Chapter Twenty-Three

Indie

 

 

After talking to Cross, I decided to wait to go see Dad. He was on stage doing the soundcheck right then anyway and I wasn’t going to make him divide his attention between his job and me. Talking to him could wait.

I went back to my bus to look up the girl everyone was talking about and scour through all my photos, both the ones I’d printed and the ones I hadn’t, and turned on the news. While I didn’t remember seeing any incriminating photos of Eric, something must’ve been there—otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so adamant about me not taking his picture. I never took his picture.

One picture after another and I found nothing. But then I remembered seeing something.

Fingering through the photos again, I found the one I was looking for. The picture was of Cross talking to Ransom. But it wasn’t them I was interested in. There were people in the background and I’d bet cold hard cash that the guy was Eric. I couldn’t be sure.

I flipped open my laptop and scrolled through the photos. I got to the one I wanted, clicked, and waited for it to load. Once it did, I used my photo editing program to zoom in and clean up the resolution on the corner of that photo. Then I lightened it.

There I found Eric Drinkswine and the girl accusing him. Or at least the one whose picture had started circulating on the internet. Her parents had done an interview on one of the news channels and Sasha McEnery’s post was breaking the internet.

In the picture, Eric was leaning in, either whispering in her ear or kissing her neck because she had her head thrown back and a little satisfied smile on her face. I immediately hit print.

Then my phone chimed.

Where are you? Dad’s text read.

Bus. Heading into the venue, I typed back to him.

Stay away from Drinkswine. I’ll find you later.

I always try to.

That meant he’d heard the news and I started to second-guess whether I really wanted to go inside. But I had to. I wanted to know what Cross and the others were going to do about their bandmate.

I stomped my way into the venue in search of Cross—hopefully, minus the rest of the guys. It took some searching, but I found him coming out of the dressing room.

“So?” I asked much, much louder than I probably should have.

“Come here.” He wrapped his hand around my upper arm and pulled me back into the dressing room.

We were alone. At least for now.

“Did you ask him?” I asked. “What’d he say? What’d the others say? What are you guys going to do?”

“Woah. That’s a lot of questions.”

I shrugged. “I want to know everything.”

Cross leaned a shoulder on the wall and took a deep breath. “We asked. He says he didn’t sleep with an underage girl.”

“Did he say he didn’t sleep with that girl?” I pointed at the television in the corner, even though it wasn’t on. “The girl accusing him. Her picture is circulating. You’ve all seen it right?”

“Ah,” he said while scratching the back of his head. “I don’t know that we asked specifically and no. I haven’t seen anything since I talked to you this morning.”

“Cross! You have to ask him.”

“All right.” He held his hands up in front of him. “I get it.” He sighed and looked me right in the eye. “We want him out. We’ve wanted him out for a while, but Lawson says we either need proof, for Drink to go willingly, which he won’t do, or for him to be arrested.”

“Proof?” I asked. “I have proof.”

“What?” He pushed off the wall and came toward me. “What kind of proof do you have that he slept with that girl?”

“Well, I don’t have proof of quite that, but I do have proof that he was comfortable with her.”

“Show me,” he said.