[Chapter FOURTEEN]

“You may now worship the ground I walk on!” Ryan cried as he walked in, completely unannounced, to Andrea’s apartment.

Andrea, startled by his sudden entrance, leapt up from the couch, where just a second ago, she had been flipping through the TV channels, completely at peace and relaxed.

Because of the time that work and practice out of her schedule, the few times that Andrea could just sit and relax were precious to her and not something to waste. Besides sleeping, Andrea was almost always doing something, and balancing work and her crew had proved to be do-able, it was just difficult and very stressful. So, of course, seeing as this was an important time for her, her best friend Ryan just had to ruin it.

“Remind me to not give you a key to wherever I move to next,” Andrea spat as she collapsed back onto the couch, trying to catch her breath after being scared out of her wits.

Ryan, grinning from ear to ear, ignored her mood and literally jumped onto the couch next to her. However, he didn’t say anything. He just stared at Andrea, the stupid, perpetually happy look on his face.

“What do you want?” Andrea sighed tiredly after she decided she couldn’t take much more of his grinning. It was obvious that Ryan had something to say, he had just been waiting for Andrea to ask. “It had better be important,” Andrea interrupted as Ryan opened his mouth to speak. “Especially since you didn’t bother to knock like you should have.”

Ryan managed, to Andrea’s horror, to grin wider. “I told you,” he said. “You can worship me.”

Andrea groaned. “Really, Ryan? You essentially break into my house just so you can announce  that you’ve decided to play God today? You think that just because you’re making steady money now that you can get all self-absorbed on me?”

Ryan had—finally—broken into the world of professional comedy. He had found a place that offered him a set once a week, and now comedy club owners were coming to him, instead of the other way around. Andrea was really proud of him; she knew that this had been Ryan’s dream for a really long time. But, if it meant that Ryan changed his personality for the worse, Andrea didn’t want it, however selfish that was of her.

“No…” Ryan sang, still smiling. “This is something that I did for you…”

Andrea, intrigued (as well as a little relieved) sat up a little straighter.

Ryan reached around behind him, and though Andrea couldn’t see him properly, she knew that he was reaching for his jeans’ back pocket. “Do you remember that school you competed at? The one with the ridiculous auditorium?”

Andrea watched Ryan’s hand as he brought his hand back around, but it was holding an envelope. It had been folded a few times so it could fit into Ryan’s pocket, but he started unfolding it now, very slowly, watching Andrea watch him. “Yeah…” Andrea answered quietly.

“Did you see the bulletin board just outside the entrance to the auditorium? In the lobby?”

“No…”

The more Ryan asked his questions, the more curious Andrea got. She could tell that Ryan was just about to burst, trying to contain his excitement. “Do you remember making me record that performance?”

“I remember paying you for that too,” Andrea growled, shooting her best friend a look. She was frustrated with how long Ryan was dragging this out. It felt like they were five year olds and one had candy and was teasing the other. “What’s going on, Ryan?”

He finally handed Andrea the unfolded envelope, a reflex to Andrea’s anger. “there was something on the bulletin board that caught my eye. It required a video submission, so I sent that one in.”

Andrea only partly listened to Ryan as she ripped the envelope open eagerly. It was obvious that Ryan had already opened it once and read the contents, but Andrea didn’t care.

She pulled out the letter, grateful that she hadn’t torn that in her excitement. She unfolded it, taking a deep breath in the process, a desperate attempt to calm herself.

She scanned the first paragraph, absorbing what it said more than comprehending. “We won something?!” she cried.

“Sort of,” Ryan answered, the grin still on his face as he watched Andrea’s reaction. “They think that you guys are good enough to compete in their own battle/competition thing!”

“And what do we get if we win that?” Andrea asked. Ryan had been the one to enter them, so she assumed that he would know the prize.

Apparently, she guessed correctly, as Ryan was bouncing in his seat, unable to contain his excitement. “You guys will be in a music video, and if you do that well, you could get offered more jobs!”

Andrea, though slightly annoyed that Ryan would enter her crew into a competition without her knowledge, was excited. This would give her and her crew the opportunity to actually do what they loved for a living, instead of all of them working dead-end jobs so they could make ends meet while they spent every other waking second practicing.

