by C. L. Ryder
They both looked up when a silhouette crossed outside the blinds of their front window. Timbre, recognizing his master’s presence, sat up and barked when the doorbell rang. Coleen opened the door, and was shocked to see who was standing there.
She was dark and gorgeous, with her black hair pulled up into a bun, and she was wearing the same hoodie and skinny jeans that she’d been wearing in class when Coleen had spied her sleeping. Coleen’s mouth dropped open as, for a moment, she forgot why the girl was even at her front door. It was the first time she’d ever really gotten a good look at her face, and she was more attractive than she’d realized. Way more. She had a face that was slightly tomboyish, yet incredibly feminine at the same time. Her expression was somewhat intense, with a long, expressive mouth and eyebrows that arched down in a way that looked almost like a scowl—a damn sexy scowl, Coleen thought.
“Hey, you’re…” Coleen pointed at the girl’s chest. In my class, she thought, but the words never came out. She just stood there, finger pointed out, mouth hanging open. Timbre trotted out past and jumped up to greet his master.
“Madison.” She shook Coleen’s finger and grinned. “Thanks for taking care of Timbre here. Sneaky little guy. I really appreciate that.”
That’s right, Coleen remembered from the class roll call. Madison Moon.
“I’m Coleen.”
“Great, nice to meet you, Coleen. You a student over at state?”
Coleen frowned. Apparently, the recognition was not mutual. “Um… yes.”
“Right on. Me too.”
“You, um… Are you a programming major?” Coleen asked.
Madison stared at her blankly for a moment, and then her face brightened and she clapped her hands together. “Oh, shit!” she laughed. “I thought I recognized you. You’re in my Intro class.”
“Yeah,” Coleen smiled. “I thought I recognized you too. You were sleeping in class today.”
“Oh, wow,” she laughed, embarrassed. “You saw that? Yeah, it’s bad. I think I’m fucked for that final tomorrow.”
Timbre, who was getting bored, started to sniff around the hallway in front of the apartment. Yuri got up from the couch and went over to them. “You guys know each other? Hi, I’m Yuri. Roommate. Your dog likes cookies.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s a little pig.”
“We’re in the same programming intro class,” Coleen said, wanting to change the subject from Yuri feeding her dog junk food.
“Oh, nice,” Yuri nodded. “You know, I don’t even know why she needs to take that class.” He pointed his thumb to Coleen. “She’s way past the intro level.”
“Really?” Madison suddenly looked excited. “Oh, man. Coleen, please. Can you tutor me? I really don’t get any of this shit, and I need to pass that final tomorrow. My place is close, I’ve got some beer. You drink beer, right? It’s not much, but I owe you for getting Timbre. Of course, I’d owe you for tutoring me too, but…”
“Tutor you… You mean like, today?” Spending more time with her attractive and seemingly outgoing classmate was exactly what she needed and wanted, but her social anxiety was acting up as usual, and she found herself searching for an excuse not to go out.
“Oh, dude!” Yuri said suddenly, nudging Coleen. “Didn’t you say you’ve been wanting to tutor someone?”
“What? No I—”
“Yeah. You have, remember? You told me today.” Yuri made a face at her: Get out there, it said.
Coleen scratched the back of her head. “Okay. Sure, Madison, I’ll help you out.”
“You’re my fucking hero, Coleen.” Madison smiled a wide, genuine smile, and Coleen felt warm inside. “You can walk back with me. If you’re free now, I mean.”
My hero. I like the sound of that.
Coleen went and got her bag. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
As she walked out the door with Madison and Timbre, she gave Yuri a quick look that said, “here goes nothing.”
Three
Coleen snuck a glance at Madison, who was walking beside her with Timbre strutting along in the front, the late afternoon sun glowing down on them. She wondered how she’d gotten so fortunate to have her path cross with Madison like this. She definitely would never have had the confidence to approach her in class. She felt like Madison probably didn’t swing that way anyway. Not with her luck.
Regardless of Madison’s preferences, Coleen was just glad to have made a new connection, even if it was as a tutor. Thank you, Yuri, she thought. If you hadn’t been there to push me forward, I probably would’ve made up some lame excuse for why I was busy. If that had happened, then poof, her last chance to put herself out there by the end of Sophomore year would’ve completely vanished into thin air.
They walked up the main street that ran perpendicular to the one that Coleen’s apartment was located on. Madison walked with a kind of a casual confidence in her step, and Coleen, despite her now gym-fit body, felt like she had to put a lot of effort into making sure she kept her posture confident.
“So… you’re a programming major?” Coleen asked, wincing immediately at the lame question. No shit, she told you she was one literally five minutes ago.
“Yeah. Why, I don’t seem like one, huh?”
She shrugged. “I mean, there’s lots of different types of people studying it. But, yeah. For some reason you don’t seem like someone who would be studying computer science.”
