“Where’d Benji go?” Billy asked, looking around after Yellowcard’s set was finished and he and his bandmates had filed down the steps into the backstage area.
“I dunno. Have you seen him?” Paul asked Joel, looking down at the singer as he stared off into space, his breathing so shallow it was almost imperceptible. “Joel?” Paul placed his hand on Joel’s thin shoulder.
“Hunh?” He murmured.
“How’d Benji take the song, Joel?” CJ asked, putting her arm around the singer’s slim waist and looking up at him. “Y’gotta admit, it was a great song.”
“It was catchy,” Paul added.
Joel looked down at his shoes a moment. “You got any idea where the Yellowcard guys go after their shows?” He asked, his voice shaky and quiet. CJ soothingly rubbed her hand against his back as Billy inquired about the premise behind Joel’s question. “I think we better, uh, go find Ryan and warn him.”
“About what?” CJ asked, gripping the bottom edge of his shirt as her arm rested on top of the belt cinched to hang low on Joel’s waist. His answer wasn’t verbal, just a wide-eyed look down at her, one that she could easily interpret. “Oh, shit,” she breathed. “Um,” she pressed a hand to her mouth while she put her words together. “Um, Billy, go check the beer vendors on the East side, Paul, check the West, Joel, go check the Yellowcard booth then start on the far end of the bus area. I’ll start on this end. If we don’t find Ryan after that, we can all meet up behind the Volcom stage. He might be there.”
“Okay,” Paul replied, giving her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze before the four bandmates split up, in pursuit of the singer that had just lyrically torn them apart, hoping to spare him the physical equivalent at Benji’s hand. CJ sprinted into the bus area, shoving her laminate in the security officer’s face before she made a beeline to the Good Charlotte bus. She jumped up the three steps in one stride and looked in the space behind the seats in the front lounge, as Benji kept his beloved little league baseball bat stashed there for safe-keeping. It was wooden, short and compact, well-oiled and easy to wield, his weapon of choice if it came down to it.
The niche was empty.
“Dammit,” CJ breathed, then turned and sprinted off the bus.
Billy went to all of the beer vendors up on the East side, asking if they had seen any of the members of Yellowcard. All had something to say about the current undeniable tension between the two bands, but little to say about the question at hand. “Look, have any of them been here or not?” Billy asked distractedly, blue eyes flicking around himself to make sure he wouldn’t miss one of them if they walked by.
“Nah, sorry, man.”
“It’s cool,” Billy replied, shaking his head as he started away from the vendor, only to run into Sean a few feet from the next one. The violinist’s eyes dropped a shade when he caught Billy’s, stopping short in hopes that he wouldn’t have to talk to him. “Sean, glad I found you,” Billy breathed, ignoring the nonverbal cues.
“Why?” Sean asked skeptically, taking a step back from him, dark eyebrows cinching together as Billy spoke.
“After the song…” Billy scratched his head, wondering if he should put the issue delicately, or be blunt. “Benji’s kinda out for blood, so if you know where Ryan is, we might want to warn him.” Blunt always works.
“I’m not sure exactly where he is…” Sean said, shaking his head, looking over at the beer vendor and signaling that he wanted one.
“I got no idea, so anything would be helpful.”
“Well, I can help you look,” Sean said, sucking the first couple inches off of the cup. “We’ll split up so we can cover more ground,” he added, smiling as though he might be at least marginally accepting of the cooperative arrangement.
“All right, cool. Thanks,” Billy called, starting away the way he had been going to keep up the search. Sean shook his head as he watched the guitarist go off weaving through strangers and keeping his head down.
“Jackass,” Sean mumbled, walking off in the other direction to find some fun and enjoy his afternoon
Paul came across Ben and Alex as they were visiting other band’s booths. “Hey, Paul,” Ben called, reaching out and grabbing his hand, pulling him back behind the shady cover of a discount CD tent. “What’s up?”
“You guys know where Ryan is?” He asked hurriedly.
