Somewhere in Neverland

“I don’t want to go on tonight!” Samson whines in the wings of the stage. Noelle and Roland are out onstage doing last minute prep before our queue to walk out. “I don’t want this to end!”

It’s true. Everyone is hesitant to take the stage tonight because we know it’s the last time we’ll do it on this tour. The past six weeks have been a once in a lifetime whirlwind of experiences that all of us are reluctant to see go, so it’s completely unnerving knowing this is the last time we’ll be waiting in the wings for the thumbs up from Roland.

“Think about it like this: at least in a few days you’ll be able to sleep in your own bed,” Eliza says, hoisting herself up onto an amp to watch the show tonight. “You’ve been living out of a van for six weeks, I’m sure that’ll be one thing you don’t miss.”

Miller trades me my bass for my glucose meter as Roland runs off stage and turns around to give us all the signal. Sam brushes off all his pre-show nerves and makes his way boldly onto center stage as Luke begins the intro guitar riff to Dolls of Freya. Theo clicks his drum sticks together three times to count us off and before I know it, the crowd is singing along with Sam.



Goosebumps rise on the back of my arms as Sam’s voice trails off and the crowd erupts into a fit of cheers. If I had any doubts about the loyalty of our fanbase before this tour, all of those can be thrown out the window because the crowd reacts so strongly to the music. They match Sam’s emotions as they sing along, word for word, and everything comes full circle for me. Our music, whether any of us realizes it, has impacted our fans enough for them to relate to it and care so strongly. When Sam is in pain, they’re in pain. When Sam sings of hope, they’re hopeful and that’s all I could ever hope for.

When I joined this band seven years ago as an angsty teenager, the only hope I had for us was that we’d become friends. I didn’t care that half of the boys were in middle school. I didn’t care whether or not Ian played keyboard or classical piano. I didn’t care about anything besides the fact that our mutual love of music would bring us together. The fact that Sam can sing a song as painful as Dolls of Freya and have the crowd be so passionate about it is something I don’t think any of us ever expected, so being met with such an energetic and loving crowd is an eye-opener for all of us.

We stand and gawk at the crowd which is still going wild. Six weeks ago we stepped out onstage for the first time, unsure of what sort of response we’d get. As a band, we were sure of ourselves and our music because it spoke to us, but now we know that we really do have fans out there and it’s really thanks to Alex that we’ve been given such an amazing experience.

“Hello Baltimore! We are Feral Amity from Palo Alto, California!” Sam bellows into the microphone as the crowd cheers all over again. “But our lovely bassist over here claims her home is right here in Baltimore!”

He points to me before turning to smile and the crowd whoops and hollers because Baltimoreans have a lot of passion for our hometown.

“Yeah, yeah! Baltimore!” I laugh, thrusting my fist into the air. “It’s the city of champions, huh?”

Again, they go crazy and it makes me feel at home despite being gone for the past seven years. There’s a spirit and camaraderie that ignites us and helps us fight through the end-of-tour fatigue and Sam brings the crowd back to the real topic at hand: our next song.

“This next song was written by our drummer, Theo. It’s called Armageddon Sonnet and it goes a little something like this!” He says as Russell’s guitar intro blasts through the speakers.



Out of the corner of my eye, I see Olivia step forward from the wings of the stage hesitantly and my head whips around to see what she’s doing. Alex stands just out of view of the crowd with a smile on his face and offers her a thumbs up. I send him a questioning look, but he only shrugs.

The boys have told me stories about the end of tour prank tradition, so I can only assume they’ve put my sister up to something. She has a mischievous grin on her face as she walks boldly to Theo’s drum set where she pulls a Furby out of the backpack she’s carrying and places it right on his bass drum.

Everyone watches as she carefully moves around the stage, strategically placing Furbies anywhere she can find a flat surface, knowing full well the intent of the prank. After she has placed about six Furbies, she runs off stage and gives Alex a high five.

“No! Uh-uh!” Sam screams when he spots one, disregarding the fact we’re mid-song. “Fuck this! No! No! Get those fucking things away from me!”

We all stop abruptly to watch Sam’s freak out. Everyone knows he is legitimately terrified of the things. Somewhere during his childhood he claims one tried to murder him or something and ever since he’s avoided them like the plague.

Theo stands and grabs the toy from his drum and holds it up. “What Sam? You don’t like these?”

He holds it out towards Sam who backs away and shakes his head violently. “No! I don’t think you realize that I’m legitimately about to fucking cry! Alex, I fucking hate you!” He says as he spots Alex and Olivia laughing in the wings. “I’m going to kill – no, get it away from me!”

