Today's short story is a longer flash fiction, but still under a thousand words. Enjoy!

           There I was, just standing there, when what I wanted to do was forbidden.

           My name is Joy, and I sing lead in a small local group called The Rock Band. We got our name at our first performance. We were so bad the other kids threw rocks at us. We’ve gotten better since then. At our last gig, the coffee shop owner actually spotted us to a free gourmet coffee each. Not exactly the big times, but better than rocks.

           It was Saturday afternoon, and I was doing research at the library. Granted I was sitting in a club chair near the magazines, and I was looking at pictures in the latest edition of Glamor. And I was hungry. So the temptation was to sneak the soda and granola bar out of my backpack and scoot down in the chair and munch away under cover of my magazine. Instead, I listened to my stomach growl while I stared at the picture of the ruby-red apple filling my vision, complete with a scratch-and-sniff spot. I scratched and sniffed. The fragrance that filled my nostrils reminded me of orchards in the hot summer sun on my grandfather’s farm. I reminisced about my childhood for a moment, until movement caught my eye, and I turned to stare at the vision before me.

           “If you don’t take chances,” said the man in the striped pajamas, “you might as well not be alive.”

           I did a double-take. No, he wasn’t actually wearing pajamas; he was actually wearing an old-time jailhouse outfit, complete with a little black hat and a ball and chain around one ankle.

           Because he wasn’t looking directly at me, I wanted to make certain he was talking to me. I pointed my right index finger at my chest.

           He nodded.

           I turned my eyes back to my magazine. Perhaps if I didn’t make eye contact, he’d move on.

           “The trick is to know what chances to take.”

           Okay, so the no-eye-contact thing wasn’t working so well. “Who are you?”

           He focused his eyes on me, or should I say his eye, because only one of them met my gaze; the other one tilted upwards and stared at the ceiling. I really hate that, because I’m never sure which eye to look at. “The guy in the goofy outfit who reads fortune cookies here on Saturdays.”

           He bowed low from the waist, then straightened. “Carry on.”

           And he was gone.

           By the time I regained my composure and snapped my dropped jaw shut, he had gone around the stacks. I jumped from my chair and chased him, eager to find out who’d set him up to tease me, but he wasn’t there.

           When I came back, someone else was sitting in my chair, reading my magazine, scratching and sniffing my apple. I picked up my backpack and moved on.

           I went in search of something else to do, thinking about the crazy guy’s ruminations about chances. What kind of chances awaited my choosing?

           I strolled along the magazine stacks, and not finding anything of interest there, I wandered over to the non-fiction section. I don’t know a Dewey Decimal system from nothing, so as I strolled the aisles, I glanced at titles. Geography, history, mathematics – wow, books sorted by topic. Great idea.

           I continued and found myself in the midst of the arts section – drawing, painting, illustration. Finally, I happened on the musical arts – piano, brass, orchestras – and exactly what I needed: the Songwriters Market Guide. And right next to it, Starting Your Own Band Without Losing Your Mind. I snagged both.

           When I pulled the market guide from the shelf, a small, thin pamphlet-like book fell to the floor. I picked it up. Confessions of a Groupie. I wondered what it would be like to have groupies. Or be a groupie. Is this the chance Fortune Cookie Guy meant?

           I sat at the nearest table and chair, set aside the books, and began reading the groupie pub. From the first paragraph, I was hooked. Being a band follower sounded like a blast. I had a hundred questions. Do groupies follow every band, or do they choose a band and follow them around? I wasn’t so sure if that was for me. My mom likes me to be home during the week by ten. Does a groupie need to like the music? I’m real picky about the music I listen to. Is there a particular dress code for groupies? I like my jeans and shirts, so I’d need to pick a band where that was the uniform. And do groupies go where the band goes? My mom had told me some hair-raising stories about a trip she’d taken to Duluth with a bunch of friends where everyone else ended up getting arrested and she’d had to call her mom to wire her money to take the bus home. No, siree, I didn’t want to get myself in that situation.

           When I got to the back of the book, there were stories from several groupies who told about their adventures with the bands they followed. Some stories were scary, involving drugs and alcohol and other kinds of risky behavior I knew my mother wouldn’t approve of. Then again, what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

           What really clinched it for me, what really made me discard this notion of being a groupie, was the last story from a girl who sounded a lot like me. She’d left her safe, Midwestern town – just like the one I live in – and followed a band called Risky Business, leaving it after a particularly rough show where, in her words, “everyone else got arrested on that weekend in Duluth.”

           My mother had a lot of explaining to do. Duluth, indeed.



About Donna:

A hybrid author, Donna writes squeaky clean historical and contemporary suspense. She has been published more than 50 times in books; is a member of several writers groups; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, traveling extensively for both, and is an avid oil painter.

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