“Nah,” Alex replied. “How come?”
“Cuz Benji’d love to fuck him up something terrible. Maybe we could but the kibosh on it if we find Ryan and warn him.” The two bandmates stared at him.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Your song… bad. Benji… mad,” Paul explained. “Ryan…dead.”
“Hmm,” Ben hummed, nodding. “See, now, all right, we could go find him, but wouldn’t it be more fun if we let Ryan get his ass kicked so we could gain some hardcore cred? You know, ‘yeah, our lead singer got in a fight, what? We’re hardcore.’”
“Dude, doesn’t Ryan weigh, like, a buck and a half maybe? Benji’s pissed, and he’ll crush him,” Paul said, shaking his head, his usual smirk conspicuously missing from his face.
Alex and Ben looked at one another. “Ryan’s scrappy, though,” Alex reasoned.
“He’s got a big fucking mouth,” Ben murmured.
“And he will be crushed,” Paul reiterated.
“He might still be behind the stage,” Ben said, pointing back towards Volcom, all the way on the other side of the grounds and with a sea of people and hundred degree heat in between.
“Hope we get there in time,” Paul sighed as the three of them started off together.
Joel and CJ met up around the middle of the bus area. “Anything?” She asked him.
“Nothin’,” he replied.
“Benji took little league,” CJ warned, putting a hand against the sweat slicked skin of Joel’s forearm, grazing over the black ink beneath the surface and looking at her shining fingertips as though she thought some might rub off. Joel reached up and tugged on the dark green ends of his hair, staring up at the sun long enough to imprint scars he saw in negative when he closed his eyes.
“Let’s go to the stage,” he said.
Ryan was sitting beside the cases marked Yellowcard, restringing his black guitar, as it had been losing pitch lately. The cases of his and dozens of other bands were around him such that he felt like he was inside some private cubicle of space, removed from the bodies milling about outside and from the pressures to be friendly, to smile, to pretend he didn’t have a hangover splitting through his skull, that he didn’t miss his bed, his neighborhood, his solitude wrapped up in a little place called home.
He heard someone slide cases aside, walking into his solitary cubicle of space. He glanced that direction, but no one was visible yet. He assumed the person was dropping equipment off, and he returned to his task.
“Boo,” was the first word spoken, rumbling low and resonant in a barrel chest.
Ryan looked up and saw Benji emerge from the only opening in the wall of equipment chests, a wicked grin on his lips and a bat tapping idly against the outside of his leg. “Oh, shit,” Ryan breathed, jumping up and sliding behind the case he had been sitting on, the black guitar he usually babied like a pet clattering to the ground, the sun glinting off of the shiny surface.
Benji turned his attention to the tech who had just walked to the back edge of the stage to check on equipment. The guy had frozen when dark, menacing eyes had caught his. Benji lifted his bat and pointed at the tech with it. “Go away,” he said evenly, then turned his eyes back to Ryan once the tech scrambled off after a last glance at Ryan’s pleading eyes.
“Benji, come on, man,” Ryan said, holding both of his hands up in a placating gesture. “It’s just a song, dude.” Benji slowly moved towards the smaller man, his face drawn in anger, a red flush creeping up his neck to begin to tinge his cheeks. “It’s just a stupid fucking song, dude, it’s nothing that we’d have to…” Ryan backed up against the cases stacked against the back of the stage. “It’s nothing we have to do this over.”
“Well, well,” Benji said softly, almost a whisper. “You are a talker, aren’t you?” He looked over at one of the Yellowcard cases and placed the end of his bat against it, pushing it off the case beneath it, so it thudded on the ground, the top falling open, revealing it as empty. But Benji wasn’t looking. He was eyeing Ryan intensely as he pressed against the wall of boxes behind him and tried to shrink until he was invisible.
Ryan felt a sudden sweat pop out all over his body, rolling down his back to glue his shirt to his skin, and sliding down his forehead and into his eyes. He blinked rigorously to combat the stinging. “Oh, Jesus… Benji, come on. You wrote a song about us too, you know?”
