Tiny cracked a small smile. I guess I was a pleasant change from all the drunk people he had to corral every night. Either that, or he thought I was an idiot. “Naw, you’re not getting kicked out. They want you”—he motioned upstairs with his walkie-talkie again—“upstairs.”
Victoria grabbed onto my arm. “Upstairs,” she repeated. “The VIP area! They must have seen you come in. The security guards must have told someone!” I could tell that she was about to implode like a star; even Jonah looked impressed. No doubt he was thinking about the possibility of an open bar and bartenders who didn’t check IDs.
“But why do they want me up there?” I whispered to Victoria, trying not to look at Tiny.
“Because you’re Audrey!” she hissed back. “You’re ‘Audrey, Wait!’ You’re a celebrity!”
I gaped at her. “Do you think we might be able to go backstage?”
She squealed and jumped around, and I grabbed her hands and squealed with her.
“So you’re that Audrey, huh?” Tiny said. “That’s cool. My kid sister likes that song. She’s got a crush on that lead singer guy.”
“That’s her ex-boyfriend!” Victoria told him, jabbing me the ribs. “Evan!”
“Whatever, man. It’s a cool song.”
I decided that I could dig Tiny’s Zen vibe about the whole thing. And as a man in a suit rushed down the stairs and introduced himself as Eric, the promoter of the show, I realized that this was really happening. My hands were shaking a little and I have no idea why, but I looked over to Tiny for support.
And God bless that man with the thick neck, he got it. “Hey, girl,” he said to me under his breath as he lifted the velvet rope so we could follow the promoter back up to the VIP area. “Enjoy yourself, all right?”
“No worries, my friend,” I told him. After all, my privacy hadn’t been sacrificed just so I could sit at home in my pajamas and watch Laguna Beach marathons and wonder for the thousandth time why I hadn’t told that Isabella reporter to fuck off. I looked awesome. No one else had my boots on. I had my best friend on one side of me and the love of her life was on the other side of her, and when the promoter guy came back with all-access stickers, I slapped mine onto my hip, exchanged grins with Victoria, and thought, Let’s dance.
10 “Amazed to stumble where gods get lost…”
—Patti Smith, “Beneath the Southern Cross”
NO MATTER WHAT YOU READ in all the magazines or see in movies and TV shows, it doesn’t give you a sense of what it’s like to be in the VIP area.
It was just so calm that I couldn’t believe it. I think it was the first time that I had been at a show and no one tried to climb over me or trample me to death in the pit. (That happened to Victoria last year at the My Chemical Romance concert and oh my God, we could barely get her up. They had to stop the show so she and a bunch of other people could get pulled out. Totally scary.)
But this? This I could get used to. Here Victoria and I had all the room we wanted, and there were free drinks in the corner, and we could actually talk to each other without screaming in each other’s faces to be heard over the sound system. And the view of the stage was incredible.
Still, I couldn’t help but notice something.
“Do you get the feeling?” I said into Victoria’s ear as we leaned up against the railing, “that people are watching us?”
Victoria, subtle as she is, immediately started looking around to see if I was right. “Don’t look!” I hissed. “Great, you’re looking now. Never mind, you ruined it.”
“How can I tell if they’re looking at us if I’m not looking at them?” she shot back, then peeked over our shoulders. “Oh, yeah, they’re definitely looking at you. Not us. You.”
“Me?”
She sighed and rested her head on my arm. “Yes, you, mon cherie. They didn’t invite us backstage because Jonah slipped the bouncer a twenty.”
We watched the crowd for a few minutes, pointing out the drunk girls and the loner guys, when I suddenly saw a guy with longish red hair, tall and towering over the rest of the crowd. James. “Hey, it’s—!” I started to say, but then he turned around and I realized that it wasn’t James after all. His nose was too pointy. James had a cuter, more buttonish nose.
Too late, though. Victoria had seen me point. “Who?” she said, and followed my gaze. “Oh.” Then she turned to me with a knowing smile. “Oh.”
“Shut up,” I told her.
“I haven’t said anything yet!”
“Don’t.”
“How can I shut up if I haven’t said anything?”
“I know you. You’ve got a monologue coming up.”
“No, I don’t.” Then she paused. “But if I did, I would say that maybe you should ask James out and stop torturing the rest of us, and that James obviously likes you in a ‘let’s have our own pep rally under the bleachers’ way, so you don’t have to worry about rejection.” Then she sipped at her water innocently. “But don’t worry, I’m not saying anything.”
I pretended to be annoyed and ignored her, but Victoria always had a way of saying what I didn’t want to admit to myself. In the car earlier that day, I hadn’t told her that after those girls came into the Scooper Dooper and James spilled the soft-serve, he and I had both cleaned it up, and I’d accidentally gotten some vanilla on my face—and he had wiped it off with his fingertip. The store had been so quiet and we were below the counter where no one could see us, and if this mom and her three kids hadn’t barged in just then…well, I think something would have happened.