Lost Boy

3

When they arrived back at the van, the boys instructed the driver that they were going to Ashton's place for band practice. They sat in silence for a few minutes before turning the radio on and groaning at the song that was playing. It had been played at least once every hour since summer had started and it had begun to get on their nerves. 

"How cool would it be to have our songs played so much that people can't stand them anymore?" Ashton said and giggled at the thought of it. 

Michael gave a loud chuckle and nudged him in the side, "Why would we want that? How about a happy medium? Where no one gets sick of it? I don't want to be know as 'that band that has that one song that gets played so much that its now annoying even though at one point it was a good song'."

Calum and Ashton laughed but soon stopped when they noticed Luke wasn't reacting. 

Luke was feeling sick. He felt like he wanted to laugh, but he also had a strange feeling that was unfamiliar to him. He felt as if he might start spewing emotions all over the seats of the van and he wasn't too fond of it. He'd never been one to just throw things around, but thats exactly what he wanted to do now. Instead, he tried to stay true to how he normally acts and said, "Whats going on? I'm just a bit car sick. I'll live. You all know how I get sometimes."

The sad part about it was, they all believed him. They went on laughing while Luke was having an identity crisis.

-

"Time for banding! Get it? Its like... band as a verb. We're banding. That sounds cool," Ashton said through his giggles. 

The  three other boys rolled their eyes and picked up their mic stands and whatever they needed from various locations in Ashton's basement. They got set up fairly quickly; they had done this enough to know where everything was and which outlets to use. 

They started to play, but Luke still wasn't feeling up to it. When it came time for him to sing, he belted out a noise that sounded like it belonged in the music hall of fame. They rest of the band, too shocked to continue playing, gasped. 

Murmurs of, "Whoa, dude, where did that come from?" and, "What happened to little Lukey?" spilled around the room. 

Luke, still surprised himself, laughed. He laughed because he didn't know what else to do. Did somebody slip him some steroids? Did he drink to much apple juice earlier? Nothing sounded right. For the rest of practice he was doing great. He'd never felt better than he did in that moment.

What he didn't know was that his voice was coming from Cameron. She had the voice of an angel, as Ashton would say. Little bits of her personality were slipping through. She was trying to have a bit of conscious in Luke's head. 

She was lucky.

-

At the end of practice, they all gathered on the small, broken couch. Calum began his usual speech about how they were going to go big places one day with a few added compliments to Luke along the way. They were all ecstatic and generally excited. They made plans for later that night to go out but they didn't know where yet.

They had this tradition of putting a slip of paper with the name of a place on it in a hat (one of Ashton's fedoras to be specific) every time they found a new restaurant or club. So now was the perfect time to pull one out and make it a date.

They all decided that Luke should be the one to reach in the hat since he had done so well in the hours before. His lanky fingers reached into the hat and pulled out a pasty white slip of paper. He unfolded it quickly, wanting to know where they were going. 

"It's a club. That one that Calum was telling us about the other day," Luke said, rolling his eyes.

Calum jumped up, "The one with the glow-in-the-dark stuff?"

"Yeah, that one."

-

Back at Luke's house, he was trying to find something to wear. He didn't want to wear something too nice, because he was sure something would get spilled on him eventually, but he also didn't want to look like he was a silly school boy who couldn't pick up a girl.

Eventually, He decided on a simple Blink 182 shirt. Simple enough, but also shows a bit of personality. 

Luke then heard a door slam and shortly after, his doorbell. Michael stood at the door, looking impatient. He must have gotten into an argument with his girlfriend again.

Luke opened the door and was about to leave when his mom stepped in and called to him, "Where do you think you're going?"

Luke froze in his tracks and turned around, trying to stay calm. "Uhm, I'm... going to study with Michael at his place."

Liz's face twisted and her eyebrows scrunched up, "Study? With Michael?"

Luke tried his best to think, "Yeah, he's trying to get his grades up for spring so that he can play football."

"Sports? Michael?"

"Yeah, love you , Mom. Bye," Luke almost shouted as he stepped through the doorway and shut the door. 

"You're a terrible liar," Michael laughed at Luke and hopped into Ashton's car.