Page 34 of A Little Christmas! 4: Song
“Are you going to plan more of them?” Zachy asked. “Like an actual tour and stuff?”
“Naa,” Song replied, grabbing Zachy’s other hand. “At least not anytime soon. We’d love to do a few weekends outside of the city from time to time, just to see how other people respond to our music, but I think we’re a long way from trying to take it across the country.”
“What he said,” Decon replied. “I love the idea of making music and sharing it with anyone who wants to listen, but I don’t think I could ever handle living out of a bus and constantly hopping from city to city. I already miss my dogs, and we haven’t even been gone a day.”
“It’s not an easy life,” Daddy said, “and it can seriously shorten the lifespan of a band if all its members aren’t mentallyprepared for that kind of commitment. Seems like you guys are aware of that though, which shows maturity. I’m impressed. A lot of guys your age would be trying to rush out on the road without thinking through the logistics of being away from family, friends, and your support systems.”
“No shit,” Decon said. “I’m too new to this whole anger management regimen to want to be too far away from my sponsor. Even this is pushing it a little, to be honest. It’s kinda why I jumped at the chance to spend the downtime with you guys, so I wasn’t out there trying to navigate this insanity alone.”
“Naa, we’ve just gotta navigate this insanity together,” Zachy said, giggling as Daddy unfolded the map and let out a long, low whistle.
“No bull,” Daddy muttered as he turned the map, studying it from different angles before shaking his head and struggling to fold it back up. “Song, how about you pick a direction, and we’ll start there.”
“Left,” Song declared, leading them in that direction. “I hear water. Maybe it’s a fountain.”
“Left it is,” Daddy declared.
“Ohh, look, it’s a Billy goat with snow all over its back,” Zachy remarked, cocking his head to study it. “It looks so at home out here. We had one on the show once, and it tried to eat Oswald.”
“Oswald the Owl?” Decon asked. “Oh my god, my nephew is in love with that show. If he’s over when it’s on, he drags me to the living room so I can watch it with him. I’ve never seen the goat episode, though; I bet it was hilarious. You work on that show?”
“Yup,” Daddy said, so Zachy didn’t have to. “As part of the sound crew.”
“Oh, that’s badass. I bet you get to see a lot from the booth.”
“There’s never a dull moment, not with all the animal guest stars they bring in,” Daddy replied.
Zachy was grateful for the way he’d phrased it, making it seem like Zachy worked in the sound booth with him, thus sparing him from having to think up a lie when his daddy knew that he wasn’t a very good liar.
“Have any of them ever gotten loose on the set?” Decon asked.
Snickering, Zachy burst into full-on giggles as he was hit with a memory from a very recent episode. The look on his daddy’s face when Gage turned and narrowed his eyes at him just made Zachy laugh even harder.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Decon said.
“Me too,” Song said. “You gotta share with the rest of the class now.”
“Definitely,” Papa said. “Because I’m seeing a lot of scowls coming from a particular direction, and what that’s telling me is that someone had an encounter with the escapee that he’d managed to keep secret from the rest of us.”
“Only because a certain little imp hadn’t gotten around to blurting it out yet,” Daddy grumbled.
“Two of the tarantulas got loose,” Zachy explained in between giggles. “Huge ones too.”
Song gasped, and Zachy could feel his hand quiver. “You had big-ass fuzzy spiders wandering around free in the studio?”
“Yup,” Zachy said.
“How can you laugh about that?” Song asked. “Oh my goddess, I’d have been scrambling up someone’s back screaming my head off and gripping their hair so they couldn’t put me back down again.”
It was a good thing that there were few other people in the space, because Zachy lost it completely, his giggles turning to loud, snorting laughter.
“Dude,” Decon said. “You could climb me and cling to me all you wanted, ‘cause my big ass would be screaming too and looking for someone even bigger to climb.”
“I don’t even like little spiders,” Song declared while Zachy struggled to catch his breath. “If I see one in the room, the room is theirs forever, especially if they disappear behind something. That’s a huge nope for me. Like, hella nope, no way, you gotta find it and get it out of there with proof of disposal before I’ll even think about going back in there again.”
“And even then, that’s iffy,” Decon added. “’cause where there’s one, there are probably more of them, and I don’t wanna meet one bigger and cringier than the previous one.”
“I love spiders,” Zachy remarked when he could finally suck in enough air. “I’ll catch them and put them outside for you the way I helped catch the tarantulas.”