Lights flashed around the arena. The crowd screamed madly, stretching their arms toward the stage. All around me, impressive pyrotechnics sparked like geysers. The band behind me blared a pop-rock beat. It was the encore of the show, usually my favorite part, because it's so jumpy and energetic. But tonight, I just couldn't wait for it to be over, so I could go back to the hotel, fall face-down on a huge bed, and not wake up until I felt like a human again.

Don't get me wrong; I love to perform. But the downside of putting on five concerts in one week was that you didn't get much recovery time if you happened to catch, oh, I don't know, say... the flu.

I'd been battling this stupid bug for the better part of three weeks. I just couldn't seem to shake it. Lucky me, I had yet another concert to perform tomorrow night. It seemed as if my body had waited for the most hectic part of the tour to get sick.

Maybe I should explain a few things. Like why I was traveling with four other guys all over the entire North American continent, for instance. But I guess I'll start with the basics.

My name is Jack Sheridan. I'm seventeen years old, six feet tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, my favorite color is red, and I was born and raised in Athens, Virginia.

Okay, now that all that stuff is out of the way, let me tell you the interesting stuff.

I've spent the last three and a half years of my life as a member of Downtown. Downtown is this musical group of five guys, including me. And if I may take a moment for shameless self-promotion, we're an extremely popular group. We sing pop, and even though we've always been pretty successful, the past year has been an amazing roller-coaster of number one hits and awards shows and Total Request Live appearances and so on. Even we five were surprised at how well we were doing. We were singing to packed stadiums and the mobs around our hotels began to grow steadily larger and crazier. It's a bit overwhelming, but we all love the fact that we're really making it as musicians.

I guess we're what you'd call a boy band, you know, we sing pop songs and dance and most of our fans are teenage girls, that kind of thing. Come to think of it, I'm really the only one who could qualify as a boy, since all the other members are at least twenty-one. Anyway, getting back to the point, we, Downtown, were reaching the end of our North American concert tour, titled All and After, the same as our latest album. This round of concerts were truly our most exciting and exhausting to date. Even more exhausting for me, because of my lame immune system.

Speaking of which, that lame immune system was really making things tough for me. With every passing note of our encore, I felt more and more certain that I was going to throw up all over the first three rows in the stadium. Which probably wouldn't go over well as far as public relations went. Finally, the song ended, the applause exploded, the lights darkened, then shone brightly, and I was able to stumble backstage and be sick in the garbage can outside the dressing room.

"Impressive, Jack," said a voice behind me. I wiped my mouth and turned to see Peter McArthur, my bandmate and best friend, smirking at me. "I have to give you a seven point five though, because your projectile force is just not up to standard."

I gave him a dirty look, but suddenly had to turn back to the garbage can and finish what I'd started.

"Wow," said Peter, watching and sounding genuinely impressed. "Wow. What the hell did you eat?"

I finally straightened up, glared at him again, and headed into the dressing room to grab my stuff.

The dressing room was a madhouse, even though it was only me, Peter, and Brad Cavenhill, another member of Downtown, inside. You'd think after years of touring together, we could establish some sort of dressing room order, but every one of us Downtowners is perfectly capable of destroying a once-organized room by ourselves, and it only gets worse as the number of us in a room increases.

We're not all slobs. Actually, I'm really the messiest of us all. But Peter, Brad, Casey, and Tony all contribute just as much as I do to the trashing of the dressing rooms. Well, maybe not Casey so much as the others, but when comes down to an hour before showtime, we all generally throw the rules out the window and just drop our junk wherever it lands.

I made my way across the room, stopping occasionally to collect the Gameboy I'd left on the floor, a bottle of water I'd dropped in the sink and forgotten about, and my black suede jacket, which had somehow ended up dangling from a nail in the ceiling. I dumped the stuff in my duffel bag, threw my jacket on, scooped up a handful of Gameboy games and shoved them in my pocket, grabbed an orange from the table of fruit, crackers, soda, chips, cereal, and other assorted junkfood that had been provided for us, and brushed by the other guys out the door. We like to get out of the concert venue as quickly as possible, before too many people find their way down to the dressing room and start chasing us.

I ran through a parking lot as fast as my shaky stomach would allow me. I climbed onto the tour bus that would take us back to the hotel, dropped my bag on the floor and collapsed into a cushioned seat. I rested my elbows on the table in front of the seat and let my head fall into my hands.

Tony North and Casey Little had beaten me to the bus. Casey, who was

sitting across the table from me, peered at me curiously through my hands and said, "You don't look so hot. You feel okay?"

"Nope," I answered. "I think I might puke again. I would take cover if I were you."

He smiled at me, his blue-gray eyes crinkling. "I'll take my chances. You want anything?"

Actually, it sounded like this: "Ah'll take mah chances. Ya want anything?"

Casey's originally from Louisiana and he has a strong Southern accent. He's also about the nicest guy I've ever met. Casey never raises his voice, always listens to you, even if you're raving like a lunatic, and is never without a smile. Rumor has it that Casey was voted, "Most Likely To Pick Up A Hitch-Hiker," in high school because he was constantly sharing his lunch with people who'd forgotten theirs, or carrying books for someone who was on crutches, that kind of thing. Casey just can't resist helping someone out, both when they need it and when they don't. He's just thoughtful, polite, and all-around nice by nature. He's probably been that way his entire twenty-two years.

