Less Than Perfect

The wind whipped playfully through my hair as Teagan sprinted down the street carrying me on his back.

“You’re going down punk,” Kai screeched from her perch on Elliot’s back as the guys charged towards our designated finish line.

“Oh WHAT?!” Teagan yelled when we beat them in the race.

I hopped down off his back and we high fived, chest bumped, and exchanged any other form of congratulations we could think of. Kade came stomping down the street a block behind us scowling.

“What’s got you all grumpy?” I asked giving him a hug around the waist once he caught up to us.

“You see this?” he questioned pointing to his quivering hand.

“What? You’re off your drugs again?” I quipped back.

“Funny. I haven’t had any coffee today so I can’t function right,” he responded with a little grin.

I gave him a suspicious look, raised eyebrows included.

“You know how I feel about buying Starbucks on our tight budget,” I said putting and emphasis on the words ‘tight budget’.

“Aw come on!” they all whined.

Finally I gave in went with them to Starbucks so they could get their coffee, but I watched them drink it through narrow eyes the whole time (no pun intended).
***
I was sitting at the merch table before the show watching everyone around me Teagan came running up and dove under the table. I peeked down and smiled at him gasping for breath.

“Whatcha doing down there?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“Ugh that Jordan kid is following me! He’s hitting on me and I scared!” he whispered and peered around the edge of the table.

“Bwahahahaha didn’t you tell him you have a girlfriend?” I asked through hysterical laugher.

“HE WON’T LISTEN TO ME!!!”

At that second though Teagan bolted out from under the table and into the group of people and seconds later the androgynous kid, Jordan, went running past. Elliot and Kade came over to sit next to me at the table until the show began.

The show was running so smoothly that night that I felt like something had to go wrong. Finally on the second to last song I stood up too quickly from where I was kneeling at the edge of the stage. Suddenly everything was black. The four boys in the front caught me, conveniently touching me inappropriately in about three different places. I looked behind me and the band thought I just jumped down. God damn. Dizziness can go die in my book.

After the show was over and everyone had packed up I gave hugs to my friends in Shower Sounds and Bottomless Romantic because it was their last night on the tour. Of course Shower Sounds were coming back in a few weeks but I was still going to miss them. I glanced over at Kai and she was standing awkwardly looking at the guys like she didn’t know what to do and Kade had a smug look of satisfaction. Unsure as whether I wanted to know what was going on, I ignored it. We finally got in our van to depart for Chicago.

Kai was asleep on Elliot’s shoulder within minutes on the road. I looked up to Teagan who was in the driver’s seat after about an hour on the road.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

“What?” Kade demanded.

“Uh dude we’re gonna run out of gas.”

“What are you talking about? We just filled up today.”

“I know dude but we didn’t have enough money to fill it up all the way,” Teagan replied cautiously.

Well obviously this wasn’t an ‘I told you so’ kind of moment so I just joined into the frantic discussion of what we should do. See the problem was that we had just driven past one of those ‘no gas station for 40 miles’ signs about five miles ago. On top of that we had somehow managed to get out where none of us had service on our cell phones. And finally after about three or four minutes of sheer mayhem the van’s engine sputtered, jerked, and came to a total stop on the side of the strange Illinois highway.

“FUUUUUUUUCK!” Elliot yelled pounding his fists against his forehead.

“Eh what? What’s happening, who died?” Kai said yawning awake after being thrown from Elliot’s shoulder.

“This fuck wad,” Elliot growled and gestured toward Teagan “passed the last gas station in 40 miles 10 miles back and now we’ve run out of gas!”

“Hey, I didn’t realize we were so low on gas or I would have stopped,” Teagan countered hotly.

“Okay guys, fighting isn’t going to help anything,” I said calmly to the boys.

“Stop it Pax,” Elliot yelled in my face “stop trying to pretend that everything’s not fucked up. It’s fucking annoying!”

“Oh… I’m sorry you feel that way. Well since everything’s all fucked up I think I’ll go and take a walk. You know uh see if I can get some uh cell phone reception and make things less fucked up,” I whispered blinking hard.

I felt like my throat was full of water.

I back away from the door and forced it open nearly falling out on the pavement from the effort it took to move the old metal. I straightened myself up and stumbled off down the highway in the direction we had come from.

“Hey wait for me!” Kai called jogging up behind me.

“You know he didn’t mean that,” she said wrapping her arm around my shoulders.

“You know what?” I asked walking faster “I really think he did mean it. I mean you guys are always getting a good laugh out of me trying to be a nice person. Why shouldn’t I piss you off too?”

“Oh please don’t be like that,” she asked gently.

I didn’t say anything just because I couldn’t think of anything appropriate for the moment. We shuffled along down the highway for about five minutes before either of us said anything again.

“Where are we even going?” Kai asked me.

“I don’t know,” I whispered looking around into the darkness “I guess to find a solution.”

She nodded in understanding and we both checked our cell phones for service bars. T-mobile and AT&T suck. I was calculating the time in my mind and if we walked we could be back at that town with the gas station in the next 2 ½ hours.

“How’s Thom doing?” Kai asked me randomly.

“Oh well you know, work and everything. He’s just doing his best to pay the bills you know. I suppose he misses me…” I trailed off considering that I had no idea how Thom was doing at this very moment.

“No I don’t know,” she replied a moment later.

“What?”

“I don’t know about having to pay the bills and stuff or about missing people at home,” she said bluntly.

It was a blatant reminder of just how different we were, and yet we were still so compatible. We were in two different worlds living two different lives, and yet could still relate. The teenage years and high school are just simpler versions of adulthood if you think about it.

“So how are you in the love department?” I asked grinning as I glanced down at the pale reddish mark on her neck that definitely hadn’t been there yesterday.

Apparently it was a loaded question because 20 minutes later I was still explaining to her how this was exactly how Kade got whenever he got obsessed with someone.

“Why don’t we talk about this stuff anymore?” I asked her.

“Well you and Thom are so much more serious than anything I’ve ever had. I guess we’re just at different places in life right now…” she trailed off, it seemed like neither of us could finish a thought tonight.

I linked arms with Kai and we quickened our pace down the shoulder. The night air was warm and felt moist in my lungs as they labored when we sped up to jog. Our arms slipped to our sides and we ran as fast as we could. We were racing each other to nowhere with no immediate purpose and no right direction. When I finally fell to my knees from the exhaustion the gravel tore at my palms but I didn’t care at all.

“I haven’t run like that since high school,” I gasped to Kai.

“I haven’t run like that since last month,” she laughed and clutched the stitch in her chest.

“So uh Kai?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we gonna do once we get to the town or get service or something?”

“Hmmm that’s a good point,” she said rather suspiciously.

“What?” I asked sensing she wasn’t telling me something.

“Oh I just have the number for AAA saved my phone for emergencies,” she replied smiling.

In the frenzy of being completely offended and cussed at by one of my friends I had totally forgotten that we had road side assistance. The only problem was that we had no service to call the number on our cell phones.

I was filled with a fresh bout of energy and optimism and jumped to me feet to keep walking. If we could just get service to call we could be out of this mess to Chicago for our show at the Metro. We walked for another five minutes or so before two bars finally appeared on my phone. Kai and I cheered and hugged each other and finally called the magic number that would save us from this mess.