With the Band

by Jean Haus

  “Is he here?” Sam asks wide-eyed, obviously not caring Gabe is manhandling him.

  Gabe jerks him closer. “The fucktard got in my face screaming weird shit. I almost punched his lights out. Luckily, I’m on probation. I settled for a bitch-slap,” he says, releasing Sam’s collar.

  I tuck away the little nugget about probation.

  “So he left?” Sam asks.

  Gabe shrugs and wraps his arms around one of the girls. “Fucking hope so.”

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Sam says, then starts pushing through the crowd.

  I stay close, a shadow in the swath he cuts through people.

  Near the back entrance, he interrogates several bouncers. The third one thinks he saw someone fitting Seth’s description leave a few minutes ago through the parking lot. Out near the buses, Sam starts tearing at his hair and swearing under his breath, pacing back and forth across the cement.

  After a few minutes of letting him vent, I ask, “Would he go back to the hotel?”

  He stops and releases the tight hold on his hair. “I don’t have a clue!”

  Knowing he’s frustrated, I choose to ignore his anger and think of possible solutions. “I could go back to the hotel while you look . . . somewhere else.”

  He’s staring at me, breathing heavy, when the bass line of his phone rings and he takes it out of his pocket.

  “Mom,” he answers curtly, then turns away. Staring at the back of him, I see him shake his head several times but can hear only the low murmur of his voice as he continues walking away. Minutes later, done with the call, he comes toward me, searching on his phone. He stops a few feet from me without looking up.

  “He’s at the bus stop.”

  “Really?” I ask incredulously. He didn’t want to go home this afternoon. He’d told me repeatedly he was staying on tour with his brother.

  Sam continues studying the screen on his phone. “According to what he told my mother.”

  “If we go back out front, we could probably catch another taxi.”

  He shakes his head and turns. “We’re about two blocks away.” He shoves the phone back into his pocket and takes off past the bus. “It should take less than five minutes to walk,” he says over his shoulder.

  Jogging in flip-flops is a bitch.

  Sam was right. About five minutes later, we come up to the bus station. A bus slowly passes us and we both stop running at the sight of the person giving us a middle-finger wave from the back.

  Actually, Seth’s twisted grin pairs rather well with his one-finger wave.

  Chapter 17

  I sit on a bench while Sam talks to his mother. He paces back and forth across the sidewalk. To say he looks frazzled is an understatement. When the woman at the outside ticket counter told us the bus was heading to Kansas City, Missouri, Sam about hit the roof, hearing his brother was traveling across half the country.

  I pull my gaze away from Sam, unwilling to watch him wear a path into the cement. The man on the bench across from me tips his brown paper–bagged bottle to his mouth, staring at me with blurry eyes. A woman nearby talks into her phone loud enough for people two blocks over to hear. Along the far wall, another man sleeps on a bench, drooling on the wood. The open-air pavilion is nearly vacant in the middle of the night. I’m guessing the inside of the terminal is as quiet.

  Sam finally comes over and plops down next to me. He runs a hand down his face. “Supposedly, he’s catching a connection to Detroit tomorrow.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “If he does it,” Sam says with a sigh. “If there was another bus going out tonight, I’d be able to follow him.”

  I’m shocked at that. Apparently, Sam would be willing to abandon the tour to chase his brother down. I suppose, from what I’ve witnessed, that makes sense. Seth out in the big world by himself could be dangerous, mainly to himself, possibly to others.

  Sam glances at his phone and sighs. “It’s past two o’clock. We should head back.”

  We start walking to the hotel. From what I can gather, the bus terminal is somewhere between the arena and the hotel. Though the area is rough, the streets are empty this late at night. Sam is silent as we make our way back. His shoulders slump, as if he carries the weight of the world on them.

  After the first block, I say, “The person who calls you all the time isn’t a girlfriend. It’s Seth, right?” Sam silently nods. On the third block, the main question that’s been screaming in my head all night comes out in a light tone. “What’s wrong with Seth?”

  Sam glances at me, then stuffs his hands into his pockets. After a few minutes, I assume he is never going to answer, but then he says tightly, “He—he’s schizophrenic.”

