Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City (20 page)

“But what that
means
is that the guy in the fringed jacket either works at the House of Blues or—”

“Is in the band!” She gasps and then covers her mouth. “Oh my God! Your
mother’s
a groupie!”

“My mother’s a …? No! My mother’s the
opposite
of a groupie. She is uptight and hates noise and blood and mice and has to be, you know,
perfect
.”

“Who says groupies
like
noise and blood and mice?”

“You know what I mean! The point is, I
could
see her with some big-shot manager or agent or producer or something. Maybe it’s some Hollywood hotshot who wants to put her in a movie. Or a video! He probably got them VIP seating and got let in early.”

She looks at me like I’ve got beans for brains. “So she takes a trip to Las Vegas with my dad, happens to meet up
with some bigwig producer, and dumps my dad on
Valentine’s Day
to get a part in a movie?”

It does sound ridiculous, but the sad thing is, I could see my mother doing just that. “Why else would all this happen? She really liked your dad—she’s not going to dump him to be some
groupie
.”

Just then headlights turn into the loading bay and start coming toward us. Without a word, we both dive for cover behind the truck and hold our breath while the headlights get closer and closer … and then go off.

We hear a door slam and then the sound of another door sliding open, and when we finally peek out, we see a man in a turquoise shirt walking away from a van that says C
ONNIE’S
C
ATERING
in fancy turquoise lettering. He’s carrying two big deli trays and heading straight for the back door of the House of Blues.

“It looks like he’s working alone,” Heather whispers.

“And I think he left the van’s slider open,” I whisper back, because I hadn’t heard it close.

“Which means he’s making more than one trip?”

I nod. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

We watch as he beats on the regular door, and when no one answers, he goes to the roll-up door and beats on that. It makes a lot more noise than banging on the regular door did, and after he does it twice, someone inside rolls the door up.

The music goes from thumping to
loud
, and the combination of an open door and a rock concert must have overloaded Heather’s logic circuits, because she starts to make a break for it.

I yank her back. “No! You’ll get busted!”

“So what are we going to do? Sit here and watch the door close?”

It turns out that’s exactly what we do. Only before it closes, a big guy in a red
SECURITY
T-shirt steps out from inside and looks all around like he’s making sure nobody’s out in the loading dock planning to infiltrate the House of Blues.

“So now what?” Heather says after the door’s rolled down.

I tap her arm as I move out. “Come on.”

“Now?”

“Shh! Just follow me.”

So I lead her around to the van’s open door, and what do we see inside?

A whole bunch of deli trays and bakery boxes and baskets of fruit.

I also see some turquoise polo shirts on hangers, dangling from a hook on the side of the van.

“We’re wide-open here!” Heather whispers. “What are we
doing
?”

So I grab two of the shirts and we zip back around to the far side of the van. “Here,” I tell her. “Put this on over your clothes.”

She doesn’t say, That’ll look dorky! or anything like it. She just puts it on.

And yeah, she looks dorky.

But then, so do I.

Anyway, I peek up through the van’s side window, where we’ve got a clear view of the building. And we
don’t have to wait long before the regular door starts to open.

Heather grabs my arm. “There he is!” And as we’re watching him stoop over to wedge some paperwork down by the threshold so the door won’t latch, she suddenly looks at me and says, “Is this what it’s like to be Marissa?”

“Huh?”

She shakes her head a little. “Never mind.”

But it does sink in, so I tell her, “Actually, yes. I’m always dragging her into
something
.” I eye her. “Not so much dragging going on with you. I’m more having to hold you back.”

“Yeah, well, you were right—this is definitely a better plan.”

If we had been doing something less, you know, adrenaline-intensive, I would probably have fainted. But seeing how we were about to dive into some security-infested waters, I didn’t actually pass out from shock. I just let her words kind of ring in my ears.

Anyway, the catering guy is heading back for another load now, so we duck down, and when we’re sure he’s walking off with the second load, Heather whispers, “We’re grabbing a tray, right? And going in?”

