Lukey Kid

Olli was right. We were touring. Starting the Wednesday night after “Hit The Lights” was released, we’d be crammed in a tour bus with Olli and Justin from Fire Motion. He was driving us, but it was a while before we found out why. His band was touring with us, but to spare us the discomfort, they were in a separate bus. I counted my blessings.

Everything was taken care of. Brianna wouldn’t be coming with us, so Olli would take her place as our tutor. I guess it wasn’t all bad, since he was actually pretty smart as far as academics went.
…But…our rented tour bus felt like just a tiny little living space.

At first, I set foot in it and went, “Oh, joy.” Then, Soria grew a thoughtful grin and said, “I have an idea.”

She took total control. And I mean control. Nobody objected with she smacked a homemade “Brian Fallon is My Hero” bumper sticker on the back of the bus. Then she stared at it for a long time and went, “This won’t work.”

The bus’s backside eventually got so plastered (pardon the pun) with those stickers that Brendan questioned why she didn’t just go out with Michael since they apparently looked alike.

Soria smacked the crap out of that boy.

Plus, the outside of the bus was covered in graffiti. We thought it looked sort of neat, until Justin pointed out the f-bomb on the passenger’s seat door. He convinced us to hire a body decal company to paint our logo on the side, a little dude in a full-body cast we like to call Steve…

And hire we did!

The CD sales were through the roof. Orders from nearly all over the US (concentrated in our area, of course) were shipped the morning after the release party, raking in hundreds of dollars. Our FlySpace even crashed for a few days because of that.

As if perfectly timed, fans of the Not Listening label decided the tour weeks before the release, voting for who’d be going. It was a big month for Rai - I kind of felt sorry for him having to handle all this. It had to be stressful to be under all that pressure. We had known it was going on, but it was more of a vague, “Oh, that’s just background noise” matter. We were brand new to the label and we doubted anybody would want to hear us tour the country. Ha!

We three musical acts came up with the name for the tour, and it took the longest time! When Rai urged it on us for the last time, Brendan said, “I don’t know.”

And the name stuck.

So the name of it was the I Don’t Know Tour, featuring Fire Motion, Olli Lolli, and Plaster Caster as the headliner.

And I couldn’t wait.

The day we were leaving for our first show in Gainesville, a bunch of other Not Listening bands said goodbye to us in the studio parking lot.

Aaron stuck by me, holding onto my shirt like a lost cat. Every time he looked up at me, my heart broke a little more. It just hurt.

“So I guess this is it,” he whispered, blinking rapidly.

“No, it’s not,” I reassured. “I’m coming back real soon.”

He shook his head. “No. It’ll be two months. That’s too long.” Then he wiped a tear away.

I pulled him close in a brother-to-brother hug. He dug his face into my chest, tears pouring silently out of his eyes.

I felt good that I finally had a chance to be a brother.

And with Rai and Miami and Not Listening, it’d stay that way.

Like so many other times in my life, I found it hard to wipe the smile off my face.

“Bye,” Aaron waved when he pulled away. I waved back, even if we were close enough to hug again.

Plaster Caster, Joey, Olli, Olli’s two bandmates (Joshie and Gabriel), and Justin boarded our bus.
Justin’s bandmates - Johnny, Sam, Anthony, and Gunner - boarded their much-smaller van.

And once we were out of that parking lot, we were on our ways to Common Grounds, a venue in Gainesville.

Boredom decided to rear its ugly head within five minutes of being on the road, even though we were all still pretty awestruck with the discovery of all of the weird things inside a tour bus – a microwave, a little TV propped up at the end of the couches, dinky beds, and a nice smooth ride. Olli ended up entertaining himself with his harmonica, which bugged the crap out of all of us, and he probably would’ve even irritated his band if they weren’t sleeping in the back of the bus.

“I swear to God, if you don’t stop I’m sticking that thing right up your -” Justin growled.

“Hey, um, man. Why can’t I drive?”

“Because Rai told me not to let you take the wheel, and you’d end up crashing into a school bus full of babies.”

“He did not say that!”

“Yeah he did!”

“Whatever! Just for that I’m gonna play twice as loud!”

With a sharp pull of the steering wheel, the bus lurched to the side of the road so fast that I dropped my SkyPod.

Justin leapt from his seat and yanked the harmonica from Olli’s hands. He stepped outside and threw it clear across the eight-lane road into the woods on the other side, then returned to his position, breathless and crimson.

“God, who peed in your corn flakes?” Olli sneered.

Justin responded with a real audible growl that made the younger one recede like a dog with its tail between its legs.

But that didn’t stop him. Of course not.

Within the hour he was up by the driver’s seat, annoying the wits out of Justin. I got to thinking he just got a sick thrill off of his reaction.

“So whatcha doin’?”

“Driving.”

“Driving.”

“Go play Guitar God or something.”

“Go play Guitar God or something.”

“Oh, Christ…don’t start.”

“Oh, Christ…don’t start.”

