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dressing room was tiny with a tile floor, adding to the coldness, and few facilities. There was a toilet and an ancient shower, and a mini fridge full of cold water. The furniture looked like a bunch of people had just offered random bits of their old stuff from their houses. There was an ugly patterned sofa, and four armchairs, all in different colours.
    And I thought my hotel room was drab.
    I wasn’t sure of my role when we got to gigs. Was I supposed to help them carry things? Or just stay out of the way and… I don’t know… deliver drinks to the roadies? When I asked Drew, he laughed. “It’s up to you, Luce. If you want to help, you can, but you don’t have to. If you want to wait backstage and write, that’s fine.”
    “Maybe I’ll just watch and write for today. When I know what the heck I’m doing, I might be more useful.”
    He laughed. “Okay. Go grab a seat, and get used to seeing this happen almost every night for the next month.”
    I smiled, wondering how soon I’d get bored of seeing beefy men lugging heavy equipment. As I clocked one of the Parisian men who had been roped in to help, his biceps straining against his t-shirt as he carried a heavy speaker, I figured it would be a while until I tired of this.
    Instead of heading backstage, I moved to the back of the bar and sat down beside the sound desk. There was nobody around and I could easily move if I was in the way. I pulled my journal and pen out of my bag and rested them on my lap while I watched as my friends, plus a bunch of people I didn’t know, started setting up the stage. It was a lot more complex than I’d imagined. There were so many things to be set up, not to mention the tuning up of the instruments which would happen a little later.
    That was what I wrote about in my journal. The realities of being a roadie. Fans only ever see the end product – a set stage and a great show. Beforehand, there are technical issues to be ironed out, and the occasional bit of drama when a roadie can’t follow a direction, or spends more time tweeting photos of the band members when he’s supposed to be working.
    Yeah, Mr Biceps turned out to be all muscle and no brain.
    Another new thing I learned about that I’d never seen before was the band’s pre-show rituals. In the dressing room ten minutes before the gig started, my friends turned into completely different people as they prepared to put on a show. Once again I found myself sitting in the corner observing while Drew paced the room with his head down. Joey was bouncing up and down and loosening his wrists, and Mack was holding his guitar, running his fingers over the strings in silent practice. Jason stood in the centre of the small room taking long, deep breaths and blowing them out slowly. I wanted to ask why they seemed so nervous when they’d done this so many times before but I didn’t want to interrupt. Two minutes before they were due on stage, they all snapped out of their own head spaces and went in for a group hug.
    I chuckled, and Jason turned to me. “What?”
    “Sorry.” I shook my head. “That was probably the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Where do you go when you’re all zoned out like that?”
    “We’re trying to get into the right mind frame for performing. We can’t just go out there from doing everyday stuff. Well, we can, but the show is never as good when we haven’t had this time to centre ourselves and think about what’s coming up. These people have paid for a show, and we’re going to make sure we give them that.”
    Another side to Jason. I’d never thought he didn’t take his music seriously, but I’d also never witnessed just how serious this was for him. The whole “getting in the zone” thing was new to me. Music meant everything to him, and his passion sparked something inside me. Something that made me want to jump on him. Immediately.
    “Gotta go,” he said, although I thought I spotted a sparkle in his green eyes, as if he knew