“That’s the plan. We’ve just got to time it right.”

“We want him to be in long enough to be far enough away—like in the greenroom, right? But not so long that he’s on his way out when we’re coming in with his trays?”

“Bingo.”

The catering guy goes back through the regular door,
and even though it looks like it closes, I can tell the door’s not latched.

“So … when?” Heather whispers.

“Not yet.”

Ten seconds go by.

“Now?”

“Not yet.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“So … when?”

“Going by his last trip, I’d say”—I give her a grin—
“now.”

So we zip around the van, grab a deli tray each, and beeline for the door the catering guy went through. Sure enough, it’s not latched.

Since the roll-up door is to the right, I whisper, “Once we’re in, I’m planning to go to the left and walk like I know where I’m going.”

She nods. “Let’s do it.”

Opening the door and stepping in is like entering a dark cave with a searchlight behind us. I can see a tall slice of light to our left, but where we are is dark except for the light coming in from outside.

“Quick, close it!” I tell Heather.

She does, and as we hurry to the left like we’d planned, she nods at the tall slice of light. “That’s the stage!” she calls over the music.

And yeah, there’s no doubt about it—we are backstage at a rock show.

There’s also no doubt that we’ve been spotted by security. “Gorilla at two o’clock,” I tell Heather.

“Two o’clock?” But then she sees him. And where he’d just been watching us before, now he’s coming at us.

“What do we do?” Heather says in my ear, and I can tell she is freaking out.

“We stay cool!” I tell her back, and instead of trying to ditch it through the dark somewhere, I move
toward
him.

“Third door down!” he shouts over the music.

“Thanks!” I shout back, and even though my heart is beating louder than the drums onstage, I head off in the direction he’s pointing like everything’s cool.

When we’re in the clear, I sneak a grin at Heather, and she sneaks one back.

We have infiltrated the House of Blues!

There was no way I was going down to the third door.

That’s where the real caterer had to be!

And since the first door we came to was propped open, I ducked inside without looking back.

Which turned out to be a classic case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. There were three scruffy-looking guys hanging around on couches. Maybe none of them were Gorillas in red shirts, but they had a really, uh … 
hungry
look to them. Like they were amped and armed and ready to slay dragons.

Or in this case, girls with food trays.

“Dude, you’re serious?” one of the guys says, instantly moving from sitting on the couch to standing on it.

The guy next to him eyes us, but instead of jumping up, he slouches farther into the cushions. “They got the wrong room,” he grumbles. “Darren Cole’s having an after-party.”

The first guy springs off the couch and hurries over to close the door. And while he’s doing that, the third one perks up like he’s caught the scent of warm blood. And
then the first guy checks out my tray and cries, “Dude, it’s
sushi
.”

“Hang on!” I snap. “You’re not getting this for nothing.”

“Oh, really?” the first guy says, and he obviously thinks I’m hilarious.

“Oh, you can
steal
it from us,” I tell him, “but then we’ll sic the Gorilla Gang on you, and good luck with them!”

“The Gorilla Gang?” the third guy says.

“Security, doofus,” the Sloucher calls over.

The first guy stares at me like he can’t quite believe I’ve got the guts to go up against three scruffy guys with tattoos. So I tell him, “Look, all we want are badges.”

“Badges?”

I point at the laminated backstage pass hanging from a cord around his neck. “Two of those,” I tell him, “for two trays of sushi.”

“Dude!” The main guy laughs as he looks at the other two. “They’re groupies!”

The Sloucher calls, “Not for Hallowgram.”

“Who’s Hallowgram?” Heather asks.

“The guys out there rocking the house down?” the main guy snaps. “The opening act?”

“Oh,” Heather says, not sounding at all impressed.

“See?” the Sloucher calls. “We get squat.” He eyes the main guy. “And I know you’re a big fanboy, but I’m getting pretty tired of hauling their gear for beer.”

“So let’s have sushi!” The main guy whips off his badge and looks at the others. “Who’s giving up their badge to share this feast with me?”

