Exit 57

After soundcheck, they all got together to eat a mid-afternoon lunch. It was a pretty silent lunch. Both Kevin and Nikki didn't feel like talking. Joe and Nick had found out what Kevin had done and were refusing to talk to him. Frankie didn't know what was going on, but he wouldn't talk to Kevin either because Joe told him not to. Mr. & Mrs. Jonas were completely oblivious to this, and continually tried to make conversation. They gave short, one worded answers and all left the table as soon as they were excused.

As soon as she got back into the bus, Nikki decided to start packing. There was no use in waiting. It took her forever to find her bags because she hadn't used them in so long. They were in the undercarriage of one of the buses, covered with a small layer of dust. She wiped them off and carried them back to her bunk.

She began grabbing clothes and throwing them in her suitcases. She didn't bother folding her clothes. She was in too much of a bad mood to care.

After packing the random articles of clothing that were in her bunk, she started cleaning out all of the other stuff she had stored away in there. Random magazines, CD's, and a bunch of other crap she had forgotten she had. Most people would be surprised how much crap can actually fit inside a small bunk.

After getting everything in sight into a suitcase, she stared at the walls of her bunk. They were covered in pictures. It was kind of like a timeline; at the foot of the bed were all of the pictures from their preteen years, and the pictures became more recent as they went on.

She started with the oldest ones. Being careful not to rip them, she took them down, remembering stories about each picture. There were some of their first day of high school together, some from Kevin's surprise 15th birthday, and so on. Before she knew it, she was all the way to the head of the bed, with only a couple pictures left. She slowly took those down until there was one left.

It was of her and Kevin, taken very recently. It was on tour in St. Louis, Missouri. They were standing at the top of Monstrosity, a huge outdoor playground in the City Museum. She remembered that day so well.

She had always been afraid of heights, but it was different when you were dangling in a wire tube about 200 feet from the ground. She had wanted to turn around and go back down so bad, but Kevin wouldn't let her. He had already made it to the top, but he climbed back down to help her the rest of the way up. When they got to the top, they took a picture together, both wrapping their arms around the other to shield each other from the cold.

She lightly pulled the picture down, remembering that day. As she held the picture in her palm, she stared at it for a while. Resisting the urge to crumple it up, she set it with the rest of her pictures and went to go pack her shoes.

___

The lights dimmed, and the band started to play a montage of previous songs, most of which were probably unknown to most of the girls in the audience. As the intro to Year 3000 started, a wave of screams ran through the audience. The boys rose up on the stage elevators, the stage filling with smoke. No matter how many times she saw this, it still excited her each time.

She watched the concert from her usual spot on the side of the stage, but tonight was different. She wasn't into it. She was still in a horrible mood from what had happened earlier in the day, and she couldn't get what Kevin had done to her off of her mind.

Although she always watched their concerts, tonight was going to be an exception. She wasn't going to sit through the whole concert when she was feeling this way.

As she stood up to go back to the dressing room, Kevin must have noticed her because he looked over. As she looked back towards the stage one more time, she made eye contact with him.

They continued to stare at each other. Kevin's hand that had been strumming the guitar stopped. He looked like an idiot just standing there, not playing or singing, but just staring at her. Even though it was a couple of seconds, it felt like hours.

Nikki could have stood there and kept his gaze all night, but she didn't want to. No matter how much Kevin had hurt her, she didn't want him to look like an idiot on stage. She turned around and walked away. After walking a couple of paces, she heard his guitar playing continue and him start singing again.

They continued with the concert, but Kevin was off all night. He almost forgot about the Goodnight and Goodbye dance, sang the wrong words at one point, and his playing was sloppy. Nikki knew it was because of her. She somewhat felt good about it, because she thought it was right of him to feel guilty for what he'd done.

After the concert, she gave Nick and Joe a hug. Kevin was no where in sight. He basically ran off the stage and into one of the smaller dressing rooms immediately after the concert had ended. Not that she minded. She didn't want to see him right now.

Later that night, as she was lying in her now bare bunk, she dreaded the next day coming. She couldn't believe she was actually going back to New Jersey without her best friends. She didn't want to fall asleep, because the sooner she did, the sooner that tomorrow would come.