“You’re welcome,” Andi said. “Um. See you soon!”
As much of a bummer as the call with Buffy had been, the one with Cyrus was way better. Andi could practically see him bouncing off the walls of his bedroom when she gave him the news. He hung up almost as quickly as Buffy had—but only because, as he told Andi, he wanted to start figuring out what to pack.
Having agonized over her own wardrobe, Andi completely understood that.
Once plans with Pops and CeCe were confirmed—they would arrive bright and early the next morning and bring Buffy and Cyrus with them—Andi was ready to celebrate. And what better place to do that than in the VIP area—also known as the Orchid Arena? The big white tents were located right next to the main stage, allowing for the best possible view of all the biggest acts.
After flashing their laminates, Andi and the rest of the group were shuttled past red velvet ropes and through brightly colored gauze drapes. Inside the tents were enough white leather massage chairs and couches for each and every VIP guest, and Bowie’s orchids looked gorgeous sitting on heavy black marble tables. The only thing missing was Bowie, who was rehearsing with the band in anticipation of the next night’s performance.
“Check it out!” Jonah said, making a beeline for a table with a chocolate fountain towering at least four feet high, surrounded by bowls of fresh fruit, fluffy white marshmallows, puff pastries, fancy cookies, and more.
Bex grabbed a skewer and speared a piece of pineapple, then held it under the cascading chocolate. Meanwhile, Mona opted for a marshmallow, and Andi and Jonah both selected rolled wafer cookies.
“Oh my gosh…that might just be the most delicious chocolate I’ve ever tasted!” Mona smiled, and they all laughed at how her glittery green lips were smeared with chocolate and marshmallow.
“Seriously!” Jonah agreed. “And look over there.”
On the other side of the tent was an entire section devoted to carnival food, including a red-and-white popcorn machine, a bright pink cotton candy stand, funnel cakes, hot dogs, and every deep-fried food known to man. Then, in the next tent over, there was a DJ commanding an enormous dance floor filled with people.
“Incredible.” Andi’s skin was tingling as she took it all in.
“It really is—thank you so much for hooking us up with passes to get into this place,” Jonah said, smiling at Andi. “I thought last year was fun, but this is beyond anything I could have imagined.”
“Me too.” Andi smiled back. “But don’t thank me, thank Bowie.”
“Well, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know Bowie…right?”
“I guess.” Andi grinned, but then her expression clouded over when she saw a familiar face. It was Luke, with Jagger and Zane right behind him.
Andi turned to Bex and grabbed her by the arm. “Look who it is,” she whispered.
Bex followed the direction of Andi’s eyes and waved when she saw Jagger and the others. “Jagger! Over here!”
“Hey!” Jagger grinned and hugged Bex. “How’s it going? How awesome is this setup?”
“So awesome!” Bex agreed.
“I guess you found your wallet, then?” Jagger asked, motioning to the rainbow-hued VIP laminate sitting on top of Bex’s silver-and-turquoise neckpiece.
“Oh, um…no,” Bex said. “But you remember Bowie from high school?”
“Of course.” Jagger raised his dark eyebrows and gave Bex a light punch on her bare upper arm. “You guys were quite the item.”
“Yeah, well, he’s going to be filling in for the Renaissance Boys’ singer tomorrow, so he managed to get more VIP passes for us.”
“That rules!” Jagger grinned.
“Yeah, it does,” Andi interjected, glancing over at Luke. “But it’s been kind of stressful, wondering where the wallet went.”
“That’s such a bummer,” Luke replied, “but hopefully you’ve still been able to have a good time so far?”
Once again, Luke was chewing on his lower lip and Andi couldn’t shake the feeling that he was hiding something. Maybe he hadn’t taken the wallet, but something was up with the guy. If only Andi could figure out what it was.
“Can you excuse us for a minute?” Bex asked Jagger and his friends with a forced smile, grabbing Andi by the elbow and guiding her over to the other side of the chocolate fountain.
