“You’re alive,” Theo says.
“What the fuck?” I clutch the bedsheet to my chest.
The three of them stop in their tracks, taking in the room. Kenny and Ripper gape at the mess, but Theo stares at me. “Are you smokinginside? Do you know what that fine is going to cost us?”
“When he thought you partied yourself to death, he was very concerned about the paperwork,” Kenny says.
“Yo.” Ripper crosses his arms. “This room looks like a bomb went off.”
It is a bit of a disaster. All my shoes and clothes exploded out of my suitcase at some point, and there are bottles and empty take-out boxes I haven’t felt the energy to clean scattered everywhere.
“No,” Kenny moans, rushing to where my blue guitar lies haphazardly in the corner among the trash. “Not the baby.” He picks it up and cradles it. “That’s sacrilegious.”
I sit up straighter, jabbing my cigarette into an old cup. “How’d you get a key to my room?”
Theo waves it at me. “Remember that hotel manager you tortured last night? He owed me a favor.”
“Whatever.” I make a shooing gesture. “I’m alive. Now go away.”
“For a bunch of people you quit on,” Ginny says, “they’re strangely persistent.”
As if to prove her point, Theo walks over to my bed and sits down. I scramble back against the headboard, pulling my legs away so our bodies don’t graze. Ripper and Kenny perch on the corners, refusing to look at me. After the way they chewed me out last night, the fact that they’ve deigned to be in the same room with me is a miracle.
“I don’t remember inviting you to a sleepover,” I say to Theo, because he’s the safest target.
His leg bounces. “We have news.”
“Goodnews,” Kenny adds. His long hair is braided today, and he fiddles with the end. Playing with his hair is a nervous tic. In fact, now that I scan the three of them, I sense an anticipatory buzz in the air.
“What’s going on?”
Theo scoots until he’s sitting right beside me.
He’s wearing an olive-green hoodie that pulls taut over his shoulders. A strand of dark hair falls against his cheekbone, and as he tucks it behind his ears, I smell the hotel’s eucalyptus shampoo, clean and bright, notice his fingers are long and elegant like a piano player’s.
My muscles tense. He pulls out his phone, leaning until our shoulders touch. “Here. Take a look.”
“We’re internet stars,” Kenny crows.
“I want to see,” Ginny says, and crouches next to me on the bed. We’re a rapt audience, though Theo, Ripper, and Kenny seem more interested in watching my face than the screen.
On Theo’s phone is a TikTok video captioned “The Saddest Shit I’ve Ever Seen.” In the still, I’m standing in the middle of the stage at the Hideout.
He presses play. It’s a recording of “Six Feet Under” from last night. Whoever took it was standing near enough to the stage to get a good close-up. The version of me up there is a stranger with a good voice, good guitar work. I feel a swell of pride that’s replaced in the next second by dread.
As the song builds, Theo leans even closer. And there I am, my voice hard and desperate, the music pounding, Kenny wailing on the drums. I drop to my knees. Whoever’s recording says, “Oh, shit,” and the camera flickers a little, then restabilizes, zooming in on my face. Shame floods me. I look wrecked. What was I thinking, letting everyone see me like that?
I glance down again at the title of the video—“Saddest Shit”—and punch pause on Theo’s phone. He looks at me, surprised.
“How is this good news? It’s humiliating.”
“Wait,” he says hurriedly, and, in a total rookie move, scrolls to the comments.
“I don’t want to see that,” I start, but he says, “They love you. Look.”
Against my better judgment, I glance where he’s pointing. The first comment, with seventeen hundred likes, says, “Gave me chills, can’t stop watching.” Theo keeps scrolling, to “Next level emotions, bruh”; “Damn, this gutted me”; “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt any emotion this intensely. Does that make me a robot?” There are comments about me: “Hannah Cortland is a legend”; “This chick’s voice is insane.” Ripper snorts at the next and reads it out loud: “That girl looks good on her knees,” then the next: “Women in rock are whiny.”
“It’s funny because you’re the lead singer in a rock band and he’s just an internet troll,” Ripper explains.
