onyx: poltergeist

thirteen

JAYDA

I quickly made a break for the exit at that exact second when Mr Lambert's shift ended, whipping out his phone and scrolling through the stream of messages Terrance was flooding it with. Apparently the rest of Mr Lambert's band was already waiting for me at the Bootsy Bellows, wherever that was, and damn, I was definitely late.

Punctuality aside, I was glad I had some preparation leading up to the gig. After Mr Lambert texted me on my phone to warm up my vocals in the shower I came to realise that Mr Lambert himself actually had some good vocals himself and that I could effectively manage and control them. I guess it's no doubt why he was the lead vocalist for his band.

The thing I didn't prepare for however, was researching on where the performance venue is, because now I felt like a lost puppy roaming the hectic streets of Los Angeles, all while stuck in the body of a fully grown 34-year-old man.

I quickly scrolled through Mr Lambert's phone applications until I finally found where his maps were, all while subconsciously taking note of the messages Terrance had been spamming him with for the past fifteen minutes or so. Remember when Mr Lambert said that he was someone who was 'pretty chill', now it felt as if all the chill Terrance used to have was thrown at the wind and swept away with it.

Terrance Spencer: Hey Adam, did you just get off from school? It's starting to get late and the rest are already here.

Terrance Spencer: You should be out of school by now brother, where are you?

Terrance Spencer: Markus just came up to us and asked us where you were, ADAM WHERE ARE YOU?

Terrance Spencer: Oh god, we have to be up on stage in half an hour, Adam you have to come ASAP.

Terrance Spencer: We need to rehearse too.

Terrance Spencer: I GIVE UP, ADAM CALL ME.

I swiped away all his messages and made a mental reminder to drop him a call later as I tapped on the search bar in the maps application and shakily punched in Bootsy Bellows before tapping again on enter. Thankfully, directions to wherever the bar was immediately surfaced on screen and I expanded its details to take a look.

Oh god. I am definitely going to be late.

The bar was located along Sunset Boulevard, which was, like what Mr Lambert said, just a mere few streets down from his abode. The problem was that I already take 45 minutes to reach school from his house on foot, so my only solution in order to make it to the Bootsy Bellows on time was to sprint down each block.

I couldn't care less about the watchful eyes of the passers-by on the streets; I practically just turned on my heel and sped down block after block. There wasn't much traffic on the road at this time of the day, which was a blessing because I could just fly down street after street without having to dumbly stand by the pavement and watch the many vehicles take all the time in the world to crawl down their concrete path.

Ten minutes had passed since I took off from the school's entrance and the GPS on the map updated, stating that I had fifteen minutes left till I reach the bar. For that moment I couldn't bother about the trickling sweat threatening to blind me or how I was starting to get muscle aches from running, there was a chance that I would make it on time, which was good.

I continued to run further down and immediately did a sharp left turn once I caught sight of the signboard that read Sunset Boulevard, toggling between the map application and Mr Lambert's contact book with trembling hands until I caught sight of the name Terrance Spencer and slammed my thumb down on it.