Louder Than Thunder

A couple days later, the road crew and bands were on their tour bus headed for Liverpool. The girls all sat near the front, quietly looking out the windows at the countryside scenery. Things were mostly silent in the front half. In the back half, the boys were playing around, all except Sidney. Even Kurt joined in with a laugh.
Sidney, meanwhile, was writing a letter to Michelle. He tried to explain how he didn’t mean to offend her and didn’t mean anything he said that day, and even asked the other boys to sign it, promising that they had nothing to do with it. Michelle left it on the seat beside her, not bothering to read any more excuses.
The same thing happened at their concert that evening. He wrote a note and tried to get it to Michelle in the Rag Dolls’ dressing room, and he caught the door just as Kim was leaving it.
“Kim! Can you give this to Chell, please?”
“I’m sorry, Sidney, she doesn’t want to talk to you right now and as the manager I need to make sure they aren’t distracted before they go on stage. Having a conversation with you in this state would be distracting.”
“Fine,” Sidney said, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly. “Fine.”
Kimberly was about to continue on her way, but she realized she couldn’t leave Sidney upset like that. She turned towards him and sighed.
“You okay? Sidney?”
“I don’t know. I just want to make it up to her. We both weren’t in the best mood to have a proper conversation that day and I really don’t want to fight. I just want her to believe me.”
“Believe you about what?”
“Believe me when I tell her that Keith and Eric had nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, I see,” Kim said, thinking for a moment. “I bet she does believe you.”
“Then why won’t she talk to me?”
“Well, I mean, what happened that night was very traumatic. None of us are over it. We need time to ourselves for a bit to think things out, as different personalities and as friends. You need to understand that one thing, Sidney. You wanna be with Michelle, one thing you’ve gotta understand is that she is not a flat person. There are many sides to her and you’ve gotta let her be her own person. Your lives can’t be focused solely on one another because it doesn’t work that way. Maybe with some girls, but the girls assembled here in this band are a part of the majority who need more.
"I’m not gonna lie: Sidney, I think you can be that man for her. I really do. You’ve just gotta learn to be patient. You’re a smart man. I know she likes you and I can almost guarantee she still does.”
Sidney nodded understandingly. He folded his note and tucked it away in his pocket for now. Kim slowly moved past him, ready to be on her way.
“Thanks, Kim.”
“Don’t mention it.”
With that, she finally walked off. Albert walked by just then; he seemed to be looking for someone.
“Sidney, I’ve been looking for you. I need to go over the set list quickly, alright?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s head back to the dressing room,” Sidney suggested.
They headed over to the Leatherjackets’ dressing room, not talking much along the way.
After the show, Eric approached Darlene who was waiting off at the side of the stage. She smiled weakly at him.
“Hey, Darlene! Let’s go get a drink,” he suggested.
“I was just watching the show. I don’t really want anything to drink right now, thanks,” she said, heading back to the dressing room and leaving Eric confused.
“You tried,” Keith said, patting him on the back as he walked by.
“Has the world gone blinkin’ mad?”
“Naw, you’re just barmy.”
Keith snickered as they walked into the backstage together.
A couple days after their only Liverpool show, they were flying to Glasgow. Sidney was still adamant on getting Michelle to pay attention to him for one moment. He just needed to know what was really wrong. He spent some time sending notes over, only to have none of them read. He finally walked over to her.
“Chell-“
“I’m not in the mood to talk, Sidney.”
“Please talk to me quickly. I just want to understand what happened. Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it? I really didn’t mean anything I said that day about all that mod and rocker stuff. It was just a tired day, that’s all! I know you don’t care, and you know I don’t care about mods and rockers and who’s who. I just care about you.”
Michelle crossed her arms and faced the window, not in the mood to pay attention to his words. They didn’t have much meaning to her right then.
“Chell, please listen.”
“No, Sid, you listen! The band is the only thing that matters to us, alright? Our friendship, our band, our music – those are it. Keith and Eric come along and try to ruin everything we’ve been working on for the past year and a half - and in other ways, our whole lives. We’re finally here and they want to ruin it all!”
“I promise you, they didn’t do it! I asked them and they told me they didn’t. They even signed that note I sent you on the bus to Liverpool. They didn’t do it.”
“How nice. You didn’t do it. I’m proud,” she said sarcastically.
“Chell-“
The stewardess arrived just then and stood with authority over Sidney, crouched beside Michelle.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your seat.”
Sidney looked up at her and then back to Chell. He sighed before standing up and apologizing to each of them before returning to his seat. He sat down with a pout, unsure of what to do from then on.