Alex ushers Olivia back out onstage to collect the toys as he takes the microphone from my stand. He’s still laughing, but is trying to pull himself together.

“Hey guys, hi!” Alex says over the cheers of the crowd. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys mid-song, but I guess this works just as well,” He stops and chuckles when Sam places one of his hands on his hip and raises his middle finger at Alex stubbornly. “Sam’s just gonna be a diva for a minute or two, but hopefully he’ll get over it so these guys can finish their set. Really quick though, really quick, I just wanted to say how grateful we are that our great friends in Feral Amity could open for us on this tour. At first it kind of freaked us out because there was just this van of lunatics showing up at the venues every night, but then we realized after they showered and put on clothes that they weren’t a pack of wild dogs,” I shake my head and allow myself to laugh. “And I want to thank all of you for putting up with these crazies tonight. I know they’re only one and a half songs in and it feels like their set is never gonna end, but I promise at the end of it all, despite how big of a bitch Sam is, we’ll come out and play a kick ass show that makes up for all this.”

I yank the microphone out of his hand before he can continue. “Thank you, Alex. It really means a lot to all of us knowing we have such great friends,” I say sarcastically. “Now if you’d kindly scoot your butt back over into the wings and take my little sister and all those creepy Furbies with you, that’d be fucking fantastic!”

“So, uh, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” Sam steps forward to his microphone and looks back to all of us. “Let’s go from the first chorus?”

Russell leads us back into the rhythm of things before Sam belts out the remainder of the song and goes immediately into the next to make up for the lost time from Alex’s prank.

We make good time with our set and the guys must realize this because shortly before our last song, Rian and Alex come back out onstage with their hands filled with shot glasses full of what looks like a variety of beverages. They carefully distribute the glasses to each of us and some of the younger boys look a bit uneasy about the idea of taking shots.

Rian grabs my microphone off the stand and holds his glass out in front of him. “So, uh, these past almost two months have been quite the adventure with these goons over here. A lot of the time they really suck as people, you know, just are really, really hard to be around and we hate them with a fiery, burning passion. To get through most of this tour I’ve had to drink away all of my sorrows and found myself boozing at all sorts of hours of the day to keep my sanity, so for one final hoo-rah, let’s fucking take some shots! And don’t worry boys, all of you who aren’t 21 have a shot of delicious Squirt to look forward to!”

I glance down at my glass to verify I’m not going to give my child fetal alcohol syndrome and am glad to see the boys have thought this through. Unfortunately, it has the same cloudy pink coloring of Squirt and I debate whether or not I really want to take it, knowing how repulsive the taste is, but I know I have to if I don’t want any questions from the crowd or the boys.

We toss them back and I do my best not to make a sour face, but can’t help it.

“What, you can’t handle your shots, Caroline?” Rian asks with a smirk and I flip him off and grab the microphone from his hand.

“I can beat you in a drinking competition on any other day than today, Ri-Ri! And you know that’s the truth,” He puts his hands on his hips and cocks his head to the side like he’s up for the challenge. “No, Rian! I’m not fucking doing it! We need to finish our set and you fuckers are wasting our time. Get the fuck off the stage! We love you, but fuck off!”

“No, but really quick,” He says, grabbing my entire arm to pull the microphone towards his face. “For real, we love these guys so much and have had such a great time with them. We give them a lot of shit, but they’re amazing. Love you little shits!”

As Rian and Alex exit the stage, Miller rushes on with Russell’s acoustic guitar and trades him for his Les Paul.

“Alright guys, this is a really sad moment,” Sam says, centering us and bringing us back to the set. “We have one more song for you guys tonight and, well, this tour. So, without any more interruptions, we want to slow it down for you guys and play a song very near and dear to our hearts. This is our song Riley’s Arrow!”

I feel like I’m in some sort of a trance as my fingers pluck along to the song. It’s surreal that after everything that we’ve been through these past few weeks that this is really it; this tour is really coming to an end. I try to enjoy myself onstage as much as I can, but my mind wanders to everything but the beauty of the moment. It freaks me out that in two days I’m flying home to California without Alex. It freaks me out that in two days my four best friends won’t be readily available to have a face-to-face conversation whenever I want. And it fucking freaks me out that after everything we’ve been through, all the travel we’ve had in the past six weeks, that in two days I’ll be back home in California sitting around and twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do.

When the music ends and Sam’s voice fades out, I’m snapped back to reality by the cheers from the crowd. I stand dumbfounded for a moment before I pull myself together enough to rush offstage where I hand my bass off to Miller and consider throwing up. Instead, I’m met with a tight embrace from Noelle who knows how much I’m dreading the next few days.

