The pact

That evening Tony, Vic and I had a perfect afternoon at the fair. We didn't talk much about school, mostly just about fun subjects. Vic and Tony could get along very well too. They had the same kind of humour and music taste. I was very happy I had Tony back in my life, I had missed him so much. But he made me think about the other two friends I had lost two weeks ago and that made me quite sad. It was kind of disappointing that Jaime didn't even try to contact me. Mike was so stubborn, I didn't expect him to come to me, but it was still not nice that he didn't.
Tony had asked Vic and I to come over to his house the day after. So the next day me and Vic were walking our daily way from school to home, but this time we went in the direction of Tony's house.
I noticed that Vic was nervous, although he tried really hard not to let it show. It wasn't weird of course. He hadn't had friends for years and now he had two. When we first studied together he had been really nervous too. I think he was just afraid to mess things up.
I giggled at him nervously scratching his head and him being mad at me for laughing at him.
When we arrived at Tony's house, we rang the doorbell and Tony opened the door. We walked up to Tony's familiar room and I let myself fall on the blue sheets, making myself at home. Tony went to sit in the chair by his desk and he took out his acoustic guitar from the corner like he always did. Wherever Tony went, was his guitar. He started playing silently.
Vic stood awkwardly in the door opening, not sure what to do. I laughed at him and grabbed his hand, dragging him to the bed. He went to sit next to me.
He gave me small smile and my insides went crazy.
''Do you play?'' Tony asked Vic, nodding his head to his guitar.
Vic shook his head. ''No, I wish I did though.''
''I can teach you if you want to.'' Tony said as he started playing dammit by blink-182 without looking at his guitar.
Vic smiled widely. ''Yeah, I would love that. I have always wanted to learn it. ''
''Okay, I'll learn you sometime, it's harder than it looks though. But as long as you're not tone-deaf, you can learn it.'' Tony said and he shrugged.
I chuckled. ''Believe me. He is not tone-deaf.'' I said poking my elbow into Vic's rib. He blushed.
''What am I missing?'' Tony said confused but smiling.
''Vic is an amazing singer.'' I said.
''You sing?!'' Tony asked enthusiastically. ''Singing is a gift, man. You're lucky if you have a good voice.''
''Well, Luna says I'm good, and I believe her, but I think she is exaggerating it a little.'' Vic said.
I groaned and rolled my eyes. ''I'm not! He is really good.''
''Okay well there's only one way to find out.'' Tony said with his plectrum between his teeth. ''What voice type do you have?''
Vic raised an eyebrow. ''What do you mean?''
Tony took the plectrum out of his mouth. ''There a six voice types. Three are for women and three are for men. The three for men are bass, the lowest, baritone, the middle one, and tenor, the highest one.''
Vic looked confused and didn't say anything. Tony chuckled.
''I think he is a tenor.'' I said. ''He sings pretty high.''
''I guess I'm a tenor.'' Vic said like he didn't have a clue about what he was talking about. I chuckled.
Tony grabbed his capo and put it on his guitar. ''Alright well, I think you can pull of Iris by the goo goo dolls if you sing it higher as the original. Do you know the song?''
Vic nodded and then Tony started playing. God I love this song. After a short intro Vic started singing. He started off a little shaky, but as the song went on he got comfortable. It honestly sounded amazing. The combination of Tony's guitar and Vic's voice just gave me Goosebumps over my arms. God, music was such a beautiful thing.
When the song ended I looked at them with my mouth hanging open. “Holy fuck! That was amazing!”
Tony and Vic laughed at my enthusiasm.
‘’But in all seriousness, dude. You’re really fucking great.’’ Tony said as he put down his guitar.
Vic smiled. ‘’Thank you. You’re pretty fucking awesome yourself too.’’
Tony smiled his cute enthusiastic smile like only he could do. ‘’Thanks! You guys should see us at junior prom! The songs we’ve prepared are so great!’’
Vic and I looked at each other and then looked back at Tony with guilt. ‘’Tony, we were not planning on coming.’’ I said.
Disappointment washed over his still boyish face. ‘’What? Why not?’’ I felt guilty. He probably really wanted us to see him perform.
‘’Tone, everyone at school either bullies or ignores us. We’ve no one to ‘party ‘ with. And it’s also on Vic’s birthday, so yeah we’re going to this open stage things and before that we’re going to eat cake with his parents and grandma.’’ I said.
‘’Are you kidding me? Junior prom is on your birthday? That’s even an even bigger reason to come! You can’t just miss junior prom. You’re going to regret that when you’re older.’’ Tony said switching looks between me and Vic.
‘’Tony, we haven’t even got dates…’’ Vic said.
‘’Go together!’’ Tony said like he just revealed the biggest plot twist ever. When he saw us both turn red he added: ‘’I mean as friends. Lots of people do that. You don’t need other people to have fun. Just have fun together! I’m just going to decide for you guys: you are coming. I won’t take no for an answer.’’
I looked at him with a surprised look. I had never seen him like this. Tony was normally always the one silently agreeing with everything me, Mike and Jaime came up with.
I guess he just really wanted us to be there. I looked at Vic, discussing the subject by exchanging looks. He just shrugged.
I sighed. ‘’Okay Tony, we’re coming.’’
A wide smile grew on Tony’s face and I knew we had done the right thing. ‘’You’re not gonna regret this.’’
Uhm, I was doubting that.

