In the Image of Grace by Charlotte Ann Schlobohm Page A

to him and he stamped it. A
fluorescent yellow monkey face looked back at me.
    “Go on,” he said waving me in.
    Once inside it was dark. I almost needed night vision
goggles. There were people all standing and mingling about. Small
tables were sporadically placed about with kids and their drinks at
them. A long cushiony booth like thing ran the length of the wall
and next to that was a set of stairs. In the back was the bar and
since it was an all ages show, the place for me to get a pop. I
pulled off my hat and shoved it in my coat pocket and slid my coat
off and draped it over my arm. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I
found a little empty table that went around a pole and leant up
against it. I was supposing you stood around until something
happened, but I wasn’t too sure what that something was. Music was
playing in the background and everybody was talking, but it wasn’t
too loud. I recognized a couple people I’d seen in the hall at
school. One was the girl with unfortunate skin that was in my
division. She was with a guy who wore a once piece blue jumpsuit,
an interesting choice of apparel for going out. I was going to go
over and say hi, but I decided that if she saw me and wanted to
talk to me she would come over. Near me were a couple of girls who
were dressed like they were from a 1950’s sitcom. They had on
rolled up jeans, with white collared shirts and their hair in these
little bouncy ponytails. The one girl had a kerchief wrapped around
her head. They were having a conversation about the musician whose
music was playing in the background at the moment. The one girl
said she was going to go to Omaha, Nebraska to be in his presence,
so she could absorb the music and the other girl informed her that
he had moved to New York. No, he moved back the other one said and
that was the end of that. I didn’t know who it was they were
talking about, but I did like the music.
    After a while of standing around and eavesdropping on
people everybody somehow knew it was time to go upstairs. Jeremy
didn’t really tell me what his thing was that he had going on, but
I was assuming it had to do with music. I wasn’t too sure if he was
in a band or did the sound or something. I followed everybody up
the narrow staircase and we entered a place that was long, narrow
and painted black. I found a chair in the back to throw my jacket
onto. I took my wallet out of my coat pocket and slipped it into my
back jeans pocket. If somebody felt the need to pick pocket me they
wouldn’t have been getting much.
    Once again everybody milled around in little groups.
There weren’t that many different people alone. I kind of felt odd
having nobody to chit chat with, but I didn’t mind because there
was so much to take in. Some people walked out a door onto the
stage and some people clapped and others moved closer to the stage
that was at the other end of the room. The stage was wall to wall
and wasn’t that high off the ground. Three guys were up there
tweaking around with all the equipment and instruments, one of them
being Jeremy. He strapped on a guitar and started turning the
tuning pegs on it. After he’d turn a peg he’d strum the guitar
until it sounded right. His hair hung in his face as he
concentrated. Another guy was at the drums, but went over to the
microphone and started testing it. He was rather short, probably
only a couple inches taller than me and I was around 5’3.
    “Uh, testing,” he said. A few people hooted in
response.
    There was a third guy doing something with the
amplifiers. He was turning knobs and stuff. He was probably almost
as tall as Jeremy. I realized he was the guy that came up to us
earlier in the day, the one that looked like he played sports. He
had on a tee-shirt that was kind of tight and if he didn’t play
sports he at least had to of worked out. They walked around the
stage a little longer checking the equipment and instruments. I
stood in the back watching them. Jeremy seemed busy,