“Andi, I know you think Luke took the wallet, but you have no way of proving that,” Bex whispered impatiently. “Can you please just let it go, at least until they get a chance to search their truck for it?”
Andi stared at the dark wood floor and crossed her arms. “I guess—but don’t you think there’s something off about that guy? I think he has a dark side.”
Bex laughed. “Maybe Darth Vader finally got to him?”
Andi narrowed her eyes, not getting it at first.
“Luke, I am your father!” Bex said in her deepest, most ominous voice.
“Oh. Ha.” Andi forced a laugh.
“Come on,” Bex groaned. “Lighten up and let it go…at least for now. We got new VIP passes, so let’s enjoy them!”
Andi thought about it for a second and knew Bex was right. So she agreed to stop worrying—for now anyway—and they joined the others.
“Everything okay?” Jagger asked.
“Everything’s great!” Bex flashed a smile.
“Cool—then you guys should come check out the VR tent!” Jagger proposed, looking directly at Mona. He hadn’t stopped staring at her since they were introduced, and Mona had been staring right back at him.
“What’s VR?” Mona asked.
“Virtual reality,” Jonah replied with a scowl.
Andi gave him a sympathetic frown. She knew he was thinking back to that fall he took at the arcade.
“Cool! Let’s do it!” Mona said, bouncing on her heels so her glittery butterfly wings fluttered.
“Actually…” Jonah hesitated.
“Why don’t you guys go ahead?” Andi interrupted, sensing that Jonah didn’t want to get into the details. “Jonah and I…um…still have a bunch of other stuff we want to see outside. Right?”
Andi turned to Jonah, who nodded gratefully.
“But what about all the stuff to see in here?” Bex widened her eyes at Andi. “We’re VIPs now! At least come check out the massage chairs with me!”
Andi laughed and shook her head. “Maybe a little later?”
Bex glanced from Andi to Jonah and knew she wasn’t going to win this one. “Okay…but first…”
“No!” Andi squealed. “No more safety first!”
“Just a little more sunscreen,” Bex pressed, already squeezing some from the tube onto her finger and delicately dabbing it on Andi’s nose and cheeks.
“Okay, I’m good!” Andi insisted, swatting Bex away. “Can we please go now?”
“Yes, you can go,” Bex finally agreed. “But keep your phone close, and text me in an hour to let me know you’re…safe.”
“Thanks for doing that,” Jonah said with a sheepish smile after he and Andi had exited the Orchid Arena.
“Sure—that’s what friends are for.”
“Where should we go next?” Jonah wondered, pulling a festival map from his pocket and holding it out so Andi could scan it with him. They agreed to go check out the carnival area.
“But I’m not going on the Ferris wheel,” Andi warned Jonah.
“Oh, man, I forgot about that.” He grimaced.
He obviously knew Andi was referring to the sleepover disaster with Amber. So when they arrived at the carnival area, Jonah took Andi as far away from the Ferris wheel as they could get—which meant they went directly to the Skyscraper Slide.
Andi could feel her palms sweating when Jonah proposed that they go on it. She looked up at the slide, towering high above them, and swallowed hard.
“It’s way too steep,” Andi said, her lips trembling. “But you can go without me if you want.”
Andi could see from the look on Jonah’s face that he was
beyond disappointed. Andi was kind of disappointed in herself, too. She had already done so many things to prove how adventurous and unpredictable she could be—so why was she playing it safe with the slide? She glanced up again and her stomach dropped.
“I’m sorry,” Andi said with a frown. “You should really go without me.”
“You sure?” Jonah pouted, blinking his eyes in that pleading puppy-dog way.
Andi looked up one last time and nodded. So Jonah handed his flower crown to Andi to hold—“I don’t want to lose it on the way down,” he explained—and joined the line of brave souls waiting to ascend the stairs. Meanwhile, Andi headed to the waiting area, where people were screaming and laughing and watching everyone plummet to the bottom. When it was finally Jonah’s turn, Andi got her phone out and took a slo-mo video of him making his descent, whooping and hollering the entire way down.
