Chapter 30

Saturday I swung by Hanna’s on the way to the Blue Ridge, to check on Kat. We’d talked for a few minutes before they’d gone home, but Mrs. Phillips had asked that we give her a couple of days to adjust, since Thursday had been an emotionally trying day.

Kat was practically bouncing off the walls when I got there. Mrs. Phillips had taken her to a room bedding and furnishing store in Asheville Friday night to pick out some stuff for her room, and had ended up with some interesting choices. I’d never actually seen Kat’s room, since we’d never been allowed inside her home, on the off chance that we might leave evidence behind that her dad would find.

Hanna’s room was pretty Spartan, with everything in fairly dark colors and only a few band posters up on the wall. There were no trophies or mementos, even though she’d been in cheerleading from when she was little up until the end of her sophomore year. I was pretty sure she’d gotten them, but she must have either tossed them or packed them away when everything had gone bad with her teammates.

Rhonda had been the exact opposite, with bright pink colors, trophies prominently displayed, and posters up on the wall. It was the classic teen girl room to the point of being somewhat recognizable just from having seen decorated versions of it on TV.

Kat fell somewhere in between. I’d actually expected her to go closer to Rhonda’s bright pink, since Kat always dressed in very bright colors. The bedspread and whatnot she’d picked out for herself however, was closer to Hanna’s color scheme. There weren’t any posters on the wall, which was probably because they didn’t have that kind of thing at the store they went to. I still had a feeling if they’d sold those kinds of things, Kat would have picked some up too. She did, however, have a whole ton of trophies. Enough that I was considering just how little of her suitcase had been clothing.

I’d originally thought she’d gone overboard bringing her whole wardrobe, but I guess she’d taken the ‘only bring important mementos and a few clothes’ to heart. It just happened that her ‘important mementos’ collection was a fairly large haul. There were a few youth gymnastics trophies, one very unexpected junior bowling trophy, and a ton of swimming trophies. I knew she was good, considering the level she competed at, but that didn’t really spell it out as much as all the hardware did.

Hanna had told me Saturday morning that Kat was having really bad dreams though. She woke up the rest of the house both Thursday and Friday screaming, even though she herself slept right through it. Kat had already asked Mrs. Phillips about finding a psychiatrist for her and I think the dreams were what convinced her. I could imagine it would be hard, since they weren’t actually getting money from the state to support Kat, let alone pay for something as expensive as a psychiatrist. Still, I gave her Dr. Rothstein’s information and told her that he was already familiar with Kat’s condition. We’d tried to explain what he’d told us about Kat, but I don’t think she’d really understood just how bad Kat’s mental health was until spending two nights getting woken by blood-curdling screams.

Kat was excited to get back to school. Now that Mrs. Phillips had the guardianship papers, she could go by the school on Monday and get her re-enrolled. I wasn’t sure about the process, but she was fairly confident it could be done without much issue. I was glad she was taking care of it. Now that Kat was free of her father and Mrs. Phillips was dealing with stuff like making sure she got a psychologist and everything, I didn’t have to spend so much time tied up with worrying about her.

Both Chef and the band noticed my lightened load, since I was noticeably more focused in both. Victor hadn’t made it back this weekend, but the sparring with him the weekend before had given me a lot to work on, and I was starting to feel a little more confident about the entire competition in spite of myself. On the music side, most of the songs we already had were more or less finished, at least until we got a producer to work with us on them if we ever recorded anything. I’d been thinking about some additional material to write about, but nothing was really speaking to me. I had plenty of things in my life and ideas I thought would make good songs, but I also needed an idea of how to do that, and I just wasn’t having any inspiration yet.

The whole band had been working on some ideas, but none of them had really solidified yet. I think the main problem was we didn’t have anything really pushing us. We have enough of our own music to play a good set for the talent scout, so the only reason we needed more, besides being able to put more variety in our sets, was to one day record an album. That, however, seemed an impossibly long way off. So, it wasn’t actively driving any of us to produce.

“I swear to God Lyla is going to drive me insane,” Hanna said, sliding into a booth with a bowl of rice and chicken Vinney had made for the family meal.

