Meet You There

In 5 years I had never once taken off my necklace. Never. To everyone else it looked like something cheap, something I had made myself… well I had made it myself; I bought a silver chain and had punched a hole through the top of one of the guitar picks that I had bought Sebastien for Christmas. It meant that I kept him, and all the memories, with me everywhere I went, so I refused to take it off. Even when my mum insisted I take it off when I went to weddings, or christenings or parties it didn’t come off. It was the one thing I had left and I wasn’t letting it go.

About 10 months after I had been home Sebastien and I had called quits, not because we didn’t love each other, it was more that having your boyfriend or girlfriend on the other side of the world wasn’t exactly easy. For the first year or so we all emailed and had group conversations weekly, but then we all got busy. For me school kicked in, and for them it started to wind down. After a while the conversations became fewer and fewer; I started university, Kayleigh and the girls stayed in Montreal and went to college and the boys… well they continued their band and ended up with a record deal from what Kayleigh had told me, so really life had kind of gotten away from us all. After 5 years, even though I still had every single one of the memories, I only really still spoke to Kayleigh. Don’t get me wrong I would love to still speak to Sebastien, but reality is that its not practical; he was always touring with the band which didn’t make it very easy, and I had moved on and put those feelings behind me.

I was still in uni, but I had moved out of my parents house into an apartment with my best friend Taylor which was closer to the city than where we had both grown up. Logically it made sense because we both went to uni and worked part time in Sydney CBD, not to mention that the place I interned at 2 days a week was right in the middle of the city. The apartment we were in was big enough, it had 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, powder room (toilet), and an open area which was the lounge room, dining room and kitchen. We were also on the top floor of the building so we had a big open balcony area and direct access to the building roof top, which had a beautiful view of the city especially at night making it a good spot for us and our friends to hang out at.

“Jess aren’t you going to take that necklace off?” Bec asked, she’d been badgering me about it for the last few weeks telling me that it had been 5 years, “No” I replied as if she was stupid, but really what did she expect? “Jess… it’s nearly your birthday… you’re 22 in a few days for pete’s sake” she tried to reason, “do you want to get the same lecture once again?” I asked her, she knew exactly what I was talking about, “Bec, just drop it” interjected Tay as she came back into the room, “I have something for you, it’s an early birthday present” she said handing me an envelope, “read the big thing I folded up that’s next to the card first” she instructed as I carefully opened the envelope. I opened what had been folded up, it was a poster advertising a band… not any band… Green Day. “NO!” I yelled excitedly looking at the poster, to Taylor then back down to the envelope, “You’re kidding right?!” I yelled excitedly, “no I just handed you an envelope with your favourite band’s touring poster and two tickets just to get you excited and then to take it all away from you” she said sarcastically. “ha ha very funny. OH MY GOD GREEN DAY!” I yelled before checking the date on the tickets.

“Wait hold on, there’s a bit of a problem here” I said sadly remembering why I didn’t already have tickets to this show, “It’s THIS Friday the same night as that function on …” “what function?” Bec asked curiously, “the one YOU planned a while ago as a fundraiser” I said pointing at Bec and remembering that it was all her fault and that’s why I had to miss out on my favourite band, “didn’t I tell you? It’s been moved to next week” she said as if she had told me, “anyway I have to go, I’ll see you some time next week I guess” she said before picking up her things and bolting for the front door. “YOU, you had this planned the whole time didn’t you!” I accused Taylor, “me? never! I would NEVER do such a thing” she said laughing making me jokingly glare at her. “You realise this is in like 3 days, THANK you for the warning” I said frantically, running to my room wondering what I would wear even though I knew exactly what I was going to wear. “Jess, you’ll wear your Green Day shirt that you got when you were in Canada and shorts and those one pair of blue converse you wear to EVERY. SINGLE. show” she stated as she stood in the doorway of my room. “Of course you know that” I said rolling my eyes. Thankfully I had a best friend who listened to the same music as me and came with me to shows to get squished in the middle of mosh pits, so of course she would be coming with me… who else would willingly come with me to go nuts to good music, be pushed up against sweaty people; some of who are clearly unaware of the existence of deodorant, and get sucked into circle pits.

Friday came around quickly, work was over and done with by 3pm and I had caught the first train back to the apartment to start getting ready. By 5pm I was eagerly waiting by the front door waiting for Taylor so we could get some food before heading to the show. It was either Maccas for dinner or well Maccas, there wasn’t much choice as we headed towards Homebush for the Superdome. I parked my car in the car park and started running towards the escalators “HOLD ON, WAIT A SEC” yelled Taylor from behind me, “did you lock the car?” she asked and I quickly double checked that it was locked by re-locking it, “cmon cmon cmon” I urged on edge, “you can’t go in when I have your ticket anyway” she said poking her tongue out at me, it was times like this that made me want to kill her. “Fine, I’ll dial it down on being hyper” I said rolling my eyes as I walked extra slowly towards the superdome, but the moment she handed me my ticket I was overly hyper again; it was as if someone had let me drink the Coles Brand Raspberry Soft Drink and fed me fairy floss.

We had a quick bathroom break and headed for the floor… there’s no such thing as having seats at a rock concert, the floor was where all the fun was at. I mean, why would you want to sit in a seat and not be close to the stage while people look at you weird for the way you’re jumping around and dancing excitedly? On the floor, everyone was jumping and dancing like crazy so there was no such thing as it being weird.

“Okay, how we going to do this?” Taylor asked knowing that she was thinking exactly what I was thinking; barricade. “Hold my arm and don’t let go” I said with a grin before weaving my way through the crowd ensuring that I still had Taylor with me, after using the “but my brother is right up there” excuse few times and yelling at people to get over it as they whined that we had pushed past them, we made it to the second row standing to the right of where Billie Joe would be standing in a few hours, mid way between two mics which I presumed were set up for the support band. “satisfied?” I asked with a grin, “perfect” she acknowledged, as we tried to make ourselves a little more comfortable considering we would be standing there for a while before Green Day actually came on. “Any idea who the support band is?” I asked her as I looked at the stage trying to see if there was a band name written anywhere, “no idea, wasn’t on the ticket” she said shrugging, “well I hope they’re good” I said thinking about some of the weird bands we had come across at concerts. At smaller gigs the support bands were usually local acts, but bigger shows most bands had been bringing bands from the US with them opening up Australia to the wonder that is punk/rock music. Some of the support bands we had seen over the years had also been amazing and had even come back doing their own headlining shows, but I guess we would just have to wait and see who was going to be up there tonight, but either way no one really knew who they were.

After about 40 minutes the house lights went down and the stage lights came one, and a there was a strum of a guitar. A moment later, 5 guys no older than Taylor and myself came running out. “WHAT’S UP SYDNEY?!” the lead singer yelled, my head snapped back up… I knew that voice, it was familiar, but it couldn’t be, surely not. I took a second look at the lead singer, I knew that face, I knew that voice, I knew that figure, that stance, that hair, everything about him. I knew him. I looked to the left and right of him trying to work out if what I was seeing was actually true, “SYDNEYYYY! WE ARE SIMPLE PLAN, ARE YOU GUYS READY TO ROCK TONIGHT?!”