Ch. 25: Concert Bound

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
I got home and spent the evening texting Sean. I got permission from my mom to have Ally over Saturday, and I went ahead and asked Sean if he was still free to come to town Sunday. The Melbourne Mania fair was this Sunday, I had totally forgotten. When I brought it up to Ally she suggested we stop by there for the parade before she continues walking over the tennis court. I told Sean about the fair and he seemed interested in checking it out.
Saturday morning came and Ally’s mom dropped her off right after breakfast. She put her bag in my room, and Meg made some snide comments about my acne this morning. Ally and I decided to go out for a brief walk, and we ended up pacing the complex as I caught her up on my tense encounter with Jake yesterday. I really liked Sean and was getting confused over this stuff with Jake. Ally was still convinced that Jake only was reacting to my ‘taken’ status, and like her, I didn’t know what to believe. We then spent the afternoon watching old movies and laying around until the sun started to go down.
“Do you want to start heading out now?” I asked Ally. It was 4pm and the concert didn’t officially start until 5pm, “We can hit up Donna’s on our walk over?”
I really just needed to stretch my legs, and I was ancy for this evening to start. I kept texting Sean about Sunday, but I also wanted to see Jake - if I was being honest with myself. I was curious to see if he would still try to talk to me in a group setting. Part of me was sure that he was talking to me recently only one-to-one because he was embarrassed - or something - about talking to me.
“Yeah, sure! Let me grab my jacket,” Ally said as I went into the bathroom to quickly check my makeup and touch up my eyeliner.
Meg walked with us up over the hill. She was going to meet a friend at the concert too, and mom insisted she walk with us. Her presence limited what we could talk about freely, so we mostly walked in silence after trying to talk about school and failing - we could only talk about that stuff for so long. We mentioned going over to Donna’s, and Meg insisted she came along too so we slowly made our way there. Once inside I hit the ice cream freezer and pulled out a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar for Meg, her long time favorite. She rolled her eyes at me but took it, and I took that action as a small victory. I grabbed an Oreo ice cream bar myself, and Ally got a fruit popsicle, she has always preferred fruit over chocolate which I found crazy. But hey, more for me! We paid and left the store, unwrapping our treats and sitting at the little metal patio set they had added to Donna’s recently. Two tables, three chairs each. It was a nice way to slow down. We still had about 30 minutes before the concert officially started, and the sun was getting lower in the sky. There were wisps of fog way up high on the mountain surrounding us, and I knew that as the weather cooled the fog would start to creep down into town as it usually did this time of year. It helped cool everything down. We finished snacking and began walking the rest of the way to the park.
There were a few other people there this early. Mostly families setting up their picnic blankets on the lawn. Meg mumbled something about the bathroom and we decided to walk with her. The bathrooms were on the other side of the park from the stage the band was currently setting up at, near the picnic benches. Ally and I sat at a bench and watched Meg go inside.
“Well that wasn’t so bad, right?” Ally asked me, motioning to Meg.
I snorted, “No I guess not.”
“Almost reminded me of old times…” Ally added.
Meg used to be the little sister who followed us everywhere and wanted to know everything about us. She had always favored Ally, with Lana being her close second-favorite. Somewhere in these last 1-2 years she had morphed into the angry being before us. I saw her now like the ‘demon baby’ Jack Jack from The Incredibles could turn into. Furiously angry for no clear reason.
Meg came out and met up with her friend Macy, and they took off to join Macy’s family back near the stage. They were setting up camping chairs and even a table to put drinks and snacks on. At least one thing hadn’t changed - how close she and Macy were. Macy’s grandmother lived in our apartment building so I knew her before she was born, and knew her older sister Elaine too. Elaine was a few years younger than me. Elaine and Macy’s dad had grown up in the same neighborhood in San Francisco growing up, both had been good examples of how to get out of their neighborhood and ‘make it,’ well at least until my dad fell into the land of drugs. Now I guess it was just Elaine and Macy with a dad strong enough to get to the other side. He did drink a lot but nothing close to anything dangerous.
Ally spotted Evan far off walking to the skate park with some other guys around them, one was clearly Jake. I could tell from his height and gait. She stood up and looked at me.
“Ready?” she asked excitedly. Well, I guess it was time to put my money where my mouth was, I guess.
“Are you excited about meeting Joey tomorrow?” I asked, trying to calm my anxiety by focusing on anything else. Anything else to take the focus off hearing Jake’s words from yesterday reverberating in my mind on repeat. 'I just missed you.’
“I think I’m more ‘nervous’ than anything. I keep thinking he’s going to text me and cancel, and change his mind. But if anything we’ve just started talking more and more. I think I really like him,” she smiled looking down at our feet as we made our way across the park. It was nice to see her this way.
We went over our timeline again for tomorrow, making time for the Melbourne Mania parade, and hitting up a few booths at the fair before she would meet with Joey. He wanted to meet her at the fair, and to be honest I wanted to meet him too. I needed to fulfill my duty as best friend in checking out potential threats in guys Ally was going to spend time with. It had been making me crazy worried that Ally just brought him up out of nowhere, and that he had suddenly had such a strong interest in her. I weighed the option of sharing my worries with Ally, but decided I would wait until tomorrow, maybe on our way to the parade. I didn’t want to bring her down or make the mistake of saying the wrong thing and making her upset. I wanted more time to word what I was going to say so she would hear my love for her and not shut out my worry.
At the corner of the park, we started to cross the street and I saw Lana up ahead by the post office. She was walking with someone I didn’t recognize.
Reaching the sidewalk, I yelled to get her attention, “Lana!”
I saw her whip her head around and start waving, right when Jake stepped out with Steven and the way he was looking at me made it hard to look away.
BANG.