Chapter Seven — The Trouble with Having Friends (continued)

Junia Kade had cleared her kitchen table for an operation of exceptional importance. This had involved moving a half-repaired portable radio, two screwdrivers, and a mug that had been holding assorted washers since February.

In their place sat a printed arena map, two phones, a packet of concert earplugs, and a bowl of pretzels.

Luna studied the map like a general contemplating an invasion.

“Here,” she said, planting a pretzel at the very front of the general-admission floor. “That's where we go.”

Junia moved the pretzel six inches sideways. “Here. That's where the sound won't turn your bones into soup.”

“I'm trying to see VESPER, not attend a symposium on acoustics.”

“I can do both. You can apparently only do one, and you've chosen visual access to a man's knees.”

“Those are important knees.”

“I'm sure his orthopedic surgeon agrees.”

On Luna's phone were two paid general-admission tickets for the May twenty-fifth Philadelphia show, bought through the official sale weeks earlier. She had checked the confirmation three times already. Junia made her check again, not because she doubted the purchase, but because Luna had recently managed to misplace her library badge inside a bag containing exactly one book.

“Two valid admissions,” Junia said. “No magical invitation. No backstage nonsense. And absolutely no asking strangers online which service corridor the artist uses.”

“I'm a fan, not a jewel thief.”

“You posted a twelve-part legal argument against an imaginary woman and her beverage glass.”

“That glass had counsel.”

Junia tapped the map. “We get there early enough to clear ordinary security without sprinting. Once we're inside, we take a look at where the speaker arrays are pointing. If the center crush is horrible, we shift to the side. If the side sightline is blocked, we move back.”

“Back?” Luna repeated, horrified.

“The band doesn't become less talented because you've stepped behind three strangers.”

“The point is proximity.”

“The point is surviving a concert with your hearing and your shoes.”

Junia held up the earplugs. They came in little cases attached to a key ring. Luna regarded them as though they were medical devices for the elderly.

“These aren't foam plugs from a building site,” Junia said. “They're for music. You get the show without turning Thursday's library workshop into an exercise in lip-reading.”

“Thursday's a week away.”

“Your ears don't know that.”

Luna reluctantly took a case. Junia slid the second onto her own keys, then checked the arena's current bag rules on the ticket page rather than trusting a fan diagram someone had drawn six months earlier.

“Small bag. Phone charged. Sensible shoes. We use the entry listed on the ticket, not whichever gate looks most glamorous. And we decide where to meet if the crowd separates us.”

Luna sighed. “You take the romance out of everything.”

“I repair radios for a living. I know what happens when people assume the wiring will sort itself out.”

The practical argument should have been tedious. Instead it reminded Luna why she wanted Junia beside her when the doors opened. Junia would fight a malfunctioning ticket scanner with exactly the same stubborn dignity she gave a dying radio, and she would still be shouting along when the music started.

Luna pushed the pretzel from the center to the outer edge of the floor. “We try for the forward side section. Good angle, decent sound. If it's too packed, we go farther back together.”

Junia considered the concession. “And no getting separated just so you can spend thirty seconds closer to a man's mask.”

“Forty-five seconds.”

“Luna.”

“Fine. We stay together.”

Junia added their agreed meeting point to a note, along with the transit route and a reminder to check official entry guidance again on show day. Neither of them mistook a plan for guaranteed front-row access. The tickets were real. Whatever view they earned would be decided by the crowd and the doors.

Luna reached for a pretzel, then stopped when her phone lit up with a picture from her own camera roll: the little guest-artifact card she'd made for Asher on Sunday. She hadn't noticed the thumbnail sitting beneath the ticket confirmation.

Junia noticed her expression. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Your nothing has a suspicious smile.”

Luna turned the phone face down. “I kissed him.”

Junia went perfectly still. Then she set down her pen with extraordinary care.

“You waited four days to tell me that?”

“I had things happening.”

“Yes. A crime against glassware, apparently. When?”

“Sunday. At my door.”

Junia looked toward the ceiling. “And I've spent this entire evening arguing with a woman who has personally kissed a perfectly available man while demanding to make eye contact with an unavailable one from twenty feet away.”

“Not unavailable,” Luna corrected automatically. “Unidentified romantic circumstances.”

“You are beyond the reach of modern medicine.”

Luna laughed and stole the pretzel she'd used to mark the stage. Junia reclaimed the map before her friend could eat the entire front-row strategy.

By the time they finished, the tickets were saved where both could retrieve them, the entry plan was sensible, and Luna had accepted that an unobstructed view from farther back could beat being flattened at the barricade.

She still intended to scream when VESPER appeared.

Junia, who had never disputed that part, was already planning to scream louder.