Rock and Roll- Originally posted by Adam Langley

“So just how fat do you feel right now?” Nikki asked her flatmates with a grin.

Her question was met with a chorus of groans and half-hearted chuckles. The five of them had just managed to eat four large takeaway pizzas, a stick of garlic bread, and half a tub of ice cream. (With chocolate sauce, natch.) There was no real reason why they had suddenly felt the urge to stuff themselves-no-one had an exam or a job interview or anything even remotely stressful on the horizon. It was just one of those things that happened occasionally in student housing, no different to waking up to find the heating had broken down or bickering over whom got to use the washing machine first. Sometimes you just wanted to sit down with your mates and do something bad for you.

A comfortable silence descended on the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Nikki saw Jack feeling around the sofa cushions next to him.

“The remote is by your feet.” She said.

Jack looked across at her. “Eh?”

“The TV remote. It’s by your feet.”

“Is it?” Jack looked down. Sure enough, he could just make out the black rectangle resting against the arm of the sofa.

“D’you see it?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it.” He leant down to pick it up. “What’s it doing down there, anyway?”

“Yeah” Deepak let out a small, forced-sounding chuckle. “I mean, who does that? Leave things in…you know…weird places” he muttered, trailing off.

“How is the floor a weird place to leave the remote?” Nikki asked, unsure whether she was actually curious or not.

“Dunno.” Deepak was looking at the ceiling now. He mumbled “I…um…bit odd. Nothing really.”

“I think that was me” Jo replied quietly. Curled up on the chair by her fireplace, book in one hand, she blinked her eyes sleepily and continued “I was watching TV earlier and I left it down there. Must have forgotten about it.”

“Oh.” Jack relaxed back onto the sofa and pressed the power button. The screen flickered into life, and they could suddenly hear the sounds of rushing water.

“…make one final push upstream, in order to lay eggs.” A scholarly voice was saying. “Salmon…”

“What are we watching, then?” asked Kev, idly scratching his belly in a way that Nikki had always associated with wife-beater vests and canned lager. She grinned at the image of Kev- clean, bordering on vain Kev-in her Grandfather’s old off-white string vest. “Is there any news on?”

“Don’t think so, it’s only quarter-to” Jack had called up the TV guide and was scrolling through the channels in search of something to watch. They could still hear the scholarly-sounding gentleman gently lecturing them about the life cycle of the Salmon.

Deepak got up and wandered into the kitchen. “I’m making a cuppa.” He called out into the living room. “Anyone want anything?”

“Yeah, I’ll have some tea, please” Jo’s voice issued out from behind her book.

“Me too, thanks”. Kev craned his neck and looked over his shoulder. “No milk in mine.”

The TV was drowned out by the sound of their antique kettle beginning to boil. “Nikki? Jack? Either of you?…”

“No thanks!” Nikki said at the same time as Jack replied “I’m alright mate, cheers.”

“So nothing for you two?” It seemed Deepak wanted to make absolutely sure.

“That’s right” Nikki called back. “Don’t worry about it.”

Back in the living room, Jack had finished scrolling through the channels and was now watching some sort of music video. At least Nikki assumed it was a music video-it was a grainy, black-and-white film of a scared-looking girl of about sixteen or seventeen walking down a street in the rain, while in the background an electric guitar issued out a mournful tune. There was a sudden burst of drumming-a-duh-duh-duh-duh-dum-and then someone began to sing.

O-h, see her picture on my wall
Hear her name,
tell her to call
I will never stop a-looking for My lost girl….

“Nice.” said Nikki. “Cheerful.”

On screen, the girl gazed mournfully and meaningfully at a phone box before turning her away and running blindly down what Nikki could only assume was a deserted high street. The blurred shapes of shop signs and corrugated steel security gates certainly suggested that was what it was, anyway. Nikki wondered why this girl’s family didn’t just take the initiative and ring her on her mobile, before thinking that if She was indeed a runaway, then the nameless girl had probably left it at home or thrown it away somewhere. On reflection, this probably wasn’t the point of the video, but even so…why didn’t she just call whoever was singing the song and tell him to come pick her up? She obviously wanted to, and it was raining outside. No matter how annoying you found a person (and from the sound of his singing voice, the man who was looking for her must have been incredibly whiny), there must come a point where enough was enough? Nikki couldn’t imagine running away from home, especially not now she had basically left of her own accord anyway, but she imagined that at some point something would have to give, and for her, that would be at around about the time she got hungry and it started pissing down. I don’t think, Nikki reflected, I would be very good at being on the run. You would have to have a certain….oh wait, hang on. Had Jack been talking all this time?

