[center][h1][b][color=purple]Chenoa Bearfoot[/color][/b][/h1][/center]
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	Chenoa was cleaning up the remains of breakfast at the dinner table as Andre cleaned the kitchen, Isaac set up shop downstairs, and Josie sat in her office with an extra bagel dealing with paperwork for both the apartment and the café. Andre was occasionally saying random words or sentences, and Chenoa would teach him to sign what he said. Sometimes he would say random things like how are you; family; Shrek is love Shrek is life. Sometimes he would ask how to say the things he was holding, like dish soap; plate; egg. She and Andre were good friends. They both had the same sense of humour, liked to explore, and had the same taste in movies. Among other things, of course. Andre would never say that he liked to learn, but would never turn down the chance to pick up different things that had no correlations like languages, recipes, and party tricks. He knew a few languages already at the age of 18 and loved to try new recipes for breakfasts and Sunday dinners. His YouTube suggestions would vary from vine compilations and shitposts to recipes to DIY crafts. He liked to learn new things from a person rather than a computer, and Chen loved his enthusiasm for learning American Sign Language, the Anishinaabe language, and even to apply makeup. 
They continued to talk and sign together as they cleaned for a while, and split off to their own rooms once they finished. Andre said that he had homework for his online classes to work on, but of course, he would only end up browsing the internet instead. 
When Chenoa got to her room, she gathered all the bills and change that were scattered through the top drawer of her bedside table. She had been collecting all her tips over the past few months to help pay for a new guitar since she left both of hers at home. Besides, she wanted a new one anyway. Josie half-jokingly, half-seriously suggested that once Chen got a new guitar, she could play at the café on Friday- or Saturday-nights. But she still wasn’t sure if she would take up the offer. She counted the money on her bed, sorting everything into neat piles, and saw that she had a little over $200. She then took out her phone and opened up her online-banking app to check how much she had there from her paychecks. She used a notepad to subtract the next two months’ rent to Josie and a little extra for a rainy day or just in case and added her cash to the final amount of spending money she had in her account. After doing the math, she had a little over $9,000. She was surprised at how much she had saved since the summer, even if she didn’t buy a lot very often. She had been keeping busy with the café and learning about the city, and she didn’t have a lot of friends to go out on spending sprees with just yet, so maybe it wasn’t very surprising. She silently hoped that she could keep saving, but she knew that once she started getting around and making more friends, her savings would deplete or at least plateau if anything. 
She put her loose money into her wallet which was in her messenger bag that was hanging on her bedroom door. While she was up, she let herself into Andre and Isaac’s room and took Isaac’s Fender Strat. She borrowed it a lot to practice, Isaac eventually got used to it and stopped complaining. Besides, music is how they bonded most of the time. Andre was playing GTAIV on their PS4 and barely batted an eyelash as Chen came in and back out quickly. She on her bed and put the glossy brown electric on the floor, leaning the neck between her knees. She took a few minutes to stretch her wrists and massage her fingers before she put her foot on the edge of her bed frame and the guitar on her now heightened knee. She went through the strings to see that they were in tune, but only the B and G strings needed fixing. She played around with some chords and a Travis picking style for a while, with no particular pattern at all. Just one chord after another, whatever sounded pretty to her. She grew bored of that and started to play a few songs by Pink Floyd, some bits from Metallica’s And Justice For All, and a few other odd songs she liked until Isaac’s morning shift was over.
Chenoa was humming Wish You Were Here as she played when Isaac came into her room and sat next to her. She muted the strings with her left hand and slapped them with her right as she looked at him and smiled.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yep, I’ve just got to get my bag and shoes, and we’re good.” She responded, getting up and grabbing her bag as she brought Isaac’s guitar back to his room. She put it back on its stand and slipped on some flats and headed downstairs, Isaac close behind as they walked down the stairs that led to the sidewalk next to Josie’s and they headed off.
	When Chenoa had voiced earlier that week that she wanted to get herself her own guitar instead of playing Isaac’s all the time, he had offered to bring her to buy herself one sometime. They both liked the idea, especially since Isaac only had a beat up and previously used acoustic and his electric and never really played together much since neither of them wanted to use the dry-sounding acoustic.
	The two of them decided to walk instead of taking the bus since it was a nice day and neither of them had anywhere else to be. It would only take them half an hour to walk, and the store didn’t close till dark anyway. As they walked side by side, him leading the way, they started to talk about what she had hoped to find at the music store. The subject morphed into a few different things as they walked, such as a brand of kapo that Isaac had heard of; they argued about how to pronounce the name of the brand, Thalia or Thalia; weird sounding names; and by the time the got to the store, they were talking about flowers. 
	The music store was a bit bigger than Chenoa had expected. For some reason, she had only expected to find guitars and drums. But when they walked in, the store obviously held a lot more. It was shaped like a giant sideways ‘T.’ At the front of the store(the middle of the T) was the central checkout desk, a big square with four computers that went around a central support beam that held up their high ceilings. Behind the desk was a wall full of instrument-related items. From left to right, the wall was stocked fully with guitar items like picks, tuners, strings, and straps; next to them were various electronic tuners for any stringed instrument you could think of; there were percussive items like the skins for various drum sizes and bongos; there were things like reeds and keys for woodwinds and brass instruments; and on the rightmost side were various stands for different instruments. In the middle of that wall was a glass door that led to a room full of items like french horns, trumpets, saxophones and other things that Chen did not have the lungs to ever play in her life. To the right (the bottom of the T) were various percussive instruments, but the only things set up to play in the store were two electric drum kits and two bongos tied together. To the left (the top end of the T) was a full section for various stringed instruments and keyboards and pianos. In that section was a separate room for the acoustic guitars, so that the humidity could be controlled easily for them. In that section, the first thing that you passed were the pianos, and the stringed instruments were behind them. The instruments that you would find in orchestras were on the right side, the banjos and ukeleles in the middle, and the electric guitars and bass’ were to the left with various brands and sizes of amps stacked neatly in two opposing corners.
	Chenoa smiled brightly at Isaac and playfully punched his arm. 
“Why didn’t you bring me here sooner? I could’ve moved in here, and you would have your room back!”
They both laughed as they speed-walked to the electrics. 
The two of them browsed for about an hour or so before they finally found the one for Chenoa.
The mahogany body was glossed, and pink--lighter at the base and faded to a hot pink towards the set-in neck. It had two cutouts and no pickguard. It had 24 silver frets on a rosewood fretboard with abalone inlays that were little diamonds instead of circles. There were two silver pickups with a three-way switch, and two volumes and two tones, all four labelled in black so not be mixed up, and the silver knobs had black numbers 1-10 around them. The Kronos shape head and the back was completely black and glossed, and a delicate abalone fleur-de-lis on the base of the headstock.
The hard-shell case was lined with black fur, and she also got a simple black leather strap for it. It took another half hour to decide on an amp to get for it but decided on a small and cheap amp, and they could get a bigger one to share if either of them ever got an apartment with thick enough walls. They also decided to get some fast-fret and a few packs of strings.
The guitar was about $3,000, and the amp was $500. 
They decided to bus home instead of walking with Chen’s new--and heavy—equipment, and after leaving the store began to walk the two blocks to the nearest bus back home.