He frowned. “Fine. I just...”
“I know. Look, why don’t you play a little using the practice set in the back—the one we bought and hardly ever use?”
Brandon couldn’t help but grin. “Hint. Hint.”
“Exactly.”
Kyle was right, of course. They’d bought the practice set of drums when they were on tour supporting their first album. He’d used it a lot at first because he’d feel nervous energy building up and needed to reassure himself that he’d do fine. He’d go through a few of their songs in his head, drumming as though they were live, and feel better. As he gained more confidence over time, he did it less and less—until the kit sat there collecting dust.
This tour, though, they’d used it once or twice when Kyle felt inspired to write. But it didn’t happen very often because Mollie kept them busy, constantly doing things when they weren’t onstage or doing interviews or fan meet-and-greets or anything like that.
So…drumsticks then. It was silly, but he had a pair of drumsticks that he’d rarely admitted he was a little superstitious about. When they first became “lucky,” he’d play the first few songs of a set with them, switching off at some point to a pair already onstage, because they had the band logo on them. At the end of the show, he’d toss the band ones out to the audience for a couple of fortunate fans to enjoy, but his “lucky” ones he’d kept. Today, he used them to practice, but it was especially important for him to use that particular pair for special occasions. If a festival wasn’t a special occasion, he didn’t know what was.
It was silly—he knew that—especially since the sticks were looking grimier with age. When Kyle’s band had first been evolving and they’d been trying to figure out what to name the group (before settling on just her name), he’d been sitting at the drum kit feeling bored. Instead of taking the Sharpie to his arm to draw fake tribal tattoos, he’d drawn on the middle of the drumsticks instead. And he’d drawn stick figures on both, depicting the band members playing their instruments.
Those stick figures hadn’t faded, but Brandon had become more attached to those drumsticks as time wore on. He kept them in a backpack that carried all kinds of stuff—everything from extra phone chargers, an e-reader, and a handheld gaming system to extra toiletries like toothpaste and deodorant. There were four unused bunks that they all piled stuff in, using them as storage closets more than anything else, and Brandon had always used the empty one next to his bunk to keep his backpack—as well as clothes and even a jacket and coat during cold weather. When he pulled the curtain back, he didn’t see his backpack among all the other things, so he started moving items around. But he looked and looked.
Nothing.
Where else could he have put it? He tried to remember the last time he’d used it—to no avail. He hollered down the hall toward the kitchen/ living room area where everyone else was hanging out. “Hey, any of you guys see my backpack anywhere?”
Jake said, “That ugly green and black thing you haul around everywhere that has your game shit in it?”
“Yeah, that ugly green and black thing.”
“Nope.”
“Thanks for nothing. Kyle, Mollie, you guys?”
“No, Bran. Sorry.” Mollie added, “Why don’t you check the other empty bunks?”
He knew he hadn’t put it in one of those, so why bother? Instead, he looked inside his own bunk, thinking maybe he’d been distracted, and then he walked the length of the bus to see if he’d dropped it anywhere in a moment of absentmindedness.
As he walked through, Mollie asked, “No luck?”
He shook his head. This was not like him—but neither was the hangover he’d felt earlier that morning when he’d stumbled on the bus. Maybe he’d done something with it then. It made no sense to him, but he decided to look in the other empty bunks anyway. What was that old saying? Sherlock Holmes, if he remembered correctly—something about once you had gotten rid of all the possibilities, what remained, no matter how impossible it seemed, had to be the answer. Simple enough, but that meant that he had to check the other empty bunks he’d refused to before.
Pulling back curtain one: Nope. Full of Kyle and Mollie’s girlie stuff.
Curtain two. More Kyle stuff. Damn. Guess she could hog all the real estate, considering her name was on the side of the bus.
Curtain three. Brandon glanced around and started to pull the curtain closed again…when he spied it.
In plain sight. On top of everything else.
Yes. It was his backpack. But why would he have stuck it in an empty bottom bunk when he normally stored his stuff in a top one? That was strange.
But it was also a reminder to never drink or smoke weed again. Only heaven knew what other damage he’d caused his brain. He was shaking his head and smiling as he pulled the backpack out, closing the curtain.
Kyle was walking down the hall then toward the restroom. “Found it, huh?”
“Yeah, but in a strange place.”
“Well, at least you found it.”
He nodded and unzipped the top. He’d almost forgotten why he’d wanted it in the first place. But as he pulled the zipper down and began to peek inside, he realized that something was missing.
Where the hell were his lucky drumsticks?
Chapter Five
What the hell was going on?
If Brandon had been a melodramatic kid, he’d have been hyperventilating by now. And, even though he wasn’t being overly dramatic, he was close to losing his shit. Utterly. Completely.
Okay, yes, so the drama was about to begin. This was serious. And he must have cursed out loud.
Kyle asked from the back room, “What’s going on?”
“My drumsticks. They’re gone.”
“That’s okay. You’ve got a bunch in here.”
“Yeah, I have a ton everywhere, Kyle, but not the drumsticks. Not my lucky ones!”
