Wherever You Are

I woke up around nine in the morning with crust in the corners of my eyes. I'd only been asleep for five hours, but my job never ended. We had made plans to visit Madame Tussaud's, a wax figure museum famous for their attention to detail and creation of pop culture icons. I called ahead and had them close the museum for the day. It was really more of a safety precaution than anything. Dani was a celebrity of high status, and though I didn't understand just how famous she was at first, I quickly learned just how important safety was after a scary trip out one day. We simply took a ride to a lakeside park one day. Molly joined us for an afternoon picnic and we fed the local ducks with pieces of whole wheat bread. We were only there for an hour because Richard urged us to pack up and leave. I thought he was being a bit of a jerk, but as we left for the car I could see a large crowd waiting to see her. It was intense, watching her having to be escorted from a fun day in the park by six large men. It was a very eye opening experience for me, and I never took Richard for granted again. So, I made sure to call and have the museum close. After getting off the phone, I went to the main lobby and had the kitchen make a fresh cup of tea and a hot coffee and began my journey to Dani's hotel suite. The elevator ride seemed a bit long, but I tried to stay positive about the day ahead as I held her tea between my arm and my chest. I pulled the spare key card for her room from my pocket and opened the door with no regard as to waking her up. After all, it was my job to wake her up everyday. I set the hot cups down on the entry way table and stepped further into the room where I found Dani sprawled out in an arm chair facing the balcony. She was sleeping rather sound for someone who looked so uncomfortable. I giggled a little at the sight of it and then was surprised to see Ashton waking up from the bed. He had been laying on top of all of the bed linen and was holding onto the room's ice bucket which was filled with mostly water. He noticed it, and tried not to spill it as he saw me and sprang to his feet. He looked awkward, and I felt awkward. Had he actually fallen asleep there?

I didn't say anything about it, and neither did he. Instead, we shared a very quiet moment before I turned my attention to trying to wake Dani. A gentle tap on the shoulder had her sleepily prying her eyes open. She stretched and smiled at me before trying to sit up. I grabbed the coffee and handed it to her while she checked the time on her phone. She had yet to notice Ashton, or maybe she didn't want to talk about it. "Thanks, Sarah." Her voice was very telling about the fact that she was groggy. "I already checked the e-mails and confirmed the buses for tomorrow night." My voice pierced through, sounding rather chirpy and Ashton slowly began trying to back out of the room. "Did you call Madame-" I interrupted Dani, my eyes focused on Ashton who gave a small smile and a bit of a wave. "Yes, and they've closed until ten in the evening. Paul will be pulling the car up in about a half hour." She nodded, gave me another thankful praise and then I left the room to let her dress for the day. Ashton followed my queue and I closed the door tightly behind me. It was a silent walk to the elevator, but when we stepped inside for a ride down Ashton thought it better to break the silence. "Nothing happened." He spoke carefully and lightly, his eyes watching my face for any falter in my happy expression. "I know that, Ashton." He stood frozen as we passed two more floors. "No, seriously. I want you to know that I would never take advantage-" I broke into his sentence. "You said nothing happened, right? So then it doesn't matter what I think." The doors opened at my floor and I stepped out, not bothering to look back over my shoulder. "Be ready in twenty minutes, Ashton!" My voice echoed in the hall as I continued walking, but I could hear a faint "thank you" as I opened the door to my own room.