  “Oh, that’s . . . that’s too bad,” I say, trying to grasp that news. The little I know about the disease is what I learned in general psychology. Even with that limited knowledge, Seth’s erratic behavior starts clicking into place for me. I even recall how bizarre and unpredictable he started acting during the last two months of our relationship.

  “How long has he been?”

  Sam doesn’t look at me, just keeps walking. “Since senior year of high school.”

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Sam keeps going. “He wasn’t diagnosed until after Christmas,” he says roughly.

  “Still,” I say, running to catch up with him. “Everything”—from the heartbreak to the rumors to Seth’s gradual change—“would have been easier to deal with if I’d known.”

  Without looking down at me, Sam’s features twist into a mocking expression. “So while my parents and I were trying to understand Seth’s diagnosis, and putting him in and out of the mental ward, and doing everything in our power to make sure he’d graduate from high school, I was supposed to contact you, the ex-girlfriend who most likely hated him, to make things easier for you to ‘deal with’?”

  His words have me feeling small and selfish. I look down at my feet moving over the cement. “No. I guess not,” I mumble. Throughout the entire day, my perspective on the past has been changing so dramatically that I’m having a hard time keeping up. The knowledge of Seth’s disease makes the guilt and hurt I’ve dealt with for years go away almost entirely as I realize he wasn’t in total control of his actions—and as I kind of understand why he had the demented need to fuel the rumor mill.

  Sam shrugs. “Besides, we didn’t want anyone to know at first. We didn’t know how to handle it.” His mouth turns down. “We hoped treatment would turn things around and get him back to something like normal.”

  “Is that why don’t you tell people about him, because you wish he would be normal? Are you embarrassed by him?” My tone has an edge of incredulity.

  “That he has a disease? No. That he acts like a frickin’ idiot most of the time? A bit.”

  “Well, he can’t help it.” Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with sorrow for Seth. Knowing him before and seeing him now is sad.

  “He could take his fucking meds,” Sam says, his tone exasperated. “That would help.”

  “Isn’t it normal—I mean, isn’t it part of the disease for him to not trust the meds?”

  “Yeah, but as you’ve witnessed he’s off his rocker without them.”

  My mind whirls, and questions come tumbling out of my mouth. “Is this why he didn’t continue at the University of Michigan? It that why you didn’t go to Michigan?”

  “Yes. And yes.”

  As we enter the empty hotel lobby, resentment starts boiling inside of me. “Why would you do that to him? Why wouldn’t you go with him to college to help him succeed?”

  I don’t say it out loud, but I know in my heart that if Jill needed support like Seth clearly does, I’d stay by her side. I would do whatever possible to help her succeed.

  Sam stares at me.

  Maybe it’s because I’m tired from the long day or shocked by Seth’s condition—or maybe it’s because I’m imagining Jill, who is like a sister t
o me, in a similar situation—but I’m truly angry. “I can’t believe you’d be such an asshole. To your twin brother, no less.”

  Sam opens his mouth, then snaps it shut. He grabs my arm and drags me to the inner court of the hotel, plops me onto a chair next to an aluminum table, steps away, and lights a cigarette.

  Still angry, I’m about to stand and walk away, until Sam says, “Give me a minute to explain.”

  His tone, sad and guilty, glues me in the patio chair.

  He takes a long drag before crushing the half-smoked cigarette under his boot. “Trying to quit,” he says absently, tossing the butt into the trash.

  Really, I haven’t seen him light up that much, except for a few times and the illegal stuff.

  He plops down onto the chair next to me, lowers his elbows to the table, takes a deep breath, and stares at me. “Do you know what I want?”

  Thoroughly confused by the question, it takes me a few seconds to respond with a shake of my head.

  “I want my brother back. We’re twins, for fuck’s sake.” He slaps a hand on the table and the ping of the aluminum reverberates across the darkness of the patio. “We shared a room until we were fifteen. We were in every class together up to the age of eleven, several after that too. Played Little League on the same team for five years. Played in a band together. Sure, we’d argue and fight, but nothing”—he glances at me—“nothing could separate us. It was like having a best friend from birth.”

