“And forever.” I grab my guitar. “One last time to give it hell,” I say, then walk onstage.
When I enter the column of light, the audience applauds. I wait for them to quiet before I strum the opening progressionof the last song we wrote for the album—my favorite. “Tomorrow Is the Beginning of Forever.”
“You were born of me,” I sing, my voice raw but quiet. It rever-berates through the stadium. “Blood of my blood, bone of my bone.”
Behind me, across floor-to-ceiling video screens, light explodes. There’s a collective gasp from the audience. I’ve got my back to it, but I know what they’re seeing: all around me, larger than life, are videos of Ginny. A different one for every screen, all playing at the same time, Ginny everywhere you look. Formal videos taken by a videographer, Ginny walking across the graduation stage in her blue Bonita Vista High School robe, Ginny seven years old at a cousin’s wedding, playing flower girl. Silly home videos of her at the dinner table with brownie all over her face; clapping and riding on my father’s shoulders through the backyard. Video from Ripper’s phone, a close-up of Ginny sleeping peacefully on the tour bus with a giant, blurred-out dick on her face. Video from Kenny of her stretched out over Kenny’s legs, trying to do a yoga move but failing, then rolling with laughter. Ginny staring into the ocean at dawn, her surfboard under one arm, hair streaming in the wind. I know that in a moment she’ll turn her gaze to the camera and smile brighter than the sun. I know because I was there, because I’m the person she was smiling at.
I was there. She was there. We were here together.I press my foot down on my pedal, hit my strings with the force of my longing. All I want is for people to know.
Two more spotlights come to life on Kenny and Ripper the moment they touch their instruments, and suddenly the quiet of the song—just my voice and my guitar—explodes, drums and bass ramping up, creating a new urgency.
I press my mouth to the mic, strumming hard. “You were born for me, but I lived for you. You may have gone away, but there’s no end to you.”
I twist around, dancing loosely as I play, and catch Ginny’s face on one of the screens. She sticks out her tongue, then flips off the camera, the gesture obvious even behind the censors. Ginny’s still here—no longer a figment born of my imagination, no longer someone I can talk to, but on these screens, captured as she really was. She’s in the core of me, in my voice, in the hands flying over the strings of my guitar.
“When your body left this earth,” I sing, and Kenny crashes the high hats, punctuating my words as we speed up the tempo. “The sea opened and devoured you. Now you preside over my dreams. Your smile is everywhere, it seems.”
We’re climbing to the top of the mountain. I look to my right and wink at Ripper, jamming at his bass; look behind me at Kenny, whose arms are flying, ready—and we take off.
“Virginia,” we sing, using every ounce of our power, “don’t you listen to the critics. Don’t you listen to the preachers. You will live forever, you gold immortal creature.”
All the video screens shift to the same image, one I chose carefully: Ginny scaling the Sierra Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains, a backpack high on her shoulders. When she gets to the top she looks back at the camera, throws her arms up, and twirls.
Twirls and twirls, a never-ending loop.
“I will make sure of it,” I sing, my voice barely audible over the power of the instruments. Ripper’s practically melting his guitar, Kenny’s drums are going so fast I can’t imagine the sweat flying off him. The tempo is relentless, building and building no matter how fast it already seems, just like the song that blew the theater apart in Vegas, but here there’s no moshing, no anger, no revenge—there’s only the three of us doing what we do best for the last time, shoving our hearts into it, giving it all away, trying to show people how epic and terrifying it feels to us to be alive.
I pull the mic down and sink to my knees, an echo of the perfor-mance that started it all, but this time I’m not defeated. I strum madly, bent over my guitar, singing, “I will make sure of it, I will make sure of it, I will make sure of it.”
Kenny hits the last note. Ripper’s riff reverberates. My hands still on my guitar. On my knees, heart pounding, I close my eyes and say one last time into the silence: “I will make sure of it.”
When I open my eyes, the entire arena rises to its feet.
Chapter 62
Theo
Sunday, February 2, 2025
The woman onstage is incandescent. No longer haunted but achingly alive. She’s on her knees and we’re on our feet, the entire Grammy audience, clapping so hard our palms hurt, the sound of twenty thousand people shouting and whistling an overwhelming sonic experience.
Bryan, suave in his tux, grabs my arm. His eyes shine. There will never be a better moment than this, watching Hannah, Ripper, and Kenny receive a standing ovation. They’re trying to catch their breath—Hannah staggering to her feet, Ripper by her side, Kenny behind his kit—and they stare back at us like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.
Bryan cups his hands around his mouth and yells. I try to memorize everything.
The show lets the cheering go on for a few more seconds, and then the last thing I see before the lights go out is Hannah’s disbelieving face. The stage turns black and a spotlight finds the next presenter, a luminary of R&B, resplendent at the podium. I settle in my seat with the rest of the audience, but I can’t help staring at the stage, wanting to be back behind it where I belong.
As the presenter makes a joke about her own career that draws laughs, Bryan leans in and whispers, “Song of the Year—that’s the songwriting award Hannah’s up for, right?”
I nod. The Saints lost their Rock categories in the preceremony, so the odds aren’t great she’ll win one of the top prizes of the night, but hope buzzes in me nonetheless.
Bryan shakes his head as the presenter announces each nominee. “There’s no way the band’s actually breaking up. Not when they’re capable of a performance like that?”
“Talent was never their problem.” I’m too emotional to say more, so I take a sip of the water bottle I’ve smuggled in. Tonight, Bryan and I have learned there are two versions of the Grammys: one for the famous people and one for the rest of us. While the celebrities walked the red carpet and got seated at the small tables near the stage, with cocktail service, we were ushered in a normal door and now sit in stadium-style seating a mile away from a cash bar. Bryan is still bitter he doesn’t get to rub shoulders with Beyoncé.
But his shock that the band is actually dissolving is nothing compared to what I’d felt two weeks ago when Kenny called to give me the heads-up. With Hannah focused on her recovery, I understood it, even if I hated it. She wasn’t allowed to bring her cell phone into rehab, but I’ve texted her a thousand times anyway, each note sent off into the universe like a message in a bottle. Officially setting up Ford Records has kept me busy, but I won’t pretend I haven’t been counting the days until this ceremony, hoping Hannah would appear. I don’t know if she has her phone on her tonight, or, more importantly, if she’s out of rehab for good or just the weekend. I don’t even know if she wants to see me. All I know is that I’m here watching her from among a sea of people, like the fan I’ve been since the beginning, and even if I don’t get anything more from Hannah Cortland, it feels like a gift.
Well. Also torture.