I met Paul at the van while he sat parked right outside the hotel lobby. Dani came downstairs with Richard, who looked surprised that not many fans had gathered yet. There were only four people who recognized her at all so far, and she stopped with a pleasant smile to take pictures with them. One girl in particular must have caught her attention because as we waited for the boys to come down, Dani spent a few minutes talking with her before departing with a hug. The girls walked off, not seeming too worried about the van. Dani sat in the second row of the van, so I climbed into the far back and set my backpack down in the seat beside me. I checked the time on my watch as we waited, and after a few more minutes without a sight of them I pulled my phone from my pocket. I had their numbers programmed into my phone since the first production meeting, and I needed to make sure that they were still planning to join Dani and I today. Just as I began to type out a text, Richard pulled the van door open and Luke climbed in. His eyes darted across all of the empty seats (it was a twelve passenger van after all) before he decided to take the seat next to mine. I formed an awkward smile and moved my backpack to the floorboard and allowed him to sit. It wasn't a bad thing that he chose to sit next to me. This would mean that the car ride wouldn't be boring. It wasn't a terribly long ride, though. It was thirty minutes that felt more like five minutes with Luke sitting next to me. At first, we didn't have much to say. He was only just pulling his headphones out of his pocket when I spoke up. "Did you sleep well?" He smiled at me and I instantly returned the gesture of friendship. He gave a slight shrug and held his headphones in his hands. "It was alright, I guess. How about you, when did you wake up?" I watched him curl the chord around three of his fingers and then answered his question with a small delay. "Um, I think it was about nine o'clock or so when I got up." His eyes widened and he chuckled a bit. "That's intense." It was my turn to shrug as I diverted my gaze out of the window and to the moving scenery. "I'm kind of used to it, honestly." It was quiet again for a minute, but Luke took control of driving the conversation this time. "Oh, right. The whole assistant thing." I just gave a small nod, unsure of how to confirm that with anything verbal. The silence returned once more, and once more Luke was the one to break through it. "Do you wanna have a listen?" He held out an earbud to me and I took it with little hesitation. He placed the other earbud into his own ear and began to play something.

In Barrow, we didn't get radio. We only had two stations that came in at all: the college radio from Barrow Point and the emergency frequency. Nobody talked about Green Day or Third Eye Blind. I hadn't even heard of Britney Spears until I left Barrow for the mainland. I didn't know any of the voices coming through the headphones and into my ear, but that didn't stop Luke from asking me if I liked the song every few seconds and skipping through if I shrugged. One particular song played, and I couldn't help but feel like it was very catchy. I nodded my head a little until there was a threat of the earbud falling out, then I stopped and pushed the earbud back to it's original position with a gentle touch of my finger. "So you like MyChem?" I didn't understand what he said, and I felt a little embarrassed about it. I must have been blushing, because his eyes widened once more and his jaw dropped down. "You've never heard My Chemical Romance, have you?" I pulled the earbud out of my ear and gave it back to him, scooting over in my seat and leaning against the window to watch the city speed by. Luke laughed and shook his head, a motion I could see from the corner of my eye. "I don't mean to be rude, it's just that they're so popular." Way to make me feel worse, I thought. "Not where I grew up." I muttered it, not even sure if he would know I said anything at all. "Well, where did you grow up? Cause I'm pretty sure that the only place they aren't recognizable is Antarctica." I glanced back at him and shifted in my seat more. I needed more distance between us because I was quickly discovering that the possibility of friendship between Luke and I was at a loss. We hardly had anything in common. He took the signs that I was uncomfortable as evidence and his jaw dropped again. "Did you grow up in Antarctica?" His voice was loud now, and I could hear Ashton's voice grow softer as he continued his discussion with Dani.

"I did not grow up in Antarctica. I grew up in Barrow, Alaska and it's the northernmost town in the United States so can you chill?" He leaned back in his seat, holding his hands up a little as if in defeat. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean-" He looked over at me with a softness on his face compared to his previous express of surprise. He didn't continue his apology, though. He instead seemed to crawl into himself for the rest of the ride. I didn't mean to make him feel bad, but I was ashamed of growing up in such an isolated town. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I had never felt the touch of summer sun or seen a city lit up around me. We didn't have much internet in Barrow, either. I applied to colleges by walking thirty minutes over the ice to the village and using one of five computers at the library to look everything up. The only people living normal lives were the staff at the hospital, which had dedicated satellite. Everyone else from Barrow Point and the old research lab weren't using their technology to look up movies and the like. I had read books before about people from small towns moving away and living happily ever after in the city. It had become my dream. I had nothing in Barrow but my parents. I was shunned all through school because I didn't like ice fishing and I wanted to spend my free time painting. Everyone else seemed really into hunting, but I just had no use for killing the wild and bringing it home to dry out. When the sun set for polar night, I got comfortable staying home and watching incredibly old VHS of There's Something About Mary and Austin Powers. On special occasions, my dad would pull the rest of the VHS collection out from the garage and we would spend the whole day watching Star Wars. That was all there was to my life in Barrow. That's the reason why I needed to get out as quickly and as far away as possible. It just didn't work out the way that I wanted it to.

