger she used to remind him of it constantly, which would make him cry. Nowadays the ‘joke’ (she didn’t really see it as a joke, just a simple statement of fact) just earned her a punch in the arm. Most of her siblings had moved out, but they always came home for Friday night dinner.
Having so many siblings was good, because Marlene could always slip out of the house unnoticed, or get Laurence or Charlie to cover for her. She’d been doing it since she was thirteen - probably way too young to go out to strangers’ parties or gigs, with the naive hope of bumping into some big-time producer who would launch her to stardom. By fourteen, she knew all the bars around Hollywood - the ones that would serve her without a second glance, the ones with bouncers that would let her in. At the ones that wouldn’t, she even knew the specific bouncers that she could charm her way into easing up on the rules. She knew most of the producers and managers that were around. She knew all the up-and-coming bands, the ones which people thought had a chance of making it, the ones which people thought certainly didn’t. She knew which restaurants were open 24/7, and the ones that, although they looked dusty and crumbling from the outside, harsh white light flickering on and off, served the best quesadillas, or fried chicken, or curry. At fifteen, she had tried almost every drug under the sun - meth and heroin being the only two that she considered off-limits. At sixteen, she still had the same dream when walking into a bar that she would meet a producer willing to give her a real chance, but she had it in a much more sophisticated and much less naive way than when she was thirteen - with eyeliner.
Once dinner was over, Marlene rushed to her room. She fumbled with the purple metallic eyeshadow as she pressed the brush hard into her eyelid. It looked messy, but Marlene never cared. A side effect of inheriting her mother’s thick, curly hair; it was too unruly to make it look neat and nice, so she never tried to make her appearance fit that mild. She sprinkled some silver glitter into the corner of her eye, and grabbed the clumpy mascara - ugh, she really had to get a new one soon - and almost poked her eye out while she tried hopping into her denim skirt at the same time. She had to be in Smalls in half an hour. Who was she kidding - she was never going to make it in time. Searching around the floor of her room for a clean top, she grabbed the first one she thought looked semi-decent, and held her boots in her hand so as to not make a sound while she crept into the corridor and climbed out of the window that faced out the front of their house.
It was hot and stuffy inside the bar and she already needed a cigarette. She hadn’t brought any with her, so she would have to ask the first person she found. In fact, she never brought anything with her. She had a twenty for emergencies inside a pocket that she had once sewn in her bra, but other than that, she never took anything to these things. She knew she would lose it if she did. Scanning the room, she saw no sign of Levi. It was too packed for her to see anything and she kept getting jostled about too much to get a clear line of sight to anything. Deciding to make a beeline for the bar, she turned around and leaned over the sticky wooden counter.
One look over the sea of people told her that the band that was playing tonight must actually be good - people were dancing and jumping in the way only people who are intoxicated do. With LA, it was always hit or miss - you never really knew with these things. It could be decent, or it could be a man who had never experienced empathy until he listened to the Smiths and now thought he was qualified to write shitty songs about what it meant to be sad. But Marlene loved it all the same. She loved the good bands because they were good, and she loved the shitty bands because they were shitty. Either way it was entertaining. It brought a little jolt of excitement to think that she was maybe standing in front of a future sold-out stadium artist. Or at least a funny story she could tell people if there was a lull in the conversation
Marlene looked around once more. The flashing red and purple lights of the club revealed, for one second, a booth in the corner with a man with a dirty blond beard and wispy, shoulder-length hair. It caught her attention, and she made her way, wading through the bodies, towards them.
“There she is! Right, fuckers, this is Marlene Mckinnon - she’s a piece, isn’t she?”
Levi winked at her, inviting her to sit down. The rest of the people he was sitting with eyed her with a mixture of wariness and hunger. Marlene smirked back as she took a seat on the red velour sofa in the booth, next to a pink-haired girl. At first she used to care about the looks she would receive in these places. She knew she looked underage. She knew everyone else knew, they just didn’t care. It used to make her angry, until she realised that it was practically the only reason she was invited anywhere. Youth was a currency in Hollywood, one that she was running out of. In a few months she would be seventeen, and then she only really had a year until she had to rely on reputation instead of her age. It stressed her out.
She was brought out of her thoughts by a nudge to her right, and Levi handing her a rolled up dollar bill, pointing at a line of white powder. One thing she appreciated about these things was the steady stream of drugs. Another thing she would lose when she got older; people would make her start paying for substances because they weren’t so eager to get her in an inebriated state. She pushed all those thoughts away from her mind and leant down, putting the bill up to her right nostril. School had been so tiring lately - assignment after exam after performance after assignment. God it was so fucking tiring being gifted.
