New York: Allie's War, Early Years

"They got asked to open for one mega-band. That doesn't mean they're rolling in the cash."

"Why are you defending him?" Cass said. "You know it's crap detail. And he's blown you off since we got on the plane. He could at least have offered to meet us for breakfast...or sit with you for part of the flight, for that matter..."

I couldn't really argue with that, so I shrugged, keeping my mouth shut.

I really didn't want to get into it with Cass about Jaden again. She really was convinced he was getting a big head from the band stuff, and slowly turning into a dick as a result.

Hell, maybe she was even right.

But Cass hadn't sat in dank, one-room apartments with him for years, either, listening to Jaden play the same riffs over and over again as he tried to write songs. Nor had she been one of four fans sitting in for laundry mat and coffee shop shows, usually where the other three people listening were either washing their dirty socks or one of a handful of Jaden's pals from music school. Cass also hadn't seen him dragging his junkie drummer out of the practice space by his shirt after he stole half of their sound equipment and sold it for stash. Nor had she heard the drag-down fights the rest of them got into, about everything from set lists to costumes to who'd last paid for parking and who broke whose guitar case and on and on.

So the last thing I wanted to do was get on Jaden's case now, when the band was finally enjoying some real wins. Eye of Morris' tracks were climbing on all the college and even the mainstream charts. They got their big break when Jaden gave a few songs away to an indy filmmaker, who ended up making a sleeper hit that catapulted the title song into the top 100 in a week's time, and then into the top 50.

Last I checked, it was still rising, and Jaden was riding the high of that, too. Given everything he'd gone through, I was fine with letting him bask for a while. As long as he didn't go completely off the deep-end, he had a right to be a little excessive.

"So?" Cass said, making a show of checking her Felix the Cat watch, which I happened to know was broken anyway. "Do we wait until he's an hour late? Or is a half-hour long enough?"

"Chill out, Cass," Jon said, sighing a little. "You're like a harpy right now."

"A harpy?" Cass said, turning to glare at him. "You should want to be out on the streets, too...isn't this like gay mecca? The place where you can let your freak flag fly?"