Chapter 43

More days passed with no further news from either my parents or the reporter about the story on Cameron, who was on complete lockdown at home and not allowed to talk to anyone. So far, as far as I’d heard, he hadn’t been sent off to the alternative school, and was just cooling his heels. We didn’t know if that was because his parents were waiting to see what would happen, maybe hoping the school district would change the ruling, or had sought legal advice, but limbo seemed better than being permanently moved to the bad kids’ school. I wanted to tell him I’d talked to some people and there was a chance help was coming, but Megan had already called his house once and gotten an ear full from his parents, so calling was not an option. If this stretched through next week without any action, I’d call the reporter back and see if he could give me an update and try to find a way to sneak a message to Cameron, but for now, I would wait, since the last thing he needed was someone getting him in more trouble.

Apparently, even thinking “things sure are quiet” was enough to get the universe’s attention when Friday night, or I should probably say very early Saturday morning, rolled around and a phone ringing woke me up in the middle of the night. Fridays were very long days for me, starting at about six in the morning, and ending when I got home from the Blue Ridge around twelve-thirty Saturday morning, so I usually just took a shower and passed out as soon as I got back home. This Friday was no exception, or it wouldn’t have been an exception if my cell phone hadn’t rung an hour after my head hit the pillow.

My first thought was that something had happened with Mom and Dad. Maybe he’d gone too far, was pissed off about the restraining order, and had taken his aggression out on her like he normally did. They were the only ones I could think of that would call this late, especially since everyone I knew was aware of my schedule.

“Hello?” I mumbled into the phone.

“Charlie, it’s Lyla. I need some help,” she said.

Wherever she was, there was some noise in the background that didn’t sound like their house. Maybe something was playing on TV, but it didn’t really sound like that.

“What’s up?”

“I need someone to bail me out,” she said.

“What?”

“I ... uhh ... got arrested. The deputy said it was for simple assault and there is a set bail that can be paid for that. If it isn’t done, they’ll transport me to the Ashville prison in the morning.”

“How much is bail?” I asked, doing a quick calculation of my very limited funds on hand.

I’d taken two hundred out, leaving the rest of my money with Chef on Monday, and spent maybe seventy-five of it so far to pay my phone bill and for gas. Since I didn’t have a bank account and I was basically living off of my earnings from one gig until the end of the weekend, Chef wasn’t holding much more than that for me.

“Four hundred. It’s for me and Tabitha both.”

“I don’t have that kind of money on me and my bank account is sitting empty. Have you called Seth or Marco?”

“Yes. Marco answered and said they couldn’t help.”

Of course he did. The more Lyla had come to my defense, the more Marco had been giving her the same attitude he gave me. I was pretty sure he didn’t check with Seth at all, but this wasn’t really the time to deal with him.

“You’re at the sheriff’s station?” I asked.

“Yeah. They’re letting me use the phone to make calls about bail, then they’re going to put me back in one of the holding cells.”

“Okay. Well, let me see what I can do. Someone will come down to bail you out in a little bit.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I really appreciate it.”

“I know. Just hang tight.”

I hung up the phone and looked at it, thinking. I could ask Mrs. Phillips for the money, but I knew things were tight for her. Enough that, if I thought she’d take it, I’d start giving her money like I had Mom. She was a single parent, just like Mom was, with a kid in college, and paying to feed and house two additional kids. Except for food and what we used in electricity and water, Kat and I were paying for all of our own stuff, or at least I was paying for my own stuff and Kat’s father was paying for hers, but that still had an impact on how much money Mrs. Phillips had available.

I clearly couldn’t go and ask Mom and Dad for it. Besides the fact that Mr. Eaves very specifically warned me about not going near them or interacting with them in any way, it was unlikely they’d have the money for this. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dad had already blown through the money he pulled out of the band and my bank accounts, and Mom didn’t have my income coming in to supplement hers any longer.

That left only one option, which I felt very bad about taking. Chef was already funding my emancipation, and probably whatever bill Mr. Eaves had sent over for getting the restraining order done as well, and was already paying the band a big chunk of the door every weekend night to play at the Blue Ridge. He seemed to be the guy I went to every time there was trouble, and I was starting to feel more than a little guilty about that.

But, I couldn’t leave Lyla in jail, or worse, sent to Ashville for arraignment. Besides needing her for our shows the next two nights, she was my friend. Maybe not super close, but she’d asked me for help. I was annoyed that Marco had bailed on them like that, but being mad at him didn’t solve anything.

“Charlie?” Chef asked, groggily when he answered.