Have you ever noticed that every guy looks better in a suit or tuxedo? I don’t mean the ugly uniforms they wore to school back in England. No, I mean an actually good suit. I first noticed that the night of junior prom.
Vic came an hour early to my house so I could give him his gift. (I had doubted about what to give him for so long, but now I had finally found the perfect gift!) He showed up at my doorstep with his suit already on and I couldn’t help but drop my jaw. He was looking incredible handsome. I quickly closed my mouth, but he had already seen it and laughed.
I blushed. ‘’You just look good in a suit, okay?’’
He smiled at me and winked. ‘’I’m sure I’m nothing compared to you in a dress.’’
My stomach went crazy. The last few weeks we had these little flirt moments and for some reason it felt natural with Vic. But I couldn’t tell if he was serious about it or if it was just a joke to him.
I looked down at my dress. I was wearing a black, lace dress I had bought a few months ago, but had never worn. I looked back up to Vic.
‘’Oh wow, someone is in a charming mood.’’ I said as I took his hand and led him up the stairs, ignoring my parents sitting in the living room.
‘’Okay, sit down!’’ I said to Vic as we entered my room. ‘’I’m gonna give you your birthday present.’’ I said.
Vic sat down at his regular place on my bed. ‘’You know you didn’t have to buy anything.’’
I rolled my eyes. ‘’Just, shut up and be happy about it.’’ I walked over to the closet and took out his birthday present. I turned around and handed it to him.
His jaw dropped out of surprise. In my hands I held a regular acoustic guitar. I hadn’t wrapped it, because well, guitars are hard to wrap, but I had put a red bow on top of the body of the guitar. ‘’Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Victor. Happy birthday to you!’’ I sang as out of tune as I could.
He took the guitar from me, still looking surprised as he inspected every side of it. Then he looked up to me with wide eyes. I laughed. ‘’Holy fuck Luna, You are amazing! But aren’t these things like fucking expensive?’’
I sat down next to him. ‘’Yeah a lot of them are, but I bought this one from a guy never who played it, so it’s second-hand, but practically new. And now you don’t have to borrow Tony’s guitar when you have another guitar lesson from him.’’
‘’Wow, this is awesome!’’ he said. ‘’Thank you so much, Luna. You are honestly the best friend I have ever had, that’s not hard to do, but still. I love the present, but mostly I love that you spend time and effort on it. That makes me feel fucking good.’’
He looked to me and our eyes met. The tension between us was unbelievable. He was feeling this too, right? I couldn’t NOT feel it.
The moment seemed to last forever, like time had stopped. I wished he’d kiss me. I knew that if he’d kiss me, than I’d be sure about how I felt about him. It would silence the voices in my head telling me to run away from love.
My eyes went to his lips and his eyes went to my lips. For a moment I actually thought it was happening, until the alarm on my alarm clock went off. I put it on so we wouldn’t forget to go to prom. We had the tendency to forget about time.
The tension broke and we looked away. ‘’We should go.’’ I said my voice shaking.
He just nodded and stood up. Had this really almost happened? I couldn’t believe it.

