|June 2014|

---

Start living again so they can start feeling alive again.

I stared at the beautiful black Taylor acoustic guitar that belongs to my brother. I don’t know what I can do. Fans are expecting something else after releasing The listening, but I don’t know what else to write. My brain is too fried to write new material. I’m not even done with my second album.

Without Mauire and Adam (And a freaking studio), I can’t think right. I need a floor plan. I need my home.

Sighing in defeat, I roll over on the couch and lay upside, staring at the brown carpet floor. Scout is right. For the past six months, I haven’t really been living life and I need to in order to keeps thousands of others alive.

“Hey,” I let my eyes travel up (or down,) to see David standing before me.

“Hi.”

“We just stop and Adrian needs an extra hand with the merch and I was wondering if you would help.” I let my attention avert to my brother’s beat up Vans.

You need to live this year

I took a deep breath and nodded my head.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I sat straight up and stared at him. My heart felt all weird and warm inside as the corner of his lips began to pull upward in a smile.

“Be ready, Tyler, you and I are going out for breakfast. First day of tour is always hectic.”

---

“I mean, dude, she was a self-centered whore. What do you expect?” I tighten my grip on the steering wheel as David and Tyler continued to argue about Tyler’s ex-girlfriend. Apparently ‘Jess’ is a blonde with huge boobs and green eyes who used to date Tyler. After she found out Tyler was bisexual, she began to persuade the idea of a threesome with another ‘bisexual’ guy and in the end, she got to fuck two guys.

“Come on Tyler, you gotta give her more credit.” I said, cutting a glance at him as we entered the parking lot. The first bus in sight was for The Story So Far. “She was smart enough to think it through,” I said. Because in reality, she was.

“Well, I mean, yeah. I could, but then again, I think, oooo, maybe not.” I rolled my eyes. I turned the steering wheel towards the back entrance. I just have to thank Issues’ manager for getting us a rental car.

“Was it good?” David ask. I rolled my eyes. Idiot.

“You two have no self-” I couldn’t finish my sentence when I saw the body collide with the car. All I heard was the thump. I slammed the brakes so hard, my hair blocked my vision as it flew all over. The body rolled over the top of the car until it landed with another thump on the ground.
David went silent.

With panic coursing through my veins and my heart pounding out of control, I looked over at Tyler who was rubbing his hands down his face. It remained quiet for a few minutes.

“Was that Michael?” He finally asked as he stopped biting his nails to look my way. I folded my lips in to keep them from trembling, but forcefully nodded my head. “Ah, this is another episode of Jarrod.” He mumbled as he got out the car.

I copy his actions, unbuckling the seatbelt, and following him.

Michael lay sprawled out on the gravel road beneath us. His leg was bent in one place and his arm was sprawled in another. His shirt was torn and the impact knocked his hat clean off.

“Is he okay?” Tyler asked. David keeled down and pressed two fingers to his neck.

“He’s breathing.” We both let a sigh of relief. That took like maybe, 1% of the issue away. But we still have a body lying on the ground. “We just knocked him out cold,”

“No,” Tyler groaned. “We have to play in thirty minutes, no, no, no,”

“Have you seen Weekends at Bernie’s?” David asks out of nowhere. I turn to cut him a glare, but Tyler stars into a space before a smirk form its way on his face.

“I have seen Weekends at Bernie’s.” he replies, staring at the gate in front of him. I groan.

“Okay, how about we not.” I say. “Body here.” I motion towards Michael.

“Fine, here, let’s get him to the bus and cleaned up.” Ty nodded and proceeded with picking him up. I went to the left and threw his left arm over my shoulder. I struggled a bit, falling down as his weight became more than half my weight before Tyler and I began dragging him back to the Issues tour bus. Nearby people gave us strange looks and others (majority) took photos.

“Uh, Tyler, Ellie, David? Whacha doing?”

“Not now Alan,” Tyler and I said at the same time as we finished dragging his body. We got to the bus and David threw the door open. Thankfully, no one was on the bus, which meant they were at set. We threw his body on the couch and I fell to the floor and regained my breath. I could feel my heart pounding, I could feel the thump against my ribcage. It worried me 50% less than it should have.

“Keep your shit together.” I mumbled to my heart.

“Oh, I’m going to be in so much trouble,” Tyler huffed. He threw his hands on top of his head. But then, it hit me. What the hell is Alan doing here at Warped Tour? Unless-

“So, I gotta go. Band meeting,” David said as he began backing up towards the door.”

“What?! You-you just can’t leave me here with him!”

“I’m going to make sure the thing with the car-the car is uhm, yeah,” David closed the door and a few seconds you could hear his little feet carry him across the lot.

“Lights, you have to help me with tonight’s set.” He pleaded.

“What? No! if I do that, then fans, they’ll think I’m like making a comeback or something.” I stuttered. “And I promised David that I would help Adrian with the merch tent.”

“You just ran over one of our vocalist!” Tyler exclaimed, throwing his hands to the still knock-out Michael. “And you could fill in Nylo’s voice since we have no other female.” He looked towards me.

“Tyler,” I began. Although I did say I would take Scout’s advice, I wasn’t ready to perform on stage and give everybody the wrong assumption.

“You. Ran. Over. One. Of. Our. Vocalist.” He continued to stare at Michael.

“I haven’t screamed in almost three years.” I pleaded. “Can’t you get someone else to do it?”

“Like who?”

“Like hell I know! I don’t even know who’s on this years set!”

“Please,” I stared at Michael and then back Tyler. I did owe it to him. I ran over his vocalist. But then again he was distracting me, but then again, I have nothing else to do.

“Fine.” We fixed up his appearance and set his head straight. It lolled back to the side.

---

The rest of the day was spent dragging Michael’s body around so we could get him by the stage. We passed by some fans who wanted an autograph. I stood behind Michael and used his hands to sing the paper. The girl gave us a funny look.

We passed David who was leaning against his tour bus on his phone. When he saw us, he gave us half a smile while motioning towards Michael.

We passed by their stage manager and he too gave us a funny look. Tyler gave him a smile and then low enough for only me to hear he said: “Go, go, go, go!”

Once we got to The Journey stage, we situated him in a chair and fixed his appearance before hooking a microphone on him and running back stage.

“Here, this is what we use for sound check.” Tyler handed me the microphone.

“I know how this works. I used to be in a band.” Used to.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

I cleared my throat and did the check. “Check 1, 2. Check 1, 2. This is Lights,”

“Check 1, 2. Check 1, 2. This is Michael,” Tyler starts screaming check in a pathetic and poorly imitated version of Michael's screams. “Shit that hurts,” he muttered.

“One minute people,”

“Think we can pull this off?” Tyler asked me.

“Nope. Not at all.”

“That’s what I thought.” He handed me the microphone.

“Let’s do this!”




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Notes

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