Page 110 of Dirty Chorus

“She really had to do that right before we went on?” Everything inside me feels like it’s gone through hell. The guys say nothing, but rather give me blank stares and silent nods as if they expected all along.

I press my bleeding hand against my thigh, watching blood stain in the creases of my knuckles. I can’t feel anything other than a dull throb that I’m going to be regretting later.

Glass clinks as a guy with a clipboard steps through the door, blinking at the broken bottle below him. “Uh... hey, so, uh... you guys are up in fifteen. The other band’s cleared the stage.” His voice was cautious, like I might throw him next. “Okay... umm yeah.”

“We’ll set up,” Vince says, nudging Tony toward the door.

Omen lingers. He crouches down in front of me. “I’m sorry, man. I know you liked her. I know it’s not what you needed right now.” I don’t answer. My throat is too dry for words. He sighs. “Maybe right now isn’t a good time for either of you two to date. And if she's the right one, then you need to let time decide that. She’s just got out of highschool, and starting college. She doesn’t get what it’s like to grow up fast. You had to be a man before most guys even figured out who they were.”

“Right...” I say, staring at the crack in the wall. I rub my temples. “I shouldn’t have opened up to her, but...”

“You cared,” Omen says quietly. “That’s not a weakness. It just proves that you don’t have to shut everyone out. Sometimes you don’t even let us in. It’s not like we don’t see what you’re going through.”

“I just didn’t want her to become a stranger.”

“I’ll give you a minute. Maybe use that anger out there. Make it worth something.”

When he leaves, I sit there staring at my hand, flexing my fingers as the blood smears into the cracks of my skin. The pain is starting to pulse now. My heartbeat pounds within my knuckles. I take the five minutes I have to dump my hand into one of the ice trays, and maybe I’ll be able to play without it throbbing every damn second.

I grab my guitar, throw the strap over my shoulder. It’s not like I haven’t done this a thousand times before. I’m going to smile like it's second nature, and stuff it all back down. I take only one deep breath before glass crunches under my shoes and I leave the greenroom. The second I open the door I hear it – the crowd is cheering before I even hit the stage, chanting our band's name.

Metal Blade Records was in the crowd somewhere, waiting to watch us live. For almost a decade this has been my dream, and the only thing I’ve known how to do. Write lyrics on a napkin when they hit, play tunes on my guitar, and sing my heart out.

Before I walk across the stage, someone is handing over earplugs, and I adjust them. Someone else hands me cords for my guitar and I set myself up. Then I see the silhouettes of the guys already on stage. Smoke billows out, and the strobe lights cut through the haze of hundreds of people crammed together. The heat hits me the second Omen hits the first chord.

My guitar screams to life, my fingers moving on instinct as I step out onto the stage, carrying every emotion that has been weighing down on my chest for years. All of it coming up at once. When I hit the mic, it all comes up – the loudest guttural roar that gets the crowd to go nuts because you can’t start a heavy metal concert without one of your heaviest songs, and you can’t end it without one either.

“Alright, you motherfuckers, have you ever heard of a wall of death before?”

I can hear all those cheers and screams.

“You better fucking make one!”

They don’t hesitate to split the pit open. Two massive walls of people form. Both sides crash together, people falling, and bodies slamming into each other. My lyrics are swallowed with each song, but they're chanting each verse back at me. If I tell them to raise their hands they do so in unison.

I get through my first three songs, before I catch her in the crowd. I swear my eyes are tricking me as bodies shift and move in all directions. There are people crowd surfing, and I only catch glimpses of people’s faces. But no. She’s there, right in the middle of the crowd, half lit by the stage lights. Her hair is a mess, her body swaying like she can’t stay upright. It makes it even worse when an arm wraps around her waist.

My skin crawls because it’s Brody holding her.

He presses her against him, his mouth close to her ear, whispering something that makes her head fall back into his shoulder. Then he looks directly up at me on the stage with the blackest of eyes. When he kisses her, right there in front of everyone, I have to refrain myself from throwing the microphone into the crowd, but there’s no way I’m going to have that type of label on me. I keep singing, refusing to miss a note this time and the mosh pit explodes in chaos.

I pace myself across the platform with only two songs left to sing. I’m sweating up a storm, my hair is dripping, and my shirt is drenched. “A girl I love wrote this.” I stare at my converse as I walk back and forth. I can hear the cheering and the whistles. The faint shouts of girls yelling that they love us. “We haven’t played it before, but she said to me that she wrote the song hoping one day she can give it to someone she loves. I hope she likes what we’ve done.”

Yeah, we’ve been off-key for ages,

But I hear you in the sounds

And in every broken lyric you’re the one I’ve written down

You’re my dirty chorus,

The thought I can’t let go

We’ve played through the static,

We’ve screamed through the pain,

Say the words girl and I’ll come back