Madison smiled. “Yeah, I get that.” She pointed. “Down this street.” They turned left onto a residential street, and then Madison crossed over the lawn of the first house on the corner and went to the side gate. She reached over the top and undid the latch to open the door, and Timbre scampered inside.
“Beverly!” Madison shouted as they walked into the backyard. “Hey, Beverly!”
Coleen saw that on the far side of the yard, there was a small shed built there, with a shingled roof, a window and a front door. It looked almost like it could be a playhouse for a kid, just bigger.
“What!” A rickety old voice called out from the main house’s back screen door.
“Please make sure you close the side gate? Timbre got out again.”
“Hm!”
Madison stood there, waiting for the old woman to say something more, but apparently it was all she had to say about the matter. She sighed and latched the gate, and then gestured for Coleen to follow her to the shed. “I rent out this studio from the lady that lives here,” she explained. She unlocked and pushed open the door. “It’s not much, but it’s cheap, and she lets me pay for part of it by doing yard work and stuff for her. She may act like a spiteful old hag, but deep down she’s got a soft spot… I think. And she lets me play my music loud as fuck.” She paused to think about this. “Or maybe she just can’t hear it.”
Coleen looked around Madison’s “studio”. It basically was just a renovated shed with a bathroom and a small kitchenette area. Other than that it was completely bare bones, with the insulation exposed in one of the walls. It didn’t help that Madison apparently hadn’t tidied up the place since she’d moved in—she had clothes strewn about everywhere, and stacks of CDs, CD cases, and what looked like hard drives inside anti-static bags. Coleen saw one shining beacon of hope that stood out amongst the mess, literally looking like a bubble force field stood around it repelling all the clutter away—a spick and span workstation with a Macbook Pro set up on it, a pair of large, rectangular black and yellow speakers, and a small, half-sized piano keyboard on a stand.
She plays piano? The set-up drew her in, partially because of the tidiness, but mostly because of the keyboard.
“Sorry about the mess,” Madison said, picking up some of the clothes and tossing them into a hamper, which made practically no difference to the room’s tidiness. “Alright, we’d better get started, huh?”
“Yeah,” Coleen said, getting her laptop out of her bag and setting it onto a small foldout table. She expected Madison to grab the Macbook, but instead she pulled out a grungy ol
d laptop that looked like it was probably on the fritz of being obsolete. She wanted to ask—but she ended up not saying anything. Force of habit.
“So, why don’t you show me what you do understand,” Coleen said, getting out her notes.
“Uh… I’ve got a basic understanding,” Madison replied, scratching her neck uncomfortably.
“Okay.” She typed out a bit of code onto her computer and turned the screen to face Madison. “Can you describe the shape of the graph that this would create?”
Madison stared blankly at the screen. “One would look like a diagonal… shit. I don’t know.”
Coleen blinked. “Okay, um. How about this.” She typed out another bit of code. “Can you tell me the function?”
Madison’s eyes glazed.
“Alright,” Coleen said, closing her laptop and pulling out the class textbook from her bag. “It looks like we’ve got a lot of reviewing to do.”
The light had faded to dusk outside the windows of Madison’s shack. Madison was reading over Coleen’s notes, and her head was doing that bobbing thing again as she nodded off to sleep. This really isn’t her thing, Coleen thought, feeling more than a little bad for her. Watching as she dozed off, Coleen fantasized about what it’d be like for Madison to fall asleep with her head resting on her shoulder.
She felt a warm rush. That’d be nice.
She sighed. There wasn’t any point to fantasizing about stuff that would never happen. It’d only bring her disappointment. Besides, she was happy to finally have a class friend.
Madison bobbed her head again, this time banging her forehead on the textbook on that sat on the cluttered table.
“Oh, dammit,” Madison groaned. “I’m sorry, Coleen. You’re here trying to help me, and I’m falling asleep.”
Coleen smiled. “It’s alright. Is your head okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Normal wakeup for me,” she said, chuckling.
“Something tells me you don’t have any real interest in programming.”
Madison flashed her a sheepish grin and stood up from her chair. “You got me. You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Coleen said. “I’m not twenty-one, though.”
Madison went over to the mini fridge in the kitchenette and pulled out two cans of Budweiser. “It’ll be our secret then.” She winked and tossed one of the cans over. Coleen fumbled with it before finally catching it in both hands.
With a crack hiss, Madison popped hers open and sat back down at the table. Coleen cracked hers open too, and sipped the bitter liquid. “How old are you?” she asked Madison.
“Twenty-two. Gonna be twenty-three this summer. I’m the old lady in the class, for sure.”
Coleen felt the buzz of the alcohol warming her body. She didn’t drink too often, so it was affecting her pretty quickly. Typically, if she were to do anything, she smoked weed with Yuri—but she liked how the alcohol made her feel. It loosened her up, quieted that doubtful inner voice that gave her anxiety.