Suddenly badges are flying at us and our food trays are being taken and the main guy is giving me a crooked smile, saying, “Our little secret.”

So while they turn their backs on us and descend on the food, Heather and I whip off our turquoise shirts, stuff them under a couch, loop backstage passes over our heads, and hurry out of there.

“This is
awesome
!” Heather squeals.

“Stay cool,” I tell her as I lead her farther away from the outside door we’d come through.

“Do you think we can get into Darren Cole’s after-party?”

“Staaaay cooool. First we have to find a place to disappear for a while.”

“Disappear? Why? We have backstage passes! We can go anywhere!”

Right then the catering guy steps out of Door Number Three. Luckily, we can see him a lot better than he can see us because of the light coming out of the room he was in. So I grab Heather and move deeper into the darkness of the big backstage curtain while he hurries by.

Heather’s neck cranes around as she watches him go. “Do you think he’ll notice the trays are missing?”

“Stop looking!” I tell her. “We just need to disappear!”

When we get to the end of the backstage curtain, there’s another clear view of the stage, and since there’s nobody standing in the wings, I move in a few steps to see if I can figure out where my mother might be. There are huge speakers and other equipment between us and the band, so it’s actually really easy to sneak a little ways onto
the stage and still be totally hidden. Trouble is, the stage lights are really bright, which makes looking past the stage hard to do. What I
can
see is that there’s a big standing area in front of the stage and a whole raised level of seating that curves up and back to a big open balcony. Like a theater where the bottom got dropped down to make room for a giant dance floor and a stage.

And really, all this tells me is that the place is huge.

Then Heather’s in my ear saying, “If the guy in the fringed jacket has anything to do with Darren Cole or his band, they’ll be in the greenroom.”

“What greenroom?”

“You know—Door Number Three? Where all the food was getting delivered? They’re probably hanging out there right now, waiting for these guys to be done playing.” She nods past the stage. “You’ll never find her if she’s out there. And why would she be out there if she got in early?”

Which all made sense.

But still.

Something about going into Darren Cole’s greenroom scared me.

“Sammy! Come on! Do you want to find her or not?”

“I can’t just walk in and say I’m looking for my mother! So what do I say? What’s our story?”

“Why can’t we just walk in and look around?”

“We’re thirteen! Someone will ask what we’re doing there! And if we blow it and get busted, there goes my chance of finding her.”

“You worry too much. Come on. We’ll just wing it.”

“No!”

She grabs me by the sleeve. “Come on!”

The next thing I know, Heather’s yanking me through Door Number Three, and there we are, two thirteen-year-olds, in the middle of at least a dozen over-thirty-year-olds. There’s a guy noodling on a guitar, another guy lacing up his black running shoes, another guy tapping drumsticks on the arm of a couch, and a whole bunch of women doing a whole lot of nothing besides showing skin.

“She’s not here,” I whisper to Heather. “And I don’t see a fringed jacket anywhere.”

“So let’s ask.”

“No! Let’s get
out
of here!”

“Why are you so weirded out?” she asks me when we’re safely outside.

“I don’t know, okay? I’m … I’m …” But everything’s a jumble and I just can’t put it into words.

“You’re what? A few minutes ago, you were playing hardball for backstage passes. And now you’re totally wimped out! What happened?”

“I’ve … I’ve got this really weird feeling. Like a panic attack, only … only I don’t know why!”

She studies me a minute. “Maybe you don’t really want to find her.”

Something about that felt close. And then out of my mouth comes “Or maybe I just don’t want to know who she’s with.” I shake my head. “I need to sit down.”

“Sit down!? You don’t sit down at a rock concert!”

And really, I couldn’t explain why I felt so weak and
pukey and confused all of a sudden. It was like this
force
had come over me and broken up all the steely bonds that had been holding my anger molecules together.

My mom had secrets from me, but maybe she had secrets for a reason.

Maybe I really was better off not knowing.

So I tell Heather, “Go and do whatever you want. I need to find a place to sit down. I’ll meet you out at the box office after the show.”