“I wanted to enter you in this so that even if you guys didn’t make it, there was no way anyone could say that you missed an opportunity. Especially one that you probably would have passed up with your old crew,” Ryan told her, pointing at the letter. “But the fact that you guys actually got in makes everything so much sweeter!”

Andrea stopped staring at the letter and looked up at her best friend. “Thank you, Ryan. Seriously. Thank you.”

“Do I get a hug?” Ryan asked, holding his arms out.

Andrea laughed, but complied, throwing her arms around Ryan’s neck.

“One thing though,” Ryan told her after they parted. “It looks like you’ll need a sponsor. Or at least someone that will pay for things, since this isn’t your regular little battle that happens down the block. This will definitely get expensive.”

Andrea nodded, looking down at her hands. She understood what Ryan meant, and who he was implying that she should ask.

It would be tricky, but Andrea was up for it, considering what was on the line.

-           -           -           -

For once in her life, Andrea was glad that she had been a difficult child during her teen years. All the climbing in and out of windows and hiding knowledge—as well a a pretty accurate mental topographical map of the area—she had gathered during that time was actually coming in handy, thought she couldn’t help but find the irony of her having to sneak into a house that she had actually helped pay for, particularly when the front door was unlocked and her family still living inside.

Nevertheless, after sneaking over to the left side of the house, she climbed up the wood pile that sat right next to the house, a remnant of when they had cleared the land to build the house. Her father had always said that they would use it as firewood, but with the Los Angeles weather, a good fire was hardly ever necessary, plus, they had forgotten about the wood when they got to building the fireplaces, and ended up installing gas. So the wood stayed where it was against the garage, now just a decoration—and a convenient way to get onto the roof.

Andrea had to jump slightly to reach the roof’s edge, and no matter how many times she did it, it still scared her. She was always afraid that she would miss and slip off the wood and tumble to the ground. But that hadn’t happened yet, and it didn’t happen now, years after the last time she had done it.

She pulled herself onto the garage roof, the dancer in her playing a part. After standing up, she walked, carefully, across the slants of the garage roof and onto the roof of the actual house. Her bedroom was the first room next to the garage on the second floor, so all she had to do was walk across.

Once in front of her bedroom window, she knelt and ran her fingers around the frame of the window, hoping that her step-mother hadn’t found and removed the mechanism that Andrea had used for years to get into her room from the outside, even when it was locked. Considering that the window screen was still missing (Andrea had hidden it long ago), she figured that her “key” was still there.

It was.

A line of clear, plastic string was sitting on the frame, seemingly innocent. It was almost impossible to see, but it was really helpful. Andrea pulled on it, and the window unlocked, actually surprising Andrea a little. She had oiled the hinges and locks every week when she lived here, just to make sure her key still worked. Apparently she had done that unnecessarily.

She had made this key after an unfortunate incident when the housekeeper had unknowingly locked Andrea out of her window. Andrea spent the resulting grounding time drilling a small hole to outside, taking the plastic string, securing it properly to the lock, and making sure it worked from the outside. It was—and still is—the perfect way to get into her room.

Feeling slightly accomplished, Andrea slid the window open and crawled into her old room.

It obviously hadn’t been touched since she had left by anyone except the housekeeper, who cleaned the room despite no one going in or out.

Resisting the urge to go through her stuff that was still in the room, she walked across the room to the door, opened it slowly, and peeked out, hoping that no one was in the hallway. She knew that her step-mom wasn’t at home, as Andrea had waited until she saw the woman leave for somewhere, but Andrea didn’t want to take too many chances. For all she knew, anyone in the house would see her and call the police, even though they would know who she was.

She didn’t see anyone, so she hurried to the stairs, quickly going down both flights of stairs to get to the basement.

Once in the basement, she looked again for people before walking down the hallway. She walked past a few doors until she got to the one she wanted.

She knocked lightly, but not before taking a large breath. Judgment time had come.

“Come in,” a voice on the other side of the door called.

Timidly, Andrea did so, and found her father sitting in front of a computer in his familiar large office.

“Hey,” Andrea said quietly, not really sure of the reaction she would get.

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