Chapter 14: Boos

I stood there with the microphone at my chin and let them boo.

It went on longer than I would have believed a crowd could keep it up.

Jude stepped half a pace closer, so his shoulder touched mine.

He bent to the mic stand and said, "Okay, that's enough."

The boos got louder.

"Hey," he said. "Hey. Let her."

They did not let her.

I put my free hand on his chest, flat, over his heart.

He stopped talking.

I shook my head at him, a small movement.

Something in his face broke open, and then he nodded and stepped back.

It was my stage now, for as long as I could stand it.

I let my eyes move across the faces in the pit.

They were so young.

A girl in the front row had glitter on her cheeks and a Hollow Pines shirt I had probably sold her in Cleveland.

She was screaming at me with her whole face.

A boy next to her had his phone up, filming, and his mouth was twisted.

Behind them, an older man in a ball cap was laughing with his arm around his wife.

Then something flew out of the dark and hit the stage at my feet.

It was a T-shirt, balled up tight.

It slid across the boards and stopped against my boot.

The crowd roared with a kind of delighted horror.

I looked down.

I bent over, slowly, with the mic against my chest, and I picked it up.

I shook it out.

It was black, with the tour dates in white on the back and a little tag at the neck.