“Dude! That was out of control!” Jonah enthused when he had exited the ride and found Andi.
“You know what was really out of control?” Andi laughed.
“What?”
“How loud you screamed!” Andi handed her phone to Jonah so he could play back the video.
“I’m not screaming!” Jonah scoffed after watching the video. “That’s a victory yell.”
“Uh-huh.” Andi laughed again.
“Seriously, you have no clue what you’re missing.”
“And I would rather remain clueless,” Andi replied as she noticed the most bizarre thing heading toward her and Jonah. “What is that?”
Jonah turned to look, and as it got closer, they both scrunched up their faces in disbelief.
“I think it’s a giant walking pizza?” Jonah said.
“I think you’re right!”
“Who wants pizza?” came a male voice from somewhere deep within the pizza costume, which was prancing through the crowd, stopping to let various people take selfies.
“Look at his back!” Andi pointed to a poster stuck to the costume. “It says, ‘Follow me to the pizza-eating contest’!”
“Dude.” Jonah gasped. “Now’s my chance!”
With a mischievous smile, Andi said, “I’ll do it if you do.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jonah shook his head. “There’s no way you’re going to enter.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” Andi insisted. “It’s in my blood—Bex entered one year and took third place.”
Jonah’s eyes grew wide. “Well, okay then. I guess we’d better go check it out.”
“I guess we’d better!”
So Jonah and Andi joined the crowd of people who were following the giant pizza. Andi wasn’t going to back down this time. She would prove to Jonah—and more important, to herself—that she could be as daring and adventurous as he was. So long as it didn’t involve slides as tall as skyscrapers.
After winding through crowds of people, the giant pizza finally arrived at the entrance to an outdoor amphitheater with a digital billboard that read EXTREME EATING ARENA, along with a scrolling list of the schedule of food-eating events, which had kicked off earlier in the day with pancakes. That had been followed by hot dogs, hamburgers, buffalo wings, and pies. Pizza was up next, and later they would have a rib-eating contest and a giant turkey leg–eating contest.
“Excuse me! Comin’ through!” said someone behind Andi and Jonah, and they turned to see half a dozen people in red pizza delivery uniforms, each one wheeling a metal utility cart holding what must have been at least fifty pizzas.
Andi looked over at Jonah, who was bouncing from foot to foot as though he couldn’t wait to get inside.
“Is your mouth watering as much as mine is?” Andi asked.
“Uh-huh!” Jonah motioned for Andi to follow him along the sloping concrete path right behind the pizza delivery people, who were making their way toward the stage at the bottom of the amphitheater. “I hope it’s not too late to enter!”
“Oh, no—I didn’t even think about that.” Andi glanced at the stage, where people in bright yellow EVENT STAFF shirts were cleaning off a table covered in what appeared to be blueberry pie. Off to one side, contestants wearing formerly white bibs—also covered in pie, Andi assumed—were walking over to a smaller table covered in red, white, and blue ribbons with a sign that read WINNERS’ CIRCLE. Next to that table was another one labeled SIGN-UP CENTRAL.
“There!” Jonah yelled. “That’s where we enter!”
Andi continued to follow Jonah, but when they got to the end of the line of people waiting to add their names to the sign-up sheet, they saw a guy in one of the pie-covered bibs running toward them. He had short, spiky brown hair and his round face was flushed and sweaty—and also covered in pie.
“Look out!” the guy yelled, shoving past the line of people waiting to enter the pizza-eating contest.
Andi and Jonah watched in horror as he stumbled by them and finally arrived at his destination. Like a man reuniting with his long-lost love, the guy wrapped his arms around the top edge of the black garbage bin and proceeded to make awful retching noises into it.
Andi cringed as she looked over at Jonah, whose face had gone pale. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“No!” Jonah groaned, slapping a hand over his mouth. “If we don’t get out of here soon, I think I’m going to be sick, too.”
Andi looked over at the stage again, where the pizzas were being set up on the long competition table, and then took a few steps closer to the sign-up table. There were only a few more people in front of them, and Andi really wanted to enter. But when she turned to look at Jonah again, she noticed he was breaking out in a cold sweat and turning a little green.