“…real.” Jack said loftily. He raised his eyebrows at her. “You can at least agree with me on that, surely?”

“Um…I suppose…” “Brilliant!” Jack’s face broke into a smug and triumphant grin. “Maybe I’ll finally get at least one of you weaned off that teeny-bopper rubbish and onto some decent music before we graduate, after all.”

At that point, Deepak walked in, holding a steaming mug of tea in each hand. He slowly made his way across the room, looking for all the world like a tightrope walker involved in some high-risk stunt. Carefully, carefully, carefully, he lowered the plain blue ceramic mug he was holding in his left hand until it was almost in front of Kev’s face.

“No milk in yours, yeah?” He asked.

“Hm?” Kev glanced away from the screen. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one’s mine. Ta.”

Jo looked up from her book. “Do you want me to come and get mine?”

“Probably be safer if I bought it over.” Now that one hand was free and he had one less thing to worry about, Deepak allowed himself a sheepish grin.

“They are pretty hot. I’ll stick it on the table for you, is that alright?”

“Fine.” Jo returned to whatever she was reading. Nikki considered asking what her book was about, but thought better of it. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t interested-okay, fine, maybe there was an element of that, but still, she knew from prior experience that things tended to be a little less…slow, let’s say, when no-one gave Jo a chance to talk about her course. She was a lovely girl, Nikki loved her, couldn’t imagine living in a house without her, but all the same. Once Jo got going about her course she never stopped. Micron this and modules that. It was safer-or less boring-just to leave her to it.

The music coming from the TV built to a crescendo, and then suddenly cut out. The runaway girl lay in a puddle, her doleful eyes filling the screen, strands of wet hair streaking across her face. The video slowly faded to black, and was almost instantly replaced with a man with impossibly curly hair screaming “YEAH” into a microphone in front of a bright red background. A cacophony of noise. A guitarist let out a fast-paced riff, and the drummer (“O-oh my God!” laughed Deepak. “Check out those glasses! He looks like a ******* beetle!” And it was true, with those big lenses and his squat frame, Nikki had to concede he looked remarkably like a beetle) banged away at his instrument with a look of intense concentration.

“I know who these are!” Kev said suddenly. “I saw them at Leeds Fest! Um…the Downloads, am I right?”

“Yeah.” Jack’s eyes were still rooted on the screen. “Yeah, the Downloads. This is from their old album, I think. “Sotto Voice”.”

“Nice.”

For the net few moments, the five of them sat quietly as the rock stars loudly and merrily performed for them on a soundstage surrounded by rows of apparently identical blonde dancers wearing very few clothes. Nikki couldn’t make her mind up if it was the loud music or the fact that all the lead singer did was screech into the microphone, but she was having some difficulties understanding what was meant to be going on. She decided to try and move the conversation-such as it was-away from music.

“So what do you guys want to do now? We could watch a film, go out for a walk somewhere?”

“I’m not fussed.” Kev shrugged. He took a final sip of tea and placed the mug on the floor by his feet. “I’ll do whatever.”

“Me too.” Deepak, who had just come back with his own cup of tea, leant against the doorframe and began to drink.

“Can’t.” Jo said apologetically. “Got to finish this chapter for tomorrow.”

“Jack?” Nikki asked. Her friend, whose main attention was on the TV, merely grunted and waved his hand in her general direction.

“What do you want to do, then?” Deepak asked Nikki in an interested tone. “Anything important or just, you know…spur of the…”

“Just a spur-of-the-moment trip out, yeah”

“And do you have any ideas about where we should go, then?” Nikki thought long and hard. She thought of all the pubs she new, all the clubs she had never been, all the films she wanted to see. She also thought about how tired she was now she had eaten and how none of these things would grow legs and walk away. “

Nope, nowhere in particular.”

“Right.” Deepak settled down in his seat. “May as well just stay here then.”

“Sounds good.”

“Whatever.”

“Is the news on yet?”