  He stares out over the patio as I try to keep my expression neutral, so I won’t interrupt his explanation with the growing sadness building in my chest. This isn’t about me.

  “The brother I grew up with is gone. He’s not the same. I’m never getting him back.” The hum of the huge hotel air conditioners fills the silence. Sam turns to me. Even in the shadowy darkness, I can see the anguish lining his face.

  He gestures to the tattoo on his arm. “I wanted to remember the real Seth with a line from a song he wrote for the Bottle Rockets.” Shaking his head, he sighs sadly. “I got wasted so I could deal with the needle, but I wanted to freeze him in my memory with the permanence of a tattoo.”

  Though I’ve tried, I can never make out the black swirly writing on his arm. “What does it say?”

  “Can rule the world with my twin at my side,” he says.

  “It’s about you?”

  “It was about both of us. From some crap song he wrote.”

  “Oh,” I say softly, recalling the old Seth. The Seth who believed he did rule the world.

  “I couldn’t deal with it, Peyton. I couldn’t go to college with him.” His hands grip the edge of the aluminum table. “It was as if my brother had died and a stranger had taken his place. It had always been us, yet suddenly I was alone. I had to get away from the loss. The loss that stared me in the face every day,” he says hoarsely. “From the heartbreak of losing my brother and best friend.”

  For one long moment, I stare at his sad face, taking in the glare of tears in his eyes, and imagine losing Jill like he lost Seth. It would be devastating. Then, without thinking, I’m across the flagstones and in his lap, hugging him to me and trying to absorb the raw pain pouring out of him. His hands grip my back and he shudders underneath me as he buries his head against my neck and shakes with sobs.

  Feeling wetness on my neck, I mumble, “I get it. I really get it. You’re not an asshole.”

  His fingers dig into my back and we hold each other, rocking and gripping and mourning what can’t be changed. It’s an embrace filled with sorrow and desolation. I’m not surprised to find I’m crying too. For him, for Seth, for the loss of what they had. Gone now. Forever lost. The sadness of it is overwhelming.

  The resonance of a throat clearing loosens my grip on Sam. When the beam of a flashlight hits us, I almost fall out of his lap.

  “It may be the middle of the night,” the person holding the flashlight behind us says, “but this is still a public place, not a bedroom.”

  He lowers the blinding light a bit and I can make out a guard uniform.

  Sam whips his head around. “Fu—”

  I slap my hand over his mouth. “It’s not what you think,” I say, mortified at the guard’s insinuation. I start untangling myself from Sam’s lap. “We were—his brother . . .” I stand and pull my hand from Sam’s mouth. “We were just hugging.”

  The guard makes a harrumph sound, and Sam shoots up to standing. “Are you blind, old man?” The guard lifts the light again and Sam puts up a hand over his face. “Get that shit out of my eyes!”

  The guard lowers the light a bit.

  “Seriously?” Sam wipes an arm over his wet cheeks. “The one time I let myself cry like a baby, some asswipe thinks I’m fu—”

  “Okay,” I say loudly, cutting Sam off and reaching for his arm. “We’re going to go.” I drag Sam by the arm toward the door leading to the lobby. “Sorry for hugging on your patio,” I say in a tone laced with sarcasm.

  The guard doesn’t respond, and I don’t wait, just drag Sam into the lobby and then to the elevator.

  Inside the elevator, Sam leans his forehead against mine. “Now, that guy is an asshole.” A giggle escapes me, and Sam reaches up and wipes the wetness from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Thanks for listening to my shit, Peyton.”

  The elevator doors open. We don’t move.

  Troubled by his despondent tone, I catch his wrists. “It wasn’t shit, Sam.”

  He shakes his head against mine. “It’s never-ending shit.”

  My grip tightens on his wrists. I want to fix this and help him, but it’s unfixable.

  He pulls our entwined hands to his mouth and lowers his head to give my knuckles a whisper-light kiss. “Thanks again,” he murmurs, lifting his head back up and looking at me with his warm sky-blue eyes.

  The touch of his mouth lingers on my skin, brings memories of the caress of his mouth on other parts of my body, and my breath catches at the tenderness of his gaze.

