A thrumming undercurrent of anticipation ripples through us. We rise as one, falling into a loose formation, our steps synchronized.
The hallway is dim, the roar of the crowd distant but growing. My pulse keeps pace with it, beating harder, faster.
Twilight bumps my shoulder. “See you on the other side, Ara.”
I nod once. No turning back.
Beneath the stage, the air is electric. The opening chords of our first song vibrate through the platform. The stagehands move with precision, final checks, and countdowns murmured into earpieces.
I close my eyes. The noise is deafening, but inside—silence.
This is what I live for.
The platform slowly rises.
The first glimpse of the stadium steals my breath—thousands upon thousands of fans, their arms raised, a sea of lights blinking like stars. The sound hits me full force, a tidal wave of energy.
My heart pounds in time with the music.
I lift the mic to my lips, inhale deep—
And then I’m gone.
Ara takes over.
And Celeste?
She’s nothing but a ghost in the wings.
4
Celeste
The smell of coffee and sizzling bacon fills the air, cozy and familiar against the quiet hum of the generator. Morning light filters through the narrow blinds in soft and gold light, catching on the haze of pancake steam and the faint shimmer of leftover glitter.
My rig isn’t exactly spacious; it’s a glorified tin can with ambitions of being a real house. But somehow, every Monday morning after a show, we all end up crammed inside it anyway. Still groggy and grumbling, half-covered in body paint and bruised from whatever chaos we unleashed on stage.
I flip a pancake, watching the edges bubble as I mentally replay the sets from the weekend. The crowd was electric. Linkin nearly fell off the catwalk the first night. Korbyn broke a drumstick mid-solo and somehow treated it like an encore.
But what a way to start the first stop of our world tour.
Shiloh flops into the built-in dinette like she’s survived a war, clutching her giant thermos of cold brew like it contains the meaning of life. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“Because the music speaks to us,” I remind her, chuckling as I see her dramatically lay her face on the table.
“Yeah,” she mumbles into the wood grain. “Right now it says ‘take a damn nap.’”
Across from her, Korbyn wears her usual post-show armor: an oversized hoodie, messy topknot, and those battered Batman slippers she swears make everything better. She sips on a protein shake and scrolls through last night’s recording on her tablet. Her eyes are sharp despite the exhaustion, always analyzing, always ready to tweak and improve.
Linkin saunters in shirtless, hair still damp from a shower that definitely used all my hot water.
Why he couldn’t shower in his toy hauler, the world will never know.
Actually—that’s a lie. He does it because he likes to steal all my hair products. I bought some for him when we started rehearsals almost 6 months ago, and that fucker snuck into my apartment and put it in my shower. He later told me that it’s just ‘not the same’.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” I mutter, plating the pancake and sliding it over to him.
“Morning, Lover,” he says around a mouthful of pancake before the plate even hits the table.
