The First Stage (Appearance)

The First Stage (Appearance)

The first morning was not like the first night. When I woke up, Ian was already gone—how he’d managed to get out of the honeycomb bed without waking me, I was never sure; things were cramped as could be in there.

And the first morning was not like any morning before, because I when I woke up at eight thirty, things were loud. The opening of the festival was, apparently, an event to be celebrated.

A Note About Teenagers:
They are loud.
Yes, I realize that I, technically, am one of them.
But I was not loud in the way fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen is loud. I am not loud in the way a fan girl is loud. And I could not quite remember ever being as excited as these teenagers were about any single event.
Not even my wedding.

When I sat up, I smacked my head against Pete’s empty bunk—the one that Adnan was supposed to sleep in, but had waived in lieu of stealing the place where Pete had dumped his things. When he got back—and God only knew when that would be—Pete would more be mad about Adnan’s moving his spare drumsticks than stealing his bed.

Kay leaned over the edge of her bunk when she heard my graceful emergence. “Yo, Sloan,” she greeted, saluting me with some sort of science book. Kay was not like Lys in the way she read—Kay didn’t read about diprotic acids because she felt like she had to. Kay read about diprotic acids because she enjoyed it. Honestly, the latter was seriously more deranged.
I rubbed my head. “Good morning.”

“Mark’s in the shower—you can go in next, if you want to, but Ian and Adnan already used it, so I don’t know how the hot water situation is. Actually, I don’t know what the water situation is at all. I thought about that this morning, and you’d better believe that I plan to find out.” This speech was misleading—Kay was not usually a morning person. However, being such a light sleeper, the noise had probably woken her up long before it had begun to bother me. She’d had time to acclimate.

I dragged my duffel bag out from under the bunk. There was just enough room to maneuver in here. Not for the first time in my life, I was glad that I was me, Sloan Kettering McLellan, as opposed to, say Adnan Ganim. It was the difference between being a relatively small girl and an impossibly large male. It was that difference that mattered in times like these.

“Where is Ian?” I asked. Jeans, tank top, Converse. Classic. I mean, I clearly couldn’t compete with Keeley—even though the outfits we wore were nearly identical—but I could have done worse for myself. It was a relief not to be in competition with girls like that, anymore.

Hopping down from the bunk without hitting her head, Kay leaned against the wall next to me. “He got up like three hours ago—I was already awake, of course, ‘cause somebody slammed a door—and did some impressive yoga to get out around you, and then showered and went to find Pete and breakfast and practice area. He looked a little stressed. Do you think he’s a little stressed?”

She was teasing. Ian would be in nothing short of a panic until approximately seven minutes before he went on stage, at which point a bizarre state of zen would overcome him and he would be breezy and calm and would start cracking jokes that would invariably get on Pete’s nerves. This was the way with every show. We knew the drill by now.

Mark came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. It was a wet towel, but it served the purpose of concealment—all that was important to me, to be perfectly honest. “Don’t take your clothes in there,” he warned me. “Everything in the entire bathroom gets wet. Who knew?”

“It’s eight thirty-seven,” Kay warned him, with a bemused eyebrow raised in his direction. “Ian is going to shoot you.”

“Shit,” Mark muttered calmly. “Sloan, get in the shower so that I can get dressed. I will not have you witness my soaking wet shame.”

These kinds of things happened to Mark with alarming regularity. As mean as she was, he was really lucky to have Kay. At least she didn’t get into such predicaments. Still it was easy to tease him; I blew a kiss as I passed him on the way to the bathroom. “I’ve seen your shame in every other state, my dear Mark,” I assured him. “I don’t see why soaking wet should be any different.”

As I closed the door, Mark hissed a pleasant “you suck” in my direction.

Ian:
1. Not in the practice area when I went to look.
2. Not in the food area when I went to look.
3. Found talking to Jean about how everything was going to go down, in a seemingly random point in the middle of the festival, with fan girls thronging en masse.

When I walked up next to him, he put his arm around my shoulders, and continued with his conversation. Feral Children was slotted on the same stage as Cremnomania, one hour after the latter had finished. Each band had two hours to perform and there would be stages set up all over the place for the little noisy teenagers to salivate over, or do whatever else noisy teenagers did to bands they loved.

When poor, harried Jean finally escaped the clutches of my manic and stressed husband, he turned and gave me a tense kiss. I wrapped my arms around his waist and stood up on my tiptoes to give him another—it was then that he finally smiled and let me lead him away.

“How was your morning, sleepyhead?” It was, by now, with all the looking I had done, nearly noon. The first string of bands was just starting to get all of its equipment put together. We ambled through everything.

I made a face at him. “I was a wayward adventurer, seeking my partner, who had been lost among the masses.” I sighed theatrically. “I confess I was much afraid I would never see him again.” Another sigh and I laid my head against Ian’s shoulder. Maybe I was acting a little sillier than usual to cheer him up, but you couldn’t really blame me. When he got stressed at things like this, it leaked onto Pete, and then when Pete got stressed at things like this, he went out of his way to make everyone miserable.

