Welcome to the Family

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror for about a minute now, trying to decide whether or not if I was going to wear my hair up. After that, it took about a minute and a half for me to get it exactly the way I wanted.

I leaned forward against the counter top looking at myself. I looked a little tired and could even see the stress forming in my eyes. If I wanted to be able to stand up on stage for as long as I needed, I would have to take some of my special medication that helped with my stamina.

I opened prescription bottle and took the pill. One dose before the show should help, but if I started feeling sick and the stomach pain returns, I'd have to take two doses. If I actually did get sick, it would be three. The bad thing about it all was that if I couldn't swallow the pills, or I started vomiting and pass out, I would have to have someone use a syringe and inject the meds that way.

It doesn't sound too bad, but for me it was because I had a small fear of needles, even though I've had my blood taken two times as much as the average person because of my condition. I was also stuck with Anemia, Insomnia and I had a little above average case of OCD. Yeah, I was screwed the minute my traits were set at random to form my DNA.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Chelsea, you okay? You've been in there for awhile now.” Brian’s soft voice came through the door.

“Dude! She could be going number two. Of course she’s going to be in there for a while. Give her some privacy.” I heard Cody say, projecting in a hushed voice.

“Hey, no number two on the bus!” Will chimed in.

I swung open the door and stepped out. The door crashed into Brian, causing him to wheel backwards to keep from falling. “I was not going ‘number two’… I was just fixing my hair.”

“Liar,” Cody faked a cough. I gave him a quick glare and turned to get a glass of water.
Brian stepped out from behind the door. “Well thanks…” He said, rubbing his nose. I shrugged and mumbled an apology. “It’s cool. Hey, did you take your meds?” He asked, giving me a look that I always got if I hadn’t.

I rolled my eyes. “What are you, my father?”

He chuckled. “No, just doing my part time job as your physician.”He joked…for the most part.

I smirked and went back to taking a drink. “Yes, doctor, I did take them.”

“Your loony meds or the adrenaline? Cause we all know you can get a little crazy.” Cody commented, waving a finger at me.

I gave him a stern look. “Cody, we all know you’re the one who has to take shit for your ADHD. So get off my back.” He threw his hands up and backed off.

“Wait, you have to take stuff for your ADHD?” Blake asked, chuckling at the thought. “I should have known.” He said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, and you’re stuck with having to sneeze five times a minute and hoarding tissues in your pockets, so don’t get on my ass about my medical needs.” Cody retorted.

“And you should get off my ass about mine.” I threw back at him.

“Hey, I'm just worried about you.” He said batting his eyelashes at me innocently.

I put my hand to my heart. “Awe…bullshit.” His smile faded for a second but then reappeared.

“So when are we leaving?” Kyle said, walking in from the back room. As soon as I set my glass down, he picked it back up and took a drink.

I scowled at him and he shrugged. “What? Don’t like sharing?” He asked sarcastically.

“I would rather you get your own, Cody.” I said, calling him Cody because he was acting just like him. I snatched the glass back.

“What I do?” Cody asked from across the room, clearly not getting the point.

I shook my head, in despair of him ever getting it. “I was just trying to make a point. You didn’t do anything…yet.” I mumbled the last part. Knowing him, he would do something to annoy me or the others within 10 minutes from now.

I shook the thought off and decided to change the subject. “So when are we leaving?” I asked, looking around at them for an answer.

“We should be heading out soon. You definitely don’t want to be lat to your own show.” Brian commented, grabbing a beer from the fridge. Yes, sadly he had stored alcohol on the bus for his sake while he traveled with us. Every so often though, Kyle or Cody would grab one, but would never actually get drunk off them.

When I was living with Bert and the rest of The Used, I would get tempted to drink with them, considering all of the alcohol they carried with them every year on tour, but in the end, after all of the partying they’d done, I decided I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to give in and start drinking, afraid I would end up like my mother or even Bert, who were both alcoholics.

Alcohol and other things had slowly but surely changed Bert’s life, and that had affected mine. He wasn’t the same person, the Bert I knew and once was in love with after he had gotten into drugs. He started befriending the wrong people and ended up getting involved in worse things like cocaine and heroin. After that, he had become someone I almost hated. He was harsh, and didn’t care about anything or anyone but the drugs and money. I couldn’t handle it anymore so I left The Used bus and, after a big fight, I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore, that he wasn’t my best friend and even that I had hated him. I don’t really hate him. I just wanted nothing more than to get away. I was fed up with his childish ways, knowing he needed to grow up before we could ever be friends again. As if he would grow up.