Since Chef preferred planning out the day’s menus and prepping in the morning, he’d recently decided to have Vinney run everything after the dinner rush and close the bar down at two. How he slept with all the noise below his bedroom I’d never know, but it was apparently working for him. Or at least, it had until I called in the middle of the night.

“Sorry to wake you, but I need some help. I wanted to ask if I could get an advance on this weekend’s split and the rest of the money you are holding for me? And if I could get it tonight?”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. Lyla and her girlfriend got arrested and I need to go bail them out.”

“You realize they’re not going to let a minor bail them out, right?”

“Shit,” I said, having not realized that at all until he mentioned it.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll go get them.”

“I want to come down there with you, then. I don’t know what happened yet, and I want to make sure they’re okay.”

“You know you don’t have to make everyone’s problems your own, right?”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” I said. “This isn’t everyone. She’s my friend and bandmate. Besides being worried for Lyla, I also need to find out what happened and find out if it’s going to cause other problems. She might not be on the record contract, but I’m already really pushing the line with the label. If this is going to cause more problems, I need to know about it, and I’m not going to be able to go back to sleep while I worry about it.”

“Fair enough. Are they at the sheriff’s station until the morning transport to Asheville?”

“Yes,” I said, not bothering to be surprised that Chef would know police policy for people arrested overnight.

“Fine. And don’t be too worried. If we can bail them out tonight, it means whatever they did was minor enough to be covered by either call-in or video night arraignments. They only do that for stuff that’s cut and dried, to keep the jails from filling up and to control costs. If it was serious they’d require a full arraignment, which wouldn’t happen until Monday during the day.”

“I still want to go,” I said.

“Fine. Twenty minutes.”

I got there in ten. The process of posting bail was pretty easy, although it took forever to process her out. The other person being bailed out while we were there was a drunk, which was probably the thing they had the most of. Alternate Fridays were payday at the factory, and the crowds, even at the Blue Ridge, got pretty rowdy as some of the younger workers blew chunks of their checks on drinking with friends.

“Okay, I’m going back to bed,” Chef said when they led a very rough-looking Lyla and Tabitha out to us. “You okay to get them home?”

“Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Chef,” I said, waving to him as he left the station.

“You two okay?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry about this, Charlie,” Lyla said.

“We really appreciate it,” Tabitha said, although she was giving me a perplexed look.

I imagined, from her perspective, it was strange to see a kid being the one to come bail them out. I’d only talked to Tabitha a few times when Lyla had brought her to practices. I didn’t have anything against her, but she tended to prefer to talk to Marco, Lyla, and Seth. I didn’t blame her for that. She was old for Lyla, which made her almost my parents’ age. There wasn’t a lot that a sixteen-year-old and a thirty-year-old had to talk about.

“What happened?”

“One of the guys from the factory got tanked and started putting his hands on Tabby. His buddies thought it was funny when I threatened to kick his ass, and things kind of got out of hand.”

“At the Blue Ridge?”

“No. After our set, we went to The Well to drink,” Lyla said.

I didn’t really know that place, besides the fact that it was on the south side of town next to Emmett’s Auto Service and was some kind of hole-in-the-wall dive bar. I’d only ever seen it in the daytime when it looked like it was shut down. It, however, didn’t surprise me that Lyla would like to drink there. The Blue Ridge had a bar, but it wasn’t ‘a bar,’ and was pretty tame even compared to several of the places we’d played on our tour.

“I’ll pay you back, I swear,” she said.

“I know. I’m not worried about it. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t in any trouble. Is this going to be a problem?”

“Nah,” Tabitha said. “They’ll knock it down to misdemeanor disorderly, everyone will pay fines, and that’ll be it.”

It sounded like this wasn’t Tabitha’s first bar fight. Although, to be fair, it probably wasn’t Lyla’s first one either.

“Ohh,” I said. “Well, good then. I guess you need a ride back to your car?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” Lyla said.

“Sure. Let’s go.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I really owe you.”

“Nah, this is what friends are for.”

I could see Tabitha giving Lyla a ‘what the hell is going on’ glance as we walked out to my car. She’d either get over the fact that I was a lot younger than everyone else or not, it didn’t matter to me. I only needed to be able to work with Lyla. I didn’t need to be friends with her girlfriend if she found it uncomfortable.

I was exhausted when I fell back into bed, only to be woken up by Kat screaming at nine AM. I could tell by the partial words I could make out that it was happy screams, but part of me wanted to just pull the pillow over my head to try to block out the noise. When it didn’t stop, I groaned and got up.

Kat was in the kitchen with Mrs. Phillips jumping up and down, holding her cell phone. When she saw me come into the kitchen, she ran over and threw her arms around my neck, almost taking me off my feet.