Chapter 2- A Trip With Two Music Nerds
Hello again you furs. If you liked my last chapter, the story continues today. It's still moving a bit slow, but I hope you still like it. Feel free to comment if you wish, and be sure to tune in for the next chapter. Alright, instead of rambling on, I'll let you read. Enjoy!
Chapter Two-
I just woke up a little while ago, I'm still getting ready. It's about 6:00 in the morning right now. I'm brushing my teeth and my fur and going through today's itinerary in my head. Okay, so we meet in front of the school with Mrs. Talob and Jarred at 9, stop along the Grapevine for a while, then register with Western Div. at around 3. Simple enough. I'm really excited actually. I've got my bags packed and waiting by the door, all my music memorized by heart, and I'm ready to go. I step out to the kitchen when I finish up to find my mom standing by the counter making herself some coffee, still looking like a zombie. (She's no morning person.)
"Good morning, Mom." I say. She only grunts in reply, and I can't help but chuckle at her groggy response. I go over to fetch myself a cup of coffee, but she slightly growls, making sure I know it's her coffee. Okay then, maybe later... I think to myself. Once she finally gets a cup, she sits down at the table and begins to wake up. "You have everything ready, son?" she asks. "Yeah Mom, I think so." "Okay, we'll leave here soon then. Mrs.Talob said to meet at 9, but I'm sure she actually wants you there a lot earlier than that." I agree. Mrs. T was an early-riser and a big perfectionist. In her world, early was on time, on time was late, and if you were late, you would have to face her wrath. I like my teacher though, so I try to stay on her good side as much as possible.
Time passes, and my Mom and I finally make it in front of the school parking lot. It's about 8:30, and sure enough, Mrs. T is already there, looking like some kind of feline Disney princess as usual, all ready to go. Jarred and his mom just pulled in. He steps out of their car along with his mother and the two walk up to the rest of us. Jarred's mom, Mrs. Crisp, is a grey wolf just like him. She's just a bit shorter than he is, and she's a really nice lady. In fact, as soon as she joins the group, she comes up and hugs me, my mom, and Mrs. T. As she hugs me briefly, I shoot a confused look at Jarred, which he replies with a look that said something like "Hehe, sorry about that," but I don't mind. We start throwing our bags and things into the back of Mrs. Talob's car as she's listing off things we may need while Jarred and I insist we have everything. "Alright then, we should get going! We want to be a little early!" she says excitedly. Jarred and I say our goodbyes to our moms before hopping into the backseat of the car.
Mrs. T suggests studying our music on the way there, but he and I finally convince her that we're good and she turns on the radio. It's a "soft rock" station, but any music is good to me and I don't mind. The three of us chat and joke around with each other, talking about choir and things going on at school and of course the trip we're going on now. After a while, we quiet back down and I look out the window, admiring the farms and fields we pass by. I stretch and look to my left where a sleeping wolf sits, all cuddled up next to the window. Aww, he looks cute while he sleeps. I think to myself. Bad Morgan, stop that. I correct myself before Mrs. T speaks up. "We're almost to the Grapevine now, are you boys hungry?" "Uh yeah," I say, "Hold on, let me ask Jarred." I elbow the pup awake and he says that he's hungry too. We stop at a burger joint after getting some gas. After getting our order, Mrs. Talob meets a fellow conductor from a different school that she apparently went to school with. She goes to sit down with the tabby cat and she and him begin to talk. Jarred and I pull up a chair at a table, and soon enough two furs come and ambush us.
"Hey Jarred!" say a black bobcat and a golden retriever. "Hey guys, are you on your way to Western Div. too?" he responds with a big grin on his face and a wag in his tail. "Yep," says the bobcat, "we and our conductor have been on the road for a few hours." "Same here." says Jarred. He notices that I've been left out of the loop, and kindly introduces me to them. "The husky over here is Morgan, this is his first honor choir. Morgan, the retriever here is my friend Isabel, and Kitty over here is Sam." "Nice to meet you," says Isabel before shaking my hand. Sam does the same before jokingly glaring at Jarred for calling him "Kitty." Apparently the tabby cat was their conductor, and they and Jarred met at a previous honor choir that year. We all talk and joke together and I grow to like these new potential friends.
We quickly finish our food and continue to laugh up a storm while we wait for our teachers to finish up. "You should've heard it! The girl sounded like a frog the way she croaked on stage!" Sam jokes and we all laugh at a story about a poor freshman messing up a solo. Perhaps it's a bit mean, but we're entertained for now. After a few minutes, Mrs. Talob collects Jarred and I and we're back on the road. In about an hour or so, we make it to the hotel and load our things into one of those luggage carts. She goes inside to check in at the front desk quickly, leaving the two of us students outside to wait. She comes back outside and hands us both room keys. "Don't lose these!" she warns us. We go inside, hop on the elevator, and go to the second floor. Mrs. Talob quickly finds her room, which is right around the corner from the elevators while Jarred and I have to head down the hall a little bit. Once in our room, we throw our stuff down and I sit on the bed and look at my phone. 2:32. A little less than half an hour until we need to register at the auditorium. I set it down on the nightstand and turn to see the wolf peeling of the blue hoodie he was wearing, showing a bit of his belly. I let out a small involuntary whine, but I play it off as a yawn before he can question it. He really is cute..
