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Chapter 3

Scattered by Green Day

About two hours into the set, Luce can honestly say it's been the best night of her life and by far the best show she has ever been to.

She never really thought she'd be able to take any of the advice Izzy had given her when she dropped her off, but somehow she's been able to get in the mindset of being the "main character", at least for the night.

It feels as if everyone else in the room has just disappeared. Luce decided during first song that absolutely no one was going to be able to make her self-conscious, and for the entire night it really has felt like she's been the only one at the show with how little she's been paying attention to the people around her.
Like Izzy said to do, she really has been dancing like nobody's watching... well maybe not dancing per se, more like jumping to every beat since the show began.

Luce leans forward on the railing as the current song ends and she cheers and claps along with the rest of the audience. She sees Nate shake some hair out of his eyes before he approaches the microphone.

"Alright Raleigh!" he shouts, and the crowd goes insane. "Thank you so much for being an awesome crowd tonight. Now we only got a few songs left for you..."

With that the crowd "aws" and a couple of boos are thrown in for good measure.

"Aw c'mon, man," Ash interjects, stepping up to his own mic and looking over at Nate. "Why you gotta bring the mood down? Everyone was having so much fun!" Ash faces back the audience. "What a buzzkill, am I right?"

Of course, the crowd cheers in agreement and Ash takes a few steps back so he isn't laughing directly into the mic.

Nate rolls his eyes at his bandmate but his smile says he's not serious. "Yeah, yeah, sure, get the crowd on your side, whatever helps you sleep better at night knowing you're only ever going to be the second best guitarist in the band."

Ash feigns being offended. He grabs the mic from its stand and takes a few steps toward Nate.

"Arrogance is ugly on you, my friend," he says, "We'll have to settle this over a beer later because we definitely don't have time to entertain that silly delusion in front of two thousand people."

Ash gestures out to the crowd and they all continue laughing and cheering. He flips Nate off and Nate shoots him both fingers in return.

"Children," Luce looks over to see Adam chiming in from across the stage. "Get back on your marks so we can get on with this show before we run out of time. It would be some shit if we couldn't even play the last few songs because of your egos."

There is a smile on his face, but even Luce can tell Adam is teetering on serious. 

"Oh, Adam, when did you get here?" Ash throws in, and even from the balcony Luce can see Adam let out an exasperated breath.

He waves a dismissive hand back at Ash before playing a couple of notes on his bass, ready to move on to the next song. He looks back up at Nate for the go-ahead and Nate holds out a hand to gesture for him to wait.

"Okay, okay," Nate looks back at the crowd and speaks back into his microphone. "Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted... This next song we keep close to our hearts and I hope you'll keep it close to yours. This is Amelia."

With that the notes start playing, and Luce feels the biggest, yet softest smile grace her lips. For a moment she finds she can't even bring herself to cheer for the pure fondness she feels for the song.

Amelia is her favorite song off of the band's very first album, and she's honestly surprised they would decide to play it. It's such an off-the-wall choice, as it's not one of their more mainstream songs, and really wasn't even popular when the first album debuted. It was probably one of the saddest songs they'd ever written, but it has a beat that makes a person want to cry and dance at the same time.