She pulls away and cups my cheeks in her hands, staring intently into my eyes. “This is good, Caroline,” She says without me having to say anything. “I know you’re sad the tour is over, but everything is gonna work out, okay? Now you don’t have to worry about anything except figuring out your future with Alex, which is something you’ve been waiting for since the day I met you.”

“I know,” I whimper pathetically. “But I’m still sad.”

She offers me a sad smile and nods in understanding. It’s not just me who’s leaving this tour with a long distance relationship to deal with; she has Jack to worry about now. She knows just as well as I do that things are going to be hard for the next few weeks. “Girl, you’re preaching to the choir.”

Noelle links her arm with mine and we wander backstage to the unusually empty dressing room. I know the members of The Summer Set are standing in the wings waiting for their queue to take the stage for their last time, but Alex, Jack, and Rian’s absence is odd. I settle on the idea that they’re off planning whatever prank they’re going to pull on The Summer Set, so I don’t think too far into things.

“We should prank All Time Low,” I announce with a sly smile.

Everybody’s ears perk up and give me their full attention.

“How?” Miller asks, throwing himself down next to me.

I shrug, having already given my two cents. “I dunno. I came up with the idea; everyone else needs to contribute!”

“We should just go out onstage and run around pretending to play Quidditch,” Theo says, throwing his arm around Eliza’s neck. “Have someone dress up in all yellow and be the Golden Snitch or something. I think that’d be fucking hilarious.”

“I’m down,” Miller answers and I nod, contemplating whether or not the idea is stupid. I end up coming to the conclusion that it is, but only in the best way possible and we sit around plotting for a while before the plan gets put into action.

The guys in The Summer Set wander backstage after their set and bring with them an entirely new wave of sadness. Jess has opted for a few drinks at the bar instead of sulking like the rest of us and I’m jealous of her ability to drink. Fucking pregnancy and all its rules.

As the night progresses, we continue hammering out our plan. I’ve been designated as the Snitch and have changed into a long-sleeve yellow shirt and yellow dance shorts with a bustle on the back courtesy of my younger sisters and am standing in the wings as Alex introduces Weightless.

“Manage me, I’m a mess. Turn a page, I’m a book half unread,” Alex sings as the first ball is flung across the stage by Miller.

I run around the stage aimlessly as the boys chase balls they send flying while they hold brooms in between their legs. This goes on for quite some time before they start to show any interest in chasing after me. Rian catches on first and smirks as I circle his drum kit, sticking my tongue out at him the entire time.

Once I get bored with Rian, I jump onto Zack’s back, draping my arms over his shoulders lazily and sing along in his ear. Right before I hop off, I give him a sloppy kiss on the cheek and smile when he quickly turns to return the favor.

“You’re dead,” He mouths with a smirk.

I shrug, confident the boys will find as much humor in our prank as we did with theirs. It’s all in good fun and honestly, we all need a little bit of humor in our lives, especially tonight. This tour has been fun, yes, but it’s also been stressful and hard on everybody, physically and mentally.

The boys finish the song and I allow Otto to tackle me gently to the ground as Theo and Noelle cheer in victory.

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Alex laughs as Otto pulls me to my feet.

“They’re playing Quidditch, duh! Caroline’s the fucking Snitch!” Jack points out.

Alex gets that look of “ohhhh!” on his face and nods. “Very funny, guys. Good one. Is this getting us back for earlier when we interrupted your set?”

We all nod in unison.

“I think they beat us for creativity,” Zack announces.

I run up to the front of the stage and steal Alex’s microphone much like he had earlier. “Really quick, I just wanted to say thank you to our lovely friends in All Time Low for dragging us along on this adventure. We had such a great time and I don’t think we’ll ever be able to repay you.”

I click the microphone back into the stand and turn to leave the stage with the rest of my band when I feel Alex’s hand latch onto my wrist and pull me back towards him. He doesn’t even give me enough time to send him a questioning look before his lips find mine in a passionate kiss.

There’s a collective gasp from the audience, but it doesn’t even faze me until he pulls away and I feel the tell-tale burning in my cheeks.

“Caroline McGee, everybody!” Jack announces with a laugh as he hoists my arm into the air. He wraps his arm around me in a half-hearted hug and my hand finds my forehead as I look out into the confused audience. Some people look shocked, some look horrified, while others look downright upset. Still, it doesn’t bother me because Alex just pretty much outted us to his fans.

As I walk offstage, I shake my head in disbelief that Alex had the balls to do that – to announce to their hometown fans that he was with me. He owned the situation and did it so effortlessly and boldly and for the billionth time in my life, he’s caused that nervous fluttering sensation in my stomach that reminds me why I fell in love with him in the first place.