A big thanks to my Beta Rainbowsnstars

Did you know that an amp is fucking heavy as shit? Yeah, me neither. But guess what? They are. I also noticed that I was not exactly strong enough to lift the amp, so I spent about thirty fucking minutes trying to push it across the stage. It was about two hours before the band's first show outside of Harrisburg and everyone was a little on edge. I mean hell, I was so engrossed by what I was doing that I didn't even hear Tony's footsteps behind me.

"Need a little help?" Thinking I was alone, I jumped when I heard his voice.

"Shit man, don't do that!" He laughed as he stood beside me and began to help push. Once the amp was in place and we were sitting on the edge of the stage, he looked at the sweat covered, panting me.

"You know, after about a month, that will be a lot easier for you."

"Yeah, that's what Lydia said."

Tony smirked as he replied. "Great minds think alike."

"So are you nervous?" I changed the subject.

"About the show? Fuck yeah, man. All of us are. Zack's backstage puking his guts out." When he saw the expression of alarm on my face, he continued. "But he does that before every show." For a while, neither of us said a word, each of us trying to calm our nerves.

"But you guys will play great."

Tony grinned. "I know. Didn't you hear our song on the radio earlier? We fucking rock." He stood up. "I'm going to go see what the rest of the guys are doing, see you in an hour." Tony pointed back at me as he was walking away. " And don't drop my fucking bass!"

So I continued to set up the stage, fiddling with knobs and testing the drum set until it was time for me to walk off stage. About ten minutes later, people started filling into the stadium. The headlining band, Pearl Jam, was a pretty well known band (talk about an understatement) and the Chicago venue had sold out. The concert was set up outside in the huge lot. A stage had been built there the week before.

Hundreds of people began to fill the lot; I could see them from where I was standing by the side of the stage. I looked behind me and my eyes fell on Zack, who was sitting on an extra amp, biting his fingernails and twirling his long, curly brown hair. He looked like he had been sick and I didn't see how he was going to pull this off. He must have felt me studying him because he looked up in my direction. Apparently my face showed the worry that I was trying to hide because he sent me a confident smile. He looked as if he was going to say something to me, but before he could, the rest of the band members walked back to where we were standing.

Price grabbed Zack's shoulder. "We're on." When I handed him his guitar, he still looked like he was going to puke, but he ran out on stage. The second he was out in front of the crowd, the sickness vanished from his face; he looked like he belonged out in front of a crowd. Kevin, Tony, and Price were waiting for him onstage. When Zack reached his microphone, he began his "opening monologue," as he liked to call it.

"How the hell are you guys? Are you excited to see Pearl Jam?" The crown screamed in response. "Well, you have to wait a few hours before you can see them, so go ahead and get good and drunk because we plan on giving them one hell of an opener!" Price began to hit the symbols in a rhythmic pattern, the opening to the band's first song. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw the crowd during the first song; they were going crazy. A huge mosh pit began to form in the middle of the crowd.

The nerves that Zack had shown before the show were completely gone now; throughout the entire set, he was relentlessly attacking the songs, screaming out the lyrics without ever getting off beat. Before the last song, he ran offstage and threw me his guitar. The last song the band played was the one that I had heard on the radio earlier that day. The band's performance of that song was fucking awesome. To end the show, during the last repetition of the chorus, Zack jumped into the crowd, a stage dive to end all stage dives, and the crowd loved them, cheering for an encore. Too bad the band had played every song that it had.

The band left the stage heading straight for the tour bus. I had to stay behind and pack up the equipment. By the time I made it back to the bus, Kevin had gone somewhere with the band's first groupie. Zack and Price were sitting at the table, while Tony was lying stretched out on a seat, strumming Kevin's guitar. I walked up to the table. Zack was leaning over a lit candle, holding a spoon over the flame. Price was watching the shit that was in the spoon, until he grabbed a syringe that was sitting beside him on the table and stuck it in the spoon, filling it up with a strange liquid. It was at this moment I decided to make my presence known.

