Road Rash (10 page)

“I want you to call or text or email on a regular basis. I’m not talking every day, but do it when you can, okay? Just to let us know you’re alive?” I nodded. Easy. He went on. “Your mom
worries about you, probably more than you know. My main objection to letting you go was about the stress it might cause her, more than anything to do with you. Letting her know you’re okay will help with that.”

“Sure, I can do that. No problem.”

“Thanks.” He grinned. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be wanting to go, too. In a big way. So behave, but enjoy yourself. I think it’ll be a good experience for you.”

“Thanks, Dad. What was the other thing?”

“This is going to sound dumb, but humor me.…” God, was he going to ask me to wear a chastity ring or take some drug-free vow or what …? “I want you to send postcards. I’ll get you a roll of stamps before you go. Buy a postcard at every town you visit, scratch something on it, and send it home. That’s all.”

I didn’t get it. “Dad, I’ve got my phone. I can send you pics anytime I want.”

He cleared his throat. “I was actually aware of that. Just work with me on this, okay? I don’t expect you to understand now, but you’ll be glad you did it later. And besides, Alicia loves getting old-fashioned postcards. So if nothing else, do it for her. Okay?”

He was right—I totally didn’t get it. But considering all the weird things I could imagine my parents asking for, it was the least I could do. “Okay.”

Once all
that
was straightened out, I spent the next week rehearsing with Bad Habit and woodshedding the songs on my own. I had a lot of tunes to get a handle on, but it felt good to be playing, and it was also nice to be learning different material.…

The guys in the Sock Monkeys liked the more garage-y,
pop-punk stuff (even though their set lists were all over the map), while Bad Habit had more of an indie and modern-rockish vibe going on. There was still some overlap—they both did “Lonely Boy,” by the Black Keys, for example—but even then their versions were different: the Sock Monkeys did it as a straight-ahead, four-on-the-floor, guitar/bass/drums thing, while Bad Habit changed it up a little, with Jamie’s backing vocals and cool piano part adding more dimension.

So yeah, I was happy being in a band again—things started feeling almost normal.

One thing that
was
weird, however—and I’m not really sure why—was Kimber. The night after I’d talked with Kyle, she texted me.

Kyle told me you’re going on tour w/ Bad Habit???

That’s the truth, lil sis
.

:-(

Then a second later she added
JK!
☺

I hope so
, I wrote.
I’m stoked about going
.

Yeah, me 2. GTG. Talk later
.

Later …

She showed up at the gig at Paisano’s. I don’t know—maybe it was the stress of playing new songs with a new band—but the whole thing was strange.…

I saw her during the first set, standing near the back with her older sister, Sarah. I guess she’d gotten a ride from Sarah—who must have been home from Cal Poly for the summer—because Kyle was nowhere in sight.

Kimber came up during the break and we sat at a table and had a couple of cokes.

“God, you sound good,” she said, looking at me. When did her eyes get so big?

“I think it’s the company I keep. Those guys are pros.”

“Maybe. Partly. But that’s you and no one else up there playing the drums, and I know what I see.”

“Thanks.” She still had that big-eyes thing going on, and I swear I almost let fly with
Hey, you got any annoying jerks you need scared off? The first one’s free tonight
. My face must have given me away.

“What’s with the grin?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Okay, besides that whole hop-on-my-lap image, what I was really thinking was how nice she’d been since I’d gotten kicked from the band. I shrugged. “You’ve been a good friend. That’s all.” That came out sounding dorky, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Thanks, Zach!” She smiled, but then she looked up at the gear onstage and got kind of quiet. “So you’re really going on the road with these guys? Kyle said all summer?”

“Yeah. Northern Rockies.”

“Why do you have to go all that way? There’s got to be plenty of clubs in California.…”

“Yeah. But there are also a lot of bands here, so clubs don’t need to bring them in from the outside. They don’t have as many local acts up there, so there’s more work for touring bands. We start in Montana next week. Then Wyoming, Idaho, and a couple of weeks up in Canada. We’ll be back a week or two before school starts.”

She didn’t say anything. Maybe it was like someone telling you all about the great vacation they’re going to have in Hawaii
or whatever, and you’re stuck in town all summer. I was about to tell her that it wouldn’t be all play and no work when she held up her drink.

“This …,” she said quietly, staring into the glass like it was a crystal ball. “This tastes like … like I’m sitting alone at two in the morning in an all-night diner in Barstow. There’s no one in the place but me, some smelly old drunk at the counter, and a burnt-out waitress with blond hair and black roots. The flickering fluorescents are giving me a headache as I suck down my third cup of lukewarm coffee.” She set the glass down and stood up. “
That’s
what this tastes like.” She came around to my side of the table and gave me a quick hug, then turned and walked away.

The signs go flashing by in the night.
SALT LAKE CITY—82 MILES
. I almost wish they weren’t there at all, because you see that your destination is three hundred miles or whatever, then you drive forever, and the sign says it’s still 209 miles. (If you wanted to inflict some real Langley-type torture on someone, you could have a road sign every mile. God, that would be the worst.)

Man, it was going to be almost two a.m. when we got to Salt Lake. I’d thought about getting someone else to drive, but everyone was asleep by then and I hated to wake them. Plus, they’d trusted me to take my turn, and I wanted to show I could carry my weight.

