When Eli gives you a reason to pray, you better pray. I just didn’t know what I was supposed to be praying for. Back when we toured in Old Pepe, we always showered in hotel rooms. This travel-center-showering was a new experience for me.

We made our way into the bus, where I handed Sacha his shampoo back with a “thank you” while my brother made us three packets of ramen noodles to share, sixty-forty style with pieces of grilled deli chicken thrown in. He promised to take me to buy groceries, cheap sandals and shampoo the next day. As soon as we finished eating, I walked by another member of The Cloud Collision, who had some Middle Eastern ancestry in him. He was on the phone, so I raised my hand in a wave and he did the same back before I followed Eli into the bunk area.

“Mine is that one,” my brother said, pointing at a top bunk with its curtain pulled all the way back. There were twelve total bunks with crimson curtains, three stacked on top of each other, six on one side of the hallway, six on the other. He then pointed at the bottom bunk, below where Gordo was sleeping at the top. “Zeke slept on that one. It’s yours now. I put my backup sheets on there for you earlier.”

I immediately thought of Zeke drooling over the bed—or worse. Yuck.

“Thanks.”

It was then that the curtain on the bunk above mine slid open, and I fist-pumped in my brain because sane people don’t do that in real life. Sacha looked at me from his spot in the bed above the one I’d be taking. “Hi, neighbor.”

Chapter Four

The next two weeks went by before I could ask what the hell I had gotten myself into.

One day we were in Boston and the next thing I knew, we’d gone through Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri. The routing made absolutely no sense but it never had. Booking agents usually didn’t care how long the drives were between dates as long as they scored bands the highest guarantee possible.

A handful of fans had asked me so far, “How awesome is it to be on tour with them?”

With them. Them. Eli, Mason, Gordo, Sacha, Isaiah, Julian, Miles, Mateo, Carter, Freddy and Bryce. Ghost Orchid, the members of The Cloud Collision, their merch guy, front of house slash tour manager and their lighting guy.

I showered in gas stations. I had some kind of fungus thing on the bottom of my toes from the one bloody shower I took without flip-flops. I’d eaten more pizza over the course of two weeks than I had in my entire life.

On top of all of that, summertime was a vengeful, rude bitch that didn’t care about your comfort.

I sweated all the time. I stunk at the end of every night. I spent countless hours rolling around in a bus from town to town, and I hung out in venues for nine hours a day minimum. I lived in a bus with ten men who were like every other twenty-something-year-old guys in the world. They farted, they burped, some of them had smelly feet, some of them didn’t brush their teeth enough, or the only thing that really drove me nuts: some didn’t cover their food in the microwave.

This life wasn’t glamorous. At. All.

On the other hand, to be fair, no group of people made me crack up like they did. It had been a long time since my stomach had cramped from how hard I laughed at or with them.

Eli and I had been acting more like conjoined twins than fraternal twins, as if we were trying to make up for all the time we’d spent apart over the last few years. I’d met a lot of twins in my life; some were close and others couldn’t stand each other. We weren’t like that, though.

Before high school, we’d been inseparable. Two peas in a pod. Each other’s security blanket. My mom liked to tell people that when we were toddlers, sometimes she would walk into a room to find us on opposite sides, totally silent, as if we were having some kind of telepathic conversation. What she wouldn’t tell everyone was that if she stood there long enough, we’d randomly start laughing our butts off for no apparent reason, which in turn scared the crap out of her. Yeah, I didn’t blame her.