"You guys were awesome out there."

All three of them looked up at me. Zack grinned. "Greg! Want to join us in a little victory celebration?" He gestured toward the syringe. Price was staring at me as if this was a test and I realized that I had to do it, to finally be accepted by him and the rest of the band. I gave a quick nod and walked over to Zack. He handed me a huge blue rubber band with white writing that read Houston Medical Supplies. I looked up at him.

"My dad was a doctor there." He laughed at the irony.

Knowing what to do only from the movies, I placed the band on my upper arm as Price stood up and walked over to me.

"You don't have to do this if you don't really want to." Tony stopped playing the guitar and spoke for the first time. I ignored him as Price approached me. I closed my eyes, still not believing what I was doing. My mind was telling me to jerk away as I felt the needle pierce the skin, but I couldn't move. And then, in a split second, it was over. Relief washed over me as Price stalked back over to the table; he was pissed that I had actually gone through with it and that he didn't have anything to rag on me about. I told myself that I was never going to do herion again, but as soon as I felt the high, I knew stopping wouldn't be as easy as I thought.

I honestly don't know why I fell into the pressure or why I continued using after that. We traveled from city to city, each time the amount of people singing Unleaded's song increased. And overnight, it seemed, we became a hit. Radios continued to play the song and more people started coming to our shows. Eventually, we even started headlining our on tour. And it only took a little over a year.

On January eighth, we began our own headlining tour with the first date in Las Vegas. On the seventh, at around noon, we arrived in Vegas. Lydia was flying there to see the band live; it was the first time any of us had seen her since the tour began. Tony was about to shit himself he wanted to see Lydia so badly. You could imagine his excitement when he saw her standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel waiting for the bus. As soon as we parked, he jumped out and ran to her, greeting her in about the same way he said goodbye to her. The rest of us filed out, one by one, and I, knowing my job, walked to the back of the bus and pulled out everyone's suitcases, placing them in piles on the curb. I had been paid earlier and for the first time in my life I owned a shitload of money.

"You dick." I spun around from the back of the bus to face whoever I had pissed off at this moment. My eyes met the dancing ones of Lydia, who immediately grabbed me in a hug, but still yelled at me even though my jacket muffled her rants. "After all I have done for you, you don't even have the courtesy to greet me? Bastard . . . " It continued but at this point I couldn't exactly hear what she was saying. After what seemed like hours, she finally let go of me.

"So you've gone back to green?" I gestured toward her hair. She smiled and reached up to touch a lock.

"You know, if it weren't for a process of elimination, I wouldn't have even recognized you."

"Really?" I didn't think I looked that different. I mean, my hair was longer and I had pierced my chin but other than that, I thought I looked exactly the same.

"Yeah. You got taller. A whole hell of a lot taller."

"Six inches." The first time I met her we had been about eye level but now I had to look down to see her. That was a boost of self-confidence.

"Greg, " she began in a quieter voice. " How old are you?"

"Why the fuck do you always ask me that?" "Because you never tell me the truth."

I looked around; everyone else had gone inside. What harm could telling her do? "I'm seventeen." She looked as if she had just been slapped.

"That means you were sixteen when I sent you out on the road? Fuck, Greg! Tony has been telling me about all of the shit you've been getting into and you're only seventeen? What happened to all of that shit you were telling me about graduating at the top of your class and getting into a good college? I take it that was all bullshit?" I seriously thought she was going to hit me, but I knew yelling back at her was about the dumbest thing I could do.

"No, " I began in almost a whisper, "I graduated early."

"Well that's great; now I know not every single word that has left your mouth is a fucking lie!" Sarcasm dripped from her screams. She took a deep breath before continuing. "Leave."

"What?" Whatever reaction I had been expecting, it certainly wasn't this.

She had stopped screaming and was speaking in a voice completely rid of emotion. "Leave right now or I'll tell them all the truth." And what other choice did I have? So I hailed a cab and carried my bags into the taxi. Before I got in though, I turned to say one last thing to her.

