Paint My Skies Black, I Never Wanna See The Sun Again

After raiding my entire kitchen of anything that was edible. Jack even almost took a bite of a scented candle. Matt left to make a call to get the bus towed and fixed.

“So how’d you guys end up here?” I asked, plopping down on my couch with a bowl of popcorn. Rian and Jack sat on either side of me, taking handfuls of popcorn at a time.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, slapping their hands away, “You guys just ate all the food in the house!”

“But we’re still hungry!” Jack pleaded, giving me his puppy-dog eyes. He wasn’t too good at them. His eyes were kinda bugging out and quite frankly, he was scaring me.

“Okay,” I caved, “as long as you promise never to make that face again.”

“Deal.”

Alex, Zack, and Matt were now sitting on another couch. Zack and Matt were fighting over who got the remote control while Alex was just weirdly staring off into space and fiddling with his hair.

I nudged Rian lightly in the ribs. Looking at me, I nodded in the general direction of Alex.

“Hah. Don’t worry about him,” Rian said, “he gets like that sometimes. Deep thinker, that boy is.”

“Yeah. He probably can’t even hear us right now.” Jack continued, popping another kernel into his mouth, “Sometimes he just zones out and we end up with a brand new song. It’s pretty fuckin’ sick.”

I smiled, “So wait. Why are you guys here again?”

Alex returned to reality.

“We just finished our first tour,” He replied, “We were supposed to be on our way back home, but as you can see, we’ve run into some technical difficulties.” He shot a fake glare at Matt.

“Hey! Don’t blame me!” Matt retorted, “Blame the bus.”

“You’re the tour manager.”

“And you’re the dick.”

“Aw, I love you too man.”

“So where are you guys from?” I asked, eating a handful of popcorn. Most of it fell into the cracks between the cushions.

Damn. I thought. I’ll have to clean that up later.

“Maryland. In Lutherville-Timonium.” Zack said, tilting his head only a fraction away from the T.V. screen.

“That’s not too far from here.” I said.

“Yeah. I love being home, but sometimes people call our houses or even show up at our doors. We haven’t gone unlisted yet.” Jack shrugged.

“How ‘bout you?” Alex asked. “Live here all by your lonesome?”

“Kind of,” I simply stated, “I live with my mom, but she works most of the time, so I guess you could say that.”

“Shweet!” Jack said. I giggled and Matt’s phone rang. It’s the tow truck company he mouthed. We hushed up, and after a few minutes, he hung up.

“They’re outside.” Rian grabbed the popcorn bowl from me, and we all headed outside. The heat was like a brick wall that violently crushed us under its heavy mass.

Matt left to go talk to the repair man and to truck owner. I snuck away for a moment, knowing that I have some balloons and a large supply of running water available.