Face the Music (2 page)

“Can’t wait.” I turned back to my schoolwork.

“And don’t get all bent out of shape and jealous when Laura and I both have prom dates, and you’re sitting at home all by yourself watching reruns of ‘Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.’”

“Oh, yeah, like I really watch that kind of stupid TV.” I rolled my eyes at her, then considered the information she had just leaked out, I’m sure on purpose since I could tell she was trying to keep me going. However, Laura was back in the bedroom doing her schoolwork on the computer, so there was no way to know whether Allie was just stringing me along or not. “Are you saying Laura has a date to the prom?”

Allie nodded with raised brows, then lowered her voice. “She told me just this morning. I guess she’d e-mailed Ryan Hall a few days ago and jokingly
invited him to the prom. She was pretty surprised when he e-mailed back and actually said yes. He’s going to come home from college that weekend just to take her.”

“You’re kidding? I thought those guys were history.”

“Not according to Laura. Sheesh, Chloe, don’t you ever talk to her?”

“Not about that. At least not lately. Really, I thought it was over and done.”

“Yeah, well, looks like it’s not. She probably didn’t tell you because she thought you’d rain on her parade too.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, Allie. I just find it hard to believe that Brett would really want to go to the Harrison High prom.”

“You’ll see,” she said again, rather smugly too.

I just nodded and looked down at my algebra assignment, which probably should’ve been about finished by now.

But Allie wasn’t ready to quit. “The problem with you, Chloe,” she said, hushing her voice even more since Elise was looking back from where she was sitting in the front seat next to Rosy, and it was clear that she was giving us the eye. But Allie continued anyway. “You focus too much on the music, and then you totally forget that you need to have a life too. That’s what
Brett says about Jeremy, and I think it’s true with you too. Brett says they focused so much on music that he never had a normal teenage life, and he can never get that back and—”

“Allie.” Elise used her firm voice.

She rolled her eyes at her mom. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

At that point, I turned my attention back to schoolwork, relieved that this increasingly frustrating conversation had finally come to an end, or at least a short pause.

Okay, I do realize that Allie may have a point. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that I do get a little obsessed with music. But it’s not that I don’t want to have a life. And really, I do want to keep these things in balance. I’m just not always sure how to go about it. I mean, here we are on the road, doing concerts, cutting CDs, all kinds of stuff. It’s like we’ve been handed this incredibly amazing opportunity to reach people with our music—a pretty big deal if you ask me—and I really don’t want to blow that off either.

I know, more than ever, I need to keep my eyes on God. It’s like He’s the center of this precarious teeter-totter that I’m sitting on—my music on one side, my life on the other. And ultimately, He’s the only One who can keep me balanced.

We’re in Orlando now and today was a “free” day, meaning we only had to practice a couple of hours this morning and then got to have the rest of the day to do as we pleased. We opened a concert for Iron Cross last night, the first time we’ve performed with them since we started our spring tour. Eric Green and some of the bigwigs from Omega showed up to check us out. They probably wanted to see if we had really pulled ourselves back together after the whole drug thing with Laura last winter. According to Eric, we did just fine, and no one is the least bit worried.

But I wasn’t so sure. I thought Redemption sounded a little weak or maybe just rusty. Anyway, there’s certainly room for improvement. I told Willy as much, and for that reason he had us practice today instead of having the whole day off. I know, I know; I’m a freaked-out slave driver. But as I told Allie and Laura at breakfast, “This is a job, not a vacation. We need to take it seriously and give it all we’ve got.”

“But the guys are all heading over to Disney World this morning,” complained Allie. I knew
she meant “the guys” as in the Iron Cross guys and in particular Brett. “And besides,” she continued, “Eric said we sounded pretty good last night.”

“Do you want to sound pretty good or really hot?” I asked her.

She frowned but didn’t answer.