“Good try, mate,” Keith said sarcastically, patting him on the shoulder without turning from his Playboy.
“Not helping.”
On the way off the plane, Michelle walked by Sidney to exit, since the bands were hurried off first.
“I really want to believe you. I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she passed him.
Sidney didn’t bother Chell that evening, or the next evening when they played their show. The two bands arrived early at the auditorium and did their sound check. The Leatherjackets’ equipment was set up; however, the sound check couldn’t begin.
“Has anyone seen Keith or Eric?” Albert asked.
He was hurrying through the backstage area, searching for them and asking anyone if they’d seen them. He eventually knocked on the girls’ dressing room. Mary opened the door, as Kim was busy helping Michelle with her makeup and Darlene was busy searching through her bag.
“Have any of you seen Keith or Eric?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t. Have any of you seen Keith or Eric?” Mary asked the rest.
“Not since this morning,” Michelle said.
“Same, I saw them at breakfast and then I saw them leave. Don’t know where to, though,” Kim added.
Albert grunted in frustration. He wiped a handkerchief over his thinning hair and the placed it back inside his jacket.
“Alright, thanks girls. I’ll have the roadies place your equipment onstage. You just go on and play.”
With that, he was he vanished.
“Alright, girls, ready to do our sound check?” Kim asked, as she put away the mascara into Michelle’s makeup bag.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Mary said, slipping on her second go-go boot.
They did their sound check, and then waited for the show to begin. They hung around the backstage with Sidney, Kurt and Albert as the audience piled in the seats. Suddenly an assistant came up to Albert and told him that there was a call for him.
He picked up the second backstage phone and answered the said line.
“Hello? Keith?”
Sidney and Kurt stopped and gazed towards him now.
“Is Eric with you?”
He released a sigh of relief before returning to the conversation.
“Where are you two? Wait, you’re where? You’re in jail!”
Kurt stared dazedly while Sidney stood up now, waiting to hear what would happen next.
“Alright, I’ll send someone down to pick you up. The girls will just extend their set until you get back. . .Well, we don’t have a choice. They have to go on now, so I’ll tell them. Alright, you’ll be picked up for the concert and I’ll work out the details later.”
He hung up the phone and gave a tired look to the boys.
“Girls, you’ll have to play an extended set. You have other songs memorized?”
“Well, we used to play extended covers. What do you guys think?”
“We could always go into ‘You Can’t Judge A Book By Looking At Its Cover.’ The clubs liked our cover of that one,” Darlene suggested, scratching her head with a drumstick.
“I think it’d be easier to extend ‘My Generation,’ don’t you?” Michelle asked.
“Well, who knows, we might need both.”
“If we need them, we’ll go through those in order. If that’s not enough, we’ll run down some songs from the album and this audience will just get a sneak peak,” Mary said.
“Sounds good.”
“Yeah, we’ll just do that.”
“Alright, go play girls. I’ll come to the side of the stage when they’re ready to go on,” Kim said.
The girls played through three extra songs when finally Kim showed up on the side of the stage, waving when the girls looked at her. They finished up the song as the audience cheered for the Leatherjackets’ to come on.
The girls thanked the audience and met with Kim and the roadies started setting up the Leatherjackets’ equipment. They headed back into the main backstage area yet again, where the Leatherjackets’ stood awkwardly, looking tense.
“I just can’t believe it,” Sidney said as the girls arrived in the area.
“What, it doesn’t ‘ave to bother you; you let it!”
“Last time this happened, we had to stop playing shows for months. It set us back so far. It was easy to make it personal back then when we were on our own schedules, but now we’re on tour and these are business schedules. We have to be on that stage and you have to be here to play your show, not at some club getting coked up with some big shots. We’ll have time for that between tours, but first we gotta guarantee a third,” Sidney ranted.
“It was just a bit of fun. I didn’t even take any today, I was just ‘oldin’ on to it,” Keith defended.
“Stop being such a child! We’ve gotta go on in a minute here. And Eric, should I even start on you?”
“Sidney, the girls have been listening to you yellin’ at us for a good few minutes here. I think it’s time we go on stage, eh?” Eric suggested with a grin.
The boys headed over to the side of the stage while Mary tapped Sidney as he passed by them.
“What were they in for, then?” Mary asked out of her usual need-to-know.
“Keith was in for possession of cocaine and Eric for indecent exposure.”
Darlene couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What happened?”
“The police were checking out teenagers in this one area and they just happened to be around, and of course Keith was challenging them so they checked him out and he was caught holding onto some coke, and Eric flashed the cops and a group of others who were around at the time.”
“Wow,” Mary said.
Sidney joined the other boys, who were prepared to go on stage.