“Sometimes I really don’t understand you,” Ian confessed. But he took my hand, so I figured that all was still in his good graces. “I really just don’t.”

It was hot—and what else was to be expected in July—this morning, and all the mud from the night before had dried, leaving a pitted crust that threatened to trip every passerby with its treacherous pitfalls. Food vendors were opening their doors, and souvenir booths were laying out their wares. It was truly a sight to behold, oddly beautiful—a circus before hours, with all its tricks and baubles laid out for everyone to see. Frankly, I suspected the whole situation would be much less enchanting once it began to serve its actual purpose. Things were always better when you saw them the way they weren’t supposed to be, though. It was merely a fact of life.
Ian and I spotted, from the top of a hill, Pete and Jenna watching Cremnomania setting
up—perhaps scoping out the stage where Pete would later have to perform. From this distance, the only member you could make out was Keeley, with that shock of hair. The other four were nameless ants, milling around with great pomp and purpose. As we approached, the ants melted into the angel twins and Dave and Kyle.

Pete was sitting up against a garbage can with Jenna in his lap. “Hey,” he greeted as we approached; Jenna looked up, also. “What’s doing, baby face?” she asked me, sticking out her tongue. She was playful, and I liked that.

“What’s going on?” I asked her cheerfully. Jenna, Rae, and Molly were going in the second string of performers, and didn’t have the nervous energy that my boys did. At least Ian and Pete had gotten out in the fresh air for a moment or two. Adnan and Mark were currently holed up in the practice tent, trying to hammer out the perfect bass line, and would remain there until Jean or some other important persona came and told them to shut the hell up.

Jenna smiled at me all too sweetly. “Oh, nothing,” she simpered.

***

Cremnomania was good. Their baseline, provided by one of the angel twins was awesome, though not quite as good as Mark’s, if could be allowed a little prejudice. And their drumming blew Pete’s out of the water. You could tell that Pete thought so, too, by his rapidly darkening expression—after about an hour of his getting his musical ass kicked, Jenna dragged him off, hopefully to see some other bands.

And then Cremnomania was done, and Feral Children had to go set up, and I was left alone in the audience—Kay had to go off to find Mark, but Ian merely kissed me goodbye and told me to stay and enjoy the show. It hadn’t been too long—it was, in fact, a short enough period of time to nearly seem suspicious—a time that I was without Ian before Dark and Mysterious Kyle came approached me in the audience.

“Hello, there,” he greeted me, with a pleasant smile. The demeanor was severely at odds with what I had seen of him the night before—it confused me. Besides, I was lurking at the back of the crowd, to escape the heat of everyone crushing together. This was hardly a natural place for him to be.

And besides, he was still slightly sweaty and disheveled from the stage. This wasn’t a happenstance meeting. He had purposefully come looking for me, or else he was a very, very bizarre creature that enjoyed crappy seating for concerts and being sweaty and disgusting after hitting drums over and over.

“Hi,” I replied.

The Truth:
I didn’t really feel like talking to him.
I would have much preferred to enjoy the relative quiet before Ian came on.
But instead, I was going to be stuck talking to this silly, silly boy, who didn’t even know enough to go take a shower before he got heatstroke.

Drummer Kyle couldn’t take a hint, though, apparently. He joined me where I was perched on a makeshift fencepost, crossing his arms across his chest. “So you weren’t kidding about being part of the band, then,” he commented. Ian and Pete and Mark and Adnan were coming out on stage.

The panic stage had passed and we were deep in the throes of that happy-g-lucky euphoric stage. All four of them, except perhaps Mark, looked cool as rain up there, gazing out over the audience like none of them mattered, anyway. It was one of those moments when I felt really proud of them—not just of Ian, but of all of them, though I was really, awfully glad that a particular one of them was mine. It was the closest I ever got to sentimentality.

But instead of enjoying the rush, my attention was pulled by this other boy. “Why would I kid about something like that?” I asked. I wasn’t being sarcastic, and I wasn’t being snippy or bitter. But honestly, why would I joke about something like that? It wasn’t funny.

I realized a moment too late that he might have been kidding. He stuck out his hand. “Kyle Nielsen.”

I was annoyed to be missing the performance—Feral Children’s first performance as a legitimate band with a fancy record contract and everything—but it would have been rude not to shake hands. “Sloan McLellan.”

The first song ended, and I’d all but missed it. Adnan strummed the chords of the next, and Ian swung his guitar around his back. With nearly nothing from Mark or Pete, they began a crooning ballad for the crowds at their feet. And perhaps, yes, there were fewer people here for us than there would be for the more popular bands that went on later in the afternoon. It didn’t really matter, though. We were here.

