Erin William's Guide To Warped Tour

The Only Girl

I opened the door to the tour bus and let out an excited shriek. I ran inside followed by my band mates. Dylan, one of our guitarists and my older brother, and Ryder, the other came in first, arguing over who got a top bunk. Next our drummer, Damian, came in lugging his bags over his shoulder, and sweating from the summer heat. Finally, Jasper, our bassist and my best friend, came running in, screaming almost as loud as I did, before squeezing me into a rib-crushing hug.

“Can you believe it Erin?” he asked me, after finally letting me go. “We’re going to be on Warped Tour,”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s awesome!” I was happy that our band, Conspiracy Theory, was on any tour. We were brand new and had just been signed by Hopeless, but Warped Tour was amazing. Better than anything I could have hoped for. I remember going to Warped for the first time when I was twelve with Dylan. We swore the next day we would start a band.

“Well we better go claim bunks,” he said. We walked over to where everyone was crowed around the bunks.

“Ladies first,” I said pushing my way to the front of the band and jumping into one of the two top bunks.

“That’s not fair,” Dylan said. “I already called that bunk!” I laughed at my older brother.

“Yes, but I’m the only girl in this bus, probably even the whole tour,” I said. “So, I get to pick my bunk,”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll just take the other top one,” he turned around to climb up but Damian had beaten him to it. We all laughed, well all of us except for

“Oh fuck you,” he said, dropping his stuff on to the middle bunk, right under the one Damian had just claimed. Jasper plopped down onto the bunk under mine, and smiled like a five year old who had just eaten way too much sugar.

“Well, who’s driving?” I asked, putting a finger on my nose. That’s what we had always done on our small self-booked tours: last person to put a finger on their nose got the task of driving to the next venue. A chorus of ‘not – it’s rained down from all the boys, except for Dylan. Dylan slowly turned around looking at all of us.

“I don’t get my bunk know this,” he said jokingly. “Fuck all of you,” We all laughed, but were stopped by a cough. We all turned to see, Amy Peirce, our manager standing at the entrance to the bus with guy I’d never seen before.

“No need Dylan,” she said. “You guys have your own driver,”

“No way,” Ryder said. “Are you serious?”

“I sure am, “ she said, turning to introduce the guy to her left. “This is Griffin. He’ll be you’re driver,”

“Awesome,” Dylan said.

“Well you better get going,” Amy said before turning to leave. “You’ll be meeting all the bands tomorrow,”

***

“Erinnnnnnn,” someone was shaking me awake.

“Five more minutes,” I groaned.

“We’re in Salt Lake,” my brother said.

“I don’t care,”

“Don’t you want to meat the other bands?” he asked.

“No,”

“Come on,” he was still shaking me.

“Nope,”

“Please?”

“I want to sleep,”

“That’s it,” he said. He began shouting for the rest of the guys “Hey, I could use some help over here,”