Levi started talking to the group, but Marlene couldn’t hear him over the blaring music. She didn’t mind, instead taking the opportunity to study the face of everyone around her. She knew Levi, but today’s gig was with a crowd that she didn’t really hang out with. To her right was the girl with bright pink hair, making Marlene extremely jealous. One time when she was fourteen she drunkenly tried to dye her hair purple, but it didn’t really take because she had forgotten to bleach it. Instead, in the sun her hair had a slightly purple tinge for like two months - twenty dollars down the drain.
The other girl was turned away, so Marlene couldn’t see her face, but she could make out her long eyelashes, covered in glitter. They sparkled every time she blinked and Marlene had to use every inch of willpower to tear herself away from the sight so it didn’t look like she was staring. Pink-haired girl was giggling, talking to a man with a white tank top. Rookie error. Marlene had been to enough of these things to know that if you went wearing anything white, you left with a massive piss-coloured stain. It was better to stay away from any light colours in general. He looked like an asshole anyways, Marlene thought, so he probably deserved it. Next to him was a girl with blonde hair, and then Levi. To his right were two men, too far away to make out their faces in the dark, a woman, and, next to them and opposite Marlene, was James Potter.
What the fuck.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him, as she was met with a massive grin. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear,
“Was wondering how long it would take for you to realise.”
Even in the dark she could see how excited he was at the coincidence. Marlene couldn’t help the smile that she gave back. He nodded his head in the direction of the bar, getting up. She followed him. He bypassed the bar entirely and went to the direction of the backdoor.
The fresh air slapped them in the face as they walked out. Breathing in, Marlene leant her head against the cold concrete of the club’s walls, closing her eyes in order to fully appreciate the coolness of the surface, as opposed to the suffocating heat inside the bar.
“Want one?”
She looked over to see him offering a cigarette.
“Oh you fucking angel.” She grinned and grabbed one like a starving man being offered food for the first time. Using the lighter that James also offered, she lit it and took a long drag.
They had spilled out onto the side of the building, facing the small car park. They were hidden between various metal racks and trolleys. From where they were they could see people milling about their cars, playing music and passing around joints, laughing. Marlene loved the slightly rundown look of this part of LA, with ugly cables adorning the streets, hanging from house to house, and the paint jobs that were peeling and fading with cracks. It reminded her of her Tia’s house in Rosario. It reminded her that people actually lived in LA, that normal people actually made a mark, even if it was just in helping destroy the buildings that stood there as if they had more right to be there than them. It was something that she felt she needed reminding of. The neon billboards from Melrose projected various colours into the night sky, such that when Marlene turned to look at James, his dark skin was bathed in a red glow.
“God, I thought you looked like such a little goody-goody today.”
James gasped in mock-offence, “Me? What, just because I smiled and was polite? You should try it sometime, instead of looking like you’re being held at gunpoint.” He took a drag of his cigarette, eyes smiling.
Marlene rolled her eyes, “Yeah, well, my dad said that I couldn’t take the girls to Bali on the private jet in July, and then I found out that the Four Seasons won’t let me bring my pet tiger when I go stay with them, even though my daddy single-handedly paid for their renovation last year, so I was upset. It had been a hard day.”
James laughed. She waited a bit and then said, in a much more serious tone, “I’m not actually like that, you know, all serious. It might not seem like it, but I’m actually quite a smiley person -”
“No!” James drawled sarcastically, “What do you mean? You’re practically a ray of sunshine. That whole hour we spent together earlier, I was thinking ‘wow, she’s such a jokester, do you think SNL would accept her based on just my glowing recommendation?’ and so on etcetera etcetera...”
Marlene just stared back.
“See, just like that.”
Silence.
It was Marlene who broke first, unable to feign seriousness for much longer, cracking a smile.
“Yeah, whatever, I just have no desire to be friends with anyone at school except for Peter. They think that just because they allowed a few poor kids in their hallowed halls that I should basically suck their dicks and sit and smile and be happy all the time. It’s so weird that feeling that you can’t kick up a fuss because you feel indebted to them, even though you got this opportunity on your own” she was really gaining steam now, the drugs she had taken before starting to hit her, and started using her hands for emphasis, “And don’t give me all that bullshit of ‘well we scout people based on talent not money’ when we all know that it’s a lot fucking easier to be talented when your parents can pay hundreds to send you to music school since the day you came out the womb. Don’t even get me started on how expensive it is to even have an instrument to begin with! I had never even set eyes on a grand piano until I came to Hogwarts. Those students probably saw more of their piano than they did of their fathers growing up. I am really quite nice! And funny! I just refuse to be anything but a pain in the ass to them.”