After all of that happened, I called Will (crying, I might add) and he and the guys agreed I could stay with them. We were in the band together at the time, but weren’t on tour and were still working on our album. They were so good to me, especially after telling them about Bert. I couldn’t ask for better friends. When we were finishing up on the record, I called up Brian and he soon became our manager. We were then signed to a major record label and were heading out for touring when the record was finished. I've been having the time of my life since as the singer of a rock band with the most amazing guys.

“Okay then, are you guys ready to leave?” I asked, pulling my shoes on.

“Ready to go.” Cody said, jumping up from where he was sitting on the couch with drumsticks in his hands.

I chuckled and looked around at the boys, finally noticing Will had disappeared. “Wait, where did Will go?” Everyone looked around, seeing he was gone.

“Is he in the bathroom?” Blake asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see him go in.”

“Oh William! Where art thou, William?” Cody shouted in a damsel-in-distress voice, clapping his hands together and standing on his tippy toes.

That got a good laugh out of everyone. He was even batting his eyelashes as he spoke. I was rolling out of my chair when Will replied from the back of the bus where no one could see him.

“Juliet! I'm in here, my dear Juliet! Let down your god damn hair so I can climb up this fucking tower to save your ass.”

“Wrong…love…story.” I said in between laughs. Everyone was one the floor by then from laughing. My sides were hurting as I gasped for air.

Will came in from the back, laughing along with the rest of us. As soon as he calmed down a bit, he shrugged. “How was I supposed to know the difference? All love stories are the exact same. Desperate harlequin ends up with the handsome prince every time. Every damn time.”

“I'm sure that’s not entirely true.” I said after I could finally quit laughing.

“Alright, name one. Name one romance story that the guy didn’t get the girl, or vice versa.” He said, expecting me to not being able to answer. He was right though, I couldn’t think of one, not from all of the books I've read and movies I've seen. I just shrugged in response. “That’s what I thought.”

“Okay, you guys are boring me. Can we please go now?” Cody said, bouncing on his heels anxiously.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Typical guy. You’re having a nice conversation with them then the second you bring up romance, they go off running and screaming. Cowards…” I mumbled and folded my arms across my chest. I had to deal with that a lot when it came to Bert.

I always wanted something more than just a friendship, but every time I brought it up, he would try to change the subject. It was as if he wanted nothing more than to be drinking buddies or something. That’s all we ever really did anyway. So I just stuck to hanging out with the guys from My Chemical Romance last year, but before that I was always by myself, avoiding the alcohol and other things they were in to entirely.

“What’s your problem? Hit your head again?” Kyle smirked, being an asshole like usual.

That earned him a glare. “No, you just can't ever expect a guy to admit his true feelings, or even at least tell you they love you without having to interrogate him about it. And after all of that hard work, what's the point? I find it completely worthless and time consuming. I don’t even want to waste my time with it.”

“What are you saying? Are actually giving up on love?” Brian asked with a questioning look, aside from the fact that he was still smiling.

I shrugged and tied my shoes. “I don’t know. I doubt I'll ever find anyone who would take the time to actually grow feelings for me, let alone get to know me. Maybe I have given up. I feel like I've been looking for so long, and wound up feeling so lost.”

“That’s not true, I got to know you.” Blake pointed out.

“What are you trying to say Blake? That you have feelings for Chelsea?” Cody asked, raising his eyebrows up and down with a big goofy grin on his face.

My face instantly heated and turned red. I had to look away before anyone could notice, especially Blake and have him completely deny it, making it clear to everyone he was saying no. That would just make me feel even more embarrassed.

Brian shook off the comment Cody made before Blake could answer and changed the subject, thank God. “Come on Chels', you’re only 20 years old, do you really expect to find love so soon?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s such a typical adult comment. ‘You’re too young to know what love is’.” I said mocking the very words my mother once told me when I had accidentally mentioned to her that I was falling for Bert. We were having a fight and somehow he had become a topic in the argument.

Brian scoffed, obviously offended. “That’s not what I meant. I'm just saying, maybe you shouldn’t give up so soon. You’re so young. I'm sure you'll find the right guy. You just can't give up yet. Keep trying, I’m sure you’ll run into him one day.”

“Yeah, I just hope this time you don’t almost put a poor guy into a concussion.” Cody snickered, trying to keep in his laughter, but couldn’t help himself.

I scowled, knowing the minute Brian said that, Cody would have some snarky comment. “I just knewyou would crack some stupid joke.” I growled.

He shrugged. “What can I say? I've got talent for sarcasm.”

“Yeah, and pissing people off.” Will threw in, bringing up the Snickers incident.