Kyle peeked her head out into the hallway. “Lucky ones?”
“Yeah…you know, my old ones.”
“The ones with the drawings on them?”
“Yeah, those ones.”
“I didn’t know you still had those.”
“Yeah. I use ‘em on special occasions. Like today. They’re the ones I like to practice with.”
Kyle sighed and then yelled down the hallway, the sound of her voice breezing past Brandon with force. “Hey, any of you guys see Brandon’s lucky drumsticks?”
Jake appeared at the other end of the hallway. “I don’t know. What do they look like?”
Kyle said, “They’re those nasty ones with drawings on them.”
“Nasty?” Brandon felt a little miffed by that.
“Well, yeah. You gotta admit they’ve seen better days.”
“Still…”
“Nah, I haven’t seen them for a while.” Jake turned his head. “Mollie, you see them?”
“No. But I have half a mind to toss them next time I do.”
Brandon was starting to get irritated. These people were supposed to be his friends, and they’d been nothing but dicks since the night before. He knew that meant that they still thought of him as a little kid. “Never mind. I’ll find them myself.”
“We can help, man.” Jake walked down the hall. “I used to have a lucky routine before shows.”
“Routine?”
“Yeah. I’d listen to one song off Kill ‘Em All—didn’t matter which one, so long as I listened to one entire song. And I’d usually do it while getting into whatever clothes I was gonna wear. Then I’d drink an Orange Crush.”
“Really?”
“Yeah—but those damn things got harder to find. And then one night I was super sick and slept till it was time to get onstage. It wasn’t till the third song of our set that I realized I hadn’t listened to any Metallica before the show. And I freaked out, convinced something was going to go wrong—but it didn’t. Probably a good thing, because I cut refined sugar out of my diet. No nasty drinks anymore.” Brandon grinned, already f
eeling a little better. “But Metallica forever, right, man?”
“Yeah.” He fist-bumped his friend. So he felt a little relief, but he still wondered what the hell could have happened to them.
“So where do you think they might be?”
“They were in my backpack.”
“The one you misplaced and just found?” Brandon nodded. “Do you think maybe you had way too much to drink and did something with them? Maybe you put your backpack in the wrong place—after misplacing your sticks?”
“Maybe.” He seriously doubted it—but his bandmates and manager were convinced it had been his own doing. He realized there might be some merit to it, though, so he decided to look back in all the bunks they used as storage once more. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll find them.”
Or not. But he wasn’t going to say another word about it.
As he searched the bunks methodically this go round—taking out an item at a time and completely emptying one bunk and putting everything back before looking in another—he admitted to himself that maybe he had been more drunk the night before than he’d thought. He’d heard stories over the years of people drinking so much, they passed out or blacked out and had missing chunks of time where their memories failed them. It was possible, he supposed, that something like that had happened to him. And maybe, in that drunken stupor, he’d done something weird with the drumsticks.
That just sounded so damn lame.
But he searched all four storage bunks—and found nothing. Then he decided, as a last resort, to look in his own bunk. If he truly had forgotten shit he’d done early this morning while half awake and feeling like crap, it was possible that he might have put them in his bed. Doubtful…but he’d looked everywhere else possible.
He pulled back the curtain. There were no drumsticks…but what he saw was weird and chilling.
There was a note written in red marker on a piece of white paper, and it stood out from the dark blue bedding. The note said, “Come find me during Silverblade’s show.”
What did that even mean?
“What the hell’s going on here?”
“What, man?” Jake arrived right behind him and Brandon pulled the note off the pillow.
“Look.”
Jake took the note and Brandon watched his friend’s eyes scour it more than once as if also trying to make sense of the whole thing. “So who wrote this?”
“I have no idea.” He didn’t even want to say he thought it had something to do with the missing drumsticks…and someone rifling through his belongings—maybe when they’d been out eating? He’d sound like a paranoid freak.
“I know this sounds crazy—but do you have any stalkers?”
Now that sounded silly. “No.”
“It’s just weird that this person is asking you to find them.”
“Yeah.” Brandon felt a flash of inspiration. “Okay, very funny. Which one of you guys did it?”
“Did what?”
“Hid my drumsticks and left this note.”
“Wasn’t me.” Jake looked sincere. Yes, the man joked around from time to time, but he would have admitted it now if he’d been up to something.
“Kyle?”
Their lead singer popped her head in the hallway again. “Yeah?”
“Did you do this?”
“Do what?” Brandon held up the note. “What does that even say?” Mollie joined her and strained to read it.
“So which one of you did it?”
Mollie sighed. “Brandon, honey, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to play games like this. If anyone did it, it would have been one of the roadies. They get bored and look for reasons to mess with people. Why don’t you ask one of them?”
Yeah, those guys might get bored—but he doubted they would do anything stupid like this…which meant only one thing.
Someone had broken into their bus, taken his drumsticks, and left the note—and that was creepy as hell.