  “Come on.” He gently pulls his wrists from my grasp and turns me toward the hall with a hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to be dragging ass tomorrow.”

  As we tread down the hall toward our room, I wish for the millionth time that I’d never fallen for Seth. Now I wish I had fallen for Sam instead.

  Chapter 18

  Standing inside the U-shaped configuration of foldout tables that make up our booth, I slide another card through the credit device attached to Romeo’s phone. Selling T-shirts, hats, and CDs is a mind-numbing experience. I’ve come to hate running the booth. But the band has no one else, and the earnings at the end of a night total from about three hundred to a thousand dollars. Not too shabby for an up-and-coming band. I can’t imagine what the other bands pull in. They have multiple booths, with long, long lines.

  The next few hours will drag. We just got to Richmond this morning, but right after the show, once the crew packs everything up, we’re hitting the road again around two a.m. to drive to Philly. And we won’t arrive until early morning. I’m not looking forward to the next run of concerts and bus trips we have lined up.

  The muffled first riffs of Luminescent Juliet’s “Midnight” echo through the venue as I fold up a T-shirt, slide it into a bag, and hand it over to a guy with a pink Mohawk. He purposely brushes his hand along mine in the process, smiling slowly. “When you’re done, I’d love to buy you a drink.”

  My standard concert outfit has become a pair of denim cutoffs, cowboy boots—my dumb ass didn’t bring fashionable yet comfy shoes—and a Luminescent Juliet T-shirt. Of course I have one of each of the three designs, which put the band’s name and logo across my chest. Not the most flattering outfit, yet male rockers seem to like it. I’ve gotten a few compliments on it, and a few propositions like the current one.

  I force a smile. I don’t have anything against pink Mohawks, and of course this guy doesn’t know I have a boyfriend. But hello, dude, you could be a serial killer for all I know. “Tempting, but I have to work all night.”r />
  At that moment Mike, the roadie whom Romeo pays to cover the booth so I can take pictures, slips in to take my place. “Hey, Peyton.” He reaches for Romeo’s phone in my hand. “Go on. They just went onstage. I’ll take care of this.”

  Mohawk guy frowns.

  Ignoring him, I go snatch my camera from behind a bin of T-shirts and then slip out of the booth. Getting backstage is not an easy feat. First, I have to get through the masses in the hallways around the arena. Then I have to take a tunnel that goes under the bleachers and around half the arena. Next come the checkpoints where I hold out the pass around my neck for inspection. Once out of the tunnel, I pass the green room and spot the Brookfield guys being interviewed by the local media.

  I pass an area where backstage ticket holders are getting pictures taken with members of Griff.

  The excitement on the fans’ faces always gives me a little surge of exhilaration. I’d never been backstage until this tour, but I have been to several concerts. My first was the most exciting. When I was fifteen, my grandpa took me to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers when they were on their Stadium Arcadium Tour. Each time I see backstage pass holders looking giddy and wide-eyed as they meet the bands, I remember how I nearly pissed my pants with excitement during the hour-and-fifteen-minute ride to the Palace of Auburn Hills. My grandfather and I had nosebleed seats, yet we both had an awesome time.

  The music from the stage gets louder as I continue my journey, and I hear the guys break into “At the End of the Universe,” an energetic song that I’ve loved from the first time I heard it. Some songs need to grow on you. Not this sucker. Fast and rocking—I immediately liked it.

  The area directly behind the stage was a bitch to get into until the roadies got to know me. This is the place where the instruments are tuned and shined up, and where costume changes are stashed. Fans are never allowed here. A few roadies wave to me as I pass but most are busy.

  Heading around the back of the stage, I go out onto the floor past the bouncers instead of my usual spot in front of the stage, and I use my concert ID to make my way backward through the crowd on the floor to the sound booth. The perfect place to get pictures of the Luminescent Juliet guys all together, playing onstage. Earlier this afternoon, wearing a smile and a low-cut shirt—a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do—I’d stopped by with a large pepperoni pizza to ask the engineers if I could get a few pictures during the concert. Between the pie and the cleavage, it didn’t take them too long to agree to let me into the most off-limits area of all.