“Chloe’s right,” said Willy. “You girls sounded okay last night, but you need to really buckle down and put your hearts into it. Don’t forget that Iron Cross has been performing pretty steadily while you girls have been in school and enjoying some downtime. There’s definitely room to bring it up a notch or two.”

Laura nodded. “I gotta agree with Willy and Chloe. If we’re going to do this, we better do it all out.” She pushed her empty breakfast plate away. “And I, for one, am ready to go to work.”

So Allie got over her little pity party, and we actually had a really good practice and even tried out a new song I’d written a week ago. Then to Allie’s delight, we packed it all up and hopped on the hotel shuttle and headed straight for Disney World. Willy and Elise and Davie came along too, but they decided to take the quieter route, so we split and promised to meet back up with them at the hotel later on tonight. Then Laura, Allie, and I stood in lots of lines and rode the wildest rides until Laura got thoroughly
sick and threatened to throw up on us. We sat her down and made her drink a ginger ale and then headed over to the Epcot Center, where Allie had told the guys we might catch up with them by dinnertime.

“You really think we’ll find them here amid all these thousands of people?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said with her perennial optimist’s grin. “Why not?”

Then, just as we were watching the Japanese drummers (Allie, being a drummer herself, was totally spellbound by their fast-paced and physical drumming act), who should show up but the guys—all four of them.

“Hey, it’s those groovin’ chicks from Redemption!” shrieked Brett, as he raced over to where we were standing and acted like he wanted to get our autographs.

“No way.!” said Allie. Not missing a beat, she put on her best starstruck expression herself. “Look, you guys,” she cried. “It’s those hottees from Iron Cross.!”

Well, that was all it took to get a number of people looking our way, and before we knew what hit us, there were a handful of kids who recognized the name of not only Iron Cross, but Redemption as well. So right there in the Japanese drum section (fortunately the energetic performers were taking a much-deserved break),
we had a little autographing party and even informed the kids about our upcoming concert tomorrow night in Miami. All in all, it was kind of fun, and I didn’t even freak out at being slightly mobbed. I guess I have matured a little.

Then the seven of us went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. It was good catching up with the guys’ latest bits of news, and it sounded as if they’d been having a pretty solid spring tour with three albums riding the bestsellers chart, in the top five, even! But in the midst of everything, I have to admit I still felt slightly amazed by all this. I mean, how weird is it that we three ordinary girls from Harrison High are hanging with Iron Cross? Go figure! And not only are we sharing a meal, it’s like we’re all old buddies enjoying a happy reunion. I still need to pinch myself sometimes. Never mind that we’re a band with a contract and doing a concert tour, but to be friends with the likes of Iron Cross! So cool. I know I should be over this by now, but the truth is, I still get a little starstruck sometimes. But hey, I’m only human, right?

Allie and Brett and Isaiah decided to head back to Disney World to hit some more rides, but Laura and I stayed with Jeremy and Michael. The four of us just walked around and looked at some more of the Epcot exhibits, but I thought it was kind of interesting how we sort of paired off.
Kind of like a double date. Fortunately, I got paired with Jeremy and Laura was with Michael. Okay, I realize that Laura and Michael had been discussing some new technique that Michael has been experimenting with on bass, and since Laura plays bass too, well, it’s only natural she’d want to hang with him. She actually thinks Michael White is one of the best bass players on the planet. But even so, I was pretty jazzed to be hanging with Jeremy Baxter all night. He didn’t seem to mind being stuck with me either.

To say it was a pretty cool evening would be a serious understatement. But at the same time, I keep telling myself to just chill and not get too serious about Jeremy. Because that could ruin everything between us. Besides, I know for a fact that practically every Christian girl in the country (at least the ones who listen to Christian music) are either in love with him or his brother, Isaiah. And I also know it’s kind of silly and immature to be so stupidly smitten. I’m probably just having some sort of schoolgirl crush that will clear up eventually like a bad case of acne.

