14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Silas
I wake with a jolt, horrified, because I think I may have actually pissed myself. My pants are soaked and stick to my body like a wet rag.
And then I breathe a sigh of relief because it’s just from the waves: I must have fallen asleep for long enough that the tide rose a good few feet and now it’s lapping up to my thighs, drenching my lower body.
I pat the pocket of my jeans frantically and, thank God, the water hasn’t reached my ass yet. The seat of my pants is a little damp but not soaked, and my phone in my back pocket is dry. I take it out and stumble to my feet when I see the time. It’s twenty past midnight, and I was supposed to be in the backstage area at midnight to start tear-down and loading.
I reach down to retrieve my backpack and the bottle of vodka. The backpack is fine: wet, but at least there . But the bottle is not. I walk in circles, skimming the beach around the spot where I was sitting. But it’s nowhere to be found; obviously washed out with the tide.
That bottle was three-quarters full.
I kick at the wooden post because seriously: come on . This week has sucked enough already; can I not just catch a break for one lousy night?
But I’m already twenty minutes late now and I need to split. I sling the backpack over my shoulder and head toward the festival grounds. My soaked jeans cling to my calves and every step feels water-logged. Also, everything around me is out of focus: the horizon line a little off kilter and the lights from the amusement park harsh and blurry and kind of nauseating. I have to slow my pace because it’s a struggle not to just fall back into the sand and fall asleep .
After what feels like an eternity, I reach the festival grounds. The crowds are gone and now there are just small patches of people in clumps of twos and threes, packing up and pulling down wires, and a few scattered vendors counting money and closing up shop. I make my way over to the stage area, which is the busiest spot, and nod at Steve (the head roadie who hired me), when he beckons me over with a wave. He’s coiling a cable around his hairy forearm, but he stops and watches me as I make my way over.
“You’re late,” he says as soon as I reach him. He scrutinizes me with eyes that look like they miss nothing. He’s one of those guys who looks like he could be forty or he could be seventy-five. And I can’t tell if he’s a hippie or a biker-dude—he could be either. Maybe he’s both.
“Yeah.” I meet his harsh gaze head-on. “I’m really sorry, man. It won’t happen again.”
“No. It won’t,” he growls. “Caus if it does, you’re out of a job.”
I can tell he means it, too. I apologize again because I need this gig more than I need my right arm.
He nods. “Go collect the rest of those wires by the monitor and pile’em in the trunk backstage.”
“Sure thing.” I slide my backpack off my shoulder and drop it by the stairs before crossing over to the large monitor. I swear the stage is spinning. Like, bad .
I’m almost done coiling the chord when Steve calls over to me again.
“Hey kid! Get back here!”
I turn, still gripping the loop of cable in my left hand.
“You’re drunk,” Steve says, his tone flat and his eyes boring into me like a hammer-drill as I clear the distance between us.
I swallow hard. “I swear I haven’t been dr—”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, boy.”
I am totally off my game tonight. And yeah, I may have drunk a little more than my usual concoction, but I also needed it a little more, too. I don’t like the memories that seeing Jackie has stirred up and I’m going for an offensive approach here. I’ve learned the hard way that getting sucked into defense mode is a surefire way to get buried alive .
“Look at you… You’re a mess.” He gestures to my legs with his chin. “What’s that all over your pants?”
“Just water.”
He quirks a bushy eyebrow at me like he thinks I’m still bullshitting him.
“I fell asleep in the ocean,” I explain. “I mean, under the pier… The tide came up.”
I’m tanking so bad right now. And I need to save my ass, not sink deeper. “Look, I’m really sorry. This won’t—”
“How old are you, anyway?” He cocks his head, one eye narrowed. “You even eighteen?”
“Yes, sir.”
I told him when he hired me, I was eighteen. I can’t renege now.
He tucks a toothpick between his teeth, so I’m guessing he’s more biker than hippie. Which, even in my inebriated state, I realize does not bode well for me.
“Don’t ‘yes sir’ me.” He flicks the toothpick stealthily to the other corner of his mouth. “‘Specially not if you’re gonna lie straight to my face.”
“I’m not lying.”
But man, I sound defensive. I sound angry .
“Bull. Shit.” He gives me a final once-over, then leans down and starts folding one of about five guitar stands. “You’re done, kid.”
He starts on another one, not even looking at me. “I got no time for this teenage-attitude crap.”
Wait — did he… Did Steve just fire me? After not even two days?
I sidestep the stack of guitar stands. “Look, I swear this won’t happen again. I really need this job… I need the money.”
