Page 29 of Your Chorus
10Anna Sun || Walk the Moon
ROXANNE
It takesme a moment to remember where I am when I wake up in the morning. A beam of light is shining through the gap in my bunk bed curtain, directly into my eyes. I throw my arm over them and groan.
Right. I’m on a bus.
At least three people are snoring. I reach for my phone on the little shelf above my head and groan again when I see the time. It’s only 6:30, but the snoring that woke me up is too loud to fall back asleep. I scroll through some articles on my phone instead.
We got into Boston after dark last night. Sherbrooke Station is playing just before the headliner at a big weekend festival tonight. The tour buses are all parked in a lot next to the festival grounds. We arrived so late we almost couldn’t access it, but Sanjay did some kind of manager manoeuvring and got a guy sent out to open the gate.
I hear the door to the bus open, and someone whispers, “Where are you going?”
“I gotta piss,” the person by the door whispers back.
“We have a bathroom.”
“Someone’s in it. I can’t wait, man.”
Another set of curtains gets pulled back.
“Don’t piss in the parking lot! You remember what happened on the last tour.”
“I said I can’t wait!”
The whispering takes on a furious tone. “That’s what you said to the cops last time, andit.Did. Not. Go. Well.”
“Fuck you, I’m taking a piss!”
I can’t stifle my laugh as someone else, not even bothering to whisper, calls out, “So take a fucking piss already!”
Bus life is going to be interesting.
We’re all up a few minutes after that. I know through Cole that a lot of bands refuse to take female crew members on tour, but including Rose and me, there are five women on the bus. I appreciate the way no one makes a big deal out of it. Half the guys are in their boxers, and all the girls have crazy bed-head, but it’s still somehow a professional environment. At the end of the day, these people are here to do a job they love, and that’s clearly what’s important to them.
Along with food, which most of them are currently fighting over like a pack of wild animals.
“Sit down and wait for me to give you your toast!” Sanjay orders. He’s one of the only people who’s fully dressed, this time in a maroon button-down shirt. “I will distribute the toast when it’s ready.”
JP takes that as his queue to start banging on the wall and chanting, “Distribute the toast! Distribute the toast!”
Several people join in. I’m sitting in my bunk with my legs dangling over the side. Cole’s doing the same thing across the aisle. I catch his eye, and we both can’t help exchanging a quick smile. There’s a stillness to Cole, even in the midst of all this insanity, and the familiar pull towards him is hard to ignore when everything around me is new and weird.
The toast does get distributed, and everyone finds somewhere to eat before either heading out to do whatever it is they’ve got to do today or lounging around to wait for the shower.
Everyone except Rose. Her bunk is above mine, and there’s a very stern-looking ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign pinned to the leopard print curtain.
I know from the scheduling app we’ve all got on our phones that we’re in for soundcheck at ten, but other than that, there’s nothing else on my plate until we play tonight.
“So, um, what are you and the guys doing today?” I ask Cole after the two of us volunteer to do the dishes and are bent over the tiny sink.
“We’ve got a radio interview downtown at noon, then some press stuff, and then we were just gonna check out the city for a while. I was going to ask if you wanted to come...?”
We’re both being cautious with each other. I don’t think either of us actually thought about what the day-to-day was going to be like, but I can’t let things get awkward. I have to prove—to both of us—that we can live like this. We can leave the space between us. We can keep our distance and be okay.
* * *
Soundcheck scaresthe shit out of me. The stage is huge, and the field in front of it stretches on for so long I can hardly imagine there being enough people to fill it. The massive lighting rigs overhead leave me sweating and semi-blind. The whole situation is a confused whirl of people with headsets and coils of cable running around shouting at me to stand in different places and stop then start then stop playing my violin.
