by skeabs (and a little bit nemo)

“You gotta believe,” she’d say as she stirred the pancake batter, her massive arms flapping against her torso, the harsh slap of skin on skin in the heat, the soft whisper of wool in winter.

“In what?” you’d always ask.

She’d shrug, pause in her stirring to add some chocolate chips. “Doesn’t matter. S’long as it’s something.”

--

You don’t remember falling in love with Joey. You remember meeting him, and you remember last night when he said goodnight and shut his hotel room door behind him, but most of the rest in between is a blur of tours and shows and practice and girlfriends and one-night stands. You don’t remember exactly when your happiness became dependent upon his.

--

You always knew what she believed in. You remember packing it up when she died: the brittle, stale remains of a pancake made in 1974, which she claimed contained the face of Jesus. You remember the day she’d shellacked it, stuck it on the wall of her kitchen, the site of the Dear Lord’s reappearance.

“Jesus looks like Elvis,” you told your mother.

“Just don’t tell Grammy, Chris.” She ruffled her fingers in your dark hair. “She wouldn’t like it.”

“I won’t,” you muttered, ducking away from her tickling hands. You never said anything, but you couldn’t walk through Grammy’s kitchen without whistling “Hound Dog.”

--

She died before you started the group. She would have hated that you recruited two kids who worked for Disney. “Mice are bad luck,” she’d say. She never let you audition for anything they called about.

Lance collapses onstage and you think maybe it’s true. “Abacadabra” wards off fevers and sickness and you get a few strange looks from the nurses but you mutter it every time you see him for months afterward.

--

She gave you your first earring when you were five. Your mother didn’t want you to get your ears pierced, said you were teased enough at school. Grammy made you carry it on you at all times and promise to avoid the pool and large bodies of water and you did until you turned sixteen and pierced your own ears.

--Two girls skip down the street in front of you. “Step on a crack and you break your mother’s back ” they shreaked, holding hands and hopping over broken pieces of pavement.

You look down, shuffle your right foot over an inch, the jagged line of the crack unbroken now beside it.

--

When you were seven, she woke you up in the middle of the night and dressed you in your winter coat and shoes. Under a bright round moon, you watched her cut an apple in half and helped rub it on the big, swollen joints of her hands. You buried it in the soft soil of the flower bed with a plastic shovel from your sandbox.

Midnight is darker in the midwest than it ever was in the city and you have to do your digging in the headlights of the bus. The corn makes odd whisphering noises as you drop the buttons from Joey's favorite shirt in the small hole then add the right shoelace from your favoriate pair of Nikes and a picture you tore out of a magazine. Joey has his arm around your shoulder and you're both smiling.

Joey starts dating Vanessa. You stop eating apples.

--

“Chris is easy,” Justin says, and you blink, not sure what he means. The interviewer coughs politely, waiting pointedly for the follow up. “He believes anything you tell him The sky is green? Sure And Elvis isn’t dead and polyester is totally making a come back.”

You smile and laugh and sneer a little like Elvis to draw a laugh but you wonder, sometimes, how much is too much.

--

She caught you lying once, something so small you can’t remember now what it was about, and laughed. She ran her fingers through your hair, tusking.

“He can’t help it,” she told your fuming mother. “Black eye, pick a pie, run around and tell a lie.”

You weren’t sure what it meant, but it never worked as an excuse again.

--

You carefully write his name three times on a small square of paper and then your own. Around that goes the wish and then the rose petals you stole from Britney's bouquet. Three squeezes of honey directly from the bottle into your mouth and there's enough room for the folded paper just inside the head of the little plastic bear. You buy a dozen bottles of honey in two months and you gain ten pounds and towards the end, you dream that bees are building a hive in your head. Joey breaks up with Vanessa and starts talking about marrying Kelly. Justin finds the hardened carcass of a honey bear under the sink in the bus and shrieks. You try to laugh.

--

You’re pretty sure you started the “drink ‘til it’s good” game, but you’re pretty damn sure you didn’t suggest Lizzie Maguire. Not when you still have the two copies of “From Justin to Kelly” hidden from prying eyes in the back of the bus. Although Lance swears that no amount of beer (or pina colada, in his case) makes that movie watchable.

Justin starts drinking during the previews and by the time Lizzie meets Paolo, the hot Italian lover, he’s singing “Why Not?” and blowing raspberries on JC’s arm.

“Does Justin think it’s good yet?” Lance asks testily, dodging a flailing kick while maintaining a firm grip on his drink.

“Lance isn’t drinking enough ” Justin says, leaning forward and spilling part of his beer on Lance’s shirt. Lizzie tosses a coin in some really old and cool looking fountain and makes a wish. You don’t know why you never thought of it before.