We arrived at the museum and a staff member waited to unlock the door for us. Richard slammed the door of the van closed and followed everyone in, his usual silence becoming more of an accent between the silent awkwardness from all of us. I had already tried to forget the tension between Ashton and I, but now I had somehow ruined the way Luke and I had been getting along. As we walked through the museum, we both stood as background noise to Dani and Ashton's conversations. They jumped from topic to topic before they began a conversation of particular relevance. Ashton and Luke had apparently never known that a couple of years ago, Dani Weston had her own likeness created. She stood at five foot ten (the same height as Dani) and though her hair and makeup and outfit were all very different, it was very clearly Dani. It was also very creepy how realistic it looked. Ashton and Luke took a large step forward towards the figure and while Ashton stared intensely at the face, Luke's attention kept jumping from the true Dani (who laughed from the sidelines) and wax Dani. For me, it was like staring into a time capsule. Ashton asked if someone would take his picture with the figure, and Dani was happy to oblige under the condition that she were allowed to be in a picture with it as well. She hadn't seen the figure since it was unveiled in New York City before it was moved to London and she wanted to tweet about the day's events. I stepped away from the trio who seemed to do anything but poke and prod at the figure. Instead, I took a silent walk alone into the hall of music icons. There were a lot of people that I didn't recognize but had heard of. My dad lived in New York before he moved to Alaska. He grew up in the city as a young boy from Queens and his older brother (my uncle Jack) was in a rock band. Uncle Jack said they were terrible player but they idolized Def Leppard and could usually fill a whole fifteen minutes on stage with covers. My didn't talk about his past much. It was like a past life that he couldn't remember and didn't want to bother with. He had forgotten it the second that it was traded for a life in eternal winter. My mother was the one from Alaska. Her grandfather owned a whaling company. That's how my parents met. My dad traded life on wall street for a hard day's work fishing, hoping to find himself. I suppose that if that's all true then he did find himself, because he and my mother still don't leave each other's side.

I tried to look for musicians that I knew, then finally settled on a figure of Justin Timberlake. I hadn't heard any of his music until the night that I met him backstage at an awards event. It was a long time ago, but my memory was strong. He apparently knew Dani quite well and they talked for about fifteen minutes, catching up on life and work before agreeing to write together sometime and parting with a hug, the same exact way she says goodbye to everyone. I tried to look at the figure's familiar face, trying to imagine what it would be like to idolize someone so badly and then finally see the figure. It was something I couldn't really imagine. I had never really idolized anyone except for Mark Hamill, and I had yet to see a wax version of him standing anywhere in this museum. I started to realize just how embarrassed I was. I didn't know pop culture that everyone referenced, and Luke was not the first person to ever look at me like an alien. It didn't help that as soon as I moved to Los Angeles, I was hired by Dani and therefore was constantly surrounded by celebrities. They were narcissistic and surprised when I didn't kneel down in admiration. Dani was the opposite. From the moment that I met her, she seemed really pleased that I wasn't in awe of her. I suppose that's because she is constantly Dani Weston: the musical prodigy superstar. People see her and they think that they know everything about her, but no one really does. Perhaps not even me. When they look at her, they see someone who had her heart broken when she was young and became celibate. Tabloids saw her with men and printed stories with headlines that screamed out "is she finally giving love a second chance?" I looked at her and instantly saw Danielle Weston: a girl who loves Disney and thinks family is the most important thing in life. She plays the guitar and the violin and the piano and the harpsichord and even the damn banjo and tin whistle; but to me, Dani is no musical prodigy. She's not the little girl who became the youngest professional in the Los Angeles Orchestra, nor is she the youngest person to be signed to Lighthouse Records (when she was ten, mind you, even though her album didn't release for two years). I look at Dani and just see Dani. I don't see her past, or her future. I don't try to piece together a timeline of her life and connect the tabloid stories to dots at specific positions in an attempt to fill in the gaps. That's why we're friends. That's probably why it's so hard for me to make friends with anyone else. My thoughts digressed down the rabbit hole of self pity and then self loathing, for being pathetic to myself. I hardly noticed when Luke came and stood next to me.

