But he did show, pretty early for him and an hour or so before the band was scheduled to rehearse. He drew up the garage door with a shuddering groan and stood silhouetted by the stark morning light like that time at McKinney Falls when I thought him to be far more benevolent. He came inside and stared down at me, looking more tired than remorseful.
“I lost my shit.” He sat down next to where I was huddled and placed a hand on my hip.
It wasn’t even close to an apology, but it was probably as good as I was going to get. I also wasn’t in the position to be making demands.
“I didn’t fuck him,” I said weakly, angry at myself for feeling the need to explain.
“I know,” Seth said in a resigned voice. I couldn’t tell if he was more upset that he’d hit me or that his suspicion had proven false.
Without having to ask, Seth cut up some lines, and I snorted them. The withdrawal subsided almost immediately, and I waited patiently for the high to overcome me. When it did, my blood and bone liquefied, and I faded into the crisscrossing threads of the plaid couch, the place of so much early experimentation by Seth and me in our first golden months together. The great Before.
Seth left me alone after that; instead doing laundry and tinkering around on his guitar or whatever else he could find to stay occupied, waiting until I had drifted far enough away that I couldn’t help but boomerang back to him.
The band arrived sometime around noon while I was still soaking in my high, half-helpless on the couch just like a junkie. Sabrina came over and grabbed my chin between her strong thumb and forefinger, squeezing tightly.
“What the hell happened here?” she demanded, scrutinizing my face like she was trying to make a diagnosis. “And what are you on, Hiro?”
I shook my head. I lacked the words or the effort it took to answer her.
“Leave him alone, Sabrina,” Seth said from across the garage. He was plugging in his amp. The feedback rattled through my bones, and I winced at the jarring sound.
“Are you fucking high right now?” Sabrina asked me. She swung her fiery gaze on Seth. “Did you get him high? Did you fucking hit him, Seth?”
Yeah, so… I’d been hiding all of this from Sabrina as well.
They argued. It turned into a screaming match. I drifted in and out, determined not to let their squabbling ruin my high. Sabrina tried to shake me out of it. Then she tried to drag me out of there, but I clung to the couch like a sailor to his sinking ship. I put a cushion over my head to drown them out. Nothing came between me and my master.
When the fog lifted and my high wore off, I rose from the couch like Lazarus rising from the dead to find the band in the middle of a jam session, except their playing was muffled because Seth had put noise-canceling headphones on my ears. Because he cared about my hearing or he cared about not ruining my high? Either way, it was thoughtful, and I kicked myself for giving him any credit as my jaw was still aching from that stunner of a hit from the night before.
Sabrina was at her post behind the drums, firing hateful glares at Seth’s back and beating the hell out of her skins. Mitchell was plucking at his bass, but it looked like his mind was on other matters. Dean was giving me the same looks Bobby had given me last night. But none of them would interfere, not even Sabrina, because the band always came first. We were all occupying the same space but on entirely different frequencies, together and so very far apart. Everyone who signed that piece of paper had a job to do, including me. Mine was to bleed.
Seth was too focused on his music to care what I was all about. I glanced around for a piece of paper and found an old invoice for an oil change on the van. I grabbed a drafting pencil from Seth’s carpentry tools. I could have used my phone, but that wasn’t how I was used to composing.
I scribbled out the lyrics to the song that would become Petty Crime’s anthem. It went like this:
I rise and you fall
I push and you pull
away
I scream and you cry
I beg and you fly
away
Take a little at a time
Give you just enough
to make you mine
you waste
away
I was still drafting it when Seth’s shadow fell over my paper. I glanced up to find him staring down at me. I couldn’t hear him because the headphones were on my ears, and the band was still playing behind him.
