CEX SUB CON

There is some festival going on in the cafeteria of a school. Bands play on stage and beside them there is a table with two commentators who are doing a Spanish broadcast of the performances for Mexico. I don't know the guy who has to play first but he's friends with some of my friends, and he asks me if he can use one of my instrumental songs for his set. I say OK, and sit near the front of the audience with my laptop, which is plugged into the stuff on the stage by a really obvious thin cable. The musician gets on stage and pretends he is playing the song, but it seems obvious to me that the song is mine, and that my laptop and that visible cable blatantly have something to do with the set. The audience applauds loudly and the musician grabs the microphone to thank a few people. I am not one of them. He concludes when the one song is over, and I ask some people standing around me if they think it's fucked up that he didn't thank me on the mic when he thanked other people. No one seems to care, and since I don't want to sound bitter or weird, I shut up about it.

When the show is over, everybody's eating in this cafeteria. I can see Elizabeth and all of her friends a few tables in front of me. I am by myself. Tom S., the A&R guy who I haven't talked to in quite a while, sits down next to me and starts talking to me about some music plans. Then Kiley, who is eighteen, comes over and puts her arms around me. I ask Tom if he can hold one on second while I go take care of something else and he agrees, but tells me to be real quick because he doesn't have a lot of time. Then I pick up Kiley and put her on top of Tom, who is sitting with his back against the cafeteria table and leaning back, and whom I know is married, and she rests her head on his chest and closes her eyes. Tom doesn't freak out and I am relieved, so I leave.

I go to my house and my mom tells me that I didn't wrap up some Krispy Kreme donuts like she asked me to the night before. I get a little mad and ask her why that even needs to be done. She wants me to put saran wrap around each donut and put it in the freezer. She's got a headscarf on and she's cleaning the house intensely. I blow it off and go out the door to get my sister's car. The car is at a corner that doesn't exist in my neighborhood, and it is bigger now, and it's black. Tom is laying down in it with Kiley sleeping on his chest under a purple knit blanket. I don't know what to say to Tom and he disappears. I move the blanket and find that Kiley has no shirt on. I wake her up by pinching her and she tries to put her arms around my neck again. She says she wants to hang out, and I tell her that I have to do some dumb thing for my mom and probably can't be out of the house for too long, but that I will drive her home. She thinks that's an OK idea. I ask how long it takes to get to where she's staying and she says about an hour. I know she's probably giving me a way low estimate and feel stressed. I don't know if I can be gone for three hours. I try to hint that she should find a different way home but she makes it clear she doesn't know anybody here. I decide I will take her home, so I reverse the car back down the street, to the cul-de-sac at the end of Farmfield Court, down the driveway of the house the Alhuwalia's used to live in, which now connects to Stansbury side of Manor Road, where the roads are really steep and there are massively tall trees crowding the sides of the road. We reverse far enough and I try to put the brakes on but the car keeps going backwards. I am afraid another car will come around the corner and hit us. It is hard to keep the car on the road because I can barely see around the trees. I am really worried but I calmly explain to Kiley that this sometimes happens in this car. I change the car to Drive while it is still moving but we don't stop, and we're reversing up a hill now. There's a ton of mud all over the road just up the hill, more than enough to get stuck in. I put on the emergency brake and shift the car to Park and try to steer us up against the leaves and mud on the side of the road, but the car keeps moving, and to avoid going all the way off the road, I spin the wheel and the car spins and starts moving forwards up the hill, into the mud. Kiley is obviously freaked but is not wigging out yet. The car hits the mud and keeps going, up the hill, where the road narrows and the mud deepens.