Chapter 17: Every Girl in School
Galveston County High SchoolAuditorium — BackstageFive Minutes Earlier
"Sheldon, are you absolutely sure you want to go on stage?"
Adam asked it for the third time. "The keyboard can go right behind the curtain. The sound carries through just fine. Nobody would even know—"
"Why would I stay backstage?"
Sheldon looked genuinely puzzled.
"Yeah, why?" Emmett echoed.
Juno's eyes moved to Adam with an expression that said she already suspected the answer.
"Because—" Adam chose his words carefully "—you have stage fright. Serious stage fright. If you walk out there in front of that crowd, there are exactly two ways it ends. You freeze and run, or your legs give out and you go down on stage."
Sheldon stared at him. "How did you know I have stage fright?"
Because I know more embarrassing stories about you than you've had time to live yet.
"Mrs. Cooper mentioned it," Adam said smoothly. "Why don't you just peek through the curtain first? Get a feel for it."
He said it knowing exactly what would happen. He'd actually have preferred Sheldon on stage — the difference between on and off was significant — but Sheldon's stage fright wasn't a minor hurdle. It was a full stop.
"That's reasonable," Sheldon said, and walked to the curtain. He pulled it back an inch and looked out.
On stage, Cash was mid-performance. The crowd was packed and loud, bodies pressed together, screaming along to every chorus.
Sheldon stood very still.
His pupils shrank. The sound seemed to get further away and closer at the same time. His heart rate climbed in a way that felt completely disconnected from anything he could reason through.
He let the curtain fall.
"You were right," he said, walking back to the group with a slightly unfocused expression. "Backstage is fine."
Juno and Emmett said nothing.
Adam gave Juno a look. She returned a small nod.
"Take some deep breaths," Adam said. "And if you need to sit this one out entirely, that's okay. We've got it."
"I can do it." Sheldon took several slow, deliberate breaths. The color started returning to his face. "Backstage."
"Backstage it is."
Adam moved Sheldon's keyboard to a position where the sound would carry cleanly through the curtain, checked the setup, and then heard the host's voice wrapping up the introduction.
"—and now, please welcome Hard Candy, performing a semi-original song tonight!"
Adam walked out first, just him and his guitar, and let the opening notes breathe before anything else happened.
The song was a rock ballad — slow to start, emotionally open, building. Adam had spent most of the week reconstructing it from memory, working from fragments he'd had rattling around in his head since long before this life, and he'd made it his own in the places where his memory had gaps.
The auditorium went quiet in a way that was completely different from Cash's performance. Cash had generated noise. This generated stillness.
Cash, watching from the side of the stage, registered the change in the room and went very still himself.
The girls in the front rows weren't screaming. They were watching with the expression of people who had forgotten they were in a high school gym.
The song built. By the time the chorus arrived and the full band came in behind Adam — Emmett on drums, Juno on bass, Sheldon's keyboard floating through the curtain — the emotional shift hit the room like a weather change. The quiet broke all at once into something enormous.
Not just the girls. Parents. Teachers. Guys who had come ready to cheer for Cash. Everyone.
Cash stood at the side of the stage and said nothing.
One of the Emotion band members leaned toward another. "That melody — doesn't that remind you of something? Like early Guns N' Roses, before the first album came out?"
"Yeah," the other one said quietly. "But the chorus is—"
"Different. Better."
Guns N' Roses had formed in 1985 and released their debut album in 1987. They were the hottest band in American rock right now. But the song Adam was performing had only been played in small venues during their earliest days — before any official recording, before mainstream exposure. Only serious, deeply committed rock fans would recognize even the outline of it.
The Emotion band members were exactly that. Which meant they understood the full weight of what they were watching — a sixteen-year-old at a high school homecoming covering a song that barely existed yet, and doing it in a way that felt definitive.
Adam caught their expressions from the stage and felt the specific private amusement of someone working with information nobody else in the room has.
He also noticed, scanning the crowd during the final chorus, the sheer number of girls looking at him in a way that was going to significantly complicate the next few weeks of his life.
This is a lot, he thought. This is genuinely a lot.
The performance ended. The auditorium stayed loud for a long time.
The Emotion band members gathered around Cash.
"So," one of them said carefully. "About the bet."
Cash was quiet for a long moment, jaw tight, staring at the stage where Adam was still standing.
"We run," Cash said.
"Cash—"
"We said we'd run, so we run." He looked around at his band. "Tonight happened. It's going to get around regardless. If we back out of the bet on top of it, that's two losses in one night. At least this way we only lose one thing and we keep our word." He paused. "Rock and roll has a tradition of not caring what people think. Let's act like it."
His band members groaned collectively.
Later that night, under the cover of darkness and accompanied by the laughter and disbelief of what felt like half the school, Cash Goodman led Emotion on ten laps around the building.
Adam watched, genuinely impressed despite himself.
That actually took guts.
Monday Morning
Adam arrived at school and immediately understood that something had shifted.
The clusters of girls near the front entrance. The looks that followed him through the gate. The whispered conversations that paused and restarted as he passed.
"Hi, Adam."
"Hey, Adam!"
"Hi, Adam—"
He kept walking, nodding, smiling the specific smile of someone who recognizes a situation and is already calculating how to navigate it without making anything worse.
This was going to be an interesting semester.
End of Chapter 17
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