Casey pressed his hand to my forehead. "You should take some aspirin for

that fever."

"I will, Mom," I said. I rolled my eyes, but managed half a smile back and brandished my toothbrush from the depths of my duffel bag. "Right after I get the taste of two-way Whoppers out of my mouth."

I brushed my teeth and changed my clothes. I would shower back at the hotel. When I emerged from the bus's tiny bathroom, the other members of Downtown had all piled on board.

Brad Cavenhill is the oldest member of Downtown at twenty-five. He's our bass, and although he's not exactly like the father figure that all the magazine portray him as, he is the most responsible of us and he likes to make sure everything is running smoothly. For example, as the bus started moving away from the stadium, he passed out all the things the rest of us had left in the dressing room, slapped a hand against my forehead, told me I had a fever and to take some aspirin, tossed his bag into a corner, and reminded us all what was on the agenda for tomorrow. Finally, he got comfortable in the corner of the bus (I don't know why, but he always sits on the floor), and started re-hashing the concert with Casey. He's pretty easy-going mostly, but he has to get all the work out of the way before he'll play. As soon as he starts playing around though, he can be as crazy as Peter. When the two of them put their heads together, the rest of us know to watch out.

Tony North is next. He's twenty-three and would never dream of joining in Brad and Peter's practical joke sessions. On the rare occasions when we get time to ourselves to do whatever we want, he'll spend it by himself, reading or something. Right now, he was sitting in a chair opposite Casey and I at the table, scribbling away in his journal, which he's written in every single day for as long as I've known him. Occasionally, he'd glance up and pitch into Brad and Casey's conversation, but mostly, he just listened quietly with half his mind while the other half concentrated on his journal. Tony's the highest voice in Downtown and he can do this falsetto thing that's amazing. He gets ribbed sometimes for singing so high, but the fact is, he's really talented and someone has to take those high parts.

Peter McArthur, you may have realized, is the joker among us. He's twenty-one but he acts about twelve sometimes. He loves to play jokes or tease people, especially me. He's also the most outgoing and wacky person of anyone I know. He's always doing something to his hair, which I'm pretty sure is naturally black since he's half Puerto Rican and has an olive complexion and dark eyes. But I can't prove that it actually is black because he's always dying it some bright color. This week, it was teal. Peter's the best dancer in the group. He's been doing all kinds of dancing since he was five and it shows. He doesn't exactly make the rest of us look bad, but he does stand out.

Then there's me. If you're wondering where I fit into this little group, well, I'm kind of the little guy. Oh, all right, I am the little guy, but I don't make a habit of saying so. Like I said earlier, I'm seventeen, and the other guys love to kick me around, especially Peter, even though he's been my closest friend since the day I met him. I'm like the little brother they never got to torture, according to Brad. And, to look at it from another angle, they're like the older brothers I never got to annoy. Well, to be technical, I've always had an older brother, but my twin, Ben, only has a few hours over me, so it doesn't really count.

Casey found a deck of cards somewhere and he, Peter, and Brad started a Pitch tournament. I just kind of watched them and waited for the bus to get to the hotel so I could shower and go to sleep. I'd never been more tired in my life. I guess I must have looked pretty bad too, because Tony looked up from his journal and stared at me for a second. Then he put the book down, got up, and put a hand to my forehead.

The whole forehead thing was getting a little tired, but I held my tongue
(settling for an eye-roll) until Tony said, "You feel warm. You should take some aspirin."

Here's the thing. When I joined Downtown, I had just turned fourteen. So it was weird to suddenly be around a group of mostly-grown men all the time. At first I felt really, really young and immature, and I guess I was, but the others have always been great. They kind of showed me the ropes of the music business, but they were also around while I was doing a lot of growing up. Over the past three years, we've all learned how to deal with each other, how to perform together, and how to live together most of the time without killing each other. I've matured a lot since I first joined and I feel just as experienced as the others when it comes to being a member of the group. And when it comes to being, you know, just a person. What I mean is, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I'd lived away from my parents for the better part of three and a half years, but as I soon as I got a little sick, I had all four of the guys on my case, playing Mommy. They were taking the older brother thing a little too far.

That sentiment, added to the fact that I felt all-around rotten and just wanted to be left alone, was what prompted me to push Tony's hand away roughly.

"I'm fine," I insisted. "You don't need to babysit me."

Tony only smiled at my annoyed tone. "All right, take it easy, Jackie. Just looking out for the welfare of our little brother," he teased. The others laughed a little and even I cracked a smile. It's hard to be mad at Tony. Even if he was calling me Jackie, which I'd have to hurt him for later.

We (finally) reached the hotel and crept in through a back entrance to avoid crowds. I took my much-anticipated shower, threw on a t-shirt and pajama pants, and collapsed onto the soft bed. I heaved a sigh of relief, enjoying the feeling of the cool pillow against my face. My heavy eyes shut and I began to drift off...