By the time I got to Salt Lake, we needed gas, I was burnt, and I was about ready to pee my pants. So I pulled into this big-ass gas station right off the highway, used the bathroom,
got a large coffee and a power bar, and filled the tank. I’d had the radio on while I drove, turned down low and tuned to a talk station to keep me awake. I left it on at the gas station, and sure enough, everyone stayed asleep. I’d learned that trick when we were kids. We’d be on some long drive and Alicia would wake up every time we stopped until my dad started leaving either the radio on or the engine running. Funny how the
absence
of noise can wake you.

So I paid with money from the band fund and pulled back on the freeway. After I’d finished the coffee and the power bar I felt a lot better, so I kept on cruising along as I listened to some goofballs debate the likelihood that aliens were responsible for a bunch of dead goats in New Mexico.

I made it as far as Idaho Falls and had to give up—it was almost five a.m. and I was toast. I pulled off the freeway, found an empty parking lot next to a shopping center, and shut it down. I have a hard time sleeping sitting up so I climbed in back and looked for somewhere to snooze. The girls were up in the little loft above the driver’s seat, two guys were on the little fold-out dinette benches, and someone was sprawled out on the seat across the aisle. The heck with it—I found someone’s sweatshirt to roll up and use as a pillow and I just crashed on the floor.

I was having this bizarre nightmare about Mr. Langley torturing his students. He had us tied up in the classroom, and he’d say, “That’s one minute out of the day. Only one thousand four hundred and thirty-nine left.” Then sixty seconds later he’d say, “That’s
two
minutes out of the day. Only one thousand four
hundred and thirty-eight left.…” Then Kimber walked into the classroom and I told her to run and get help. She sat down and said no, she was going to drink cold coffee instead.…

Suddenly I woke up. Where the hell was I? I sat up and … 
whack
. I looked around. No wonder I’d banged my head—I was up in the loft. Through the funky plaid curtains I could see scenery going by—we were back on the highway, and somehow they’d managed to hoist me up there without waking me. Well, at least they hadn’t stripped me or tied my feet together or any of the other things the guys in the Sock Monkeys might have done if I’d fallen asleep on the floor.

You’d
think
there’d be enough room for all of us to sleep semi-comfortably in here. And I suppose in a new motor home this size, there is. Every year at the Golden State Fair they have a huge display of RVs, and sometimes I wander through and look at them. Some of them are pretty impressive—water beds, hot tubs, big-screen TVs … whatever you want.

Well, the ol’ Bad-Mobile was
nothing
like that. It was probably okay when it was new … which was way before I was born. Apparently, Brad’s family had used it on vacations when he was a little kid, but since then it’d spent most of its time sitting under a tarp next to their garage, home to bugs and birds and wayward squirrels—not even worth the cost of having it hauled away.

But to the guys in the band, it looked like the perfect road warrior. They gutted the whole back half and built a plywood wall cordoning the rear section off. Never mind that this eliminated little details like the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom—it made a great cargo compartment for all their gear. So all that
was left for the passengers was the front half—the dinette, this little vinyl-covered bench that was probably called a sofa in the original sales brochure, and the two seats up front. Oh yeah, and the tiny loft. In theory everyone was supposed to be in a real seat wearing a real seat belt whenever we were moving, but in reality you do what you have to do to make it work.

I climbed down from the loft and looked out the window. “Where are we?”

Jamie turned and glanced at me from the passenger seat. “Hey, everybody—looks like Baby Brudder’s awake!”

Danny gave me a big-ass grin and a thumbs-up from the bench seat, where he was sitting next to Amber. “Yo, little bro, what’s up?” he chimed in.

Great—that’s all I needed. I figured the best thing was to ignore it. I nodded at him and sat down at the dinette across from Glenn. There was a map of the Western states on the table. I spun it around so it faced me and looked at it. “So, are we in Montana yet?” I asked.

Glenn looked at me like there was something really amusing about the question, but he gave me a straight answer. “Just barely—we’re almost to West Yellowstone. Should be in Bozeman by noon.”

“Cool.”

Brad spoke up from behind the wheel. “Is anybody hungry? My phone says there’s a pancake house up ahead.”

There was a chorus of yeahs, so pretty soon we were pulling into the parking lot. As we walked toward the front door, Glenn fell in next to me. “How late were you up driving last night?” he asked.

“Maybe five.”

He looked up, like he was doing a calculation. “Yeah, that seems about right. Thanks for sticking to it and making such good time.” I was about to tell him it was no problem when he continued, “But don’t be a hero. You ever pull dead bodies from a car wreck?”

“Uh, no …”

He nodded slowly. “We can’t play the gig if we don’t get there alive, right? So don’t be afraid to wake me or one of the other guys, or just pull over and sleep.” He looked at me and suddenly grinned, which totally didn’t make any sense, considering the subject.

“Uh … okay. Thanks.”

“No big. Hey—betcha I can eat more pancakes than you.”

“No way.” I was starving.

Turns out he was right, but I made a valiant effort. Once in a while, I’d catch someone at another table glancing at me, but they’d look away as soon as I noticed.
What?
Did I have food stuck between my teeth? Was my bed-head hair poking up funny? I mentally shrugged. Whatever …

Pretty soon we were all kicked back in our corner booth, having a last cup of coffee and making small talk after the busboy had cleared our dishes. I’d just asked Danny a question about the set list, since tonight would be our first official gig as a touring act, when Amber caught my eye. Which was easy for her to do—she had big brown eyes, a head full of wild dark curls, and skin like a perfect Starbucks mocha. The two things I’d never seen her without were gigantic hoop earrings and this total troublemaker grin.