And, of course, Kyle had to interrupt again. I didn’t understand why he had to interrupt—couldn’t he just enjoy the music? That’s what I had done when his band was up there. Even Pete had had the good grace to stew quietly. “So why are you here, then, if you’re not part of the band?” Nosy little thing, wasn’t he? At least he was being pleasant.

Tearing my eyes away from the performance, I gave Kyle my most scathing look. “Him,” I said, pointing to Ian. He really could sing remarkably well. He’d always been in the musicals in high school, and gotten slack for it, too. It was uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of “God, he’s so gay,”—and it wasn’t even me they were making the comments about. I was only the girlfriend.

Kyle made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat. I looked over at him, against my better judgment; I wanted to know what he was commenting on. Me? He shrugged in response to my look. “It just figures, you know?” I didn’t know, not really. “It’s always the lead-singer guitarist types who get the hot girl that’s willing to just tag around with their band. The drummers just have a reputation for being stupid.”

“Um, thanks?” I wasn’t sure if I was really being complimented, or if the compliment counted.
He grinned. He looked infinitely nicer when he smiled. “Hey, don’t get all upset,” he backtracked, taking my question in entirely the wrong direction. “It’s not anything personal against your pretty-boy singer up there. I’m sure he’s fine. Hell, he might even be a nice guy. But he just fits the mold.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to say.

“The problem with drumming is that they never give you anything good to work with. I mean, you’ve got your epic guitar solos, and your awesome keyboard solos if you’ve got someone awesome like Hank”—ah, so the keyboard-playing angel twin was Hank, which meant that it was Craig who played the bass—“but you’ve never got any epic drum solos. Nobody wants to listen to an epic drum solo.”

I shrugged. “Pete tried to write one in, but it didn’t work anywhere.”

“Who the fuck is Pete?”

“Our drummer.”

Kyle laughed and put his hand on my shoulders, so I was facing him. “Let me tell you something, Sloan.” I wasn’t sure I liked the way he said my name, and I was absolutely sure I didn’t like the way he was touching me. His hands were too big and too warm against my bare skin. It was disconcerting. “Your drummer sucks shit. It’s the sad, sad truth. Your bassist is pretty good, and the guitarists aren’t terrible. But that drummer should be shot right now.”

“Pete is fine,” I snapped. Clearly I didn’t like this Kyle creature at all, not if I was defending Pete to him. I hated Pete, for the most part. But hating Pete was sort of like hating your brother: it was well and fine for you to hate him, and it was well and fine for you to bash him as much as you could. But as soon as someone else started to pick on your brother? Look out, because the shit was going to hit the fan. Nobody else is allowed to bash on my drummer, as much as I may loathe him

But Kyle merely shook his head, like I was some simple, stubborn child who refused to see reason. Maybe I had known him for less than twenty-four hours but I knew infuriating when I saw it, and this boy was infuriating.

So I sighed a loud sigh and said, “Do you really have to be here right now? Don’t you have a band that’s looking for you?” Come on, angel twins. Don’t let me down now. You know you want your pain-in-the-ass drummer. Come looking for him.

He laughed. Like his smile, his laugh was nice. It wasn’t quite nice enough, though, to make me forget how much I would have liked him gone, so I could listen as Mark opened the fifth (or was it sixth?) song. We’d been here for quite some while. “Keel and Dave are probably sucking face somewhere, and the wonder twins don’t ever really look for me. They have their conjoined brains to keep them occupied.”

I had to confess, I was impressed with his “wonder twins” terminology. If I had known them for as long as he clearly had, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep up the “angel twins” reference in my mind, let alone aloud. His snarky rudeness far surpassed mine.

So I sighed another loud sigh and said, “Well, then could you please go away? I’m really trying to listen?”

He laughed and ruffled my hair. I really disliked having my hair ruffled. I jerked out of his grip. “Don’t do that,” I snapped. But he heaved himself off the fencepost like it was some huge trial—at least I was getting somewhere with all of this. Not that any of it mattered, anyway.

We’d reached an intermission—Ian was already off the stage, Mark was half gone, and Pete and Adnan were following. I’d missed an entire half a show talking to this asshat. I hoped the angel twins set him on fire.

“Do you know what, Sloan?” he asked me as he backed away, an impossible cocky look on his face. I hated cocky boys, I really did. And here was one of those boys—not necessarily one who always got what he wanted, but one that liked to act like he always got what he wanted. It was annoying and immature and I didn’t have to deal with that crap. I married a guy who didn’t give me any of that crap. That was a “get out of jail free” card if I’d ever seen one.

“What?” I asked tiredly.

He grinned that nice grin again. “I think I like you,” he told me. He was rapidly backing away.

“I’m taken,” I yelled after him. His smile was infectious.

“Not a permanent state of affairs,” he argued.

He was almost swallowed up by the throng of people, now. “I’m married,” I called.

For half a second he faltered, and his smile dropped. But then he pasted it back in place. “Not a permanent state of affairs.”