I'm sorry… The internet literally exploded on me, and by the time that I remembered it was already Monday. But, if I get over 5 reviews for this chapter I'll update with the LAST (yes, LAST) chapter tomorrow. Savvy?
I don't own Night World.
Chapter 19
I'm a lot happier the next couple of days. It seemed like Morgead and I had to have that fight (well, more of a tiff, now I look back at it), just to clear the air. Even though I haven't seen him since, I feel closer to him. It seems like everything is coming together; we have a massive gig coming up on the 29th, mum and dad are as close as ever, and Hugh is acting normally again (though I'm not entirely sure how long that will last). Christmas is honestly the best I've ever had; we'd built it up like it was going to be awful because we thought that dad wouldn't be there, but now that he is, it's perfect.
I see Morgead on the 27th, but not any other days due to family and practicing for gigs. He also won't be able to come for the gig on the 29th, which I am half annoyed and half relieved about (I'm pretty sure I'll miss our little make-out sessions backstage, but I'm always terrified I'll mess up feeling his eyes on me). Any time I'm home, I don't let the Gibson (that I have christened 'Frédérique') out of sight, and I talk about it so fondly that Morgead asked me whether I was still the love of his life. To which I responded, 'I really don't know,' and he started tickling me by way of punishment. To be honest, I rather enjoyed that 'punishment'.
I'm looking forward a lot to the gig, though I kind of blanche when I see how many people have turned up. Thankfully, we're not the only performers, so the spotlight isn't completely trained on us.
Thistle bounds up to me when I'm waiting backstage as usual, though this time she looks quite disheartened. "I can't find your hot teacher," she says despondently.
I snicker. "Is that where you've been all this time? He can't come to this one."
"What? But he's the only reason I come nowadays!"
I gape at her. "Thistle."
"Don't tell mum I said that."
"You are ten years old, Thistle!"
"Have you been to my school?!"
"Good point," I concede. Her school is rather... well, the kids are well-educated. Not in what you might expect, though. Kids nowadays...
We get called up, and I start with the piano solo before going into one of our original numbers (about Morgead, go figure). It all goes much better than I expected, and I'm kind of disappointed Morgead didn't get to see.
The gig ends on its usual bang, with Val whooping and hollering and the rest of us laughing as we get down from the stage. But it's slightly different this time. As I go for the door to hide out backstage (to mope because Morgead wouldn't be joining me) a man in a suit comes up to our little group.
"Excuse me, who is the manager for your band?"
Val steps up and raises his hand slightly. Yeah, I know. I should be manager, shouldn't I? But Val thought, just because he's eight years older than me, that he should be manager. Crazy, right? Just because I'm the youngest... and the girl... well, anyway...
The man hands a business card to him. "I really think you lot have a lot of talent, and perhaps you could come to a little meeting to talk about possibly signing the band."
Val accepts it with a rather shell-shocked look on his face. The rest of us exchange glances and the man smiles at us all before leaving.
"Fueled by Ramen," Val chokes out after a couple of minutes of stunned silence.
"What?"
"The card," he shows me the card, which has the distinctive 'Fueled by Ramen' logo.
"But..." I trail off and take the card from him, turning it over to see if it's some kind of joke.
"They're American," Pierce interjects, taking the card from me. "They do Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, Paramore..."
"This is massive," Hugh says, the card now to him.
"Okay... we need to think about this," Pierce says, looking at us each carefully. "If they do want to sign us, what are we going to do, move out to America? Jez, you're still in school. We have families, friends... we'll have to think about this carefully." That was probably the most he'd said since he was ten and he shouted at me for breaking one of his PS1 game discs.
"Okay, here's what we'll do," Val says, stepping forward, his face intent. "I'll go to the meeting and find out what they want, then we'll decide what to do. For the meantime, don't say anything about this to anyone, okay?" He puts his hand in the middle, and we all place our hands on top.
"Okay," I echo.
...nw...nw...nw...
It's harder than I thought it would be, keeping the secret from mum. I'm very tempted, when she makes a slightly snarky comment about the band, to shout it at her, 'Yeah, well we might be signed by Fueled by Ramen!' But I control myself, and content myself with smiling placidly.
It's also difficult to keep it from Morgead. We have a really lovely day the day before we have to go back to school when we just talk about our childhood (kind of cheesy, I know, but I really understood him afterwards), and that added to the really nice make-out session, and the bike ride meant I was in a pretty awesome mood.
"What is with you recently?" dad says, clutching onto a mug of coffee like a lifeline as I skip about making my lunch the next morning.
"What do you mean?"
"You're always so happy. It's unnatural."
"Maybe she's in love," mum says with a smile as she comes into the kitchen.