“Olli’s an idiot.”

“Justin’s an idiot.”

Before he could get his butt whooped, Olli fled to the back room of the bus with his bandmates, snorting laughs that sounded abnormally intense. “Chill, dad!” he urged.

Justin groaned and banged his head against the top of the steering wheel. Ren and I, who were watching a movie on the TV, exchanged puzzled glances.

“He’s your son?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around, but I could tell he was smirking. “If a kid like him sprouted from my loins, I’d have to kill myself. He just calls me that for shits and giggles.”

“I think he’s just excited,” Soria laughed. He rolled his eyes.

“He was excited last year when I toured with him. He was excited at your release party. He has ADD, I swear.”

As if on cue, Olli exploded from the back room with a stupid grin. “J-Breezy! How ya doin’?”

Justin swallowed a curse. “Fine. Great.”

He grinned and went into the bathroom.

Brendan waited until he was gone to voice his opinion. “Okay, I’m with Soria’s dad - that kid’s queer as a three-dollar bill.”

Nobody denied it. Not even Justin.

“If he was, it wouldn’t matter,” Justin grumbled, “’cause I’d still think he’s annoying.”

The bus was quiet for five minutes until we heard some shuffling around in the bathroom. It went on for a while until Olli cried, “We need more toilet paper!”

“Joey, Luke, whatever - I’ll pay one of you a hundred bucks to go break his legs,” Justin grunted.

I think Joey almost said yes until the door swung open and the Popcore King himself came out. “I need a nap. I’m gonna go snooze with Joshie and Gabriel.”

Justin mouthed out, “Thank you God,” and made a praying motion with his hands.

The night fell and blanketed the road as the only things keeping us on the streets were the headlights. By nine o’ clock, the majority of us were knocked out – Olli and his band occupied the back room, Soria was in one of the bunk beds sleeping on the opposite bed from Ren, Brendan and Joey were in the two above them, and I was about to take one of the top bunks. I had my everything laid out, my pajamas on, but I wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet.

I walked to the front of the bus to throw out a paper towel just as Justin took a deep swig of Fountain Dew. He threw it aside afterward, sighing heavily with a melancholy aura.

“You gonna be alright driving all night?” I asked him.

He hesitated. “Yep. Gotta get there early as we can.”

“The show’s not until seven, right?”

“Yeah. But I wanna get there early.”

“Yeah, I hear it takes a while for sound check.”

“What? Oh, yeah. But I got family down there, friends…”

I smiled. “I had a feeling you came from Gainesville.”

He chuckled. “How come?”

“I dunno…something…your band. Yeah, that’s it,” I shrugged. “You seem like one of those dudes who’ve lived in Gainesville forever and never wanna leave.”

Justin smiled at the road. “That’s true. And I gotta carry on that legacy. Got my baby girl waitin’ for me down there.”

“Aw…how old is she?”

“’Bout a week.”

“What’s her name?”

“Abigail…Abigail Bryant,” he sighed, a glazed-over look in his eyes, “I haven’t got to see her yet. But everyone says she’s beautiful. I’ve had to stay down here and help organize things with Rai on the label so I haven’t seen her in person.”

I smiled. “I’m sure she is.”

Justin beamed and tilted his head. “I can’t wait.”

For a second I tried to think of something to end the silence. “Wait…aren’t there a ton of bands that come from Gainesville?”

“Hell yeah, that’s why they call it Gainesville Rock City! There’s Less Than Jake, Against Me!, your grandpa…”

“What?”

“Chuck Ragan. You know, Hot Water Music…”

“He’s…what?”

“I’m just kidding.”

I snickered. “I can honestly say, nobody’s ever said that to me.”

“You should say he is. He’s probably old enough.”

“What’re the odds that someone’s gonna know who he is?”

Justin smiled to himself. “You got a point.”

Reluctantly, another silence set in and neither of us seemed to like it. But I didn’t want to go to bed yet. “So…how long have you been playing music?”

He sighed thoughtfully, staring at the ceiling. “Probably, like…nine years, I think. I used to drive school buses.” He smirked with an airy laugh. “Then I got fired for droppin’ the f-bomb after some kid pelted me with his science project.”

I could really see him doing something like that after the whole incident with Olli earlier today.

“Then I got a job driving this little band around, The Bouncing Souls,” he elbowed my side, “and I loved it ‘cause I got to see so much and hear good music. I drove other bands, like Against Me!, Dropkick Murphys…then I met these other guys who were already in a band back home. They’d played all across the area and I wanted to be a part of it. Long story short, we became a band and named ourselves after a Cap’n Jazz lyric.”

I took it all in, hearing Justin’s story word by word. What a dude - that must’ve been some life.

“It’s funny. I been playin’ for years and I still can’t carry a tune,” he smiled.

I patted his back. “S’alright. I can’t sing either, not even backup.” I yawned. “Just don’t crash us tonight, ‘kay?”

“I’ll try, kid. Go to sleep - you got a big day tomorrow.”