Just The Way I'm Not

Phia sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time. They were sitting in the waiting room of a local mechanics shop close to where they had broken down. It had already been two hours since they had gotten to the shop, after taking the tow truck nearly a hour and a half to come and rescue them off the side of the road, and they were all board. There was really nothing for them to do and even if there was they really wouldn’t even be paying attention to it since they were all worried about the fate of the van.

Kora had already called Flyzik, the main tour manager in charge of basically everyone on the tour, to tell him what was going on. But Kora had assured all of them that he had told them it wasn’t that big of a deal and just keep him in on the loop of what was going on with their van. And to say everyone was a little relieved was an understatement.

When the van had first broke down merely three hours before, everyone had gone into panic mode thinking that they were going to get kicked off the tour since they were going to be late or even possibly miss the first show. But they quickly realized that they were over exaggerating and that everything was fine. And honestly, from what Phia could tell, things weren’t looking that great.

“So what’s the deal?” Kora asked as Dan walked back over with a tired and slightly annoyed expression on his face.

He took a deep breath and ran his hand over his face, “it’s a long story. But in short, the engine needs repairs and it’s going to take a while.”

“What does a while mean?” Bram asked as they all held their breaths praying it wasn’t going to be what they were all expecting.

Dan sighed again, “I was able to pull a few strings but they said over night. Sorry you guys. I know how important this first show was to you.”

They all sat in silence for a few moments letting the news sink in. This was just perfect. After having everything go perfectly smooth getting there, it was all almost too good to be true. Every tour something had happened on the first day, be it baggage, sickness, or even car trouble like it was in that situation. But when they had landed everything had gone fine, unlike all the other times. They should have seen it coming.

“How did this even happen? Didn’t your company realize something was wrong with the van?” Addie asked.

“Yeah, the mechanics did the routine checkup that’s always done before a van leaves. But something must have happened after or someone didn’t look close enough.” Dan replied as Addie rolled her eyes. “Either way, what’s done is done. The guy was telling me that there is a hotel down the road a bit that we can stay at tonight. He said he would give us a ride there once we grab our stuff.”

No one made a move to get up. And when Kora realized this she stood up and tried to put on a indifferent face before coaxing everyone else up also. She ordered them to get their bags from their now broken van and then met outside the shop where a beat up old minivan was waiting for them. They climbed in and didn’t say anything as the random guy drove them farther into town and stopped at a hotel.

They waited in the lobby for Kora to get checked in and get their rooms and when she came back she handed out the cards and they all walked up to their rooms. When the girls go to their rooms, they didn’t say anything as they walked inside and found which bed they were going to sleep on. Addie and Phia ended up sharing a bed as usual and once she settled down on the bed, she grabbed her laptop and turned it on.

Kora was on her phone talking to someone and Addie had disappeared into the bathroom to take a bath so Phia was able to keep to her own thoughts as she logged on to the free Wi-Fi and checked her emails. After a while Kora and Addie came back into the room along with the boys.

“Who’s ready for some caaaards?” Bram asked as he held up a deck of cards and shook them in his hand. Phia smiled as she shut her laptop and followed the rest of the band to the small little table set in the corner.

It was a band tradition to play cards whenever they had nothing to do. But they made up their own game so it was their own little thing they did whenever they could. And usually they would even play before a show as a preshow tradition and even been invented, by Bram who was the brains of the group, since they had been so worked up the day of the first show they had ever played. So it kind of stuck around and everyone loved playing it.

“You ready to go down Phi?” Zane asked as he began to shuffle the cards. She took the seat across from him and his twin sat next to her as Kora and Addie went to get some drinks that they had.

“Ha yeah right! I’ll probably kick your ass again like usual.” She replied as she took the cards that he dealt her.

Sorting through her cards, she glanced up as Addie was saying something to her boyfriend and only caught the last bit of what she was saying. And she figured it was something along the lines of trash talking him.

“Alrighty! Rock papers scissors to who goes first?” Kora asked as they all put their fists in.

It ended up Phia being the first and she smiled wickedly as everyone started complaining. Telling them to shut up, she began to deal her cards and the game began.

By the time they were on their third round, it was nearly midnight. Each game took a while to finish and so far Phia had won the first two and Zane the last one. Even though it was late, they played one more game before they called it a night and the boys left to go back to their own room. And then they quickly cleaned up the mess a little before saying goodnight and falling asleep.

Sophia was walking down the path towards her house alone. She had just gotten out of school for the day and it had been another hellish day. All she wanted to do was turn on some music and forget everything about this stupid town. School was already hard enough not having any friends and being deaf didn’t add to it. Everyone looked at her. If only he was in the same grade as her.

