Page 28 of In the Shadows

“Yeah, right, help,” she laughed. “Just text me later and let me know if you guys will be around for lunch or not.”

“Hey, we haven’t seen my dad yet. Why don’t we tell him to meet us at Blazing Onion for lunch?” Joey asked.

“Good idea. Sorry, Mom, we’ll have to pass on lunch but thanks for a fantastic breakfast.” I hugged her before Joey and Diamond did the same.

“No problem, boys. Be careful.”

“Can we take your car so we don’t have to park the van at the mall?” I asked. The van would have drawn unwanted attention. Attention I was afraid our presence alone was going to command.

She tossed me the keys and we headed out. Fifteen minutes later, we were circling the mall for a parking spot. It was packed so we knew shopping was going to be a freaking nightmare.

We finally snagged a spot outside of Sears and made our way inside.

“Fuck dude, this is insane,” Diamond groaned.

“No shit,” Joey added.

“Well guys, it is what it is so we have to make the best of it.” I tried to be the voice of reason, but knew my patience was going to be challenged in this crowd. “Where to first?”

“Ugh, let’s at least get Brandon done before I flip the fuck out.” Diamond was already bitching, and we’d only just walked in. “Lego store,” he said before walking off.

“Fucking hell, this shit is expensive,” Joey said, looking at the price on the Star Wars Millennium Falcon.

“Good thing he’s not at that age bracket yet, let’s look over here.” I directed them both over to the two to five age section. We picked a couple of different sets we knew he’d like, but I wanted to get him more cars since those seemed to be his favorite toys to play with.

While standing at the register, we saw a crowd building outside of the store and were nosy to see what it was going on. As soon as we walked into the mall, we quickly found out.

“Look guys, it’s Stoli and Joey from Social Sinners,” someone yelled.

“Hell yeah, and Diamond’s with them too.”

Before we could even move, pads of paper, receipts, whatever they could grab were being thrust at us to sign. We autographed as much as we could until security showed up. At first, they didn’t know what to make of us and thought we were causing trouble until the supervisor showed up. He stood beside me speaking into his earpiece, “Security one to all agents,” he paused, “do not call PD (police department). I have the situation under control.”

“Hello guys, I’m Jeff head of security. I know who you are and my officers and I would like to offer to escort you to the mall office until we can get you safely out of the mall.”

“Thanks man, we um, we didn’t expect this,” I told him, grabbing Joey’s hand firmly and keeping him close to my side.

As we walked through the dense crowd, we did our best to wave and acknowledge them without stopping for fear of being ambushed again. Diamond was right behind Joey and as soon as we were safely locked inside the security office, we released the breaths we were holding and plopped down in the plastic chairs strewn about.

“Maybe next time, if you guys would give us a heads up we could escort you through the rear entrances into the stores to shop. It’s something we do regularly for the local celebrities,” he informed us.

Local celebrities, have we really hit that status?

“Crap, we’re supposed to meet my dad at Blazing Onion. Jeff,” Joey turned, addressing him directly, “is there any way they could rope off a table in the back for us to eat at?”

“Let me call them.” He walked over the desk and picked up the phone.

“Dude, what the fuck was that?” Diamond whispered to Joey and me.

“Looks like we’ll be doing a lot of shopping on Amazon. I had no idea our local fan base reached this level. We need to set up a meeting with Sal and Easton. I’ll try to get ahold of them tonight and let them know what happened.” I grabbed my phone, the screen was flooded with social media posts. I’d had it on silent which kept me completely unaware of the fact that we were blowing up the cyber world. “Um, Jeff,” I turned my phone to him as he hung up, “we may have a problem. Looks like everyone and their brother who was at the mall tagged us on Facebook and Twitter. I have a bad feeling the mall is about to be swarmed with fans. Sorry dude, we had no idea this would happen.”

He queued up his mic, alerting his security staff. “Well, my team’s on high alert now. The manager at Blazing Onion said he’d escort you in through the back door and would section off an area for you guys. What’s the name of the person meeting you there so they can take him back to the table?”

“Joe Hayes,” Joey told him, grabbing his phone. “He messaged that he’s there and said it’s a freaking madhouse.”

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

“Fuck indeed,” Jeff reiterated.

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