Dear Sister, Here's Some Advice

It was another super hot day on warped tour. The sun was beaming down on both guests and artists alike. Water sales were at an all-time high, pit stains were a more common occurrence than not. Occasionally you’d walk past somebody with the worst body odor, making your nose shrivel up and your throat swell up. Close quarters made you squirm away, maybe even make you feel like you were going to throw up. Being outside on such a hot day was anything but healthy.

I was just lucky to have myself some boys who took their personal hygiene quite seriously, especially with such hot weather and such close quarters.

It was one of those days, those days where all you could do was sit around on the bus, air conditioning on full blast and praying the bus wouldn’t catch on fire. Usually, you could at least find a couple of artists roaming around, but it was only the poor souls who actually had things to do that went outside. I just felt bad for all the kids that came out to see their favorite bands. Nobody was in a good mood with such weather.

Even Carter, who insisted on going out and exploring nearly every single day, was sprawled out on the floor trying to cool off. If he was unmotivated to do anything, then everybody else was just a lost cause. There was no point in trying to get me to participate in anything that wasn’t necessary.

Unfortunately, we happened to have a signing and a show during the hottest hours of the day. I could already imagine myself melting into a small puddle of sweat while I was trying to sing and play the guitar. It was going to be hell. My strings were going to corrode way faster than they already did and I could already tell putting my fingers in the right place to play the correct chords was going to be a struggle.

A hot day was more than tiring.

Surprisingly, other than being more than annoyed by the heat, I was doing perfectly fine. There were always so many cases of dehydration, but I made sure to drink enough every single day. I was sleeping just fine in my bunk across from Charlie’s. And I actually wasn’t as afraid of the outside as I had been on the first day, other than being afraid of the heat, of course. I had made friends to my surprise. They were mainly in the same initial group that I had been in during the barbecue when Charlie left me to bring back a drunk Charlie, but they were the people I clicked the most with initially.

All the other people were also very nice. I wasn’t as close to all of them, but I could chat with anybody without much trouble. Of course, there were still people I had never met, but that was only natural. There were so many bands on the tour, some only playing a couple of dates and joining later. I was more than happy with where I was.

But we still had to face the super hot day without air conditioning as we actually did our job.

“Okay, guys,” Colton walked in from outside, only showing how hot it was, “time to go to your signing. There are already kids lining up to see you.”

There was a thin film of sweat residing on his skin, matting his hair and making his clothes stick to him. Despite the fact that he was wearing the bare minimum--a tank top and shorts--he still looked like somebody who decided it would be fun to go into a sauna with a winter coat on. At least he didn’t look bad, I could only imagine what monstrosity I would look like. At least I wasn’t wearing makeup, or it would have been melting off my face.

“There are actually people who want to meet us?” Charlie groaned as he peeled himself off one of the couches. “I was actually hoping nobody would care and we could stay here until it was time for us to play.”

“There’re actually quite a few people,” Colton told us, holding his stupid tour-manager clipboard in his stupid hands. “Can’t let them down.”

“None of them probably want to meet me, so I can stay here,” I argued, feeling like I was going to break out into a sweat if I even moved a tiny bit.

“You released an album two days ago! The fuck are you expecting!” Colton shook his head at us.

However, it wasn’t enough to get us moving. We all just laid there, stalling until he would give in. But it didn’t work. He started going into full parent mode, clapping his hands to shoo us and scare us into moving. It was like a mom trying to get her kids to go up to bed while they were watching a movie. We were up in no time after that.

As we left the bus, I felt like I was stepping into literal hell. It was so warm. The sun felt like I was burning me through the SPF 50 sunscreen I had on. What kept me going was the thought that Colton was just trying to motivate us by telling us that there was a handful of people actually out there for us. I knew that I’d just have to say hi to them, sign what they wanted to be signed, and then I could go back to the nice cool bus. It wouldn’t take that long.

“So, the signing will take two hours,” Colton informed as we were walking through the dry grass. “Only a certain amount of people can come, so it might take a bit longer or it might be shorter.”

I thought his optimism was pretty cute. We didn’t have that many fans, we played on one of the smaller stages and had a small crowd. Some were real super fans, standing in the front and singing along, while most were just seeing who we were. It was still cool, though.

But then we arrived at the tent. I had been wrong. It wasn’t a handful of people. What I assumed to be a busy place since there were so many merch tents was actually the line of people waiting for us. The trail led us back to the yellow tent that already had a table and pens ready for us to use. My eyes widened, realizing that this wasn’t just going to be a quick thing. Some people even screamed when they saw us arrive.

“Holy shit,” John whispered beside me as we entered the tent and got further instructions.

