Page 17 of Hero on the Road
When our laughter finally died down and I had it together enough to face Barry again, I found him staring at us like we were both insane.
“Are you two going to do that often?” he asked, like he was asking whether we ate corn all the time or something.
“Definitely not,” I said, wiping at the moisture on my cheeks. “Sorry about that. So... where are we going first?”
I mean, I assumed he’d have the schedule. He was the roadie, after all.
“Gibson Park,” he muttered. “Big outdoor venue in the city, where they have a lot of their music festivals in the summer. Label booked you for a smaller show tonight. You’re on at 7.”
Wait, 7? I looked down at my watch and saw that it was already noon. That meant we had...
“Seven hours until curtain?” I asked, shocked.
That was almost no time. We had to get there, get our equipment sorted out, figure out our set list, do a sound check, prep for actually going on stage...
In seven hours.
We had seven hours.
We’d literallyjustarrived.
I glanced up to see Connor looking just as gobsmacked as I was. The record was essentially setting us up to fail, right from the start. Why the hell would they do that?
Although...
“I guess we’re at least together,” I said finally.
Whatever happened, it would happen to both of us. And we’d be able to use both our brains to figure out how to get out of it.
* * *
“We’re here,” Barry snapped, shoving the bus into park and whirling on us.
I turned away from the window, where I’d been watching the city going by, and stared at the man. He certainly wasn’t the most pleasant person I’d ever met, and I wished we’d had someone I actually liked, though I supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. There was something weird about him, though. Something that seemed so familiar but was keeping right out of reach. I could swear I’d seen him before somewhere.
You’d think I would have remembered, what with the whole circus thing, but I’d met so many people over the last few months that it could be hard to keep track. Maybe that was it, I thought. Maybe he’d just been around the music scene in Nashville and I’d seen him at a bar or something. The scene tended to be a pretty small world, so if he was a roadie for bands, it made sense that I’d have seen him around.
And with the look he had going on, I definitely would have noticed him.
I stifled another smile and turned to stare out at the site of our first show.
The park, which, according to my quick researching skills, housed everything from a duck pond to outdoor movies during the summer, was already teeming with people, though I doubted they were here for the show this early.
Wait. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already 1. Still, if the show didn’t start until 7, it didn’t make sense for so many people to be here already. We weren’t a big group that had a big following.
Yet.
“What’s going on?” I asked, indicating all the people.
“Everything,” Barry replied. “According to the people I talked to at the label, this park does everything. Activities for the kids. Fairs. Farmers markets. Don’t worry; they’re not all here to see you.”
I scowled at the guy, wondering again whether we knew each other from somewhere, but then realized that it didn’t matter. We were here and we needed to get ready. Regardless of how weird our roadie was.
He wasn’t going to stop us from going onstage tonight.
I turned to Connor, who looked like he was coming to some of the same conclusions. “You ready?” he asked, turning his eyes on me.
“What, to go out there, figure out whether they have equipment we can borrow, then do a sound check on our own and get ready to go onstage with almost no rehearsal?” I asked. “Of course. I do that sort of thing all the time.”
