Carnage: Book #1 The Story Of Us (Volume 1)(3)

My Dad had the summer house built so the boys had somewhere to practice their music. The place was built from bricks and sound proofed, then clad with timber so it looked like a timber summer house. Bailey didn’t play so much anymore, Lennon played bass guitar and had a pretty good voice but Marley was the star, he too played bass as well as drums and had a great voice. I could play acoustic guitar but I wasn’t great, my voice was okay but very average compared to my brothers. Marley had his own band and told me that afternoon that Sean was to be the new lead guitarist and singer; Ritchie, their old front man had moved to Wales with his family at the beginning of the summer holidays. My Dad was a massive music fan and had paid for Marley and his band to advertise for a new singer, they had held auditions a few weeks back at the local church hall and Sean had been their first choice, the fact that he could play lead guitar and the piano was a bonus.

Later I sat curled into the corner of the big old chesterfield sofa we have in the summer house, I had spent half hour trying to crack the Rubik’s cube but I’ve never really been known for my patience so I soon grew frustrated and tossed that on the floor and instead was flicking through the latest copy of My Guy magazine but even that wasn’t holding my interest today; Sean came over and sat on the arm of the sofa and asked about my name.

“So how come after having three boys and giving them really weird names, your Mum and Dad finally get a girl and give her a boy’s name?”

I looked up at his brown eyes and noticed the tiny flecks of amber he had floating in them, all framed by the longest of dark brown lashes. Answer George. Stop blushing, stop looking into his eyes and answer the question. I swallow and try to wet my lips before speaking.

“My Dad is a massive fan of music, all music, any music… Bailey is named after some bloke who made guitars back in the sixties, my Dad met him or heard about him and liked his name, which I think was actually his surname, not his first name but anyway, my Dad liked it, remembered it and decided to give it to Bailey as his first name, Lennon, is obviously named after John Lennon, Marley after Bob… And me? Well I’m named after my Dad’s favourite song – Georgia on my mind by Ray Charles. So I got the name, Georgia Rae but living in a house full of boys, it got shortened to George.”

I’ve told this story so many times to so many different people that I could repeat it in my sleep. Sean listens to my answer and nods his head slowly.

“Well Georgia Rae. I think you’re far too pretty to be called an old blokes name. So I’ll call you… ” He tilts his head to the side as he thinks about what he’s going to call me, beautiful, his girlfriend? I don’t mind either. “Gia?” he states.

Gia, he wants to call me Gia? No one has called me Gia, its Georgia by my teachers, G or George by my friends and family but never, no one has ever called me Gia. I love it, and it’ll be special, just our thing, special, just between us.

“So… is that all right then, if I call you Gia?”

I nod; it’s all I can manage. The pop rock is exploding in my stomach again, and once more it’s blocking the signal between my brain and my mouth.



CHAPTER 2

The rest of the summer of 1980 is spent watching Marley and Sean practice with Billy and Tommy who make up the rest of Marley’s band Carnage.

In September Jimmie and I start high school. School was easy for me, I was in top sets for everything, without really having to put in much effort, I wasn’t stunningly beautiful but I was at an age now where I knew my ranking in the ‘prettiness’ order and I was up there. My parents were both of Irish descent, but looked totally different to each other, my Dad was tall, over six feet, he was broad and he was dark, dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. My Mum on the other hand was short, about five feet four and very petit, even after having us four kids she was still only a size eight and was pale, skin like porcelain, she had the most beautiful dark auburn hair and the bluest of eyes. My Dad was handsome, all of my mates told me so and my Mum was stunningly beautiful and I wished so much that I looked like her, but I didn’t. Where my brothers all looked exactly like my Dad, I was a weird combination of both my parents. I had always been tall for my age, I was way too skinny for my liking, my hair was a dark chestnut colour, when the sun shone through it you could see the reds I’d inherited from my Mum but mainly it looked brown, my skin was darker than my Mum’s but nowhere near as dark as my Dad’s and my brothers and my eyes were blue, not pale china blue like my Mum’s but a very dark blue. Whenever I got a tan in the summer they’d pop right out of my face, they didn’t match my dark skin and dark lashes and always drew comments, so by the age of eleven, I knew I wasn’t stunningly beautiful like my Mum but I knew I was pretty. Prettier than most of the other girl’s in my class, prettier than most other girl’s in my year and quite possibly the school. I don’t mean to sound flash or like a show off, it’s just how it was, girls just know these things.