I snicker and shoot them both a disparaging look. "Yes. You busted me, oh dear."
"Sarcasm. Obviously to cover up the fact that you're daydreaming about someone..."
"Dad! Enough already!"
He smirks and ruffles my hair. I don't even bother trying to fix it. "Okay, I'm off," he says, kissing me on the top of my head as I turn to run upstairs. There's always something that I forget.
First lesson, English, and I sit down, quite happily sliding Wuthering Heights out from my bag and flipping through it contentedly. But when the classroom becomes populated and a voice says, "Okay, sit down and get your books out," it doesn't belong to Morgead. My head shoots up to see a short, round-faced bald man with a wide smile.
"Where's... Mr. Blackthorn, sir?" I ask, so shocked that I almost say his first name.
"I'm not sure. We supplies don't get told why the teachers are off, we just get called in."
The lesson starts, and it's definitely not a bad lesson. The short, round-faced bald man with a wide smile is very kind and funny, and everyone enjoys the work, but I'm too distracted by the fact that Morgead's not here to concentrate on anything.
And I can't go round his tonight, because Val organised an emergency band meeting before practice as he had the meeting with Fueled by Ramen yesterday. I feel quite nervous just thinking about that.
The day goes way too slowly, and it feels like an eon afterwards that Critical Thinking finally drags itself to the finishing line and I can sprint to my bike. I go directly to Val's.
The first thing he says when we're all there is, "They want us."
No-one responds apart from shooting glances at each other.
"They want to sign us. I told them we would talk about it..."
"What is there to talk about?" Hugh interrupts. "This is what we've wanted for years. Everything has built up to it!"
"They want us to move to San Francisco."
"What?!" I yelp. "San Francisco?"
"That's why I said we would talk about it."
"We have to go," Hugh says stubbornly.
"But we have our entire lives here. Would Jez really be able to drop school? Would we all be happy to abandon our parents? And what about Raven, Val?" Pierce counters with.
"I... think she would understand," Val says uncertainly. "And we can come back a lot; they just want us in San Francisco most of the time. At least six months in a year."
"But there'll be tours, recording, interviews... that could easily take us up to eight or nine, right?" I say.
Val grimaces. "Yeah. That's the difficulty."
We're all quiet for a minute, until Pierce asks, "When do they want an answer by?"
"28th January."
"Okay," Pierce puts his head in his hands. "I say we skip the rehearsal tonight, and go home to talk to whoever we need to talk to."
That does seem like the best course of action, so we all leave. I'm going quite a bit over the speed limit on the way home, so it takes less than five minutes. I wheel the bike quickly into the garage before going inside. "Mum? Dad?" I call out. They emerge from the living room.
"You're early. Is everything alright?" mum asks. I take a deep breath and start telling them everything.
They seem to be in a state of shock once I've finished, and I let it sink in wordlessly.
"So you need to move to San Francisco to be able to be signed?" dad finally says. I nod and he exchanges a glance with mum. "I don't know, Jez. You're still so young. Moving from the east of England to the west of America... it really is a big step." He looks at me carefully. "Do you want this?"
I bite my lip as I think. This is the chance we've been waiting for, and Fueled by Ramen is a massive label. Was I actually ready to move to the other side of the world for this? "Yes," I hear myself say. I'm slightly surprised; I didn't consciously tell myself to say that, but it feels right." Yes," I repeat, with more conviction. "I really do. It's a massive opportunity, and I think I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't at least try it out."
"Then okay," dad says. Mum does a sharp intake of breath and looks down.
"And I don't even have to be over there all the time. You know you can trust Val, Pierce and Hugh, right? They'll take care of me. They always have."
"And you can still get work from school over there, right? We can pay for the exams; you've only got two terms left."
"Oh! School!" I gasp. I couldn't believe it; in all this time, I hadn't thought about Morgead once. I would have to leave him.
Mum smiles in spite of herself. "Since when do you care about school? Come on, we should go out to celebrate."
I consider saying no and instead making my way to Morgead's, but there was really no point. I would see him tomorrow at school; I could tell him then.
So I spend one of my last nights in England with my family, and I don't regret it. I know now that mum and dad have completely solved their differences, and that is what truly decides for me. If mum was still alone, I probably would have turned down the offer, but knowing that she would have dad comforts me. And there are things like Skype, phones, video-calling, they could come over during the summer holidays when dad wasn't working, and mum could easily take the novels she was working on with her. This could work.
So I call Val when I get home, and tell him that I'm in. I learn that Pierce and Hugh have agreed, and even Raven is okay with Val moving to San Francisco because she's planning on coming out after her studies are over, which comforts me.
And when I hang up, I hug a pillow for comfort and think about exactly what I'm doing.