Lost and Found

“Please, please, please?!” Danny begged, jutting out his bottom lip. I groaned and covered my face with the hood on my jacket, masking my view of his green curly hair. My friend since childhood sat at my knees, with his hands in a praying stance while he begged.

“C’mon, please, Liz?” Marianne begged. “I’ll even fuck you if you want me to.”

I chuckled. “Sorry Marianne. I don’t like the vag.”

“Neither do I,” she replied. “But if you go I’ll gladly offer.”

“Please Elizabeth? You get to see your love parents,” Danny joked.

I laughed. “For the last fucking time, I’m not the love child of M. Shadows and his girlfriend.”

“Maybe they really are and they gave you up for adoption when they were really young… like… 14 or something,” said Marianne. I removed my hood, looking at her funny.

“The numbers wouldn’t add up right,” I told her.

“Okay, so let’s do some math, Miss Valedictorian. They are, what, thirty three?” Marianne asked

Danny, who simply nodded a reply. “Okay, so thirty three minus seventeen equals?”

“Sixteen,” I said, putting my hood back down to talk. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Cause we can. So are you coming or not?” Danny asked. “I’ve got one ticket left, Lizzie, if you don't come it'll go to waste. I'll have no one to take... No one in the world...”

I rolled my eyes. “You guys know I’m not crazy about this band, right?” I asked. I liked some of their songs, their older ones. But their newer stuff threw me off.

“Yes, but we are,” Danny said with an exaggerated whine . “And since Mom and Dad paid damn good money for these, [i]plus[/i] the backstage passes, I know we should use them to our full advantage. Like seeing my heroes.”

I groaned once more, making my discomfort known to this small mass. “Fine. I’ll see what Dad says about it.” I said Dad because Mom would more than likely say ‘Yeah, sure! Let me go too!’ My father was more level headed and thought things out. He had my safety in mind. He had thought things through and made adult decisions.

“Call him,” Marianne said, removing my hood and shoving my phone in my face, which was already dialing. I quickly grabbed it and inwardly sighed before Dad answered.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Hey, Dad. It’s Elizabeth. Marianne and Danny are bugging me.”

“About what?”

Marianne stole the phone away from me and spoke. “Hey Nick.”

“He’s going to say no,” I said.

“Danny got these really awesome tickets and backstage passes to a concert and we wanted to know if you’d let Elizabeth go with us.”

“He’s going to say no,” I said again. Danny clamped his hand over my mouth.

“It’s going to be in downtown Chicago.” It's an hour’s drive! We're seventeen! What if we get lost or mugged or raped or our car is stolen? What if we run out of money and we're on the side of the road? I'm not going to be the one who flashes their chest for a dollar to get something of the dollar menu at McDonalds. I bit Danny’s fingers and he quickly withdrew his hand. That’ll teach him.

“Saturday night. It starts at eight. We’d be there way earlier to wait in line, though.”

“He’s going to say no…” I mumbled watching Danny as he recoiled his fingers in terror and pain.

“Avenged Sevenfold.”

“I told you so…”

“If Danny’s parents thought it’d be dangerous, they wouldn’t have gotten the tickets for him.”

“And countdown to saying no in three…”

“Danny is. He’s got the gas efficient car and GPS. So no getting lost.”

“Two…”

"Well we were going to pull our allowances together. Danny and I had jobs this last summer that we just saved our money from."

"One."

“Thank you Nick! I’ll tell her!”

“Fuck.” I whimpered when Marianne ended the call and tossed the phone back at me.

“You’re going to the concert…” she sung, "You're going to the concert..."

“Why me?” I asked.

“Cause you’re awesome,” Danny told me, ruffling my hair.

“I hate eighteen year olds,” I said.

“It’s not our fault you’re younger than us,” Marianne put kindly, ruffling my hair as well.

“And jealous that we can buy pornos and you can’t,” Danny said.

Marianne and I laughed. “I think that’s only you, dude,” said Marianne.

“So?” he retorted.

“So what are we going to do now?” I asked.

“Celebrate until my parents get home, and then it’s beddy bye for wittle Wizzy!” Marianne cooed.

“I hate you guys,” I mumbled, pushing her away and resituating my straight brown hair.

“You know you love us,” Danny said, lying over my lap.

“Off ,” I commanded, pushing him off. Danny hit the floor with a thud and Marianne and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’ll... be right... back…” Marianne said through laughter. She took her cigarette pack out of her purse and went outside.

Marianne doesn’t smoke around me due to the fact that I’m asthmatic and I’ll most likely have an asthma attack. Those things aren’t too great. Not being able to breathe and all… god, I hate it. I sighed, pulling my brown hair into a low ponytail, and leaned my head back on the couch.

“So what do you wanna do ‘till she gets back?” Danny asked.

“We’ve got some candy…” I suggested.

Danny laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think so. You with a sugar high is annoying.”

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun," I smiled

Notes