“Fuck, that’s beautiful,” Bonnie says.
Young Decay.
Young Decay.
For a few seconds, I fumble with my phone and connect it to the speaker in the room, eventually tuning into the same before concert hype list I’d been listening to as I walked around backstage. As the first song begins, Reed claps his hands so hard that it sounds like gunfire. He jumps up and down, shakes his hair out of his face, and Bonnie joins him. Together, the pair belt out the lyrics, and Zeb and I take one more shot.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Reed says midway through the song, unable to keep his cool.
“All right, focus in,” Zeb calls our attention. He pulls a bean ball bag from his pocket, holds it up in the middle of us, and then drops it.
Reed is the first to kick it up.
And for the next four minutes, we battle to keep it off the ground.
We’ve played this game every single show for the last four years.
It’s four minutes when we can forget about the crowd waiting for us and the nerves that just won’t go away. Four minutes when we get to be carefree, as if no one knows our names.
Four minutes where we get to just…be.
By the time the stage manager comes back to walk us out, Reed and I are celebrating our team victory with high-fives.
Young Decay.
Young Decay.
We file out of the dressing room, and I hear the stage manager say, "We're walking," over his headset.
I can’t stretch my fingers far enough to ease the restlessness.
In. Out.
In. Out.
Every time they shout our names, goosebumps rise on my arms.
Reed shakes my shoulders and proceeds to jump on my back for a stretch, so damn excited that he can’t contain himself. The energy coming off him is contagious, and I run us up and down the hall once, letting him high-five and yell at everyone we pass.
He’s fucking heavy, yet I barely notice it.
An invigorating humidity surrounds the four of us when we pause together for a final time at the back of the curtains.
The lights turn completely off.
The crowd erupts.
Stage lights cascade from the sides out over the audience. Our emblem is illuminated behind Bonnie's drums.
And with the strobe lights, our intro music begins.
Young Decay.
Young Decay.
“You know I love you guys,” Reed says as we huddle. “Tonight is going to be absolute insanity. Everyone will go home after, and they won’t be able to shut up about us for the next few decades. We’ll have fucking grannies in their rocking chairs fifty years from now talking about how the best concert they ever went to was for four dumb fucks who never should have had a goddamn chance on a stage like this.”
“There’s a name we missed,” Bonnie grins. “Four Dumb Fucks.”
