Lukey Kid

Joey laughed at the TV in a gargled snort, burying his head in his arms. He lay on his stomach, kicking his feet up into my bubble, unaware of my obvious existence. I pushed his feet away, telling him, “Dude, quit.”

“But he just dumped that bitch!” he countered.

Yeah…we were watching reality television.

As awesome as this hotel was, it kind of sucked that two of the four beds were located in the main “room.” The other two were back in the back, in a completely separate room. And of course, Joey and Brendan had claimed it first, leaving Soria, Ren and I to sleep where anyone could see us. The fact that there were four beds for five people wasn’t too cool, either.

It was a monotonous Friday; I was back at the hotel with our manager while the others fiddled around with the tracks we’d already recorded. I woke up that morning with a splitting headache. I did not want to be in a room with thundering drums and squealing guitars.

Joey finished his laughing fit and rolled over, stretching with his arms hanging over the top of the bed. He groaned as the show rolled into a commercial break, than held his wrist up to his face as if to check his watch. Realizing that he didn’t own a watch, he sat up, rolling back on his butt; he tried again and stared at me in shock.

“Dude, what time is it?” he asked.

“Like, uh…” I looked back at the clock on the bedstand. “Eleven in the morning, man.”

He flailed and leapt up off the bed, flying into the kitchen. Then he scrambled back to his room like he forgot something. I didn’t have time to question his actions since he ran back into the kitchen and grabbed a can of pop, opening it on the counter. When it sprayed onto his shirt, he cussed and then shook it off. In his hand I saw a flash of pale orange plastic…a prescription bottle?

“What’s that?” I questioned, pointing to Joey’s hand.

He smirked. “My meds.”

“I didn’t know you took meds.”

He shrugged and cocked his brow, grinning. “Mommy says I have to. Or else I’ll go into town with a gun and shoot everyone.”

I squinted at him.

He popped off the top and shook a few pills into his hand. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should have looked over what he was taking, but before I knew it they were in his system.

He walked past me, looking cooler than he did before. I stared at him as he did, eyeing him to make sure he didn’t pull any funny business.

“What?” he said.

“I dunno,” I snickered. “You pulled out a thing of pills just now. Who’s to say you didn’t lie about ‘em?”

He shrugged, hands up in defeat. “Dude, why would I lie about that?”

And then he left the room.

…Hm.

A rhythmic knock sounded on the front door of the room. I got up from my bed and walked over to it, looking through the peephole, unconsciously smiling upon seeing Aaron and Olli standing side-by-side. I wondered what they were doing here of all places.

I opened the door and grinned down at Aaron, just flat out happy to see him again. Man, you don’t know…man. You see your little brother for the first time in seven years and tell me you don’t wanna see him again. It was just pure relief and hope knowing that he was still alive.

“Hiiii!” Olli cheered, doing a little dance with his famous smile.

“Hey,” I said back, not used to his level of happiness.

Aaron, at chest height to Olli, shoved him away with the same grin I had on. He squeaked, shoving Aaron away with one finger to emphasize the height difference.

“We came here to brighten your day!” Olli beamed, flipping his hair.

“Yeah,” Aaron added, leaning over to whisper to me, “but you can kick him out if you want.”

“Awww.” Olli mussed his hair, then turned and faced down the hallway. “Hey kid, call me when you wanna leave.”

“You’re dropping him off here?” I asked him.

Olli nodded. “He wanted to spend the day with you,” he smiled.

I resisted the urge to say “Aww.” But I couldn’t hold back my grin since Aaron was looking right up at me and smiling like I was his hero.

“Run along now,” Aaron ushered.

Olli smiled one last time and started skipping down the hotel corridor, singing in his high-pitched voice that could carry a tune but honestly didn’t sound too good to me.

Aaron squirmed under my arm and entered the hotel, running over to one of the beds and flopping face down on it. I closed the door behind me and sat down next to him, weighing down my side of the bed. He jerked his head up, propping himself up on his arms.

“So how’s recording?” he asked out of nowhere.

“Good, good,” I replied, shaking the hair out of my eyes.

He sat up and sat next to me, mimicking my position – leaned back on my arms like I was washing my feet in ocean water.

“Is it fun being in a band?” he added. “I think it would be. Dad always signs new bands and I just think it’s so cool to be out there making music and touring and stuff. When I grow up I wanna be a producer. Maybe I can produce one of your band’s albums! That’d be so cool!” A wave of realization swept across his face as the last two sentences rolled off his tongue.