I’m trying to sound remorseful, but it still comes off angry. But what the hell? Why does this guy care if I’m a little sauced, as long as I get the job done? And I can get the job done. I could coil a bunch of cables and load gear into a truck drunk off my ass and high. This isn’t exactly rocket-science stuff.
“If you need the money so bad, maybe you shouldn’t have blown your first pay gettin’ wasted,” Steve drawls .
I can hardly tell him that’s exactly what I need the money for . That definitely would make me sound like a full-fledged wino.
“I’m not wasted. I just—”
“Wrong answer, buddy.”
I roll my eyes. “Come on, man. I didn’t—”
“You’re done.” Steve shoots me a hard look. “Now get out of my hair. I got shit to do.”
I watch him for a second. “You’re serious.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, with an expression that makes it pretty damn clear he isn’t messing around.
“Shit!” I hurl the cable across the stage and it skids right over the edge, landing a few feet away on the grass. I grab my backpack and stalk across the stage in the opposite direction.
Just as I reach the stairs, I’m yanked to a sudden stop. I stumble and start to go down, but Steve steadies me with one hand while he keeps the back of my T-shirt clutched in his other meaty fist.
“You better be going over to pick up that cable you just threw,” he growls.
I whirl around, my palm slamming against his chest.
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
He knocks my arm away, but doesn’t look even mildly alarmed. Dude is a beast: taller than me and at least twice as wide. “Pick up the cable and put it by the amp,” he repeats.
“Fuck you.”
He’s not my boss anymore. He’s no one . And in that moment, I hate him. I resent him because of the power he holds over me. This middle-aged biker wannabe is the gatekeeper to my only means of escape from a summer of sleepless nights. Or the even more embarrassing alternative: a string of endless nightmares.
“You really want to mess with me?” he asks, eyes ice-hard. He leans in even closer, and I can smell the coffee on his breath. “Now think real hard before you answer that, kid.”
We hold what feels like a ten-minute stare-down .
It’s probably five seconds.
I finally cave, though, and turn on my heel. I head for the stairs again, and I hear him right behind me. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going to pick up that cable. I refuse, on principle, to do anything out of intimidation. And yeah, the guy is intimidating; with his behemoth size and hard-as-rock stare and that dirty bandana tied around his forehead—but I’ve had my lights knocked out a time or two or twenty. And I’ve done my share of knocking out. Safe to say, I stopped being scared of a few fists flying a long time ago.
“You better not be planning to walk away from me, boy.”
He sounds like the villain in a bad 80s movie. I would laugh if I wasn’t still so pissed about the fact that he just fired my ass.
I hold up my middle finger as I stroll in the opposite direction of the cable, toward the small sea of campers. And I’m using the term “stroll” lightly here: pretty sure I’m actually swaying; stumbling and swaying and cursing my bad luck.
“Punk-ass kid,” I hear Steve mutter behind me, a few feet away. And then two seconds later, I’m flat on the ground, arm twisted behind my back with a heavy knee holding me down.
This guy does not mess around.
The sudden impact sends my stomach up into my chest, and I’m about five seconds from spewing my supper. Only, yeah: I didn’t have supper… so that just leaves the whoopie pie. I curse at Steve, and he tugs a little harder on my wrist. It feels like my arm is going to pop right out of its socket.
I can see a few of the other roadies in my peripheral vision. They’ve all paused what they’re doing to peer over at us: the fat old guy roughing up the tardy drunk kid.
“You march your ass back over there and pick up that cable,” Steve growls in my ear. “Otherwise, I’ll be makin’ a call to the police to report you for underage drinkin’ and disorderly conduct.”
He says police like it’s two words: “Poh-Leece”. I’ve never heard anyone talk like that except in movies. Seriously: it’s like this guy walked straight off a B-grade movie set straight into my sorry life .
“Am. I. Clear?”
His voice sounds far away, now… His knee is digging into my already bashed-up lower back; against my bruised ribs. I’m definitely going to throw up, possibly from the pain more than from the liquor. I try to twist my body, but all it does is tug my T-shirt half-way up my back. I can feel the breeze on my bare skin and the flattened grass scratching against my stomach.
“Jesus…” I hear him mutter, and his grip slackens just a bit. “What the hell happened to your…”
His voice trails off. It sounds like he’s underwater. It feels like I’m underwater: the stage lights blur together, in and out of focus, and the guys over by the beer tent smudge into a hazy blob.
“My fucking uncle happened to me,” I think.
Only I may have said it out loud.
Crap. I hope I didn’t say it out loud.
I hope I don’t pass out. It feels like I might…
…pass out.