Love and Fame Games (Book 1)

08

"Now that we're all here, we'll start taking questions," Ethan Scott, Off-Kilter's guitar player and sometime vocalist, announced at lunch later that day.

It was a bright, sunny day but cool enough in the shade so all seven of us sat at—or rather, squeezed into—one table outside the cafeteria.

Content to just absorb information and let the others talk, I pricked up my ears and went on eating my turkey sandwich. Ethan turned to each person at our table, lingering in Erin's direction to give her a pointed look.

"Off the record, of course."

"Crap," Erin muttered. She reached under the table and produced a voice recorder that she'd been hiding, switched it off, and whined. "Come on, one little puff piece for the school paper. I'll make you guys look soo good."

"Nice try." Ethan laughed, and so did everyone else at the table. No one would have believed Erin, even if she had said that without the sarcastic tone and eye-rolling. She wasn't the gushy puff piece type; she was always after the bigger story.

"Ugh. Just let her write the damn article," Alex butted in. "No one reads the school paper anyway. Like, what is the big deal?"

"Thanks a lot, Alex," Erin said, knitting her brows at said girl, who nodded and accepted her thanks graciously.

Ethan responded with a tight-lipped smile. "The big deal is that until a record deal is signed and safe in our hands, we need to be careful and make sure every move we make is approved by management."

No one was quite certain how to respond to that. Even though Ethan's tone was light-hearted, we all knew what a huge break like this meant to someone like him.

Ethan Scott had a reputation for being a bad boy. He didn't really mind it. According to him, it kept people who would normally mess with someone like him off his back, not to mention, drove a lot of girls wild.

He was kidding when he said that second part, but not completely wrong, from what I'd seen. Although, personally, I think even a choirboy with his looks wouldn't do so badly in that department, either.

Anyway, Ethan lived on the wrong side of the tracks and had an attendance problem—pretty lame reasons to label someone, in my opinion. He lived there with his mom, who worked two jobs, an ailing grandmother, and an older brother with special needs, for one thing, and he occasionally skipped classes to work and help make ends meet, for another.

I guess that was why I didn't find it at all weird, not seeing him all summer—unlike Seth. I just assumed he got a job somewhere, and as it turned out, I was right.

Those weren't the only reasons for the label, unfortunately. He also had a father who died while serving a prison sentence. But who didn't have a family member they wished they weren't related to?

That didn't seem to be the case with Ethan's dad, though. There had been no funeral or memorial service when Ethan's dad died and I had no memory of meeting him before then. All I really knew about him was that he played a mean guitar, had taught Ethan to play when he was still around.

He was also the original owner of the shiny candy apple red guitar with the dragon-scale design strap that was Ethan's prized possession. Ethan would never part with it, even when he really needed the money. Why would he cherish something that reminded him of someone awful?

"Exactly, Erin," I heard Alex say in an admonishing tone. "You can't just harass them when they're eating like this. Have some respect for their privacy. God."

Seth who all this time, had been silently eating some sort of sandwich wrap from across the table, looked up. He turned to Alex with a look of mock confusion. "Weren't you the one who sent that video of the concert to everyone we know?"