"Thank you."

She stared at me blankly. "For what?"

I chose my next words carefully. "For saving my life. If I hadn't met you, I don't know where I would be right now."

I sat in the cab and closed the door behind me only to have it pried back open.

"Get out of the fucking car." Lydia moved aside to let me out. " I'm still pissed at you, you know."

"Believe me, I know." I muttered under my breath as she led me back down the street.

"What?"

"Nothing." She glared at me the entire way back up to the hotel. Tony and Zack met us in the lobby.

"I heard you guys yelling. Well, I heard Lydia yelling. What happened?" Tony asked.

"Nothing, just a small misunderstanding." She gave me a death stare and continued. "Tony, I think I'm going to share a room with Greg tonight, ok?" Tony looked as if he wanted to kill me. Not because he thought Lydia was cheating on him with me, but because it was the first time he had seen his girlfriend in over a year and he had been faithful to her that whole time. Get my drift?

"All right, that's fine but why don't you come up with me to my room for a while?" I had to grin as I watched her self-control shatter as she agreed and the two practically ran to the elevator.

"I need Vodka. Or at least a cigarette," I whined to Zack. Lydia had given me a headache. He laughed.

"I can help you on the cigarette, but you're on your own for the vodka." You know, when I first met Unleaded, I immediately thought that Tony would be the only guy I would get along with, but I had actually become better friends with Zack. We had a lot in common, even if he didn't know all of it. His childhood was basically a mirror image of my own - the abuse, the running away... but I think his dad did a little more than just hit him.

Zack and I hung around downstairs until about five in the afternoon, which was when the entire band and all of its road crew, which had grown considerably in number, met in a private room for a meeting about some completely unimportant shit that I can't even remember. But after the meeting was over and everyone was still just sitting around, all of our lives changed forever.

I don't even remember whose suggestion it was; it could have been Price's or maybe Kevin's, but someone wanted ice cream. We all hauled into a rental van. Price was driving. Laughing and singing off key to the radio, everyone was pretty much at ease, when out of nowhere, a car comes at us - head-on.

"Fuck!" Price screamed.

I never met a pearl quite like you

Who could shimmer and rot at the same time through

There's never been a better time than this

Bite the hand of the frostbitten eminence

I'm alive in uterine

A stab in the dark

A new day has dawned

open up and let it flow

I'll make it yours

So here we go

All my friends are murder

And all my bones are marrows in

All these thieves want teenage meat

All my friends are murderers

Away . . . Away . . .

He's gone away . . . He's gone away . . .

You know, there are certain people in your life who, once you meet them, you know your life will never be the same. You can't go back to the way you were before you met these characters, because, good or bad, you can't change the effects they had you. These pivotal individuals are extremely rare, most people are lucky if they even meet one. My dad was one of those people. He made me hate everything about myself and try my hardest to be nothing like him. One look in his eyes and I was instantly sick to my stomach. He had those eyes, my eyes, and the fact that we shared a common trait made me want to leave New York and my family forever.

Lydia was another pivotal person. I honestly believe that she saved me. She gave me a job and ,in a sort of dysfunctional way, a family. And what happened next in our lives destroyed that family, alienated us. If only I knew what I had before it was so unjustly taken away, maybe I would have had the time to appreciate it more, to tell each and every one of them how much they meant to me. But what happened did happen and there was nothing I could do to change the past.

Little did I know that I was about to meet my third pivotal person - a man by the name of Gil Grissom. You know, looking back on it now, there are still things that, given any chance, I would want to change, but I honestly don't regret a thing.

AN: the third chapter in the stay home series 'Opiate Summer', which features Greg's first meeting with Grissom and will tell what happened to the band members, will be up soon. Well, I haven't even started writing it yet, so don't expect it too soon.
Also, I want to thank all of the people who offered to beta my stories; I was shocked at some of the people who actually offered. Rainbowsnstars offered first though. I really hope I didn't piss anyone off though, but I've never had more than one person offer to beta before.
Anyway, please review.