Since Hanna was up at the Blue Ridge Saturday and Sunday nights anyway, she’d started working nights both days, which meant she only had an hour between the end of practice and the beginning of her shift to eat and get ready.

“What did she do?”

“Someone told her I used to be a cheerleader.”

“So ... something, something, uniform?”

“No. She said she’d heard stories about what happened at team sleepovers. She then went on to describe those stories in frighteningly graphic details.”

“I think I’d like to hear some of these stories?” I said, waggling my eyebrows at her.

“Shut up,” she said, throwing her napkin at me. “I’m already getting enough shit from her! I don’t need it from you, too.”

“She’s just screwing with you ‘cause you let it get to you.”

“I know, but it’s hard not to react. That girl’s mind is filthy. I think she spends all week in between practices thinking up the freakiest thing she can.”

“Hey, guys,” Kat said, nudging me over and sliding into the booth.

Her hair was still wet from swimming practice. We were still getting down the new schedule, since we didn’t have to balance everything around keeping her dad from getting angry so she now had a social life. She’d only been able to come to a couple of my gigs, and she’d decided that, after her training on Saturday and Sunday, to start joining us at the Blue Ridge.

“How was practice?”

“Good. I checked with them like you asked and Daddy paid the fee for April yesterday, so we don’t have to worry about that.”

Even though he’d agreed to continue to pay for her training, I’d wanted to double-check and make sure he was following through. I wanted to keep any of us dealing with him to a minimum, since each interaction might be the time he decided to say screw it and renege on the whole deal. So, I’d had Kat check with her coach, instead.

“Now that you’re here, there’s something I wanted to run past you two,” Hanna said, looking serious.

“Okay?”

“So you know how Mom applied to UNC for me?”

“Yes. I thought you didn’t want to go in-state though?”

Hanna’s original application list had no schools closer than a thousand miles away on them. I was a little sad thinking about her going to school so far away, but she’d applied to them before we’d become friends and before she’s started coming out of the shell she’d built around herself. She hadn’t even known her mom had applied to any in-state schools until the acceptance letters came in.

“Well, I never did any school visits and the acceptance deadline is coming up pretty fast. I’ve been looking around and they’re one of the few schools with a full entertainment management track as a focus in their business management degree programs, and the only school with a program better than theirs is USC, which I didn’t get into. I also thought if I did this I’d probably end up with class projects where I could come back out and work with you, or at least watch and get information. But, I’ve never actually visited the campus, since I hadn’t planned on going anywhere around here when I’d done my original campus visits. So, my thought was maybe we could go see the campus during spring break.”

“All three of us?” Kat asked hesitantly.

“Of course all three of us. I think it might be fun, and I’m not really one for the whole Myrtle Beach or Florida spring break trips.”

“I’m not even sure what those are,” I said.

“Every spring break a lot of kids get hotel rooms at places like Myrtle Beach, Miami Beach, places like that and party all weekend. There’s lots of drinking and ... other stuff. I went with Aaron last year.”

“That doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.”

“No,” Hanna agreed. “Some years you might end up going just because a lot of local bands get booked to play shows out there, since drinking on the beach gets old after the first day, but it’s probably too late for that this year.”

“Going to Chapel Hill sounds fun to me, though. I’d have to talk to my mom. I can guarantee she’s going to want to know if any adults are going.”

“I’m eighteen,” Hanna pointed out.

“Yeah, she’s not going to buy that.”

“Well, to save money I thought we could crash at my Aunt Shirley’s house. Sam would love to have you there. Besides, that week is the same week as Trianglecon, and you’d promised him you’d go with him to it, remember?”

“Shit, I’d forgotten all about that.”

“We’re going to Trianglecon?” Kat asked, suddenly excited.

“Well, I was going to try and get out of it, but I think Charlie has to.”

“Can I go too? Ohh, I don’t have any of my cosplay stuff anymore. It’s all still at my dad’s house. Damn, I’d almost finished my Dark Taloness costume.”

“Sometimes I forget what a massive nerd you are,” I said, smiling and shaking my head.