“So maybe we should skip the pizza?” she asked with a frown. Who knew Jonah got queasy so easily?
Jonah nodded fervently. “Yes, please!” He spun around and headed toward the ramp leading out of the arena so quickly that Andi had to jog to keep up.
When they were safely outside, Jonah turned to Andi, and she was relieved to see that he didn’t look nearly as green.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Ugh.” He exhaled loudly. “I’m really sorry—I knew people sometimes got upset stomachs at these things, but I’ve never seen it happen up close. If we hadn’t left, I would one hundred percent have thrown up.”
“I was feeling pretty queasy on the ride up the mountain earlier, so I totally get it.”
“Thanks for understanding—and thanks for getting out of there with me,” Jonah said with a frown. “I don’t know what I would have done if I was with any of my other friends. They’re all so crazy, they probably would have forced me to go through with it.”
“Uh-huh.” Andi knew she had probably made the right call by leaving the pizza-eating contest, but she was still determined to show Jonah that he was wrong about her. She could take risks! She could be wild and crazy! And in fact, now that she had seen his slightly less courageous side, she felt as though it was time to show her more courageous side to him…and to herself.
“You know what?” Andi suddenly said, pushing past Jonah and through the crowd.
“What?” Jonah asked, chasing after her.
“I’m going on the Skyscraper Slide!” Andi yelled back.
“Huh?” Jonah caught up and grabbed Andi’s arm, stopping her. “You don’t have to do that!”
“I know I don’t have to,” Andi replied. “But I want to.”
When they made it to the slide, however, Andi’s heart sank as she counted the flights of stairs to the top.
One step at a time, she told herself. You can do this.
With each step she took, her legs became shakier and her stomach filled with more butterflies. But by the time she arrived at the platform, she knew there was no turning back. So she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and—yes—screamed the entire way down. But when she finally landed at the bottom and stopped screaming, a giant smile spread across her face. Jonah had been right—it really was out of control, but in the best possible way!
> “What a rush!” Andi squealed when Jonah got to the bottom. “Want to go again?”
Jonah laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously!” Andi insisted, already making her way back to the line.
And this time her legs felt strong and her fear was completely gone.
When Andi woke up on Sunday morning, she was shivering—partly because it was a lot colder than she had expected it to be, partly because she was so excited that Buffy and Cyrus would be arriving soon with Ham and CeCe, and partly because of how much fun she’d already had at Mountain Jam. The highlight so far had definitely been conquering the Skyscraper Slide; she and Jonah must have gone down that thing almost a dozen times, and each time had been better than the last!
After that, Andi and Jonah had reunited with Bex and Mona in the VIP tent, where they were able to watch all the incredible nighttime performances on the main stage. The bands had been great, but Andi was sure nothing would compare to seeing Bowie play with the Renaissance Boys—yet another thought that gave her chills. They also danced in the DJ area and filled up on way too much carnival food, and Jonah even conquered his fears and played a few games with Andi in the virtual reality tent before wrapping up the evening with an extended stretch—literally—in the massage chairs. The first day and night of Mountain Jam had been epic, to say the least.
“Good morning!” Bex smiled and rolled onto her side. “How’d you sleep?”
“Really well.” Andi sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “These beds are so comfortable.”
“They really are,” Bex agreed. “Beats the heck out of our sleeper sofa!”
“I bet.” Andi grinned and pulled the covers around her. “But isn’t it kind of cold in here?”
“Yeah, kind of.” Bex hopped out of her bed and threw a hoodie on over her old gray concert tee and sweatpants, then went to check out the little air-conditioning unit for their tent. “I never thought we’d need to use the heat setting on this thing up here, but hey—at least there is one!”
Andi sighed happily as the tent started to warm up. She got out of bed and put a sweatshirt on over her pink thermal jammies. Then she headed for the couch, where Bex was eating a banana from the fruit basket.
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