We’d talk a lot during school, laugh together, and sometimes I’d catch her looking at me the way I looked at her, and I’d think maybe, just maybe, she felt the same way. I never said anything, because I didn’t want to mess things up. I didn’t want to make it awkward if she didn’t feel the same.
A soft knock on my door told me that either my mom already sensed something was wrong, or one of my siblings ratted me out.
“Eric?” She called from the other side of the door. “Are you alright?”
I groaned in response, not bothering to remove my face from my pillow.
“I’m coming in, okay?” When I didn’t protest, I heard the knob turn and the door click open. The mattress shifted under her weight as she sat on the bed beside me. “Bad day?” she asked.
I made another non-committal noise into my pillow.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, rubbing my back in soothing circles, like she had been doing since I was a baby. “I might have something to turn that frown upside down.” I turned my head enough to peek at her with one eye, intrigued, and she chuckled. “Whenever you feel up to it, come downstairs.”
It took me a while to snap myself out of my depressive spiral, but eventually, I got up off my bed, removed my backpack, and met my mom downstairs in the kitchen. She was standing at the island, peeling potatoes for dinner.
She looked up at me and smiled.
“Can you go downstairs and see if your dad needs help?” she asked.
“He’s home already?” I asked. She nodded. “What’s he doing?”
“I can’t remember. He said he didn’t need help, but based on how long he’s been down there, I have a feeling he might.”
I turned around, opened the door to the basement, and stopped dead as I rounded the corner at the bottom of the steps. Blinkingseveraltimes, my mouth dropped open, unable to believe what I was seeing in front of me—a brand new, black, six-piece DW drum kit.
I wasn’t naïve. I knew drums weren’t cheap. My mom had been a nurse, but stayed home after my siblings and I were born, and my dad worked at a small company in town as an accountant. With my brother playing every sport known to man and my sister in dance, we weren’t exactly rolling in money. I didn’t even want to think about how long they’d been saving up for this.
I felt my mom’s presence behind me, and I swallowed the tightness in my throat.
“You…you guys got me a drum kit?” I finally managed to stammer, my voice breaking from excitement. I didn’t even try to hide the tears that filled my eyes.
“Mr. Joe said it was time,” she said, shrugging. I made a mental note to hug the man who I’d been taking lessons from for the last year and a half the next time I saw him.
I scrambled to sit in the throne, and as soon as I did, it felt like I was finally home. I’d been playing on a practice pad after my lessons for eighteen months, and I had to pinch myself before I really believed that I was finally sitting behind a full kit.Mykit.
I spent the next few hours locked in the basement, pounding out simple patterns, my heart racing with joy every time the drumheads vibrated under my sticks. I didn’t care about the noise, or how many times my siblings came down to tell me I was annoying or beg me to stop. I didn’t care about anything except the fact that I was playing—that I was living the dream I’d held onto for so long.
In that moment, through my pre-teen angst, I made a vow. I was going to be somebody someday. I was going to be so famous that Andrea Smith would look back on this day andwishshe’d kissed me on purpose.
FIFTEEN
Ty
? Stay – Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko ?
Two weeks.
That’s how long I got to be part of Velvet Shadows’ tour before I died.
Alright so obviously I didn’tdie, but it feels like I am indeed on death’s doorstep as I lay in my bed in the back of the RV, willing death to stop messing around and just come for me already.
I don’t even know how I got sick. No one else on this tour is sick. Cold and flu season is well past us, and even then, I wasn’tthissick. I’ve been fighting a fever for thirteen hours, and my entire body feels like this RV backed over me several times.
I check my watch for the time and breathe a sigh of relief when I realize it’s time for another dose of the cold medicine I picked up at the last gas station when we stopped. I drag myself out of bed and make my way to the bathroom to doanother shot of medicine before turning around and laying back down in bed.
I pull the covers up over my head and curl into a fetal position as full-body shivers wrack my body. I grab my phone from beside me and fire off a text to Eric.
Ty: Hey, I’m really sick today, so I’m keeping my door shut. It’s probably best that you stay as far away from me as possible.
