Out of the Morning and Into the Night

One week, seven days. 168 hours.

That’s how long my best friend and I had to prepare outfits and such for the upcoming Avenged Sevenfold concert the following weekend.

It was a cool, sunny Saturday morning. I slowly slid into my car and put the key in the ignition. As I drove away from my house, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked it at the next stop light. Roxine. She and I have been best friends for as long as I can remember. “Where r u?” the text message read. I quickly replied with “coming,” just as the light turned green. I drove silently all the way to her house, mouthing the words occasionally to the CD I had been listening to. As I pulled up to her house, she came running out, squealing the way she always did when she was excited, a huge smile spread across her face. As she opened the car door, she screeched, “Morgan, ONE MORE WEEK! I can’t wait! We’ve gotta look ahh-mazing if we want Brian and Zacky to notice us!” She trailed off as I quietly laughed to myself.

Ever since she first laid eyes on Brian, she was in love. Somehow, every time we had a conversation about the band, she always found a way to gush over him. And of course, she brought up Zacky as well, the man who inspired me to learn to play guitar, as well as the best looking member of the band, in my opinion.

She and I chatted excitedly the entire drive to the mall where we would be spending the day shopping. As I turned into the mall parking lot, I immediately began looking for a spot to park my car. Of course there’s nowhere to park, I thought to myself. It’s always packed here on Saturdays. As I finally found a spot and parked my car, Roxine got out of the car and groaned.

“Why did you park so far? Now we have to walk a million miles just to get to the entrance!” I looked at her and rolled my eyes.

“Did you find anywhere closer to park?” I asked as we began walking. “And how is it that you can walk around a mall all day, but not across a parking lot?!” She laughed and flipped me off, knowing I was right.

In no time, we entered the huge automatic sliding glass doors leading into the food court area. “See, it wasn’t that bad, you survived the walk here,” I laughed.

She looked over at me, “BARELY!” she sighed, her voice dripping with dramatics. “Where to?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Coffee first, please. I can tell this is going to be a long day,” I joked.

Once I got my coffee, it was off to Hot Topic with Roxine dragging me by my wrists, as if I wasn’t capable of directing myself to the store I’ve gone into a million times before. She ran in, ignoring the employee who asked how she was doing. I strolled in a few paces behind her, making sure to say hello to the employee Roxine completely blew off.

As I was looking through a rack of band t-shirts, I hear a high pitched scream from the other side of the store, accompanied by footsteps which got louder and louder with each step. “Look. What. I . FOUND!” Roxine screamed yet again, getting her some dirty looks from the preppy bitches standing behind her. “ISN’T IT JUST PERFECT??” She asked, holding up a fitted black A7X band tee with a skeleton couple on it.

I quickly looked it over, “I love it! Where’d you find it?”She guided me over to the Avenged Sevenfold gear. I picked up a white shirt that had ‘Avenged Sevenfold’ scribbled across the front in big black letters, holding it up for Roxine to see.

“I really like that one, let’s go try them on!” she suggested. As we walked over to the fitting rooms, we picked up some other accessories to pair with our developing outfits.

“I can’t believe it! Only one week until the concert we’ve been waiting anticipating for months!” Roxine almost squeaked from the fitting room next to mine. When she heard me burst out into a fit of laughter, she told me to shut up. She always hated when I laughed at her for squeaking, but I couldn’t help it-it was too damn funny. My laughter subsided when she directed my attention elsewhere.

“Come out and show me your outfit, yeah?” She questioned. As each of us stepped out of our separate fitting rooms, we screamed. I figured the employees ought to be fed up with all our screaming fits by now. “You look so good, no you. No you!”

We always had a tendency of saying the same thing in unison. People always asked us if we were siblings separated at birth, we were so close.

“You have to get that!” I told her.

“So do you!” she exclaimed, “because if you don’t, then I will!” She giggled as she walked back into her fitting room.

As I began closing the door to my fitting room, an employee approached me, and asked with an annoyed tone in his voice, “could you change quickly? There’s other customers who need to use the fitting rooms too.” I shook my head and quickly changed into my original outfit.

When I came out, Roxine was sitting on a bench, waiting for me. We headed toward the register and paid quickly, not wanting to waste a minute of our ‘concert shopping’ day.