Page 82 of The Comedown

“Collette! Collette!” they chant, and I wave, spinning in a tight circle to take in the sheer size of the gathering. It’s ten times bigger than I imagined. Did he invite the entire concert?

A drone hovers nearby, daring to come in dangerously close, so I blow it a kiss since it’s undoubtedly streaming this whole thing somewhere. Two more pop up right behind it, zooming over as well, and I do the same to them, blowing each a kiss for whoever’s watching.

Past the drones, beach balls bounce wildly in the air, the people beneath just as frenzied when Julian’s voice cuts off.

Across the tops of the buses, I’m barely able to make out Julian say, “You came.” He’s staring at me like he sees me, but doesn’t really see me. He was drinking last I saw him, and who knows what other influences he’s under right now. I doubt he even knows. He consumes blindly, ignorantly. He doesn’t want to know what’ll happen to him when he takes something because he doesn’t care.

Or he does and is just hoping for the worst.

I take a step toward him, calling his name.

Not hearing me—or choosing not to—he turns, lining the backs of his shoes up with the edge of the roof, inadvertently revealing Axel on the other side of him. Axel’s sitting at a much smaller drum set than he usually uses and his eyes triple in size a second before he’s off his stool, standing and pointing at me with one of his drumsticks.

His eyelids now closed with both arms stretched out to his sides, Julian either says, “Follow me,” or “Fall with me.” At the same time I take a step toward him, my right foot slips on the wet metal under me, my whole body jolting backward to counteract the movement. I catch the moment Julian falls straight back, off the side of his bus, and stop, my body going cold at the sight. He crowd-surfs at every single show we do, but this…this feels wrong somehow.

Axel shouts, “Collette! What are you doing here?”

Julian’s eyes fly open to seek out mine again. His arms windmill in front of him as he tries to stop his fall, but it’s no use. He lands in the ocean of bodies below in the next breath and is immediately swept up by the swell, mixing with the others already riding the human surf. At first, he attempts to sit upright, yelling while scrambling to remain above the bouncing heads and hands, then all at once, he’s ripped away as both his body and voice disappear beneath the surface entirely.

This whole thing feels wrong. Not just Julian’s odd behavior, but also the claiming I just witnessed. Even with the main attraction himself down there now, the undertow doesn’t seem to be satisfied. It’s like the tide’s leveling up, preparing to add to its collection of victims.

The emergency window on Julian’s bus opens and people start piling out onto the roof through it. Julian’s bus is always packed with people. With partiers. Remoras. Remoras attach themselves to bigger fish around them—the bigger, the better—then feed off their leftovers. They live off the rewards, whether from hard work or good fortune, that they had zero help in obtaining themselves. They’re essentially success leeches and they’ll bleed you out if you let them.

On the other side of the remoras, Axel yells for everybody to go back inside, but nobody listens. More and more lift themselves up through the window until they’re spilling on to the roof of my bus as well.

Behind me, I reach a leg out to tap on my own emergency window, hoping Antonio is nearby to open it for me. I hear the latch disengage, then a shoulder bumps into mine, sending me sideways. Unfortunately, two pairs of arms reach out, steadying me before I fall. Unfortunately because they’re overzealous, twitchy arms. Arms that are impatient for no other reason than self-satisfaction. My heroes aren’t heroes at all. They’re remoras, trying to get their suction cups placed anywhere they can.

“I’m good,” I tell them, thrusting their hands off. The exchange causes me to trip over the now-ajar window, landing directly on top of the glass with a hard thump, closing it again. Shit. That’s going to hurt tomorrow. Thank God the glass didn’t break, or else I would’ve fallen all the way through to the floor of the bus and possibly cracked my tailbone, or worse.

“Hey!” I hear Axel yell again except in another direction. “Get Bare! Hurry!”

My pants and underwear soaked straight through, I start to crabwalk backward, off the window.

“Oh, I remember this skit,” one of the remoras says, elbowing the taller, bulkier one. “That show was so hot. Think she’ll give us lap dances, too?”

Lowering himself, he follows after me in a sort of bear crawl, identical to how Julian did when he was baked out of his mind and I was just trying to rouse him enough for our performance. Except this is much more predatory. Much more intentional. This time my heart pounds at a rapid speed I can’t control any more than I could the last time something like this happened.

No, no, no.

Keep your head up, smile on, and don’t show weakness.

“That’s not what I’m doing, guys,” I say through chattering teeth. “I just want to get back inside my bus.”

With my ass almost clear of the glass, the very real concern shifts from if I can make it inside to if I can make it inside alone. If someone, or multiple someones, follows me inside, I’d be endangering Antonio, too.

In a split-second decision, I straighten my legs out in front of me, and bang a fist on the glass, yelling for Antonio to lock it again. I don’t know how or when he’ll be able to get out, but I have to believe he’ll be okay as long as nobody else makes it inside with him.

Why did Julian do this? This is where our teams sleep. At least my team does. He got lucky that they weren’t here.

Axel’s question comes back to me. “What are you doing here?” Like he was surprised I was. I can only hope that Julian assumed everyone from my bus was gone.

Hands latch on my ankles, then jerk me forward, my ass sliding easily across the slippery surface to the smaller of the remoras. In an automatic reaction, my hand flies to my pocket, but before I can get it inside, the larger remora drops from standing into a plank over my body in one smooth motion, his torso landing on mine as his arms give out, crushing my arm between us.

Breathe. Just breathe.

The problem is with the extra weight on me, it’s hard to breathe. And with the hands still holding my ankles down, it’s hard to move. No, it’s impossible to move. Three of my limbs are restrained for Christ’s sake.

“We’re not gonna make the same mistake Julez did. We’re not letting you cock-tease us.”