Once Backstage

Chapter Two - The Concert

When Maddy and I stepped out of the terminal and into the busy California airport, I suddenly felt completely lost and a little scared. There were people everywhere, and I was in a place that was farther than anywhere I've ever been before. Maddy however, didn't seem to be as afraid. She kept glancing between her phone and the airport signs as I followed her past some restaurants and the TSA checkpoint. We stopped at the top of an escalator near the bathrooms. "He said he'd be around here somewhere," Maddy said, so we set down our carry-on bags and looked around. I wasn't much of a help, though, because I had no idea what he looked like.

About a minute later we heard a voice yelling out over the crowd. "Madelynn!" We looked over to see a guy in his early twenties walking up to us, smiling and waving. He was a little over six feet tall, with messy brown hair and a stubbly face.

Maddy rushed forward and gave him a hug. "It's so good to see you! It's been too long," she said to him.

After they finished greeting each other, he then averted his attention to me. He smiled and stuck his hand out to me. "Hi, I'm Chris," he introduced himself with a sparkle in his eye.

I shook his hand warmly. "Nice to meet you. I'm Kayla."

Then there was a moment when we all just stood there without anything to say. It was kind of weird.

"Well," Maddy finally spoke up. "Let's get our bags and leave. I'm starving."

Chris and I agreed that it sounded like a plan, and the three of us went down to the baggage claim. After we found our luggage, Maddy and I followed Chris to the exits and out to his car. Maddy hopped into the passenger seat of the old Camry and I crept into the back. She and Chris talked back and forth on the drive to his house. I just sat there silently and listened to them catch up on each other's lives. Apparently, they haven't seen one another in almost five years.

We stopped by a Mexican fast-food restaurant and picked up some tacos to eat at Chris' house, which wasn't too far from the airport. It was a little house, what many would call a starter home. From the outside, it was a really cute place, but the inside was a messy disaster.

"I've been starting to clean it, but I didn't get very far," he said sheepishly as he showed us around. "Hope you don't mind."

Maddy and I were going to stay in the guest bedroom. It was sort of a bare room, with a full-sized bed, an old beat-up dresser, and stacks of boxes piled in the corner. There were posters and framed photos of baseball players hanging randomly on the peach-colored walls. We sat our luggage on the bed and went back into the living room to eat and watch a movie. Afterwards we sat around and just talked. Chris seemed like a cool guy. He was very funny and shared some of the same interests as us. He was a huge fan of baseball and loved to talk about it. He and his family moved out to Carlsbad when he was in high school, and he had recently got his own place in Irvine.

It was nearing 7:00 when I called my mom to let her know how things were going and how well the flight went. After we hung up, I decided to go to bed early. I told Maddy and Chris goodnight, and left them talking in the living room. I curled up in the bedsheets with a big smile. It was amazing knowing we were finally in California, and there was only one more day to go through before the concert!

The next day Chris didn't have to work, so the three of us piled into his car and he took us to the mall. Once I stepped outside, I noticed the sudden increase in the temperature. It was sunny and in the mid-eighties, which felt wonderful, unlike back home where it was averaging forty degrees. Chris told us we were lucky they were in a heatwave, because it's usually not that warm there in March.

I was awestruck by the mall we went to. It was a huge outdoor shopping center, with lines of huge palm trees and a giant ferris wheel. There were crowds of people around us, and even though Maddy and I had developed a decent tan over the past few weeks from the tanning salon, we still felt pale compared to the locals.