"Haha, tired?" he asks. I smile and nod in reply. "Something like that." "We can probably take a little nap before registering if you want?" Before I can answer, the hotel phone rings and I pick it up. "Hello?" "Hi Morgan, it's Mrs. Talob. You boys should meet me by the elevator so that we can start to head down to the auditorium." I jokingly roll my eyes at Jarred who is giving me a confused look with his head tilted. "Sure, we'll be there in a second," I tell her. "Okay, bye." she says, seemingly satisfied. I give Jarred the heads-up, and he groans complaining that it was so early still. We both head out the door, regardless, and I lock it behind us. Sure enough, there at the end of the hall stands a cheery Mrs. Talob waiting for us. She waves us into the elevator door and when we step into the lobby, we walk down a little bit until we find a side door, leading straight to the auditorium standing just about 50 yards away.
Once we make it to the front of the beautiful, ornate building, Mrs. Talob pulls out her camera and asks us to pose for a picture. We stand together, and before she flashes us, the tall wolf puts his arm around my shoulder. If it weren't for my thick fur, they both would notice me blushing like crazy. We wait until we see the flash, and we take a look at her phone. It's a good picture, but a bit corny. We go inside the dark building and climb the steps past the foyer and join with the good-sized line formed there in the second floor's hallway. The line stretches into a big set of doors going into a room. They called it the "Gold Room" because of the yellowish-painted walls. We finally make it inside and there are three tables put together with sign-in sheets. Jarred and I find our names and put our initials next to them. Rehearsal isn't until 6:00, so we head back down.
We are waiting on the bottom floor now for Mrs. Talob who is registering as a conductor. Jarred peeks into a set of big doors and mischievously waves me over to him. "Come on, it's the stage and stuff in here. Let's check it out." "Okay," I tell him, "but let's make it quick before Mrs. Talob finds us and claws us to death." We step inside, and some lights are on so that we can see, but it's still pretty dim. The auditorium is huge and each wall is decorated with scenes from Greek Mythology. This place is actually really impressive. Jarred runs up to the stage and climbs onto the giant platform. "Jarred, what are you doing?! You're going to get us caught!" I scold him. "Aw, live a little. I'm just going to test the acoustics of this place!" Oh Lord. He starts to mess around, pretending to be warming up. He makes a really loud, opera-sounding pitch. I'm laughing at his foolishness when in comes in a janitor with a cart. Jarred, startled, leaps so quickly off the stage, he tumbles to the ground with a big thud!
I help him up from the ground, with one paw covering my mouth to keep myself from bursting into laughter. He does the same as we rush out back into the foyer. There, we are almost trampled by Mrs. T as she is looking for us canines. She gives us a glare before telling us "Gentlemen, let's act like professionals shall we? No more wandering around." "Yes ma'am." we both say, bowing our heads while trying to keep a straight face. We go out to the front of the building and sit on the steps. She tells us to wait for Sam, Isabel, and their conductor who should be coming out soon. About a minute passes by, and another conductor and past colleague of Mrs. T comes and greets us with two of his students. One was a ferret named Dean and the other was a white fox named James. Both of them were very quiet and unresponsive when Jarred and I introduced ourselves. They were to be our roomates. After they leave, Jarred turns to me and jokingly whispers saying, "I hope they aren't as awkward later on." I chuckle and nod at him in response.
Soon enough, Sam and Isabel run out and join the two of us students while our conductors talk. We're trying to make dinner plans. "Okay, that's a good idea.." I say after Sam makes a suggestion to check out the plaza across the street to see what's there. We tell our teachers, who say that it's fine as long as we're back on time. We walk across the street and look around. "There's a lot of stuff to do," says Isabel, "we can even go to a movie theater later this week." "Yes!" Sam exclaims, "there's this movie that came out this week that I really wanna see. We can go maybe Thursday night?" "Fine with me." Jarred says. We all walk down a couple of blocks, joking around with each other about a bunch of random stuff. We stop at a pizza place, and we unanimously decide to eat there.
I'm the last to order, but Jarred stops me. "Hey, don't worry about it, Morgan. I'll share mine with you." "Really?" I ask him. "Sure, I probably won't eat much of mine anyway." I nod. Okay then, that was nice of him. The pizzas there were personal pizzas, so they weren't that big, but I'm happy. We finish getting our drinks, and we go to sit at a little booth. Jarred gestures for me to sit next to him, and I can feel the blush in my cheeks and my tail wags. The other two join us, and I keep catching myself glancing at the handsome wolf next to me, shoving a piece of pizza into his muzzle. You may think it's dumb, but he still looks adorable. This is gonna be a good week.