We drove to school in Mr Fuentes’ car, Vic had gotten his driver’s license two weeks ago. We were both silent the first few moments in the car, but then blink-182 came on the radio and we forget about all the awkwardness from first and started singing along really loud.
When we arrived at school, I had almost forgotten about the ‘almost kiss’.
The gymnasium looked like someone had thrown every cliché high school movie at the walls and painted it with glitter. It almost made me gag. Me and Vic made fun about it the whole night.
The night itself was pretty great though. At first Vic didn’t want to dance, but I practically forced him by dragging him on the dance floor. At the end of the night we were both dancing like idiots, but we didn’t care, because we had fun. There had been a slow song and we did slow dance together, but I didn’t expect him to kiss me and he didn’t. We had just danced the whole song with my head laying on his shoulder and it was perfect.
There was also no one who yelled names at us or made fun of us in another way. Some of them stared at us, but no one actually did anything. I was grateful that they gave us this night off. I was sure I was going to regret all of this if they’d ruin Vic’s birthday.
At eleven o’clock I started wondering where the hell Tony, Mike and Jaime were. There had been a lot of bands and artist who had performed, but I really wanted to see them. Tony had told me that they were second to perform, but as the first performance ended, they were not there. And the second band past, and the third band, and the fourth. They had to be last.
Half an hour before the end of the night, I suddenly saw Tony struggle himself through the crowd, coming our way. He looked stressed.
‘’Dude, we need you, right now.’’ He said. he took Vic’s hand and dragged him away without saying anything to me.
Suddenly I was standing alone in the middle of the dancing crowd and I wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