Timbre strolled in through the open front door and went to town on a bowl of dry dog food by the door, pushing it across the floor as he nosed into it.
“So,” Coleen asked, “Why are you in this major?” Ouch. She realized how harshly it sounded coming out. “I mean… since you’re not interested in it.”
Madison slouched against the chair, her legs crossed casually. Coleen couldn’t help but be amazed at how effortless it was for her to look good. She wasn’t cool in that cheerleader, preppy kind of way a lot of popular girls were in high school. More like, the kind of girl who smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey out by the bleachers. Coleen thought that was pretty exciting.
“Well. It’s a bit of a long story,” Madison said, looking off at the wall. Coleen wondered if she’d treaded into sore territory, but Madison had a really laid back attitude, and didn’t seem to mind. “Basically,” she continued, “My dad is one of those really traditional Korean parents. I don’t know how familiar you are with Korean parents.”
“Not very,” Coleen admitted.
“They can be about as old school as you can get. My dad was born after the Korean War, and so he was pretty poor when he was young. He worked his ass off, got educated, immigrated to the US, met my mom, and managed to become a pretty damn successful businessman. Because of all that shit he went through, he could only see one path for me—and that was STEM. You know. It was, become a doctor, or an engineer or whatever, or be a failure of a daughter.”
Madison took another long swig of her beer, draining the rest.
“Damn,” Coleen said quietly. “That’s really tough.”
“Sorry. Too heavy?” Madison smiled apologetically.
“No. Well, yeah, it is, but I don’t mind. I’m glad you told me. What would you rather be doing, then?”
“Well. I’d rather be working on my dream, which is what I do whenever I have a spare moment. If I can make it big, then I can just forgo this college thing altogether. I’ll show my dad I can make it my own way, you know?”
Coleen rotated the cold, perspiring can of beer with her fingertips. “So what is that?”
“Producing,” Madison said, matter-of-factly. “Music.”
“So, like a composer?” Coleen asked, lighting up.
“Yeah, kinda.”
“Wow. So that’s why you have that keyboard. I play a little piano. Classical.”
Madison smiled. “Really? That’s awesome. Well, it’s a little different from classical composing, what I do. You ever heard of EDM?”
“I’ve heard the term, but I’m not familiar. That’s, like, techno, right?”
“Techno is a genre of EDM, yeah. It stands for electronic dance music. Basically, dance music you produce digitally. There’s a lot sub-genres under the EDM umbrella—but yeah, that’s what I make. The sub-genres I like to do are, like, electro house and synthpop, that kind of shit.”
Coleen nodded, her face the same blank stare that Madison had when looking at the sample code. She had no idea what she was talking about, but she was still impressed. She pictured Madison standing at a turntable, scratching records, but she figured that was probably nothing like what she actually did.
Madison wrapped her knuckles on the table and then stood up. “Hold on.” Coleen watched as she went to over to where her pristine workstation was and removed the laptop from its stand, along with a set of large, over-the-ear headphones like the ones that she used at home with her piano, and brought them over to the table. “Here. Check this out.” She passed the headphones across the table.
“Okay,” Coleen said, shrugging. We probably should be studying, she thought, but she much preferred the idea of getting to know Madison better. She slipped the headphones over her ears, and waited.
Madison opened the laptop and sat down, the screen facing away from Coleen. She felt like she was the subject of some kind of polygraph test. Madison looked up, smiled, and then double clicked on a track.
Coleen’s mouth dropped open as rich, airy tones flowed into her ears, undulating in crystalline waves that reminded her of the electronic soundtracks from the video games she’d played as a little kid. Then it transformed, thickening up as a warm tone filled the space and was met by a duet of singing voices.
Living in a cruel world
Fighting to make sense of ourselves
In an ocean
Where we can barely swim
Admittedly, Coleen had expected to hear something similar to the Top 40 pop songs she’d heard and not so much enjoyed on the radio all those years ago. This was complex and like nothing she’d ever heard before. Immediately she felt a warmth bubbling up inside, a nostalgia for something that she couldn’t even define. She closed her eyes in the same way she did when playing piano, letting the waves of the music carry her. Then, all of a sudden, the beat began, exploding forward like the sun emerging from behind the clouds. Her eyes snapped open, astounded at what she heard—no—what she felt from the music.
Music can be like this? This is… incre
dible.
The beat pulsed through her, slow and steady, an anthem of vivid emotion. Madison had called it dance music, but this was something you’d wave a lighter to. She closed her eyes again, her body slowly rocking to the music, almost on its own.
It was like nothing that Coleen had ever experienced before. In the years she’d spent learning and playing piano, of course she’d felt the emotion behind the pieces she’d learned. She had her favorites that resonated with her more than others. But she’d never felt the level of intensity of the feelings that were being conjured up by this one song.
When the track ended and Coleen opened her eyes, Madison was looking at her and smiling. “What’d you think?” she asked. “You were pretty quiet, there.”
