The Van Pact

36: Valerie

            "I'm sorry," Stevie said, like a doofus.

            "You could say that twice," Sam stood back up. "It's always mine he drinks, you know? I don't mind sharing but when somebody consistently takes advantage of your generosity, time and again?"

            I didn't understand what was happening, exactly. Why hadn't we been arrested yet?

            Sam stared at the bottles on the floor and rubbed the back of his neck.

            "Well," he pulled an iPhone out of one of his pants pockets. He sucked his lips into his mouth. The same expression Stevie makes all the time. Maybe it really was an Irish face, and not something her family invented. "I better call security." He scrolled through his contact list.

            Okay, now comes the part we get arrested, I thought. Better avoid that. But before I could work my DiPaolo charm, Stevie blurted out something I didn't expect to hear.

            "It was an accident!" she pleaded. "We're so sorry!"

            Sam looked up from his phone, and seemed to notice Stevie for the first time.

            "Hey," he said, "you're just a kid."

            "I'm a huge fan!" she insisted.

            He slipped his phone back into his pocket.

***

            "It's a good thing all we got left in the minibar is ginger beer then," Sam Mullingar handed me and Stevie each a can. "That way you couldn't have gotten into any drunken shenanigans." He sat down on a red chair opposite the plush beige couch, on which we sat. "You've already got into enough shenanigans sober."

            If only he knew, I smirked.

            "So," he scratched the skin between his beautiful eyebrows with his thumb. "You're not going to believe this, but the last people who broke into our bus were fifty-seven and sixty-one. You two are a bit young for our usual crowd, to be honest."

            I guzzled my ginger beer. Valerie DiPaolo, speechless? A rare happening, indeed. The planets must all be aligned. Oh Lordy, I was becoming Stevie with her horoscopes. Venus in retrograde, conjunct the transiting north node of the Moon, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

            "If you're fans, though," Sam set his elbows on his knees, "I bet you have some questions. Lay em on me." He made a come-hither motion with his hands.

            I looked at Stevie. She had turned tomato when Sam first arrived and had only gotten blisteringly red since. I decided to take control of the situation, because who knew whether she could. After all, her progress with Jesse had come inconsistently. Shouldn't be different with Sam.

            "I got one," I lifted one of my index fingers. "Why did you come back to the bus, like, twenty-five minutes before your concert's supposed to start?"

            "Valerie," Stevie punched my thigh, "that's not what he meant."

            "Oh right," Sam jumped out of the chair in which he had been sitting, and pulled a duffle bag down from an overhead storage compartment. He plopped it onto the bus floor, and rifled through one of the shallow pockets on the top. He took out a teal beaded necklace and hung it round his neck.

            "A good luck charm," he explained, as he unbuttoned his shirt, stuffed the necklace beneath his collar, and re-buttoned.

            "Are those rosary beads?" Stevie asked.