--

Some things you do for reasons you can’t explain. You can’t remember where you heard that hats on the bed are bad luck, but you never drop your hat on the bed anyway, and you never allow the others to do it. You feel uneasy if you don't kiss your fingers and press them to the arch of the horseshoe above the bus door when you leave and once (and you only rarely feel really bad about this) you delayed a show for thirty minutes trying to find an alternate route to the stage when Boo, the stadium’s resident black cat, shot across the walkway. Eventually you hopped over the bit of ground his paws touched and crossed your fingers through most of the first song, hoping to erase the bad luck.

--

“C’mon, Chris,” Justin whines, jumping up and down and flapping his arms against his sides. “It’s cold as balls out here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Says the guy who sleeps with onions under his pillow and knows a rhyme about butter.” Justin shrugs, grinning. “I heard it somewhere. It’s still cold.”

“Bring a coat next time, numb nuts.” The concierge told you it was down here somewhere. Take a turn at the first stop sign, or the second? You hear running water and finger the quarter in your pocket. You wonder if a bigger denomination means a stronger wish. “You didn’t have to follow me anyway.” Justin presses up against your side, shivering under his t-shirt. “Couldn’t let you come alone,” he says through chattering teeth.

You roll your eyes, throw your arm around his shoulders. The fountain is large, taking up almost the whole of the small square, and you pace around the other side while Justin jogs in place.

You close your eyes, pull the quarter out of your pocket. “I wish for Joey,” you mutter under your breath, flipping the quarter in the water, watching it float in crazy circles to the bottom of the shallow pool.

--

“Watch out for crows,” she said, and taught you the rhyme. One's unlucky, two's lucky; three is health, four is wealth; five is sickness and six is death. You remember the six that haunted her elm tree the day before she let go. Their shrill cries echoed in your ears for weeks.

“Crows,” Lance says, pointing out the window of the bus.

“How many?” you ask, swallowing the lump in your throat as you peer over his shoulder.

“Just two,” he says, and you nod. Two for good luck.

You spend the rest of your day in your bunk, just in case.

--

You find fountains in three more cities but not the fourth. Justin follows you again on the second, but not the third. You manage to slip away from him for the fourth, but Lance catches you coming back and you have to make a lame excuse about the ice machine and he looks at you like he does when he knows you’re lying.

In the fourth city you fill the water up in the bath tub and close your eyes and pretend. You hope it works.

--

“What’s the first thing you grab if your house catches on fire? JC?”

“A fire extinguisher.” The crowd laughs.

“Justin?”

“JC.” The crowd laughs harder.

“Right then. Chris?” Justin jumps in over what you were going to say, even though you don’t remember what that is. “His rabbit’s foot.” “You’ve got a rabbit’s foot, Chris?”

You nod.

Lance leans forward in his chair, little earnest brow crinkling. “He never goes anywhere without it.”

You grin sheepishly, your hands in the single front pocket of your sweatshirt, wrapped tightly around the object in question. Thankfully, nobody says anything about the rabbit's luck.

--

The bus breaks down in the middle of whichever green grassy state you’re in this week.

“Clovers ” JC squeals, jumping down into a patch of grass and weed near the road. The bus drivers step off to confer.

You all join him in the search for a four leaf clover. Justin even starts up the song, but you only hum along while you work your way farther and farther away from the road. You hear them call you back, but you need to find a little four leafed clover before you go, before you do anything else. Before you can turn back and continue on your way again.

“Chris ” you hear, and it’s right behind you, right over your shoulder. Joey, dragging you back towards the busses, towards more travels but you can’t go anywhere without a clover, something horrible could happen.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Joey says, rubbing your arm and you realize you must have spoken aloud.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that a clover isn’t going to change anything.”

“How?”

“Same way I know throwing coins in fountains doesn’t make your wishes come true.”

You turn, you look in his eyes, and even though it should be impossible, would be impossible if you didn’t have horrible bitch bandmates that talked when they shouldn’t, you know that he knows.

You clump along back to the bus, four leaved clovers be damned, and throw yourself unto the bunk. You don’t hear him until he’s almost on top of you, leaning over you in the narrow bunk.

“How long have you been throwing coins in the fountains?” You shrug, muttering.

“How long?”

“Couple of months.”

He laughs, runs his hands over your back. “I’ve loved you for a couple of years, you idiot.”

You laugh now, turning over in the bunk and pulling him up beside you. The fit is tight but you don’t care. You press your laughing lips to his and hear (feel) him whisper against your skin “you don’t have to believe in everything.”

You know. You just need to believe in him.