He couldn’t think about it anymore. Maybe Jake was right. Maybe his lucky drumsticks weren’t so lucky. He could perform the show without warming up with them. He could learn to live without them.
He could do this.
Right?
Chapter Six
One way to take the edge off was to play games, but he needed to buy some new ones. He had his Xbox with him on the road, but without online access or a new game, there was nothing fun about it. And he wasn’t big on phone games, either.
But he also enjoyed chatting with fans online. He hung out more on Facebook than anywhere else, and he decided to do that to whittle away the time until they could head out. He’d wanted to watch some other bands, but now he felt too damn nervous to do it. Watching them would only remind him of what he hadn’t had the chance to do.
So Facebook it was.
Fortunately, he could spend all day tomorrow watching other bands play, and that was the plan.
Along with other social media accounts, Mollie managed the band’s actual Facebook page, and one thing she would do there was post one picture of each concert. The one on there right now was from a concert they’d done two days ago with Last Five Seconds in Anaheim. It was cool seeing how many fans would respond to the pictures.
There was this one girl who’d sent him a friend request last spring and he’d accepted. She was cute—long blonde hair, green eyes, sly smile. Jake had given him two seconds of grief about connecting with a fan that way but she seemed harmless. And he’d forgotten that she’d said she was going to try to come to the festival until just now. He was going through his notifications and one of them was a post she’d made on his wall. It was simple: Can’t wait to see you at Get Rocked tomorrow!
Too bad they hadn’t scheduled a meet and greet. He’d like to meet her in person.
Oh, well. There’d be other times.
But what he liked about her was that she had no issues treating him like a normal person. A lot of fans put him—and the whole band, for that matter—up on a pedestal, seeming to forget that they were real people too. Brandon was not a god, nor were his bandmates. They were normal thinking, breathing human beings who could love and hurt just like the next guy. Yeah, he couldn’t speak for his bandmates, but he did know that Kyle had relationship problems off and on with her guy, and Jake seemed to not want to settle down—but fans sometimes didn’t seem to realize that the band had all those same woes they did.
Anyway, this girl—she treated him like a person, not an idol to be kept at a distance. They had real online conversations—no Skype, but they messaged a lot—and it was a normal give and take. After being sheltered a good part of his life and then put in the position of being drummer in a band where he was once again distanced from a good portion of the crowd, it was nice to act normal around someone.
So this girl, Beth, he considered a friend.
But, of course, he wouldn’t be able to chat with her—not if she was attending the festival as planned. She’d already be out there enjoying one of the bands already playing. And that was cool, too, because even though they were in their bus, they could hear the strains of not just one band playing, although the band closest to their bus was the one whose guitars they could make out better. Brandon knew there was an entire section of tents before the stage areas just for the bands—kind of a green room area of sorts—but he didn’t know if the tents were air conditioned or not, and he didn’t know if Kyle and Mollie would let him inside anyway. If there was beer—especially after last night—it wasn’t likely.
He sighed. He’d checked all his Facebook notifications and was already bored. Maybe he’d go ahead and watch a band or two, braving the heat. As he stood, he felt his phone vibrate in his hand. He looked down and swiped the screen so he could read the text message.
It seemed at first like a spammy text—one from someone he didn’t know. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d gotten a text meant for the person who’d last owned the number, but that wasn’t it. He couldn’t help himself and tapped the message
to pull it open.
He’d walked into the main living area of the bus, barely realizing that Jake was napping on the small couch there. “Are you kidding me?” Brandon didn’t shout at the phone but it was close.
Jake sat up, blinking his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s messing with me.”
He looked down at his phone once again, hardly believing what he was seeing. There was a picture of his lucky drumsticks against a generic white background (maybe a towel, but the picture was too small to tell) and the text message read simply, If you want to see them again, text me back for instructions.
He handed Jake the phone to see for himself. “Not cool.”
“Yeah. Who’s got it in for you, drummer boy?”
“I dunno, but I’m pretty sick of it.” At this point, he was sure it wasn’t Kyle, Jake, or Mollie—but he was starting to wonder if they’d been right about one of the roadies.
Or maybe it was one of the guys in Last Five Seconds. They’d been amused by him the night before. He wouldn’t put it past them to mess with him right now. He went through his head to figure out who might be likely out of the seven additional people who followed them on the road—and he settled on one guy, a dude named Garrett, the one practical joker of the bunch. If there was shaving cream to be misused, the guy had a way to do it. If there was a bad joke to be told, he was the one screwing it up. He had a loud, raucous laugh that you loved to join in on—unless his most recent gag was on you.
And, right now, Brandon was beginning to suspect he was Garrett’s latest target.
Didn’t the guy have work to do?
Brandon wasn’t even going to discuss the possibility with Jake. He was already pretty sure he was right. “What’s Garrett doing right now?”
Jake cocked his head, not quite following. “Well, they had a meeting earlier this morning, but I don’t think they’re actually worried about us until around five or so.”
Which meant the guy had plenty of time to play a prank or two. Dammit.
Dirty Boys: Bad Boy Rock Star Romance Box Set Page 119