Hold Fast

A snail could have moved faster than the last few days. As the excitement of our trip grew, the slower time seemed to move. It was the Friday before we were supposed to leave, and the last class of the day was literally dragging on. I must have stared at the clock for the entire class because by the time the bell finally rang, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what my teacher had talked about.
I made my way over to my locker, quickly shoving my stuff inside. It wasn’t long before the rest of the guys were there. We were all planning on leaving together. The guys had agreed to stay at our house tonight that way it would be easier to leave for Denver together the next morning. As excited as were all were, a 7 am flight was not our idea of fun on a Saturday. I was pretty sure that I would be asleep as soon as we took off.
Nothing really was going on this afternoon and we mainly just went over everything that we were packing. The conversations throughout the night consisted of talking about how excited we were, worrying about not meeting the record labels expectations of us, and then realizing we didn’t care about that and joking about how we would handle that if needed. I could tell from the vibe everyone had that this trip would mean a lot to us even if things didn’t go as planned. As far as I was concerned, we were one step closer to our dream.

When we boarded the flight the next morning, we all looked like death. It’s not easy waking five teenage boys before 5am and expecting them to be coherent. I was really glad that my mom was driving us to the airport and not me. I probably would have fallen asleep.
She walked us all the way to the gate to make sure we boarded correctly. She hugged each and every one of us, leaving my brother and I for last.
“Now Mike, make sure to listen to your brother.” She gave him a stern look. Mike just chuckled and hugged her before walking over to the others. She turned to me.
“Now Vic,” she began, holding me by my shoulders gently. “You watch out for your little brother and make sure that everyone is safe. I’m trusting you and so are Tony, Jaime, and Kellin’s parents.” No pressure.
“I will mom.” I smiled reassuringly at her before wrapping her in a big hug.
“Have fun.” She called out as the guys and I walked towards our plane.

The flight to California wasn’t too bad, but I’m pretty sure that Mike almost had a full blown panic attack. When we were flying over Navada, the plane hit some turbulence and Mike squeaked and hid in Tony’s shoulder. I thought it was cute and so did the guys, but Mike said that if we uttered even a single word about it, he would personally send us to the grave. The sad part about that was that we knew that he wasn’t joking when he said that.
But I think my favorite part of the flight was the bouncing boy next to me. Kellin had not been able to sit still for almost the entire flight. How this boy had this much energy before 10 am way beyond me. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep on the flight. I was afraid he was going to pop if we didn’t land on time. It was really nice to see him so excited about something, but I was really happy when we finally landed and got out of the airport.
There we were. Five teenage boys in Los Angeles alone with no adult supervision. Well I guess I’m an adult, but right now I felt like a kid in a candy store. The first thing we did was drop off our stuff at the hotel that the company had paid for us to stay in. I was surprised to see how nice it was. Not that I’m ungrateful, but I didn’t think they would pay for five of us to stay in the Hilton. Anyway, I digress.
“What do we do now? The meeting isn’t until four and it’s only noon.” Jaime asked as we lounged in the front living area of our hotel room.
“We could go eat something, I’m starving.” Tony suggested.
“Yeah that’s a good idea. I’m getting pretty hungry too.” Mike added.
“You guys are always hungry.” Kellin joked.
“Well let’s go check out some places around here. The record label sent us enough money for food.” I offered as we walked towards the door.
We walked around the streets for a little while before we decided on a small family restaurant. Apparently these people were use to kids coming in often because the lady behind the counter was really nice and I could tell that she had a lot of patience. I let the guys all order before me and then paid for the food with the prepaid card the label had sent me. It was really weird being able to pretty much afford anything that we wanted to eat, but we were pretty modest and not really big on fancy food. A couple of burritos and some beans and we were set. Well except Kellin who had a massive craving for a Polish hotdog. But we didn’t bother him about it.
I stared at my food, kind of pushing it around, my appetite diminishing rapidly. I could feel them staring at me, but I kept my eyes on my plate. I was just nervous. This was a big thing for us and the slightest thing could set this into a downward spiral and destroy our dreams. I don’t know how this was true, but I felt that this was pretty much riding on how I handled the situation.
“Babe, are you okay?” Kellin leaned over and whispered to me.
“Yeah… just nervous I guess.” I moved my rice with my fork before giving up and putting it down. I moved my plate over, leaving it in front of Mike, knowing he would finish it for me. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. This really was going to be a stressful day.