Mike’s POV
I nervously bit my nails. Where the fucking hell was Jaime? We needed him, we couldn’t just perform without our bassist and singer.
Tony was walking up and down the classroom, pulling at his hair. This was our first performance ever, well if you don’t count party’s I had thrown or birthdays. This was different. Everyone at our school took school dances serious and the people who performed at them were actually good. This was our chance to show the school that we weren’t just a group of stupid freshmen.
Then Jaime walked through the door. He looked like a walking corpse. His face was incredibly white comparing to the black jacket of his tuxedo.
‘’What the fuck, Jaime?! We had to perform an hour ago! Prom is almost over now!’’ I yelled at him and Tony stopped walking to join us.
Jaime sighed. ‘’I know, I just…’’ He said. He sounded even worse than he looked. ‘’I just got ill and well, you guys can probably hear it, I can’t sing like this. I was at home trying to find replacement, but no one was able to perform in such a short period of time.’’
This wasn’t happening. He must’ve been fucking kidding me. I wanted to punch something. ‘’Fuck.’’ I said instead. ‘’Why haven’t you called us? Or tried to find someone sooner?’’
Tony was staying silent. I wanted him to say something. I know he didn’t like it to be angry, but it made me feel like I was alone in this.
‘’I didn’t feel good all day, but my voice was alright until I woke up this afternoon from a nap and it was like this.’’ He said gesturing to his throat. ‘’I immediately started calling people, but it was no use.’’
A silence fell. Tony was the one who broke it. ‘’We just need a singer, right? You can still play bass, right?’’
Jaime raised an eyebrow. ‘’It doesn’t matter how shitty I feel, I can always play bass.’’
Suddenly a smile grew on Tony’s face. Thank fucking god, he had an idea.
‘’I have an idea.’’ Tony said confirming my thoughts. ‘’But you guys aren’t going to like it.’’
‘’Tell us!’’ I shouted him as he stopped talking.
‘’I know a replacement.’’
‘’and that person will be able to perform in such a short time? We have to go on in ten minutes or never.’’ Jaime said.
Tony nodded enthusiastically. ‘’I told him all the songs in our set, he knows all of them. And he’s a junior, so he is already here.’’
I was going through all the juniors in my head. I couldn’t think of someone we knew who could sing.
‘’And he can sing?’’ I asked suspiciously.
‘’He is amazing. One of the best singers I have heard in a while.’’ Tony said and he started walking towards the door. ‘’I’m just going to get him.’’ He said and he disappeared.
This kid better be good. We can’t afford to fuck up. I trusted Tony, though. He was one of the best musician’s I knew. If he said that he found someone good, then I trusted him with that.
After a few minutes Tony entered the classroom again, dragging someone in behind him. It was Vic.
My stomach dropped. Why was Tony pulling such a joke in this stressful situation? I tried to contain myself, but looked at my older brother with a disgusted look.
‘’Tony, what kind of fucked up joke is this?’’ I asked.
‘’Look Mike, I told you that you weren’t gonna like it, but he is really fucking good and we don’t have a choice.’’
‘’Yes, we have. We don’t have to perform.’’ I said looking at Vic. He looked really confused.
Jaime stood up from the table he was sitting on and joined us. ‘’Mike, ten minutes ago you said you would do anything to perform here and now we have a chance to and you just wing it?’’
‘’You’re at his side?!’’ I almost yelled at him, pointing at Vic and Tony. They didn’t understand. No one did. They didn’t know what had happened between me and my brother. I never told them, because it hurt too much.
‘’I’m not at anyone’s side. I just want to perform.’’ Jaime said a bit insulted. ‘’We need him to sing for us.’’
Vic’s eyes went big. ‘’What? You guys want me to sing for you? In front of all those people? I can’t do that! I’ve never done anything like that before.’’ He sounded scared.
Tony sighed. ‘’Come on Vic. This is really important to us. Jaime can’t sing right now and you’re the only person who can help us right now. Please.’’
Vic remained silent for a while, but then nodded. ‘’Okay.’’
‘’No fucking way.’’ I said. ‘’If he performs, I don’t.’’ I said and I pointed towards Vic and then in my chest.
Then Vic looked at me. ‘’Mike, I know you are mad at me. You have all right to be. You need to know that I never wanted to hurt you. But you need to think about your priorities right now. If you don’t perform, Jaime and Tony can’t perform either and then you’ll break their dream too. You guys have worked hard to get to this point. I might not talk to you guys, but I have heard you guys talk about this for months. Music is your life, Mike. Don’t let someone like me ruin it for you. Otherwise you’ll never get there.’’
I wanted to shout him. Tell him to fuck off and to never speak to me again. I knew it was bullshit that he didn’t want to hurt me, he hurt me on purpose. Also I thought he was being incredibly hypocritical by acting like a good big brother and give me his stupid advice that he always used to give me. It made me realise how much I missed the bond I had with him, but that bond was never coming back.
But he was right. Music was my life. Drumming was the only thing that made me feel alive and listening to music was like a drug to me. I shouldn’t let him ruin this chance for me and for the boys.
I looked at my shoes while I was going through the little options that I had. Eventually I sighed. ‘’alright. But if you ruin this, I’ll ruin you.’’ I said to Vic and a smile grew on his face. I hated his smile. It meant that he had won. ‘’We do smells like teen spirit, all the small things, kryptonite and runaway. In that order.’’
I walked towards the door. The boys and Vic followed me.
‘’He’s a tenor though.’’ Said Tony. ‘’So we probably need to play them in a higher key.’’
‘’We can do that.’’ Jaime said. ‘’But we really need to hurry up now.’’
As we walked towards the stage, I realised what was happening. I knew what the consequences were going to be. But music was more important to me than my reputation.
I looked to my left to Vic. He shot me a small smile and I gave him one back. What the hell was I doing?

