Ransom(48)

It gives me a strange little rush of pride, interacting with the fans, knowing how devoted they are to the band. Even after a year away from my friends, there’s still a sense of ownership in my heart when it comes to their music. I was a part of this thing from the beginning, in my own small way. Seeing how far they’ve come is surreal.

The lobby is starting to empty, and I look down at my watch. “Ten minutes to the opener,” I tell the girls.

There are some downsides to our new job. The table is busiest right before and right after the show, meaning we no longer get to hang out in the dressing room with the guys at either of those points. Karen and Paige are pretty mollified, however, by the fact that we’re now traveling on the bus.

I might have argued with this set-up when it was first mentioned by Levi, but he was smart. He told me when the girls were present, knowing I’d be unable to put a wet blanket over their excitement. Actually, excitement is probably an understatement. They went nuts.

“We get to travel on the tour bus? Like, with the band?” Paige asked, her normally pale skin several shades whiter.

“Well, you might be on the crew bus. We’ll have to see which has more open bunks.” Levi paused. “Are you disappointed?”

Karen gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Then there had been a lot of screaming and jumping and hugging. It hurt my ears, but Levi just laughed.

“Don’t you think about arguing with me,” he said, pointing at me. “This is procedure. If you’re working for us, you travel with us. Period.”

“Levi—”

“I mean it, Daisy. Every single person who works on this tour is in the bus. It’s part of your contract. We don’t pay great, but we do provide room and board.”

By that point, Karen was practically crying with excitement, shrieking that her life was turning into the movie Almost Famous. How could I argue with that? So Levi put Paige’s car into storage and moved our things onto the bus. At first, they talked about putting us onto the second bus, the one for the roadies, tour manager, and Mr. Ransome, but there weren’t enough bunks left for all three of us. We ended up sleeping about two feet away from one of the fastest rising rock bands in the country. And Levi, of course, but I don’t think he was the reason Paige and Karen could hardly sleep at night from excitement.

I think I may even be enjoying it more than they are, if that’s possible. Of course, my reasons are different. It doesn’t really matter to me that the guys are famous or that half the girls in America would be insanely jealous of us. That’s not what puts such a big smile on my face every morning when I wake up and remember where I am.

I feel like I’m home. I know that’s kind of cheesy, but my dad moved from the house I grew up in shortly after I entered Horizons. I can’t say I blame him. That house was full of nothing but terrible, heartbreaking memories. Without me there to finish my senior year, there wasn’t really much point in staying.

After I was released from Horizons, I went straight to the apartment off campus. I went to his place for two awkward days at Christmas, but sleeping on a futon in the guest room of his new downtown condo could hardly be counted on as being home.

Here with the Ransome boys, I feel like I’ve finally regained a little bit of the home that I left behind. I laugh with them, much more than I’ve laughed all year. I don’t eat alone anymore, either. Instead, my days are filled with listening to them practice, playing video games with whichever ones are free, joking and teasing and working. For the first time in ages, I have a real life, not the cold shadow of one that I lived for so long.

“How’s it going?” Levi is squeezing his way around the small side table that we use to hold equipment and to keep people out of our space. “Good haul tonight?”

Paige leans against the wall. “Crazy. Bigger than last night.”

Levi rubs the back of his head. “I think word was getting out that our lines were too long. People didn’t want to wait so long. Now that it’s getting better, our profits will only grow.”

“So what you’re saying,” Karen says, “is that we’re incredibly valuable, and you can’t imagine how you lived without us for so long.”

He nods solemnly. “Oh, absolutely.”

I turn to deal with a last, straggling customer. Through the doors to the theater, I can hear the opener start and the crowd ramping up in response.

“Guess that’s our cue,” I say, depositing the customer’s twenty into the cash box. “Time to load up.”

“I don’t see why we have to load this all up just to unload it when the show’s over,” Karen mutters, bending to open a box.