“I know right?” Charlie whispered in response, gasping at the crowd that was both waiting patiently and impatiently.

“Are you sure they didn’t screw up and accidentally said Sleeping with Sirens was signing things right now?” Carter joked while I was just flabbergasted.

Colton shook his head with a small smile. “I told you this was serious. I don’t know how you did it, but I believe things are going to be busy from now on.”

I continued to stare at the hundreds of people with the wristbands they had gotten earlier on in the day to come and meet us. The only thing I could do was pull out my phone and take a picture, sending it to Jack immediately with a message simply stating ‘what’. Jack replied, asking me what I was showing him. So, I took a short video, starting on Charlie with a pen in his mouth and panned over to the crowd once again.

‘Holy fuck’, he messaged back when he understood.

I could only hit him with an ‘IKR’ before I was told that it was time to sit down and let the people start coming.

Let me tell you, it was exciting at the beginning. We got many people overjoyed to meet us, even me. I always still felt like I wasn’t fully accepted, like my brother was preferred, that they were confused as to why I was there, but it wasn’t that way at all. It was weird at first to have to sign posters with Cam posing, but I got over it sooner or later. Even Charlie was worried the first time, not even wanting to let me see the poster at first. However, I just signed it like I didn’t notice what was wrong with it. There were even people who had our new album already. They either had bought it that day or had preordered it when our first single had been released. I was overwhelmed.

But the signing took two hours. It got trying pretty fast, the guys even joking that they hadn’t had a cramp in their hands since their final exams in high school. I even managed to spell my name wrong a couple of times, entranced by how often I had to write it down. Honestly, the word ‘hi’ and the sentence ‘how are you’ became estranged to me. They had no meaning anymore. And that was only after half an hour. I had no idea how Jack managed to do this on a frequent basis, but I guessed it eventually became an automated thing.

We were about just over an hour in when my head started spinning. I pushed it aside and blamed it on the intense heat messing with my head along with the many different people I had met and had a short conversation with. It was quite an energy-consuming thing. However, soon after, I was having trouble focusing on what I was doing. It felt different from whenever I drifted off slightly before snapping back to reality. My eyes wouldn’t clearly focus on what was in front of me, and I never had problems with my eyesight up close.

I shook my head lightly, trying to rid the feeling. Still, the heat seemed to be the problem in my mind. So, I told the person in front of me to hang on for a second and turned to Colton, who was sitting behind us, working on some other stuff.

I tapped on his knee, catching his attention. “Pass me a bottle of water, will ya?”

He nodded and reached into the cooler, pulling out a fogged up water bottle. The feeling of the cool water beads against my skin was already so refreshing. I screwed off the cap and nearly downed the whole thing in one go, putting it on the table before quickly signing the poster the person who had been waiting had for me. While expecting the water to wake me up and fuel me for another while, it had an opposite effect. I suddenly felt like I was floating while simultaneously feeling heavy as if I had just accidentally downed a bottle of vodka instead of water.

“You ok?” Charlie nudged me with his elbow before quickly scribbling his signature on an album from a fan.

I nodded and looked up to see that somebody was waiting for me once again, only this time I hadn’t noticed that somebody had filled that empty space. They were just looking at me in confusion, as if I had been ignoring them. I automatically signed the same thing as I had been doing the entire time and gave a small smile. The next girl, I did see coming up. This time, something else happened. As I went to put the pen on the case of her old album, my arm started shaking uncontrollably. Subtly, but it was definitely enough for Charlie to notice.

“Are you sure?” He pressed, giving an obvious glance towards my right hand.

I hummed in response, unsure of what was going on. Nobody knew what was happening to me. If Jack would have been there to witness it, he would have known before I even realized what exactly was happening. He might have even recognized it minutes before I went to grab that water bottle from Colton.

The muddled feeling only intensified, as if I was staring at an optical illusion. I put down my pen and had to hold my head in my hands to try and keep myself steady. There were worried and confused whispers coming from the fans and I could feel Charlie’s stare on me. It was only when I felt a cold shiver run through me that I knew what was going on. There was nowhere for me to run.

In a flash of time, there was a group of people surrounding me, all of them seeming from a medic team, Colton trying to pry my hand away from my face as Charlie watched with uncertainty. Slowly, I did manage to pull my hands away, coming face to face with a first aid kit I knew wouldn’t help me that one of the medics was holding.

“What’s going on?” Colton inquired directly in a clear voice.

I wanted to reply, but I couldn’t, and that was when I knew it was too late. I was past saving now.

The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with a piercing headache. All objects were cleared away from me, the necklace I had been wearing also taken off me. Charlie was holding one of my hands and used a napkin to wipe my face.

I had had a seizure and I didn’t know why.

Notes