Luck Isn't Everything.

“So basically what you’re telling me is that if we take this tour we’ll lose our shot at getting signed?” Kellin argued. It was lunchtime, but no one was really eating, or even hungry for that matter. We were all stressed and frustrated. “I don’t see the good in that?”

“Yeah, I’m with Kellin on this one guys. Tour over getting signed? No way,” Jesse agreed.

“Of course you would agree,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Jesse snapped.

“It means that you aren’t looking at this right! You’re both missing the big picture here!” Gabe shot.

“Look, the guy at the label already told us he wasn’t going to hire us until we graduated. We’d be wasting our time because, even if by some crazy miracle, we won, he’d say no,” Justin spoke up. “We have to take this chance and grow our fan base.”

“Our fan base is big enough,” Kellin and Jesse said in unison.

“Rule number one, fan bases can never be big enough,” Jack snapped.

“We have a better shot at getting signed if we have enough fans behind us,” Justin added, “Our fans are the ones who are gonna make us or break us. And sure, this whole do-it-yourself thing is working and pretty great, but it would be nicer if we had an extra set of hands around to help.”

“We have your girlfriend,” Kellin nodded his head to me, “That’s all the crew we need.”

“Yeah, she knows the technical stuff, the instruments, the merchandise, and brings us water bottles. What more do we need?” Jesse joked.

“She’s not your fucking waterboy!” Justin snapped. The other two retracted their statements and all I could do was awkwardly open my mouth.

“Guys, please don’t bring me into this,” I spoke up, “I’ll help you guys with whatever decision you make. And I know this isn’t my part, but if I were in a band and in this position, I’d do the tour instead.”

“Why?” they all asked.

“Well, I mean, if it’s through competition, the label makes you do whatever they want. And they can do it because you went to them, instead of them to you. They could easily cut you and hire someone else… But if you get your name big enough to the point where you have labels fighting over who’ll produce and record the new album, then you’re the one in charge, duh.”

They all stood silent and stared at me as they let it all sink in.

“Fine, let’s tour,” Kellin said defeated.

“So when do we leave?” Gabe and Jesse asked.

“We leave Sunday morning at 11am. We have a meeting with the other guys later tonight to get all of the details. We’ll have all of tomorrow to pack and I need everyone at my by no later than 8:30am,” Justin stated.

“Why so early!?” we all groaned. We were all used to not seeing each other on Sundays until around 3 or 4 in the afternoon because we’d normally wake up about an hour before that.

“Because I want to make sure we have everything ready and set up in the U-Haul and we need to make sure everything is alright with the van,” he answered us.

“Can we get big already so we can have a bus instead? I hate that van,” Jack laughed.

“We’ll get there,” Gabe joined. We finished our lunches and parted to class.

Notes