Chapter 34

We couldn’t go to the club right away, since I needed a shower and the girls declared they weren’t dressed to go out. I thought they looked fine. At the few parties I’d gone to everyone dressed pretty much like they were dressed now, so I didn’t know why they needed to change. Of course, I was dumb enough to voice that thought out loud, after which they took a good part of the ride home explaining how parties at home weren’t the same as going to an actual club. I tried to point out that I only brought t-shirts and blue jeans, but they didn’t think that was the same. Apparently, guys are under different rules. Not that it mattered. The only “nice” clothes I had was a single button-up shirt, which was only pulled out for special occasions.

Hanna’s aunt had two showers, and the girls both took both of them, regardless of the fact that only one of the three of us had done enough exercise to actually need a shower. Once again, I was informed I didn’t understand how things worked. So after setting out the clothes I was going to wear, which only differed from the ones I was wearing at the moment in that they were clean, I sat in the living room and listened to Sam explain whatever show he was watching while I waited for the girls. I liked Sam and wasn’t trying to ignore him, but I’m not sure how much of his explanation I understood beyond it involved some kind of giant robot and ninjas, which didn’t seem like a fair match-up. But what did I know?

We grabbed a quick bite out the door, because we didn’t know what the plan was for dinner, and headed out. The club was in downtown Raleigh, which none of us had been to before. Hanna found it quickly using her GPS, but parking was a complete mystery to us. In Wellsville, and everywhere I’d been in Asheville, places all had parking lots attached to them, or at least nearby, so it wasn’t that hard. Even the places we’d been to so far on our trip had parking. Raleigh wasn’t New York or L.A., but apparently, in downtown they just assumed everyone knew where to find parking.

There were some street-metered parking spots, but they were all taken up so we drove around for ten minutes until we finally found a cash lot three blocks away. It was still pretty cold out and the girls had dressed for style, but not particularly for warmth.

We hurried down the street to the club, which thankfully didn’t have a line because it was a Wednesday. They checked our IDs and put big black and white Xs on our hands that looked hard to see until we were inside. There must have been some kind of black-light or something, mixed in with the regular strobing lights, because it made parts of my shirt and the Xs on all our hands stand out. There were a fair number of people inside, and nearly every one of them had the same white x, which told us all we needed to know about the average age of the people here. Victor looked decidedly out of place, standing off to one side, looking both older than everyone else and with no shinning white X. To his credit, he looked both embarrassed and uncomfortable to be there.

“Hey guys,” he said, coming over as soon as he noticed us.

“This doesn’t really seem to be your crowd,” I said, pointing at all the people clearly younger than him.

“No. I haven’t been here before, but I’ve heard some guys at the studio talk about it, since it’s really the only underage place opened on weekdays and the only under eighteen place down here at all.”

“I’m surprised. Isn’t Raleigh a college town too? I’d think they’d cater to college kids.”

“They do, and there are some places that do over eighteen but under twenty-one. As far as I know, this is the only under eighteen place in town. Or at least the only one I know of.”

“You know people are looking over here like you’re a creeper.”

“Yeah, I know it. It’s fine though. I mostly wanted to show you guys a good time when you’re in my city. Hell, Charlie gave me a full-on concert when I was there last time.”

“Well, I was playing for a lot of people, but I’m glad you invited us out. We were just going to go back to her aunt’s house and hang out.”

“Speaking of a concert, you know Charlie and his new band are playing tomorrow at the Spring Break Bash if you want to come and listen,” Hanna said.

“Well, I’m not in school anymore, so this is just a work week for me, and getting off on a random Thursday can be kind of tough.”

“Ohh,” she said. “I forgot.”

I think how comfortable he was around us and how he treated all three of us just like equals made it hard to remember he was a good six years older than Hanna, and eight years older than me. That didn’t put him in our parents’ territory, but it did make things very different.

“Did you want to go dance?” Kat asked me.

“Uhh, I don’t really know how to dance. I mean, I danced with Rhonda at Homecoming, but that was kind of different.”

“Nah, I saw you then. It’s fine. Just kind of hop around with the sound, I mean, you’re a musician; you can keep a beat. They won’t play slow songs here, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I guess,” I said.

I followed Kat out to the dance floor and I’m pretty sure made a complete fool of myself. She was doing specific things and looked very cool and I felt like I was just jumping around, kind of moving with the beat. If you asked me later, I couldn’t even tell you what I’d been trying to do. Still, Kat seemed to have fun and wanted to keep going when the song ended.

Hanna and Victor joined us, and they both seemed to know what they were doing. I tried to copy him, but it was hard to tell if what I was trying to do was anywhere close to what he was doing. We’d all dance for a while and then switch and Victor would dance with Kat and I’d dance with Hanna. A few times these two skeezy-looking guys that might have been in college tried to break in and dance with Hanna and Kat.

