Cancer

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All my worrying in the car on the way here had done absolutely no good. I still had no idea what to say to Pete Wentz, and it was slightly more urgent now that he was standing right in front of me and everything.

"You're late, Ross," said Pete gleefully, smiling so widely that I was sure his face had to be hurting. For all his supposedly emo ways, the man seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. As it turns out, the media is even more misleading than we think.

"I know," said Ryan, and, bless his fragile little heart, he talked to Pete Wentz just like he talked to me, even. "Fucking traffic man, this city..." He shook his head grimly and then seemed to be become aware of me all at once. "Oh yeah, um--Pete, this is Kelsey. Kelsey, Pete."

I shook Pete's hand and smiled; I was glad, because it bought me a few more seconds to think of what to say to him. But then he smiled even wider and said, "So this is the famous Kelsey? Finally!"

His eyes twinkled playfully back at me and I was tongue-tied--not because Pete Wentz was smiling at me, but because someone--Ryan or Brendon or someone--had thought about me enough to mention me to him.

"I've heard a lot about you," said Pete earnestly. "I hope you can live up to the hype."

I laughed nervously, and I tried to make some sarcastic remark, but the words wouldn't come out. And it wasn't because I was starstruck. It wasn't because Pete Wentz was my idol, or because I thought he was hot, or because I was intimidated by him simply because he was somewhat famous--because, honestly, none of that was true. It wasn't even because he was friends with some of my friends and I wanted him to like me, too.

I didn't know what to say to Pete Wentz because when I looked at him, I could only think the biting, acerbic words I could never say to him, because they weren't fair or even rational. I could never look him in the eyes and say, "You ruined my life," because it wasn't true and he didn't deserve that.

But those four words were all I could think of when I looked at him.

"Excuse me," I choked out suddenly, desperately--and, dear God, I shoved right past Pete Wentz to escape through the open doorway behind him.

I had never been to this club before, and I didn't know where the maze of behind-the-scenes hallways lead, but I had to get away. For some reason, I just couldn't stand being there beside Pete any longer. Already, I was seeing that old ghost of a memory in my mind again, the image of Brendon's gloomy, pleading face burned into my retinas, inescapable...

"...Ryan put some of our songs up on the internet, and...well...Pete Wentz heard them... He liked our songs, so he came out here and we played a few for him, and he signed us to his label..."

Of course it wasn't Pete's fault. Of course it wasn't.

But, as I stumbled blindly through the empty backrooms of the crowded club, I couldn't help but wonder what my life would be like now if Pete had never heard those songs. If Panic had never gotten signed. If Brendon had never left Vegas--had never left me...

"Kelsey!"

I stopped and turned reluctantly to see Ryan half-jogging down the hallway towards me. I sighed and waited for him to reach me.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly, his childlike brown eyes wide and concerned.

I groaned, running my hand through my hair and then rubbing my temples wearily. "Nothing," I lied, "I just... I'm just not cut out for this, is all."

"Not cut out for--not cut out for what?" he repeated, frowning in confusion.

"For this whole...rubbing elbows with celebrities...thing..." I tried to explain.

"Kelsey, Pete's not a celebrity, okay? Don't think of him like that. He's just a friend. He's a cool dude."

"Yeah, I know," I sighed again. "I'm just... Maybe I shouldn't have come."

"No!" he insisted. "Don't say that. We're gonna have fun. It's gonna be a good night."

I raised my eyebrows at him skeptically. "You know you're not convincing at all, right? You're a terrible optimist."

He rolled his eyes at me. "Come on, Negative Nancy, lets go find the party," said Ryan, placing one hand firmly behind my shoulder and pushing me forward down the hall, towards where all the noise was coming from.

I gulped nervously. "I don't think it's here. I think it left with Pete."

He just laughed at me. "Pete's still here. He was just going to the bathroom when we ran into him. Or that's what he told me before I ran off after you, anyway--he might've just said that so he could have an excuse to go in there and cry his eyes out after you treated him like some kind of leper."

"Emo kids do cry a lot," I agreed dryly, hoping he would drop the subject.

Ryan gave me a reproachful look but said nothing. That could have been because we had just stepped out into the main room, where the party was really going on, and all the light and sound and motion was dizzying. Or it could have been because suddenly people were yelling his name cheerfully from every direction, saying, "Where you been, man?!" and "We've been waiting all night for you!"

Or it could have been because across the room, slumped over in a darkened booth alongside Spencer Smith and Replacement Bassist, Brendon Urie glanced up and noticed me and Ryan standing together in the doorway.

-----

I don't know how I noticed Brendon from all the way across the darkened room--with the crowd and the music and the dancing and the laughter and the chatter of way too many unfamiliar voices--but somehow he was the first thing I saw as soon as I walked into the room. And then, as he got up and walked across the room towards me and Ryan, he was all I could see. I couldn't look away.

In a way, he looked absolutely terrible--worse than he had the other night when I may or may not have stopped him from committing suicide, even. His eyes were so bloodshot and the bags under his eyes were so dark that I noticed them even from a distance. As he got closer, I saw that there were lines on his forehead and around his mouth that had never been there before. His hair wasn't as dark and shiny as I remembered; it seemed duller, its color more washed out, somehow.

But, in another way, he looked better than he had since I'd been back in Vegas. It was obvious by his appearance that he had consciously tried to clean himself up, and it had worked, mostly. His hair--previously a wild, unflattering mop--had been trimmed a little and looked like it had been washed and brushed, at least. He was clean-shaven, for once, and his skin was smooth and clear. His button-up shirt and black jacket were freshly starched and ironed, not wrinkled and worn-out like all the other clothes I'd seen him in lately.

He stopped about six or eight feet away from me and Ryan--just far enough away to create a gap between us--with his full lips pursed, like they always were when he was anxious.

"Hey, man," said Ryan as Brendon approached. "How've you been?"

Brendon pinned him with a steely glare that made me uncomfortable to watch--Ryan, however, stared back at his bandmate evenly, his expression patient and confident: only the sudden twitch of his Adam's apple as he swallowed gave away the anxiety I knew he had to be feeling.

"How do you think I've been?" said Brendon bitterly, jerking his gaze away from Ryan and staring angrily at the floor instead.

Ryan opened his mouth to say something, stopped, and then began hesitantly, "Brendon--"

"I don't want to hear it," Brendon snapped. He was looking at the gap between me and Ryan now--almost at Ryan's face, but not quite, as if he was afraid to make eye contact for some reason. "It's fine. Everything's fine."

I watched Ryan's face carefully for his reaction. He winced almost imperceptibly at the biting edge in Brendon's voice, and that was all; I was sure Brendon wouldn't notice.

"Okay, well..." said Ryan uncomfortably. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'll just...leave you two alone..."

With one last furtive sidelong glance at me, he turned and made his way over to where his other two bandmates sat waiting for him on the other side of the room. I watched Ryan go with something like terror coursing through my veins, and then when I looked up again, Brendon was staring at me broodingly.

"Do you...do want to talk?" I asked cautiously.

He bit his lip for a moment and then sighed, nodding. Staring purposefully at the floor and ignoring the cheerful greetings of everyone we passed, he led the way to a small table in the corner of the room. As soon as we sat down, all the people who had been sitting at the two or three tables closest to us got up and moved to different tables to give us some privacy, as obediently as if Brendon had ordered them to leave out loud.

And then we were alone.