“Shut up, it’s cool. It’s only a week away, but I think if I focus I can get something together. It’s not going to be as good as the stuff I’ve done before, but I think I can at least not embarrass myself. What would you want to go as?”

“I was thinking I’d go as ‘guy who’s being forced to go to a comic convention.’ It’s a stretch, but I think I can pull it off.”

“You’re no fun,” she said, fake pouting.

“Hey, you dress up. I’m sure it’ll be fun and Sam will probably appreciate someone else being as into it as he is. Hanna and I will try not to spoil y’all’s fun.”

“I’m not going.”

“The Hell you’re not. If I have to go, you have to go.”

“This is going to be great,” Kat said.

“Anyway, I figured your mom would want to make sure there was some kind of supervision, so we can give her Aunt Shirley’s information. Do you think that’ll satisfy her?”

“Maybe. I’ll see what I can do. Did you already run it by your mom?”

“Yes. She’s so happy that I’m seriously considering an in-state school she’s willing to go with just about anything else I ask.”

“So we do the comic-con one day and UNC another, that still leaves us like five or six days. As much fun as hanging with Sam will be, I’m hoping we have more plans than that.”

“I haven’t worked out everything, but my mom and Aunt Shirley went in on a timeshare at a place called Ocean Isle. It’s a lot quieter than Myrtle Beach and I don’t think it’ll be overrun by college kids, so it could be relaxing. I was thinking we go up there Friday and Saturday night, and then drive back Sunday. You might not want to tell your mom about that side trip.”

“That might be fun,” I said. “How much is this all going to cost?”

“Not that much, actually. Since we’ll either be staying with Aunt Shirley or at their time-share, all we have to pay for is gas, food, and whatever entertainment we decide on. As trips go, it’ll be pretty cheap.”

“Okay. I’m in.”

“Me too,” Kat said. “I can’t wait.”

Of course, coming up with a plan for spring break was the easy part. The hard part was going to be convincing Mom to let me go. For all of the times she’d let me sit in the back area of clubs and bars unsupervised as a small child, she was fairly overprotective when it came to going off on my own.

Normally that didn’t matter much, since my schedule was always pretty much the same and it wasn’t like I was going out partying all the time. This, however, would be the first time I’d be asking for something like this, so I was a little concerned about how it was going to go.

I decided to just get it over with and ask her that night, partially because I was tired of having things hanging over my head and partly because if we were going to do this we had some planning to do and not a lot of time to do it in.

“You’re up late,” Mom said when she got home.

Even though it was my own band now and not just playing with Willie, I still only did the first set so I could be home before eleven. Mom hadn’t wavered from her stance that she didn’t want me coming back after midnight every Friday and Saturday, even though I didn’t have school the next day. She had made some exceptions for when I’d played in Asheville, but I hadn’t wanted to try and push it just because I had my own band now.

I think the rest of the band would have preferred if we played a little longer and I was sometimes worried they might eventually get tired of having the band fronted by a minor. True, it would only be two more years, but that was like a lifetime, especially when these guys had bills to make that were directly affected by the kinds of gigs we could get. Sure, we were getting paid every Saturday and Sunday, but we couldn’t go after some of the opportunities other bands did. Except for maybe in the summer, we couldn’t expand how far we looked for better-paying gigs or things like music festivals to play for.

Even though we all got along, I still couldn’t shake the suspicion that if the audition for the record label scout went bad, they might all bail and try to find a better opportunity.

Since Saturdays were usually pretty busy, with training, practice, a full set, and tutoring again now that Kat was free to do what she wanted, I was usually wiped out by the time I got home. Most nights I was asleep by the time Mom got home.

“Yeah, I had some stuff I wanted to talk about.”

“Stuff that I’m going to like, or stuff that I’m not going to like,” she said, suddenly suspicious.

“Neither. Stuff I need to get permission for. Spring break is coming up and Hanna wants to go tour UNC, since she got in and hasn’t looked at the campus yet and the acceptance date is coming up. I’d also promised her cousin after the thing at the beginning of the year that I’d go to a comic book convention thing with him, and it’s that weekend in Raleigh, so we’d do that too. We’d be staying with them, so we’d be back with her aunt every night, which means we’d have adult supervision.”