"You like Justin Timberlake, then?" I didn't bother to turn my head and look at him. "I guess he's alright. He is very talented." I could see Luke give one single nod, as if saying that he couldn't argue that he was talented. "Look, I didn't mean to be an ass, like I said. It's just-" He paused. He wanted to find the right word, and I finally turned to stare at him and was met with a certain look about his face. It was the kind of look that someone gives when they really don't want to say the wrong thing and mess things up. I waited rather patiently until he finally settled on something. "Surely, you know that it's rather peculiar." I turned on my heel and took a few steps farther down the hall, my eyes darting between figures before stopping in front of Kylie Minogue. Her face looked so strange and lifeless, while still retaining the color and positional frame of a living and breathing Kylie. I shivered by forcing myself to look straight into her eyes and then turned around to nearly bump into Luke. "That's a creepy one, isn't it?" I stifled my laughter. "Aren't they all?" I asked, and watched his face scrunch up a bit around his nose. "I can't argue with that." We walked side by side farther down the hall, finally meeting with a large room displaying other famous figures, mostly actors. Luke asked me to take a picture of him next to Captain Jack Sparrow just before Dani and Ashton seemed to appear from nowhere and rejoin us as a group. "We're really hungry. Do you guys want to go grab some lunch?" Luke and I looked at each other, as if trying to gauge the other person's response. I gave in halfway through our staring contest and took charge of the situation. "Yeah, let's go grab a bite." It didn't take long to settle on a place. Ashton remembered a small restaurant near the museum and as soon as we arrived, they had a table open. We sat and ate among laughter and light conversation. As I finished my potato soup, I looked up and around the table at my fellow guests and realized that it wasn't awkward anymore. Sure, the day had started off rather shaky, but these boys were just like anyone else. Better than that, I was starting to think that they were just like Dani. That isn't to say that Molly is no longer her twin but instead a quadruplet. I simply thought about how everyone saw Dani as a glamorous singer living a lavish lifestyle, but I knew that she was one of the most normal people on the planet. Sure, she was silly and retained much of her wide eyed wonder from childhood, but she was humble and grounded. The more that I got to know Ashton, and even Luke, the more that I began to think that they were grounded as well. On the way back to the hotel, Luke shared his headphones with me again. This time, he kept the volume low so that he could tell me who each performer was and a little about them. He seemed fairly fond of a lot of music, but I found myself having fun whilst listening to his passionate rambling. Dani offered to show Ashton a song that she was writing, so it was no surprise to anyone else that we once again parted ways at the elevators. Dani, Ashton, and Richard all took one lift up. Luke and I waited for the next one and boarded rather quietly. "So," His voice pierced through the distance between us and my head perked up, immediately interested. "What are you going to do?"

I thought everything that I had to do today in order to prepare for the next day. It was going to be the first show of the European leg, and I had to confirm that everything was ready. I had already confirmed that the buses would be ready and waiting tomorrow night after the show, but I needed to call again and be certain. My thoughts trampled over and each every to do list item, and the longer that I tired to think the more Luke looked disappointed. I finally opened my mouth to speak. "I don't really have anything happening." I lied. I didn't want him to feel like he couldn't hang out with me. "Do you want to come watch a movie? I have a collection." He seemed pleased with the invitation because his smile was the brightest that I had ever seen, even from him. He nodded and gave a shrug as though trying to act nonchalant. "Alright, I could go for a film." I smiled back, hoping not to laugh at his act of coolness even though I had already seen his true form. "Okay." I said it simply, and when the doors opened on my floor, he departed the elevator with me.