I laughed a little. “Maybe you will.”

“I really wanna. I wanna produce a double-platinum album for a band and make them happy and make them win awards and stuff.” He turned to look up at me, still grinning. “Dad says his bands want stuff like being called The Best Band or something by a magazine or website.”

“Yeah, a lot of bands want that,” I told him. “They wanna be recognized, but the sad thing is that once they do get recognized by VTV or something, a lot of them start putting out poopy songs.”

Aaron snorted a laugh. Wow, we are related.

“My mommy’s brother is a producer. He’s so cool. He produced Fire Motion’s last album and Olli’s first EP thingy and Blueshift’s third one. I wanna be just like him,” Aaron gushed.

“Will Schwartz, right? Yeah, I heard of him,” I said. He forgot to mention that he also produced The Max’s third album.

“Uncle Schwartz let me play on his computer once. I put together a Violence Ladies song and a Taylor Swift song.”

I furrowed my brow. “And…what drove you to do that?”

He shrugged, giggling. “I dunno, it sounded bad. Really bad. Really really bad.”

“I can imagine,” I smirked.

Aaron went silent, which kind of made me uneasy since until then he’d been talking my ear off. I mean, how much energy could a nine-year-old possibly have?

Suddenly he leaned his head on my arm and wrapped his arms around my waist – kind of. He couldn’t reach all the way around. I pulled my arm out from under him and hugged him back.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

My heart pounded right up into my throat, that all-too-familiar poison dart making its way back up my system. I swallowed it yet again and tried to find something to say that wouldn’t make me lose my dignity.

“I missed you too,” I replied.

Aaron sighed and buried his head in my chest, squeezing me tighter. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite figure out, but in response I hugged him like he was hugging me – tight.

“I am a hundred and ten percent sure that I am not the father!” growled the TV, the show we were watching coming back from a commercial break. Aaron laughed, his head still buried in my chest. I smiled and reached behind us for the remote, turning it off.

He wriggled out of my grip and grinned. “That was funny.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, a little ashamed of letting him hear what Joey and I were watching.

“I mean why would a guy say he isn’t a kid’s daddy? That’s stupid. I mean, it’s mean too! And the kid’s just sitting back there and don’t even know what’s going on. My daddy isn’t my real daddy but he takes care of me anyway.”

I bit my lip when he said that last sentence. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

I looked down at him. He was smiling.

“Are you mocking me?”

Aaron shook his head. “You say ‘yeah’ a lot.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“See? You said it again.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Now you’re just being silly!” he snorted, in an ever-so-juvenile vocabulary. Had I been with my bandmates, they’d have probably called me an…expletive. That’s why I liked this kid – I didn’t feel like rolling my eyes since he didn’t cuss every other word.

“No, you’re silly,” I teased, ruffling his hair.

He slapped my hands away and went into a laughing fit. Then he started tickling me, cuing a loud snort that accidentally came out of me. (Hey, he took me off guard, okay?) I did the same to him, poking his sides relentlessly to make him turn even redder than he already was. He laughed so hard he lost his breath, submitting to my awesome skills, begging for mercy.

“You’re ticklish! Oh man, this changes everything!” I teased, surges of happiness rushing through my bloodstream.

I guess it just felt good to get to bond with my brother. I dunno. For so long I’d been trying to fill that vacant spot in my heart with other people, hoping that I could get that same feeling of love that I did when he was around. I’d tried acting like Brendan was like Aaron, but that was just a failure. First of all, yeah, we’d been buds since we were eight, and yeah, I cared about him and all, but there wasn’t really that feeling of being bound by blood, you know? And I didn’t really feel like I could hold a conversation with him without hearing some kind of vulgarity during it. He was my closest friend, and I didn’t feel that brotherly connection to him sometimes. I mean, sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t. That’s saying something.

Man, I needed Aaron. That’s what I’d needed all this time. I got really lonely sometimes, knowing that he could have been anywhere when all this time he’d honestly been under my nose. One of my favorite band’s record label owner’s adopted son was my brother. So close, and yet so far. All these years I felt like I’d never see him again. All these years I’d tried to fill that gap. And here he was – giggling right in front of me. It was too good to be true. At first I couldn’t believe it. But after that day I knew it was real. And man…it was amazing.