But if the truth were to be known, I really hope it’s something more too. Naturally, I will tell this to no one. This is strictly a diary thing. I have no delusions here—I fully understand that God knows all about the condition of my heart. There’s no keeping secrets from God.

Well, that Allie. She went and did it. Invited Brett to the prom last week. And guess what? She was right. He wants to go. And even more amazing, Iron Cross doesn’t have anything scheduled that
same weekend, and he’s actually available to go. Well, who’d’ve thought?

“Why don’t you ask Isaiah?” Allie urged me today. The three of us had taken our lunches into the practice room, and even though we were done eating, Willy hadn’t gotten there yet. So we were sitting around gabbing about pretty much nothing. But then she and Laura got stuck on the irritating subject of prom dresses. Naturally, I tuned this out (I think I was daydreaming about Jeremy). But I suppose they assumed that I was feeling left out, so they immediately tried to pull me back in with their ridiculous Isaiah idea.

“Isaiah?” I stared at Allie as if she’d totally lost it. “Get real.”

“Hey, I happen to think he’d really like to go with you,” said Allie defensively. “I mean, he was acting like he was all jealous after I invited Brett the other night. Isaiah said it was totally unfair that he didn’t get to go to his prom this year, and he’s even a senior. Unfortunately, it was the same night that we’d all performed in Tulsa.”

“Too bad,” I said. But the truth was, I was thinking it was too bad that I couldn’t invite Jeremy to go to the prom with me. But then how would that look? A seventeen-year-old girl going to the prom with a twenty-one-year-old man! Oh, I don’t think of Jeremy that way, really. He doesn’t
seem like an adult in that sense. To me he’s just one of us, only a little older. But I could imagine what my parents or someone like Laura’s mom might say about it. Besides that, I seriously doubt that Jeremy would agree to go with me anyway. I’m sure he’d probably think a high school prom was way beneath him. Crud, I think it’s beneath me, and I’m still in high school!

“Why don’t you ask him, Chloe?” urged Laura.

“Huh?” I was shocked. Had she been reading my mind about asking Jeremy to the prom?

“Like Allie suggested, why don’t you invite Isaiah to the prom?” She said the words slowly as if she thought I was having a hard time following her.

But I just shook my head.

Suddenly Allie got that stubborn look in her eye. It’s how she acts when she thinks she’s come up with some brilliant idea, even if it’s totally lame. “Come on, Chloe. It’d be fun.”

“I can’t ask him—”

“Yes, you can,” said Laura quickly. “Allie’s right about this. I heard the whole conversation the other night. It was after the Atlanta concert; you and Jeremy and Michael were still signing CDs. But Isaiah sounded really bummed that he was about to graduate from high school without attending a single prom. He said the same thing happened to him last year. In fact, I think he
said that Jeremy’s the only one in the band who’s ever gone to a prom.”

“Jeremy went to the prom?” I realized at once that I’d said this with way too much interest. I hoped my disappointment didn’t show since I was really thinking, “Who’d Jeremy go to the prom with?” So I nonchalantly added, “That’s funny. Jeremy doesn’t seem like the prom type to me.”

“I know,” agreed Allie. “But I guess he has a girlfriend in his hometown. Apparently, she talked him into it when they were still in high school.”

“Jeremy has a girlfriend?” I could tell my voice sounded kind of high-pitched and funny, but fortunately no one else seemed to notice.

“Yeah, that was news to us too, but Isaiah said that Jeremy’s been dating the same girl for about four or five years now.”

“That’s almost like being engaged,” added Laura, as if she was some kind of authority on these things.

“No, it’s not,” I said a little too quickly.

“It would be for me,” Laura retorted.

“So how about it, Chloe?” pleaded Allie. “Why don’t you ask Isaiah? It’s not like you guys need to be involved or anything. You can just go together as friends and have a good time.”

“Yeah,” agreed Laura. “We could triple date. It would be so cool.”

“I don’t know.” I was looking at the floor now, tracing the diamond pattern of the carpet with the toe of my Doc Martens.