Folie à Deux

As the plane began its slow descent into Australia, I don't think any of us knew what we were in for.

Zoe had her nose pressed to the window, practically shaking with excitement. Hadley was filing her nails. Dylan was drowning out the music from his headphones with his own snores. And me? I was staring at my own face, which was staring back from inside AP magazine.

It wasn't a bad picture of us. In fact, it was pretty revealing. Zoe was in front, grinning like she owned the world, hazel eyes sparkling. Hadley looked perfect as ever, a blonde Audrey Kitching, somehow managing to look down her nose even though she's five-foot-one. Dylan was wearing his trademark smirk, looking like he would roll his eyes any second now. And I was in back, eyes partly hidden by too-long brown bangs, outshined by the rest of them, as always.

"The Crushes," says the bold headline on top, and I've always thought it was a stupid name, but you can't argue with Hadley. And on the bottom, only slightly smaller, it reads, "Now touring abroad with Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and Cobra Starship."

So I guess I should explain how that happened.

I was sixteen when my parents died. Zoe, my older sister, was eighteen, and she became my legal guardian, though if you met her once you would know that she is not cut out to be guardian material. I remember the last words our parents said to us, before they left to go to the movies and ended up crashed into a ditch: "We love you. Have fun." Zoe mourned for a few months with the help of vodka and a razor, but eventually she snapped out of it and took those words to heart. Some hot pink hair dye, and she was a whole new person; if we didn't have the same eyes, there would be nothing left to indicate that we were sisters. She had always been outgoing, but suddenly it was like every day was her last. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone happier or more careless.

Emotionally, it was tough for a while, but physically we were always taken care of. Zoe's best friend, Hadley, decided that we should move in with her, and since her parents give her everything she wants and then some, we had ourselves a mansion as our new home. It was about a year before they started tossing around the idea of a band, and when we finally decided to do the damn thing, we took over Hadley's basement and threw ourselves into it headfirst. Zoe was on vocals, of course. Dylan, a crush-turned-gay-shopping-buddy of Hadley's, became our drummer. Hadley bought a guitar for herself and a bass for me, and lessons for the both of us, and I practiced every night till my fingers were ready to bleed. After just a couple of months, we started playing gigs around Chicago.

Our big break came when we opened for The Academy Is... when they played a secret hometown show. I still have such a vivid memory of that night. I was glued to the spot with stage fright, as always, but as I watched my sister throw herself into the song with every ounce of power she had (and believe me, she has a lot) I knew we were headed somewhere. It wasn't until afterward that we realized Pete Wentz had been in the audience. It wasn't until five months later, when I had graduated high school with no plans for college (hell, no plans in general) that he called us and offered us a spot on tour.

It's a scary feeling, to know that the course of your life is completely out of your control.

I was nineteen. I didn't have any idea what was in store for my future. I don't think any of us knew what to expect from the tour, let alone the boys. But between Pete Wentz, Gabe Saporta, Brendon Urie, and Ryan Ross, our lives were about to be changed forever.

The plane touched down smoothly, and so it began.