Luna’s POV
‘’So here we have the youngest performers of this night.’’ I heard principal Larson say. ‘’They’re only freshmen, give a warm applause for Mike Fuentes, Jaime Preciado and Tony Perry.’’
I let out the breath I was holding in. They were going to perform, everything was okay. Only then I noticed how bad Jaime looked. That was probably the reason why they were so late.
Mike went to sit behind his drums and I noticed that he looked kind of strange.
Jaime walked over to the left end of the stage. Why wasn’t he standing behind the microphone? What was going on?
Then Tony walked over to the mic and spoke in it. ‘’Hi guys, Uhm we were a little bit late because we had some trouble. Look, normally our bassist Jaime is our singer’’ he pointed towards Jaime. ‘’But he has a huge cold and he can’t sing. So we found a replacement for him. He is a good singer, but he hasn’t practiced with us yet and he heard only five minutes ago that he was going to perform, so be easy on him if he forgets the words or something.’’
Everyone around me looked confused. Then Tony moved to the right side of the stage and an extremely uncomfortable Vic walked on stage. I saw the fright in his eyes and his hands were shaking, but he made it look like he knew what he was doing.
Everyone was quiet. The tension was felt around the room and no one exactly knew what to do.
I couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. It did explain why Mike looked so weird. I was surprised he even agreed to it.
Vic walked over to the mic. He took a breath and nodded to the guys. The guitar riff of ‘smells like teen spirit’ filled the room. Then Mike and Jaime joined in.
No one moved in the room. It was like everyone was frozen.
Then Vic started singing. His voice suited the song amazing. At first he looked extremely nervous, but as the song went on he seemed to ease in to it. He even kind off screamed in the chorus. I didn’t know he could do that!
I moved myself through the crowd to get to the stage. I saw Jaime and Mike exchange surprised looks. They probably haven’t heard Vic before.
As the second chorus came on people slowly started dancing again. I guess people got over the shock and just wanted to dance. I, at the other hand, was still completely shocked.
At the end of the song everyone was dancing wildly to the song. I couldn’t blame them, they sounded amazing.
Then they started playing all the small things by blink-182. I started dancing to it, I loved the song so much.
Vic saw me in the crowd and made a ‘I don’t know what’s happening either’ gesture with his hands. I laughed and put up my dumb to him. He smiled.
Then they started to play kryptonite. This song made me think about all the times I spend with Vic in the bus. We had listened to this song so much.
By this time people had seemed to forget that Vic was singing and everyone was dancing like nothing had happened. I was happy for that. I looked over to the group of Ryan, Peter and Jessie. They stood still and didn’t dance, but they didn’t said anything. They were just not amused.
After they had played runaway, what was supposed to be their last song, I saw Tony whispering something to Mike and Jaime and then to Vic. They all nodded and Tony took the mic to say: ‘’Okay, this was supposed to be our last song, but we’re going to play one last song for you guys. I have practised this one with Vic before and it’s a slow one, so yeah.’’ He took off his electric guitar and plugged his acoustic guitar in.
Then the beautiful melody of ‘Iris’ by the goo goo dolls filled the room. I sighed. The song sounded even more beautiful with Jaime’s bass and Mike’s soft drum beat.
I looked over to Vic and saw that he was looking at me.

‘’And I'd give up forever to touch you
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't wanna go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
When sooner or later it's over
I just don't wanna miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am’’

For a moment I believed he was singing it to me. He kept looking me in the eyes during this part the entire time and happiness flooded through my veins.
He looked away after this and looked into the crowd. I knew he wanted to sing this part to everyone else. I suddenly realised how the words matched his story.

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive

I looked around and everyone seem hypnotised. To be honest it’s hard not to be hypnotised by this song.
The song came to an end and everyone started clapping. Some people even started cheering. Look, this is why I loved music. It brought people together. During a beautiful song, everyone’s heart was beating at the same rhythm and everyone seemed to forget about their sorrow. That was the power of music.
Jaime, Mike, Tony and Vic looked like they had just won the lottery. I almost saw them realising how much they loved to perform. And they were good at it. Ecstasy was on their faces.
I started clapping and cheering too, maybe even the loudest of everyone. I didn’t realise that I had just watched the first performance of pierce the veil. No one knew back then that these guys were going to achieve way bigger things than playing at junior prom. And this night was a turning point for them.

Notes

okay, so some parts of this chapter are awesome and some parts are crap, but I hope you guys like it.

Sorry I haven't updated as soon as I normally do. My computer had a virus and I had to download word all over again :')

but okay, here it is.. What do you guys think?

subscribe, comment and vote but only if you want to ;)

xxxxx

Nicky