“Why don’t you quit being a bitch and get what you got coming?” Benji growled.
“Benj, wait,” Joel called, coming to the back edge of the stage, looking down on the two singers as CJ slid to a stop just behind him.
“Go away, Joel. Don’t wanna see this,” Benji assured him.
“We don’t want to get kicked off this tour, dude,” Joel reasoned. Benji swung in Ryan’s direction, but the smaller guitarist ducked and lunged to the left. CJ ran off of the stage and around to where she could get to Benji before he did something stupid. Hopefully she could help talk him down, and if that didn’t work, maybe she could attempt to physically subdue the guy or something.
“They wouldn’t kick us off the tour,” Benji responded to his brother. “We’re the mighty Good Charlotte.”
“C’mon, Benji, don’t be a jackass,” CJ said from just behind him. Benji’s head twitched her direction just a bit, but he never took his eyes off his mark.
“CJ, could you not provoke him right now?” Ryan inquired through grit teeth, his palms and his back pressed flat against the wall of cases that constrained him.
“I’m just trying to help your skinny ass,” CJ called back to him. “Shit, I could just walk away right now,” she added lightly, trying to break up the tension buzzing thick in the air. Internally Ryan thanked her for the attempt, though he knew it wasn’t going to do the job this time.
“Maybe you should,” Benji murmured quietly to her before he lunged at Ryan again, sure to block the exit with his body while the wood tempered weapon whistled just past Ryan’s right ear. He dropped to the ground trying to get away, as he had lost his footing on the loose gravel beneath his beat up sneakers. Benji heard Alex, Ben, Paul and Billy show up, overlooking the scrum from the stage with Joel.
“Hey, CJ, I was just looking for-” LP’s greeting was cut off mid-sentence when he looked up and saw Benji standing over Ryan with his baseball bat. “What the hell?” Everyone froze for a tense second before Benji broke into hysterical laughter, backing up a few steps and pointing down at Ryan with the tip of his weapon, the blunt edge held just an inch from his nose.
“You shoulda seen your face,” Benji choked out between spasms of laughter. “It was classic. Did you get it Joel?”
Benji looked up at his brother, who held a plastic disposable camera up over his head and replied, “Got it!” just before he flashed a cheshire grin down at the stunned platinum blonde below and slid past Alex to run off of the stage and disappear into the crowd.
Ryan gripped his chest and started breathing again, relief shaking through his limbs. “Jesus Christ, dude. Not cool,” he coughed. But Benji had already turned and pushed between CJ and LP to run off into the sea of people to meet up with his brother. CJ stared open mouthed after him as LP came to Ryan’s aid, pulling him up off of the dusty ground and pressing a newly rolled joint into the guitarist’s hand.
“You need it more than me,” LP said softly.
“Oh, man,” Paul groaned, shock still raw on his face. He put his arm around Billy’s shoulders. “I’m going to kill him,” he finished.
“Your band sucks,” Alex said to him, looking over at the bassist.
LP picked up Ryan’s guitar and dusted it off as CJ did the same to Ryan’s pants as he tried to recover his nerves. “At least I didn’t piss my pants,” Ryan said, laughing nervously, a weak smile coming to his lips as he looked down at himself. CJ carefully picked a couple pieces of gravel out of his skin and slapped his ass to see a cloud of dust plume and dissipate in the mid-afternoon sun.
“There, good as new,” she said.
Ryan licked his lips, eyes unfocused as he stared thoughtfully the direction Benji had disappeared. “I’m getting there,” he mumbled, sliding the joint between his lips and lighting it with a purple disposable lighter he found in his pocket. Without another word he wandered away from the onlookers, hands shoved deep in his pockets, mind no doubt mulling over a way to get those twin jerk-offs back.
LP and CJ looked up at their bandmates, who still stood up on the stage. “I got a feeling,” Ben said, voicing the thoughts of everyone standing there, “that this is gonna get way worse before it gets better.”