Don't You Dare: A Synyster Gates Story

Chapter Twenty-Two

The sun blazed down on top of Aubrey's head. Heat radiated from her body, and her clothes clung to her dewy skin. With sweat glistening her forehead, she walked toward the bus, praying that the air conditioning was on inside, seeking a blast of cool air.

"AC!"

She glanced over her shoulder to see Zack pulling up beside her in a golf cart.

"Hey," she greeted with a smile.

"I've been looking all over for you; we need you!" He primed with pleading eyes.

She tilted her head slightly to the side. "What's up?"

"We need someone to man the merch tent," he explained.

She narrowed her eyes at his request. "Again?"

He nodded quickly.

"Where's Matt?" She asked of their actual merch guy.

"The Berrys are fixing Brian's cab and we have an interview to do in ten minutes," Zack explained.

Although Aubrey didn't mind helping out, that was the second time they asked her to look after the merch table since she had joined them on tour. She knew things didn't work out well with the last merch girl, her replacement, so Matt decided to just wing it for Warped Tour, but something smelled fishy. "Did Brian put you up to this?"

"Put me up to what?" He wondered, genuinely confused.

"I don't know. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you guys were trying to use my old job against me. Trying to persuade me to stay." She called them out.

"I don't know anything about that," he defended with his hands up. "It's just nice to have someone, other than Berry, that we can trust to run the table by themselves again."

Aubrey softened and smiled. Even if they were using it against her, she enjoyed the feeling of being needed and actually being helpful while on tour, instead of just tagging along for the ride. "Alright, you convinced me."

"Yes," Zack cheered with a fist in the air. "Get in, I'll cart you there."

So much for finding some air conditioning...

~

Aubrey was crouched behind the merch table as she dug around in one of the boxes, trying to sort and organize the mess of merchandise that had accumulated. She had no idea how Matt Berry was able manage all the crap the band sold. It seemed to all be mixed together. There were stickers in the t-shirt boxes, t-shirts in the CD box, and CDs in the sticker box. And she had no idea where the hoodies were kept, so she took those off of the display for the time being.

If she was going to help out, she was going to do it properly.

"Ohmygod," a girl, no older than sixteen, gasped as she and a friend walked up to the merch table. She had dyed-blue hair and thick eyeliner drawn perfectly around her wide and curious eyes. "Are you the A-seven-X merch girl?"

"Uh," Aubrey smiled cautiously as she stood up. "Temporarily."

"So you know Avenged Sevenfold?" Her pink-haired friend asked with the attitude that accompanied teenage angst.

"Yeah...?" Aubrey trailed off, unsure why they were asking questions that had obvious answers.

"Ohmygod," Blue Hair squeaked. "What are they like?"

"Uh," Aubrey stammered then shrugged. "Fun?"

"Are they nice?" Blue Hair went on. "Please say they're nice."