“You nervous?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But it’s the good kind.”
“Good.”
He doesn’t say he’s nervous too. He doesn’t have to. I can hear it in the careful neatness of his words.
“Be safe tomorrow,” he says.
I look at him. “At a rock show?”
His mouth tugs. “You know what I mean.”
I do: Be careful with your heart. With your body. With your mouth when you get brave.
“I will,” I say, and for once in my life, I mean it without wanting to ruin it in the same breath.
The day of,the world moves like it’s been waiting to catch me. I don’t go to class. I pretend to study merch options for a band that doesn’t have money for shirts. I drink tea because Miles threatened to confiscate my vocal cords if I showed up with coffee breath. At four, I try on every black shirt I own and land on the one that fits like it knows how to lie about my chest in stage light. At five, I retune my guitar. At six, we load the van, and by seven, we’re under The Lantern’s neon, the sign buzzing like a nervous habit.
The place smells like old beer and last chances. The stage is a foot and a half off the sticky floor; the lights are cheap and mean; the sound guy looks like he could tell you where he was when CBGB closed. In other words, it’s fucking perfect.
Carl is, in fact, wearing a vest. He shakes my hand like he’s surprised my palm is steady, glances at the guys, nods once, and points us toward the stage like the night is a job and we look like we might be hired.
We load in fast. Eli tapes down his kit like he’s wrangling a live animal. Drew tunes and then tunes again. Miles says something kind to the sound guy—“We’re loud, but we’re not cruel”—and is rewarded with a grunt that means we have earned 12 percent of his respect.
I plug in. The bass hums under my fingers, low and filthy and familiar. I tap the mic. “Check, check.”
“Sing,” the sound guy says without looking at me.
I sing a line I wrote last night on the edge of sleep:I’ve got my hands full of quiet; it keeps trying to make a sound. The PA throws my voice back at me bigger than I feel, and for a second, I believe I’m exactly the size of this room.
Doors open. People trickle in. The first wave is human driftwood: regulars, the bored, the curious. Then a cluster from campus appears, faces I know from the café, from hallways, from classes I never sit through without sketching in the margins. A couple of the basketball guys slip in, caps low, laughing, not staying close enough together to be photographed in one shot. My chest tightens. I don’t look for him. I don’tnotlook for him.
Backstage—really, a corner with a curtain—we form a lopsided huddle. Eli taps his sticks against my shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I answer.
He grins. “Don’t suck.”
“You either.”
Miles looks at all of us in turn, the way he does right before he counts us into something complicated. “Don’t try to be bigger than the room,” he says. “Just fill it.” He nudges me. “You—sing like you’ve got something to lose.”
“I do,” I say, and it’s not about music at all. And I think he knows, because he nods like I told the truth.
The stage lights blaze. Carl lifts a hand. Nine twenty-nine becomes nine thirty, and then there’s nothing to do but walk out and be the version of myself I like best: loud, honest, ruinous.
We start with noise. Thirty seconds of teeth. The room looks up like it felt the temperature change. Then “Blackout” punches through, and The Lantern becomes a throat we pour ourselves into.
I see a girl in a leather jacket mouthing the chorus by the second verse. I see a guy at the bar stop mid-text and turn around. I see Drew make eye contact with a stranger and grin like an invitation. I see Miles bend over his guitar like he’s praying to something that’s listening.
Between songs there’s no silence, just the satisfying buzzing of the amps and the rumble of people trying to clap on adownbeat that keeps moving. We slam into “Cinder,” and when the chorus lands, I feel the floor bounce with bodies that forgot they were tired.
Then finally, after five songs, we end on “Crimson High.”
I look up on the first verse because I’m a masochist. And there he is, halfway back, shadowed by a pillar like he could be anyone. Cap low. Hood up. Hands jammed in pockets. He’s flanked by two teammates, one I recognize, one I don’t. He shouldn’t be here.
He’s here.