She took a few breaths to recover after her slight outburst, never breaking eye contact from James in order to gage a reaction.
“You’re saying this to me as if my mom didn’t just sell her car for my new drum kit.”
Oh.
“Then how are you so nice to all of them?” Marlene asked, completely dumbfounded.
“Honestly, because I can’t be fucked - too much effort to come up with witty insults. They’re not worth it” James smiled at her defeatedly, “How do you have the energy to be so mean?”
“Honestly, because I can’t be fucked - too much effort to not say what’s on my mind at all times” She grinned at him, and he grinned back. “Plus, witty insults actually come quite naturally to me.”
“Oh, do they?”
“Yes. It helps when you possess more than one brain cell.”
A snort bubbled out of him, and he took a deep breath, looking around at the car park. He was handsome in a messy way; his hair stuck out at all angles, his band t-shirt was slightly loose around the collar, with a small hole near the bottom, and his jeans were faded and fraying at the ends. They were bootcut, and hid the bottom of his shoes.
“Do you go to these things often?” he said, turning back to meet her gaze.
“Like every day. I like the scene - it’s interesting and I’m never bored. Like, last week, I met a man who took his pet rat with him everywhere. He spent hours telling me the screenplay he’s writing about a french rat who helps a chef achieve stardom because he whispers the recipes and stuff to him from where he’s hidden inside the chef hat.”
James looked at her for a beat, shocked, “I’m sad I missed that.”
“Plus,” she said this next bit with a self-knowing smile, “If you want to be a rockstar, this is the best way to do it.”
A smile started to form on his lips “Planning on being the second coolest rock-pianist in the world?”
“Second?” she retorted, mildly offended, Who’s the first?”
“Elton John, duh.”
Marlene scoffed, “Well Elton John is hardly rock-”
“I’m going to have to stop you there.” James sighed, rubbing a hand to his temple, “I am sick and tired of defending Elton John to rock snobs like you.”
“I like Elton John!” Marlene defended herself, “And I’m not a rock snob!” - Lie. She most definitely was a rock snob. - “And besides,” she continued, “I wouldn’t be playing the piano, I would be singing.”
“You can sing?”
She hummed in response, taking another drag from her cigarette. The piano was personal, she liked playing for herself, but performing was stifling. Singing, on the other hand - well she loved singing to a crowd; the whole performance, the whole act.
“Why don’t you sing more at school? I’ve heard you play so many times but I’ve never heard you sing.”
“I like singing, and I’m good at it, but I’m not Hogwarts -level good. I don’t know how my performance of Hanging on the Telephone would go down after Lila Kilster sings Queen of the Night , you know.”
Behind her, inside the club, the music switched. Another band must have started, then. Even from behind a concrete wall, she couldn’t hear anything but loud, obnoxious guitar.
“They’re not very good, are they?” Marlene mused, grabbing the pack from James’ hand and grabbing another cigarette with a smile.
“I think we could do a better job.” James agreed.
An idea started to take shape in Marlene’s mind.
“Well… why don’t we?”
“I feel like a band with just a singer and drums isn’t going to go down too well.”
“Luckily we live in a world where other people, who play other instruments, exist.” Marlene drawled sarcastically, before getting up from the place she was leaning on next to the wall. A buzz of energy flooded through her veins as her excitement rose “What else do we need? A guitar? A bass? That’s it, right?”
James nodded, “Yeah…”
Marlene looked at the other boy’s wary expression, “What?”
“I just…” James shrugged, taking a puff of his cigarette, “when we become famous, is our story really gonna be us simply - what - finding two other players? Deciding to become a band? It has to be cooler than that, come on.”
Marlene smiled. Despite how different they initially seemed, under the exterior she was finding that they were quite similar.
“Okay we’ll make a pact, then. Let’s make the band happen organically. We don’t search for band members. The moment we come across a decent guitar and a decent bass player, we start the band immediately. No stalling.”
Marlene extended her hand for them to shake on it, businesslike. James shook it, with a grin, in much the same manner.
“Much more rock’n’roll .”