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for Tom’s phone call. We’re worried. Why the silence? Has Tom decided to ditch us? If so, why? He’s got nothing to complain about. We’ve been with him for a year. We’ve put on more than a hundred shows. A pretty impressive track record if you ask me.
    As for him, he got (actually took) his twenty-five per cent as set out in the contract. Plus the $6,000 for the CD . He can’t possibly have lost money on us.
    We’re a far cry from the gloomy predictions he made when we first talked about making a CD . There’s no denying that Tom’s a shrewd businessman. In a few short weeks, he trained an impressive number of roaming student teams recruited from the different high schools, and gave them the job of selling our CD for a fifteen per cent commission.
    Going by the numbers for my school, our CD sold not in the hundreds but in the thousands. All the more likely since none of us was able to verify the number of CD s produced. One thousand, two, five?
    I’m not trying to say we’re Tom’s cash cows or anything, but I’m pretty sure he’s made at least $20,000 off us. As a matter of fact, the gears ran smoothly while he himself had next to nothing to do.
    So how to explain his disappearing act? Is he following some hot tip? Has he gone bankrupt? Anything is possible. How to know? Only he can tell us ...
    Today we’re gonna party! We’re heading over together to see U2 ’s show. A big deal. It’s going to be an awesome scene with a sound system loud enough to burst fifty thousand fans’ eardrums.
    So as to get our fill, our band bought the best tickets in the place. Crazy expensive. But Montreal must be full of crazy fans these days because the show sold out! And black market prices are demented. Scalpers are raking in the dough. Five times the face value for floor seats. And people are snapping them up. It’s insane.
    There’s no way we’d ever sell our tickets. Even if we were offered $1,000, we’d say no! We didn’t spend a night sleeping outside for nothing. That’s just what we did: we camped out overnight to be sure to get the best seats as soon as the box office opened.
    The show starts the minute we walk inside. Have you ever seen fifty thousand people crammed together? It’s mayhem! Sometimes it feels like the place will give under all the pressure, collapsing into a cloud of dust.
    The crowd’s excitement holds us captive. There’s a lot of aggression in the air, no one really knows why. It wouldn’t take much for a rampage to start. You can feel it. You can see it. Everyone’s holding their breath.
    At the same time, they’re all hoping for a bit of drama. Everyone wants to witness something out of the ordinary. A riot. To be able to say once the storm dies down, “I was there. It was terrifying! In the space of a few minutes, the powderkeg exploded. There were fireworks everywhere. Real dynamite. Everyone throwing punches. Blood everywhere. People shouting. Girls screaming. Blades glinting in the dark. It was wild.”
    Fortunately, that’s not what happens. There is no riot, but you can feel the electricity in the air. Zap, zap. We’re all on edge, feverish, agitated, waiting for U2 to whip the crowd into a frenzy, carry us away with its beat. The band had better start soon or the whole place will lift off into the air like a helium balloon.
    There’s already some pushing and shoving going on in the crowd. A few fights have broken out. The police intervene. Guys and girls with frozen smiles, blank stares. Stoned out of their minds. Floating above the others.
    Then the four of them appear, superb, electric, on the huge lit stage. With a single cry, the crowd goes nuts. Sending them flying across the stage. Like crickets. Kangaroos. Gurus. Bono runs toward us, his arm clasped over his heart.
    He’s got a broken forearm, but that doesn’t cramp his style. He’s as