Actually, saying they tried to break in was a stretch. They more kind of put themselves between the girls and us, and kind of pushed and pulled the girls away from us, until Hanna told them to get lost. They made a few choice comments, but none of us felt like trying to make anything out of it, and they never came back, so we kind of brushed it off and kept having fun.

We danced for a few hours, or at least the girls did. I’d dance for one or two songs and then try to sneak off, since I still felt like a fool every time, despite having fun. They’d let me get away with it for one or two songs and then come retrieve me and make me dance some more. It went back and forth like that until about ten-thirty when we had to call it a night. Victor had already called it a night since he had to be at work at seven, and I think he felt a little out of place with us the whole time. I’d appreciated him spending several hours dancing with the girls and I think he’d had a good time, despite feeling like he stood out. I think the girls could have probably kept going, but Hanna’s aunt had asked us to be home before eleven-thirty.

She’d explained it as not wanting to come back too late and disturb Sam or her sleep. Except for the day we took him to Trianglecon, where he was with us during the day, he was spending the daytime hours at a friend’s house where the mom didn’t work. Sam had been torn, because he wanted to hang out with his cousin but he also wanted to go to his friend’s house and play video games all day. In the end, we’d convinced him that, except for Trianglecon, he’d have been bored hanging out with us while we looked at colleges and stuff. His mom still dropped him off on the way to work, so they were both up by seven in the morning and I don’t think Hanna’s aunt planned to sleep until she knew we were home, which was also part of the reason she’d asked us to be home at a decent hour.

“Do we have to?” Kat whined when Hanna said it was time.

She’d been having so much fun and I think this was one of the things she’d missed since she’d stopped being one of the “cool kids” as part of Aaron’s group and had started spending all of her time with Hanna and me. We might treat her better, but we basically just kept to working and going to school, which meant she hadn’t been to a party or anything else like that in months. This was probably the closest she’d gotten to being out in a long while.

“Yeah,” Hanna said, but she could see the disappointment on Kat’s face. “How about this. I’ll go get the car and call you when I’m driving up and you can all come out and jump in. You’ll probably be able to get one more song in.”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to walk with you?” I asked.

“No, I’ll be fine. It’s well lit, there are still people out, and it’s early.”

“Come on, let’s dance one more,” Kat said, pulling on my sleeve.

“Okay,” I said to Hanna as I let Kat pull me away. “Just be careful.”

Hanna waved me off and headed for the door while I went dancing with Kat. We finished off the song that had been playing when she left and the next song and were halfway through the third when I started to get worried.

“Let’s go check on her,” I told Kat, pulling her to follow me.

“She’s fine,” Kat said, still dancing.

I could tell how much fun she was having by the fact that she’d just directly contradicted me. That was a rarity for her, and she normally did so very sheepishly, which made it even harder to not let her have that moment.

“I know you’re having a good time and I wish we could stay, but we can’t. Let’s go.”

“Okay,” she said, I think suddenly realizing what she’d said a moment ago.

I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze so she’d know I wasn’t mad at her, and pulled her out with me. Her anxiety was suddenly gone again as we left holding hands, a grin on her face. I knew I was manipulating her emotions, but I could feel something was wrong in the pit of my stomach and didn’t have time to argue with her.

We walked out and I looked either way down the street and sidewalk. I didn’t see her either way, or her car. I turned us towards the parking lot we’d left the car in, since she’d had time to get there and it was the only place I could think of to find her. Inside I was hoping for some kind of car trouble making her run behind, since that would be better than the alternative.

We were about halfway there, passing a big catholic church set back off the road with a nicely manicured front walkway with bushes and things leading up to it, when I heard a noise from around the side of the church. I stopped for a second, listening, because at first, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. There were still cars and things on the street, which made enough noise that I could have just been misinterpreting what I’d heard.

Once it came again, I was sure though. From the right side of the church, behind a row of bushes, I definitely heard a muffled squealing sound accompanied by thrashing. Now that I was paying attention, I also noticed the bushes shaking a bit.

I dropped Kat’s hand and ran towards the bushes, crashing through them more than jumping over them, ignoring the stinging pain from their branches digging into my arms and cutting through my shirt.

My fears were realized when I found Hanna and the two jack-asses that had been harassing her and Kat earlier. Actually, I should say it was almost as bad as I feared. She was back here and the two guys were trying to assault her, but they picked the wrong girl to mess with. Hanna’s a fighter and she still has an angry streak a mile long that she barely manages to keep under the surface.

