I didn’t feel right inside. I seldom slept. I barely ate. And I was pissed. God, so pissed. Pissed at the shooter for being fucked up in the head. Pissed at Tucker for getting us that gig. Pissed at myself for surviving when so many others had died. Why me? Why had I, the easiest shot of all at the front of the stage, not been riddled with bullet holes? None of it made sense, but maybe it wasn’t supposed to. Who lived. Who died. It was all just a random, heart-wrenching twist of fate.
A few weeks after the shooting, while everyone slept, I sat up watching the video footage of that night. I knew I shouldn’t—and I’d never tell Jess—but the gory images called to me. Thanks to cell phone video, there was extensive film chronicling the minutes leading up to the shooting as well as those fateful seconds when everything went to shit. That meant I could watch myself get shot over and over until the end of eternity if I wanted to.
But it wasn’t my fate I was tracking. It was Brandon’s. I had some perverse obsession with the way he’d died and was not entirely surprised to discover that seconds before I was hit—that moment I realized the beat had dropped—was the moment Brandon lost his life. He’d fallen back off his stool, his body shielded from view by the drum set he’d loved so much.
Not that he would have been suffering. If the video footage proved anything, it was that Brandon had died instantly—a fact that both soothed and horrified me. It had been one swift deadly shot. He wouldn’t have even known what hit him. One second he would have been in the prime of his life, and the next, gone. And that was what I couldn’t square off with in my mind. The fragility of life. The only thing that had separated my fate from Brandon’s was half an inch. Half a fucking inch!
The margins were too close. Too dangerous to live life with any security. At any minute, everything could fall apart. I began obsessively worrying about those I loved. Jess. Noah. My family. Had it been one of them, I wouldn’t have wanted to survive. Nightmares flooded my sleep. Every night I was back on that stage, the guys and me joined up there by people I loved. People I would try my hardest to protect once the shots were fired and they all dropped around me. I’d be trying to save one while another was off to the side dying. I was growing more exhausted every night. The fear of losing them was so intense that I was losing myself in the process.
This wasn’t me. It had never been me. I’d always been a fighter. A protector. I hated feeling this weak and vulnerable, and I knew I needed to pull myself together before it was too late and I lost it all. I needed help; I knew that. But asking for it, doing the work—that required a determined mindset I didn’t have.
I sighed, flinging the sheets off me when it became apparent I would be getting no more sleep tonight. Walking toward the kitchen, I passed the hall closet and paused. I wanted to open the door, but did I dare? I stood there contemplating, even pressing my forehead to the wood. Should I? Fuck it! I opened the closet door, pulled the guitar case out, and set it down on the coffee table. And then I stared. And stared. I knew what lay inside: Lucia. Another casualty of the night. I’d only recently gotten her back from police evidence, and her smooth ivory body, accented in browns, had been entombed in its case in the closet ever since.
I wanted to cradle her in my arms again, but I knew from the videos what I’d find—my girl splattered in blood with a bullet hole lodged in her heart. She’d taken a direct hit for me. I’d taken two shots to the heart that night: one, half an inch above; the other, straight-on. Lucia had been there for me, absorbing the bullet into her long, smooth neck. She’d saved my life.
And I’d repaid her with neglect. Snapping open the guitar case, I removed my beloved Lucia, remembering the day Jake had given her to me. It was the first time in years he’d even really talked to me… seen me. I’d been in the music room when he’d arrived home from tour, and he’d just strolled in and thrust it at me.
‘Here,’ he’d said.
I remembered gaping up at him, disbelieving. ‘For me?’
‘For you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because someday, you and me, we’re going to sing on the world stage together, and no one will ever forget our names.’
Remembering those words was like a punch to the gut. Jake had touched my soul that day, but he’d also set me up to fail. My whole life I’d been chasing that dream.
I ran my fingers along Lucia’s stained surface. The blood was still there. It could never be erased. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She could be resurfaced and the neck rebuilt, but would I do it? Or would I allow Lucia to remain like this forever, as a living reminder of all the damage done?
Holding her in my arms awakened something in me. I longed to hear the music again. My music. But in order for her to sing again—for me to sing again—we both needed healing. And I knew the only person who could get me there was the one person I had no right to ask. I’d spent my life blaming him for a tragedy he’d had no part in making. I understood now. I understood the sheer magnitude of what Jake had survived, what hell he’d pulled himself out of to walk among the living. I understood because I was now living a similar nightmare.
I picked up my phone and pressed his contact number.
“Hello?”
“Jake, I know it’s fucking late, but I need you.”
* * *
I didn’t have to wait long. Jake and I were practically neighbors now. After the shooting, Jess, Noah, and I had moved into the guesthouse in the backyard of my parents’ house. We didn’t have much of a choice in the matter after the bullseye Nick had placed on Jess’s back and the notoriety I received from the shooting. It made staying in either Jess’s apartment or mine impossible. We needed a safe place to convalesce, and the guesthouse provided that.
Having found a comfortable spot under the gazebo, away from prying ears, I watched Jake approach. He looked tired. But then it was one thirty in the morning.
“Hey,” he said, taking the seat beside mine.
“Sorry about this.”
“Don’t be. Sleep is overrated.”
“I’m not sure I agree. Haven’t been getting much of it lately, and it sucks.”
“I haven’t gotten much of it in seventeen years. Trust me when I say you get used to it.”
That surprised me. For whatever reason, I thought Jake had returned to a more manageable state of being, that the terrors of his past had subsided. I remembered the nights he roamed the halls. There had been something so off about him, so disconnected from reality. He used to scare the shit out of Grace and me. A living zombie. A ghost.
Much like I was now, I noted.
