Free Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) by S. James Nelson Page B

person leaned close to another to whisper something and gesture at me.
    They’d been talking about me. I could tell from their guilty looks.
    I first walked in on people talking about me at a hospital, at age nine. It’s happened many times since, but this time had to be the worst, because with another glance over the screens, I saw a picture of me standing on the stage. I had my guitar strapped on. In one hand I held up a little device with green lights. I looked at it with utter awe.
    Yep. They’d been talking about me. And looking at pictures of me.
    Splendid.
    “Is that really him?” someone in the crowd said.
    I lifted a hand and gave a little wave.
    “Turn off the screens,” said a voice from the far side of the room.
    A woman leaned over a desk, as if hoping I wouldn’t notice, and hit a key on a keyboard. The monitors on the far wall went black.
    “Awkward,” someone deep in the room said.
    The image of me standing there looking at the Cask stayed in my mind. The queasiness in my stomach surged. How quickly after I’d taken the look at the Cask onstage had these people known about it? Why did I have to let my mouth gape like I was a codfish?
    “Stop staring,” Agent Maynerd said to the crowd. He started forward. “You’re all acting like you’ve never seen a rock star before. Get back to work.”
    The people jerked into action, guilty looks on their faces. They began talking and working on their computers again. The big screens didn’t turn back on.
    As we continued on down an aisle between desks, I realized where I was—in a SOaP office.
    “It’s much dirtier here than I expected,” I said.
    Both Mom and Agent Maynerd shot me dark looks, but no one else seemed to care about my little joke—which was all the funnier because it was a complete lie. The place looked like the cleaning crew passed through eight times a day. No, ten.
    A series of glass walls lined the back and far side of the room, some with offices inside. They took me to one with an oblong table surrounded by a dozen leather chairs, where I got another big surprise.
    Dad waited there.
    He stood at the head of the table, and with a smile came forward to greet me with a hug.
    After the cancer, after my parents separated and before I became a rock star and could travel at will, I only saw him a few times a year. Christmas, summer, my birthday. He’d gone back East, to D.C., while Mom stayed on the West Coast. I visited him in D.C. whenever I could. The city had become one of my favorite places in the world.
    We hugged then stood back and apart, lifted our hands as if we held guitars, and played the air for several seconds. Then, in unison, we pretended to hold the guitars by the neck and smash them down onto the ground.
    As usual, Mom grunted. “What a senseless waste of perfectly good air guitars.”
    She always said that. I think she was jealous that I didn’t smash air guitars with her.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked Dad.
    “I came as fast as I could,” he said. “When I found out that you’d gotten hold of a Cask, I knew I needed to come.”
    I frowned. It took a day to fly from D.C. to L.A. I’d only actually gotten the Cask about three hours before. If that.
    “How did you get here so fast?”
    He shrugged and smiled. “How was your first concert?”
    I couldn’t help but grin. “It was awesome.”
    “I always loved being on stage,” he said, shaking his head. “I loved the crowd and the lights and the energy. It must have been outstanding with ninety thousand people.”
    “I could hardly see or hear them—”
    “I know,” he said, his face still beaming. “The lights in your face and the buds in your ears. But you could feel it, couldn’t you? You could feel the energy of the crowd.”
    “It was amazing,” I said.
    “I’d hoped that everything would go just perfect for you. I really wanted to come.”
    Agent Maynerd cleared this throat. “This is a very touching reunion, but I need to talk with