Cody threw his arms up. “Come on! It was just a candy bar! When are you going to let it go? I'll get you another one if you just shut the hell up.”

Will raised an eyebrow, giving him a questioning look. “Are you really?”

Cody snorted and folded his arms. “No. I just I want you to stop talking about it already.”

Will smirked. “You owe me for that fucking candy bar. I was hungry, dude. You don’t just steal a man’s candy, you know!” He said, pointing his finger at him.

“Alright!” I stood, clapping my hands together. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Agreed.” Kyle said, looking very annoyed like the rest of us.

Brian quickly locked up after we all got off. “So are you excited or are you still nervous?” He asked me as we started walking.

I watched my feet as we walked, looking up every once in awhile to make sure I didn’t run into anyone. I didn’t want to make that mistake again. “Excited, nervous…What’s the difference, really?” I lightly joked even though it came out sounding more apprehensive then I intended. I was trying to distract myself of my weary thoughts. Being a pessimist was one thing I really hated about myself. It isn’t easy to overcome the thoughts you’ve had for so many years, always putting yourself down, no matter what you did. I guess I've just grown accustom to always putting myself down, used to the bad things I've thought and said about myself. I just started believing they were all true instead of trying to be positive about myself.

He chuckled. “Well which one is it?”

“Uneasy, more like.” I answered somberly.

Will strode over to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, walking me with the rest of the guys. Mostly I think it was because I wasn’t watching where I was going, but I knew he was just trying to comfort me. “Don’t worry Chels’, they’ll love you. They’ll love our band and our music. I'm just glad to be in this band with you and the rest of the guys. Without you all I would probably be stuck working at McDonald’s or landing some other shitty job.” That got me to laugh. He returned with a genuine smile and a small hug.

“I would probably still be working down at Starbucks earning less than 50 cents a tip every time I gave the customers my ‘charming smile’, as my boss would always say. Sure, there were a lot of cute girls that would show up and ask me for my number, but I don’t really think it was all worth the minimum wage.” Kyle added, smirking to himself at his own words.

I shook my head in amazement at his vulgarity. “You are such a charmer, aren’t you?”

He looked over at me and gave me the smirk instead. He was about to throw something sarcastic back at me but Cody stole the opportunity.

“Ha! Charmer? More like impassive man whore.” Everyone but Kyle laughed. Brian tried to hide it but his body was shaking from the laughter.

“Spot on, old chap!” Will said in a fake British accent.

“Impassive man whore, huh?” Kyle asked, running over to Cody and playfully throwing him to the ground. They always did this. They would get into a small argument, throwing around insults until finally enough was said to where they began to start wrestling.

“Okay you two, enough!” Will said, grabbing Cody by the collar and pulled him out from under Kyle. “We have a very important show to do today and I don’t want you two fucking it up.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and Cody glared at him. “Sorry,” They both mumbled at the same time.

“That’s what I thought.” Will sneered. He shoved them forward and we started walking again. Blake, Brian and I were still laughing silently.

We made it to our stage that we were supposed to play on later and stood near the side. We were waiting for the band playing now to end their show. It was only around one o’clock right now, but we decided to watch them play. They were a beginner band just like us and only had a small crowd, like we would too, I'm sure.
Instead of getting anxious and nervous, I was actually getting pumped watching them play. They were pretty good, but I knew we were so much better. I didn’t know if it was their first show or not, but they seemed pretty scared.

I decided I wasn’t going to let the bad feelings get the best of me. I wasn’t going to show them my fear. I was going to be confident, graceful and was going to sound amazing. I knew my boys had my back and were going to do great themselves, so I wasn’t worried about that. It was all up to me to make everything go right. I was going to get people to like me, to like us, no matter what, and if they didn’t like us, so what? Fuck them. I wasn’t letting anyone stand in my way of my biggest dream. This was going to happen, whether I wanted it to or not.

Next thing I knew, an hour rolled on by. The previous band was packing up their equipment and left the stage. The few people that made up the crowd started to fade away and were off to go check out other bands. It was our turn now. I couldn’t believe it was already two o’clock. Some of our roadies and stagehands had just shown up with our stuff and were going to help us set up. I helped unload the trailer and grabbed a few guitars and an amp, carrying them up to the stage and setting them on the guitar rack that was at the very right of the stage. Blake was setting up microphone stands and hooking the mics up. He turned to see me watching him and smiled. I smiled back and grabbed Will’s acoustic from Steve and set it on the rack.

Will walked up to me with several microphones in his hands. Only one was wireless. “Which do you want?” He asked, smiling when I reached for the wireless. “Thought so.” He and I both hooked up the rest of them and set them into the microphone stands.

