She's Got the Rhythm

Chapter Thirty-One: This is Real Life, Whether You Like It or Not

            “Ready to kick some butt?” Adam asked me as I sat down at my drum set.

            I laughed and said, “Whose butt should I kick?”

            He shrugged and said, “Well, Ryan is always an option. Just pretend he’s the snare drum and beat the crap out of him.”

            “Now you’ve really got a creative mind,” I leaned over and grabbed my sticks out of my bag. A brand new pair with my name and On the Brightside engraved in them.

            “It’s my pleasure,” he tossed me a water bottle and I downed half of it immediately. “Thirsty?” he teased me.

            “Please, it’s 101 degrees out here,” I showed him the screen on my phone which displayed the weather just to prove it.

            “Oh my gorgeous Arizona,” he bent down to connect some wires and handed me my in ear headphones so I could hear the click track.

            “I seriously don’t understand why Blake couldn’t have picked an indoor venue,” Hannah complained as she tuned Caleb’s guitar. She’d gone from being not only my drum tech, but the guys’ guitar tech. I told her she didn’t have to mess with the drums today since Adam was here to help me with that.

            I know I keep fast-forwarding with my story but honestly, nothing too exciting has happened since the court date. It’s been ten months and our band was kind of at a hiatus for a while.

            After what seemed to take three months of convincing, my dad finally let me play in the band again now that Ryan was officially kicked out (Blake had taken care of all that) and I was safe. I honestly didn’t know how long we were going to keep up with this ‘band’ thing. I mean, we were signed and we had gone back in the studio for about a week and managed to compile a track listing for it. The album artwork was going to be released next week as well as the actual album the week afterwards. Right now, we were embarking on our first headlining tour for the summer.

            There were many questions hanging in the air about why Ryan had been kicked out of the band. I hated lying to the fans and making up statements like ‘He wasn’t in a very good spot in his life. It’s the best thing for the band right now.’ No, I didn’t want to do that. I had Blake release a statement to Alternative Press about it and it was published in the May issue. After our fans read that, they ultimately understood and gave me props for sticking with the band. Ryan, well, he was probably getting a lot of hate on Facebook, but that wasn’t my problem, he’d set himself up for this.

            “We’ve got ten minutes you guys,” Sam, Caleb’s brother, was our new guitarist who’d replaced Ryan. He was really nice, and he’d adapted to the whole band lifestyle quite quickly for not ever being in a band before. I could already tell that the fans liked him a lot.

            “’Kay, thanks Sam,” I smeared some sun screen onto my face and set it next to my set.

            “Sure, no problem,” he walked off stage and joined our merch girl, Laney, at the merch tent. We hadn’t exactly ‘fired’ Candace, don’t get me wrong, I looked up to her a lot, but we said it would only be best for her to leave. I didn’t want people coming up to her and saying that her little brother was a terrible person. I mean, he was, but I didn’t want to make her feel worse about it when it wasn’t even her fault.

            So, long story short, we hired Laney, a girl I met while working in my dad’s music shop. She played drums too, and was looking for a new pair of hi-hats. We bonded right away and I was glad I had someone to relate to. My first instinct was to ask her if she was looking for a summer job. She said she was and I suggested that we needed a new merch girl. She was interested and said she loved going on tour, her mom and dad were both musicians. I told the guys right away and they agreed, considering they wanted me to feel as comfortable as possible. I was thankful to be surrounded by a real family.