She was pissed, and she wasn’t trying to keep it under wraps anymore. One of the guys was on the ground, clutching at his crotch, rolling around, blood coming out of his nose. The other guy had apparently knocked her over and gotten on top of her, but now it was all he could do to keep her hands from clawing at his face or her knees and feet from finding the target they were aiming at. He’d caught her and was now desperately trying to find a way to get out of it.

I was more than happy to help. I stepped over his friend who was still rolling around in pain and kicked out with the flat of my foot as hard as I could, catching him right in the side. He’d been so distracted trying to fend off Hanna that he hadn’t even noticed my wild charge through the bushes. The first time he realized there was anyone else with him was when my foot impacted his side. He went sailing off of her, catching several feet of air before slamming into the ground. It’s hard to say if anything broke when I kicked him, but he wasn’t getting up.

Hanna scrambled off the ground and looked ready to murder him. I only just managed to grab her by the arms before she got to him, her hands outstretched.

“I’m going to rip his f•©king eyes out,” she said, practically foaming at the mouth.

“No,” I said, pulling her back more. “Let’s just call the cops.”

“What’s the f•©king point,” she said, now turning her unleashed anger on me. “I’d rather just teach these f•©kers a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

“Look at them,” I said, pointing at the two guys still on the ground. “I think they’ve learned it. Right now, you’ve only defended yourself. Let’s not make this into something else?”

I hadn’t heard the entire story yet, but I know she was sexually assaulted by Aaron during a party early last year. She’d tried to go to the police, but Aaron’s father being who he was, everything got swept under the rug. She had a serious issue with guys like Aaron, which these two douchebags definitely were, and with the police, ever since.

“F•©k it,” she said, kicking the guy she’d hit in the nuts hard, her foot smashing into his right shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Neither guy looked to be getting up nor planning on doing anything but be in pain for a little bit, so we stepped over them and left, although Hanna used a much more reasonable path around the bushes than straight through them. Kat was on the other side of the bushes looking terrified. She’d heard a lot of scuffling but had no way to know what was happening till we reemerged. A look of relief washed over her face for a moment, before she saw a rip in Hanna’s blouse.

“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing Hanna’s arm.

“I’m fine,” Hanna said, pulling away angrily.

She didn’t mean to take it out on Kat and was just angry, probably having flashbacks to her assault, and lashing out at anyone who came nearby. I grabbed Kat’s hand and gave it a squeeze as we walked a few paces behind her back to her car.

We were up very early the next day, since we were the first band to go on and I wanted us to have enough time to figure out where to go and stuff. The band had made it in the night before, although they’d gotten a cheap motel not far from the fairgrounds where the event was being held, so we’d agreed to meet them there.

I’d told them we’d be by at seven, since our gig started at nine. They’d grumbled but I pointed out these guys did other festivals and stuff and bands playing more prime time slots were getting a lot more than us, so I wanted to make sure we didn’t screw this up. They’d agreed, although I didn’t realize how grudgingly until I was banging on their door for the fourth time, waiting for someone to answer. I’d started getting worried I might have the wrong room when the door opened with Seth both holding it and leaning on it simultaneously.

“Jesus Christ, what time is it.”

“Seven.”

“I thought you were kidding.”

“Turn off the f•©king light,” Marco shouted from one of the beds.

I pushed past Seth and went inside. There were two double beds in the room, with Marco in one and Lyla in the other. The pillow and blanket on the floor suggested that was where Seth slept, which is also probably why he was the first one up, since he couldn’t have been comfortable enough to really get good sleep.

“Guys, it’s seven AM. Get up. We gotta get moving.”

“Whose idea was this?” Marco wined, pulling a pillow over his head.

I grabbed Seth’s pillow off the floor and chucked it at him.

“Come on, man. This is our best-paying gig yet. We can’t blow it.”

He hugged the pillow to himself harder for a second and then threw it off.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m up.”

Despite all the commotion we were making, Lyla hadn’t even moved yet.

I started to take a step towards that bed and stopped, not being quite sure of the etiquette for shaking a girl awake, since I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable or anything. I looked over to Hanna who rolled her eyes but walked around the bed and me to stand facing the side Lyla was facing. Leaning down, Hanna grabbed her shoulder and shook.

“Get up. Hey, wake up.”

Lyla’s reaction was interesting. Instead of complaining, or mumbling, or throwing a pillow, she reached up and hooked an arm around Hanna’s neck, pulling her forward like she was going to kiss Hanna. Hanna must have had the same impression, because she pulled back hard, forcing Lyla to release.

“She’s up,” Hanna said, walking away as Lyla propped herself up.

“Were you asleep or were you faking it to make a move?” I asked.