Kyle was adding picks into them just in case the guys needed extras. Cody and the drum tech Mark was fixing up his drum set behind me, putting it all together. Before I knew it, we were all just about ready to start the show.

A wave of anxiety hit me, I felt as if I were going to pass out. No, I wasn’t going to let this happen. I wasn’t going to let my Addisons disease over power me and get me sick. I was going to get through this, even if it killed me. I decided I wasn’t going to tell the guys I was feeling the usual pains I got from the sickness. I didn’t want to worry them. They needed to focus on the show and not on how I was feeling. When no one was looking, I grabbed my bag from the side of the stage and took another pill of mine. It should help with my stamina and keep me from feeling so badly. I grabbed someone’s water bottle, I think it was Will’s and took a drink to swallow the pill. I set it back down, seeing that no one noticed me and went back to standing in front of my mic.

Will, Blake and Kyle were tuning their guitars and did last minute preparations. Cody fiddled around by banging on his drums and practicing new tricks. All I could do was stand there looking out into the grassy field in front of me. I can do this I know I can.

I felt a hand and a light squeeze on my shoulder. I spun around to see Brian standing there smiling at me. “Don’t worry, you’ll do just fine. I have faith in you, my little protégé.” He said laughing. I laughed too and released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Thanks Brian. Thank you for having faith in me and the band. I know you were skeptical at first, but you gave us a chance. I just want to prove to you, to the world that I can do this, that we can do this.”

“And you can. I may have been a little weary of managing you guys at first, but then I saw you guys play. Since then I had my heart set on working for you. I just had to have you guys.” He laughed. “I know you can do this. Now you just have to show the world who you really are. You are all one of the best bands and best players I've ever had. I want to thank you for coming to me, for asking me to work for you.”

I smiled. “I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

He returned the smile. “And you sure are going to be putting me to work soon. As soon as you guys get there, you’ll be booking gigs so fast I'll have to hire people to answer the phones for gig interviews.” We started laughing together. My pessimist side said yeah, right but the side that wanted to be optimistic could only hope.

After our laughing fit, Will ran up to my side. “Hey, you ready? Five minutes until we start.” With that, he ran back to his spot on the stage at my right. Blake stood to my left and Kyle stood wherever he wanted to. I was left in the middle of the stage, and up front with several pairs of eyes on me, waiting for the show to begin.

Brian patted my shoulder. “Like I said, you’ll do great. Good luck.” He gave me a small kiss on the cheek and ran off stage without another word. I was left there speechless. I know it was just a nice gesture but I still wasn’t expecting it.

I turned toward the open space where the people would stand and watch us play. I may have felt so many butterflies dancing in my stomach but I wasn’t going to let it over take me. I looked down at the paper one of the guys had taped down at my feet. It was the list of songs we were playing from first to last. First song on the list was Reflection, one of many of our darker songs. I wrote the lyrics to it in the ninth grade but I got the guys to help me rewrite it later and they helped make it into a much better song. I went over the lyrics in my head, praying I didn’t forget any of them.

Five minutes had passed, and the guys had started to play the beginning of the song that had me singing within the first few seconds. I began to sing the first few lines of the song, my face feeling so heated from the people watching me. The song was slow at first, with a heavy rhythm, and the lyrics were strong and steady. Soon the pre-chorus kicks in as I lowered my voice. When the screaming in the background came, Cody was ready to do his part. We didn’t have many songs with screaming but when we did, he did an amazing job. As soon as the chorus hit, the guitars got heavier, the bass louder and the drums gave way to an awesome beat.

By then a crowd was starting to form in front of us. One by one, each person came along, bobbing their heads up in down with the beat of the song. I knew they liked hearing the boys play. What can I say? They were amazing. I just hoped they liked me too. When the song sped up to its incredible solo part for the lead guitar, I started throwing myself into the song.

I did somewhat of a dance around the stage and the guys, leaning against Will while I sang the second verse and then danced a little with Kyle near the end. He smiled and strummed away at his bass as I danced circles around him. When the heavy part for the guitars to be playing in unison came in, Kyle, Blake, Will and I all went up to the front of the stage, with my foot on the amp and started head banging to the end of the song. Cody finished with a rocking drum roll and then slammed down on the very last beat.

We had a pretty good turn out as a lot of people clapped for us, even cheered. Before I knew it, we had finished the concert with five of our songs. Yeah I know, it was a pretty small show, but hey, what do you expect with your first show at a venue that had more than ten different bands playing the very same day? The people really seemed to like us. We all packed up our stuff and walked off stage, high-fiving each other, feeling pretty good about ourselves.

Notes