But no, he had to be older than her and be three grades above her. He was a eighth grader about to go into high school and she was still a lowly fifth grader just about to start middle school. She was in that awkward phase of life of growing up trying to find herself and make friends that would stick with her through high school. But she was still the weird deaf kid to everyone in her school. And it felt like it would never change.

Suddenly someone jumped on her back making her nearly scream. But it only took a few moments to calm herself down and know exactly who would do something like that. She shrugged him off and then spun on her heel trying to muster up the best glare she had.

The boy just laughed not affected at all by her evil look that would send anyone else running the other way at one glance. “Aw c’mon Soph, don’t look so gloomy!”

“Shut up,” she muttered as she continued walking and not waiting for him to catch up. But even if he was only thirteen he was already tall and gangly so he caught up easily.

A hand fell on her shoulder signaling her to look up since he wanted to talk to her. “Soph what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said as she shrugged off his arm and picked up her pace but he easily caught up with her again stopping her and making her turn to face him.

“Sophia, seriously! What’s wrong? I know that look.”

She stared at him for a few moments catching the serious look in his eye and sighed. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to go home until she told him. “It’s stupid.”

She looked away eyes going to the sidewalk not wanting to look at him. She wished that life was different. That somehow she could wish everything away and be normal. But that was just a dream that was never going to happen. Gently hands touched her cheek and gently pulled her chin up so that she was looking at him again.

“Soph, tell me. Whatever it is I won’t think it’s stupid. I promise,”

“I hate school. Everyone treats me weird. Why can’t I just be normal? Why couldn’t my stupid mother actually think of someone else besides herself when I got sick and take me into the hospital in time before I lost my hearing?” By then she had angry tears running down her face and a worried Jack trying to calm her down.

She had to wipe her eyes a few times so that her vision wasn’t so blurry so she could read his lips and the ever patient Jack waited and helped her whip away the tears as she began to calm down.

“Soph, you’re not weird. People just don’t see that. They’re just assholes who can’t see what an amazing person you are. Just ignore them ok? This will start to look up, I promise.”

“Y-you do?” She asked biting her lip and fighting against the new set of tears that were threatening to fall.

He smiled one of his signature huge adorable smiles and nodded his head confirming it. Then before she could even think of saying anything else he pulled her closer to him and wrapped his arms around her tightly giving her one of the biggest hugs she’d ever received. She wrapped her arms around him in return and squeezed back holding on for a few minutes and feeling the tension and stress of the day melt away. Yeah, his hugs were just that good.

“Ok! So what do you say about going back to my place and turning on some Blink and eating until we get fat?” He asked once they parted from their hug.

She rolled her eyes and laughed as she agreed. He offered her his arm and she happily took his as they continued down the walk toward his house and did exactly what he had suggested, turning the music up until his mom had to come upstairs and yell at him to turn it down and scatter bags of chips, cookies, and cans of soda all around his room as they danced all their worries away.

When Phia woke the next morning, she couldn’t help but smile as she dreamt of another memory back from her childhood. That had only been about two months before she had moved away and before they had parted. She still missed him and could really go for one of his amazing hugs at that moment. Even though everyone was sleeping, she knew that they were still all stressed from the day before, her included. Nothing sounded better than a Jack hug.

Pushing the thoughts aside, she got up from the warm bed and grabbed a few things from her bag going to the bathroom. It was early and she knew that neither of the girls she was rooming with would be awake for a while longer so she took her time in the bathroom and actually spent more time than a few seconds on her hair after her shower like she usually did.

She finished blow drying it and stole Addie’s straightener from her bag while she slept and took her time to straighten the slight curls that hung in her hair. Once she was done, she grabbed her things and headed back to where the other two were and found that they were actually awake. She smiled to Addie as she handed her her straightener and stuffed the rest of her things in her bag.

She noticed that Kora was on the phone but couldn’t tell what was going on in the conversation since their tour manager was moving around too much and had her back turned to her.

“Who’s she on the phone with?” She asked as she sat next to Addie and started to play with her ring again.

Addie shrugged, “dunno. All I know is that her ring tone is way too loud and I want to throw the phone out the window.” Addie’s head suddenly turned after she finished and Phia followed her gaze as their tour manger ended the call.

“Hey, that’s not nice!” Kora said with a huge smile on her face.

“What’s with the look? Who was on the phone?” Addie asked and signed at the same time so that Phia could follow along.

Kora did a little dance and Phia rolled her eyes as she knew that the girl was squealing. “That was Dan, he called to say that the van is fixed so once we get the boys up we can leave and head to the venue. We won’t miss anymore of the tour!”

Phia smiled happily at the news and realize that even though the Jack hug wasn’t needed anymore, she still sort of wanted it. Eh whatever, she needed to get ready. There were bigger things to focus on than her childhood best friend. God only knows if she’ll ever see him again…