Daylight

Pet’s POV

I was in the bunk area, working on the chord progression for a new song Mo and I’d been sketching out for the last couple of weeks.
One of my usual practices while trying to write was to find a quiet area where I could record myself. I’d listen to my guitar or keyboard a few times, then run it past one or more of the girls to see if it stank or not. If it didn’t, I’d commit it to note paper and move on.
Of course, if it sucked, I’d skip the notations and just keep the recording. You never knew when a particular riff might come in handy, right?
Finding a quiet place on our bus, of course, was a lot trickier. I was just about to hit “record” when I heard Sal shrieking from somewhere up front.
Shit, now what?

I walked up to the kitchen area with guitar in hand. “Is anyone dead?” I asked.
Sal scowled at me. “Shut up, Pet, don’t say shit like that,” she snapped. “Of course not.”
“Then why are you yelling?”
She angled her laptop in my direction. “Take a look at this shit, and see if it doesn’t piss you off.”
For a second, I thought she’d been reading our “Breaking” section again on the RS website. It was cool, and we’d looked at it so many times in the last day. (In fact, it was great and a little surreal to see us getting so much attention.) But then I blinked and saw she was looking at a website dedicated to reviewing performances of the Warped bands.
I laid my guitar carefully on the nearest couch, and Sal shifted over on the bench seat so I could look at her screen.
She’d been reading a review of us from a recent show. I skimmed down the article, which at first looked pretty positive, in my view. What was I missing?
Then I found what had almost certainly pissed off Sal: “They were great! I mean, they played great, for a bunch of girls. In fact, they played like guys!”

I sat back against the wall, and Sal exploded with anger.
“What the fuck is wrong with that asshole?” she hissed. “Where does he fucking come off saying that kinda shit about us?”
I paused; I knew I’d have to pick my words carefully to try and calm her down a little.
But I couldn’t come up with anything: that sounded like an insult even to me.

Sal got impatient at my silence. “Aren’t you all pissed? This sucks,” she spat.
I looked down.
Our bassist appealed to Tia and Mo, who were calmly sitting around and reading. “Why aren’t you all as mad as me? I could fucking tear that guy apart.”
“Sal,” Tia chuckled, “you know that nobody does angry like you. Besides, why should we expend the energy of four people, when one’s doing such a great job?”
“That guy has no fucking right…” Sal fumed.
Mo chimed in. “It’s just one person’s uneducated opinion,” she offered. “We’re such a novelty, nobody knows what to compare us to. So they go for the lowest common denominator, as they used to say in school. That guy’s like…Rush Limbaugh. He knows nothing, obviously.”

Sal had to crack a smile at that. She hated Limbaugh.

“…Besides,” Mo went on, “you can sign in to that website and leave a comment, so you can vent all that righteous anger. Give him a piece of your mind….”
“But be sure to leave a little for later,” Tia added.
Mo giggled. “And you don’t even have to use your real name; just make one up,” she suggested. “It’ll be a way for you to let that asshole know just what he is, and it’ll be cleaner than ordering a hit on him.”
I shrugged. “Mo has a point,” I reasoned. “Go for it, Sal. Just don’t sully our good name.”
“Like that’s possible,” Sal chuckled. “Oh, I can’t fucking wait. He won’t know what hit him.”

I should’ve known she couldn’t just leave it at that. Oh yeah, she went on that site and totally flamed the so-called reviewer for his narrow-mindedness and his blatant sexism—probably the dirtiest word on our list. But of course, this is Sal Marciano we’re talking about; she had to make a point, and she made it onstage that night.

A few hours later, I was looking for Sal after I realized I hadn’t seen her since lunch. After she reamed that guy on the net, she’d suddenly gotten an excited look on her face. Just before she sped off for parts unknown, she’d grabbed me by the shoulders and asked if we could start off with her singing lead on “American Idiot.”
I nodded, and then she disappeared.

Now it was almost showtime, with maybe half an hour to go. I was making my way around backstage, asking people if they’d seen her.
But none of them had, which was making me more nervous than usual.
About twenty feet away, I saw Tom McCullough with his back to me. I called out his name, but he didn’t respond, and then he moved away.
I started after him, yelling, “Tom! Tom! Wait up!”
Suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder. I spun around to see—Tom McCullough.
“Petula,” he said. “Were you callin’ me, darlin’?”
I looked off in the direction I thought I’d seen him go. “I—uh—I thought you were over there,” I replied stupidly.
He looked concerned. “No, as you can see, I’m right here,” he responded. “What’d you need?”
I looked back around, more confused and nervous than ever. “I’ve been looking for Sal—we all have, all afternoon. Have you seen her?”
“No, not for awhile.” He stole a glance at the time on his phone. “Don’t you ladies have to be onstage soon?”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, and our bassist is missing. So you see my problem.”
Tom nodded shortly. “I do indeed. I’ll send her round if I see her. D’you think she might be havin’ a beverage?”
I’d thought about that. “No, she usually waits till after the show to get shit-faced. But I guess I better go. Thanks!”
I sprinted off, wishing I knew where to find Sal.