Acquiesce

Chapter 8

With Enzo back home and Liam in Wales recording, I tried to forget all about Liam, again although this time I was worried Aaron would slip up.

Jared had found out who was on the Glastonbury festival line up and was begging his parents to let him go.

We went to my parents' for dinner.

"You don't understand, Oasis are headlining, they'll never do it again and the Stone Roses. If I don't go this year, that's it, I'll never see them and my mates will laugh at me, forever." he argued dramatically.

Mum was trying to make dinner and I was helping her so we were stuck listening to him until he gave up.

"How many times? No." Mum sighed. "You're seventeen, you can't afford it and you're just not going."

"Why are you trying to make me the laughing stock?" he asked. "Everyone else is going. I've got my car, I'm an adult, why are you being like this?"

"You're getting boring now, Jared." I told him. "Why don't you understand the word no?"

He groaned. "You don't get it cos you only listen to crap. What if they debut a new song and I miss it cos you all treated me like a baby?"

"I'm so tired of hearing this!" Mum turned to him. "IF you can pay for it yourself and IF Haileigh or Aaron will go with you, you can go."

"Can't!" Aaron shouted from the living room. "Too much work commitments."

Jared stared at me. "Come on, it's Glasto, there's got to be A band you like."

I didn't want to go, at all. Festivals were just about bearable when I was there for the bands I liked, it'd be hell babysitting my brother and being so inadvertently close to Liam.

I shook my head. "I don't know, I might be booked up at work too and Enzo..."

"It'll be a break for you both." Mum said.

"We don't need another break, we just had a holiday and Venice definitely beats a field in Somerset." I pointed out.

"Why can't you just do this for me?" he asked with longing eyes. "Just this one thing and I'll never ask again."

I'd heard that way too many times before. "Me and Enzo will consider it, later."

"I need to know now, for the tickets." he said with impatience and urgency.

Enzo came and stood at the door. "I'll not get time off either."

"There you go, we can't go." I affirmed matter of factly.

"I don't mind you going, it's only three days." Enzo shrugged. "Someone's got to keep him safe."

"But..." I tried to object without real reason.

"Just go with him." Mum ordered. "He'll only drive us all mad if you don't."

He was going to drive me mad if I did but Mum laid down the law and I agreed to chaperone him and four other seventeen year old lads to the festival, all of us in his stupid black Ford Escort.

...

Enzo couldn't understand why I was so reluctant to go to Glastonbury, with Jared and without him so we argued a lot and he kept insisting I had to do it, for family. He'd do it for his siblings so I had to do it for mine.

The 23rd of June came around way too quick and the boys had filled the boot with their shit and squeezed into the back seat, three seats, four boys in the summer heat, great.