Shadows of a Dream

by Nicole Disney

  “You were right. It was my fault.”

  “It doesn’t do us any good to blame each other. It doesn’t bring him back. I don’t know why it felt so important to include you in my guilt.”

  “I loved him, Rainn. I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  “I know. Of course, you didn’t.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “Hey! Quit with the love fest in there. We have to go!” Alex yells.

  I can’t stand waiting in limbo any longer. “Do you have a singer or what?”

  “Yeah, stupid,” Alex says. “You.”

  I look to Shiloh and Jayden, feeling like I need to verify this with everyone.

  “You do want back in, right?” Jayden asks.

  “Of course, I do. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t know what was going on. You said you were finding someone else and I…” I choke up. The guys gather around me and give me a group hug.

  “We’re not the Suicidal Angels without you.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Benny has no qualms about bumping Travesty for us when we explain what’s going on. The singer comes over and pushes me jokingly. “Good to have you back. I was getting irritated with actually playing when we were supposed to all the time.”

  “Sorry. I won’t let it happen again.” I wink, and we help them tear down their set so we can get our own up. It’s a mad dash of passing cymbals and cords and amps around. We have plenty of time before the show, but we could use some practice after our hiatus, and the window for that is closing fast. Just as we’re closing in on being set up, Jayden rests his chin on my shoulder. He gets bad stage fright episodes, but it’s a little early for that.

  “You okay?”

  “I didn’t get to do my hair,” he says.

  I laugh. “Too late now. It looks good. Don’t worry about it.” I actually like it black for once instead of some ridiculous color.

  “Rainn!” he says. “You know I can’t go on without my Mohawk!”

  “What are you, thirteen? You can’t be serious.”

  “It makes me feel better,” he says. “I’m someone who can handle this when I have my Mohawk.”

  “Well, what the hell do you want me to do?”

  “Got any glue?”

  “Oh yes, I keep some with me at all times.”

  “You’re not taking me seriously,” he says.

  “Of course I’m not,” I hiss back and keep helping Alex with his drums.

  “Rainnnnn,” he starts whining. I can’t deal with whining.

  “Fine, go to the store and get some fucking gel or Gorilla Glue or whatever the hell you need. We’ll finish setting up.” He leans over and kisses my cheek and runs out the door.

  Finishing up in time without Jayden is easy enough. I play with Alex and Shiloh a little, warming up my voice, debating over which songs to include or to ditch. Jayden stays locked in the bathroom, perfecting his hair. I always thought it was vanity more than anything. I feel like I know him a little better realizing how important the ritual is to him. Then again, I kind of just want to smack him.

  Too many people start coming in, and we have to stop playing until it’s time. We don’t get any time to refresh ourselves as a complete group, which makes me nervous. We sit at the bar watching the door and wait. It’s painful.

  “Rainn.” Benny taps my shoulder. I spin. “There’s a guy on the phone for you.”

  “What? Who?” Fuck. My heart sinks as I anticipate Brad canceling. Even if he does, I guess it’s a slight improvement that he’s going to actually tell us.

  Benny shrugs. “Want me to ask?”

  “No.” I sigh and look at each of the guys. I know they’re thinking the same thing. They’re trying to be good sports, but I can’t stand the disappointment that’s filling their eyes. “No, I’ll just take it.”

  I circle the bar and go to the cord phone attached to the wall. I pick the receiver off the bar and take a breath before I answer. “Hello?”

  “Rainn? It’s Noah.”

  “Noah? What…” My brain short-circuits. I can’t put together a sentence. The relief it isn’t Brad drains to be replaced with fear. My stomach twists, and I break into a cold sweat. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just got a call on my cell. Jaselle’s in jail.”

  “What?” I ask way louder than I mean to. “What are you talking about? I just talked to her a couple hours ago. She wasn’t feeling well. She was in bed. What…” My head is spinning. “What?”

  “She got picked up buying drugs. She called begging me to bail her out.”

  “That can’t be right.” My ears are ringing as my brain starts to catch up. “She…” I can’t bring myself to say she promised. It sounds so juvenile at this point, so naïve.

  “Sounds like she got caught up in a sting or something,” he goes on. “She wasn’t making a ton of sense. She was kind of hysterical, crying. Said she was scared.”

  “Scared? Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Jail isn’t exactly a fun place.”

  My heart drops. The image of Jaselle in jail is crippling. The idea of her fear is suffocating. Everything in me screams to drop everything and go bail her out, though I don’t even know how I would manage it. I know Noah won’t do it. I can’t seem to move. This doesn’t feel real. I look around the bar in a kind of shell shock. The guys and Benny are all staring at me trying to figure out if the show is still on, frozen in anticipation.

  It feels like an emergency. Jaselle crying, Jaselle’s fear, it’s always triggered a fight-or-flight response in me, but I look at the guys, and I can’t break their hearts. I won’t. “I can’t,” I say into the phone.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Bail her out. I can’t right now.”

  “You don’t—”

  “I can’t. She lied to me. She lied to me again.” The adrenaline is changing shape from dread and fear. The knot in my throat turns to anger. “I have a show tonight. This is the biggest night of my career, and she used it to sneak off and buy drugs. I’m not leaving. This is fucking bullshit. I shouldn’t—”

  “Rainn,” Noah cuts in. “You’re right. For God’s sake, do your show. I never would have called you there if I’d known. Let her sit in jail. She’ll be fine.”

  It goes against every instinct in my body, leaving me thrashing against the current of my mind. Again, there’s that damn connection between us, an invisible circuitry that leaves me feeling everything she feels as vividly as if it were me, but I’ve had enough. My feelings matter too. My life matters too, and she can’t have this night. I can’t fix her life by torching mine.

  “Noah, I have to go. I have to talk to you about this later. I can’t.”

  “Forget it, Savage. She’s safer in jail than the streets anyway. Put it out of your mind and kick some ass.”

  Put it out of my mind. Right. I hang up and turn to the guys.

  “You okay?” Jayden asks. I’m not. I’m walking through the timeline. She would have had to start this little misadventure the moment she got off the phone with me. She promised me she wouldn’t use in one breath and started looking for dealers in the next. I don’t want to believe that, but there’s no way around it. They move to hug me, but I put up a hand to stop them. Sympathy will send me into a tailspin. I have to shake this off. I have to bury it. For now.

  Brad walks in. I smack the guys and point him out. Instead of the smiles I expect, they all turn a pale shade of green.

  “Fuck, man, we haven’t practiced in months,” Shiloh says.

  “And you just got hit with some heavy shit,” Alex says to me. “Can you get through this?”

  Jayden looks like a jittery mess, a sure sign his stage fright fit is kicking in.

  “Oh God, and you’re falling apart too?” Shiloh asks. “This is going to be a disaster.”

  “I think I need to puke,” Jayden says.

  “Hey,” I snap. “Stop it. All of you. It’s going to be just fine. We’ve d
one this a million times. It’s just the same old Chapel-rats.”

  “I can’t feel my fingers,” Jayden says. “How can I play guitar when I can’t feel my fingers? I’m going to suck. We’re going to eat shit so hard.”

  “Stop it. Your fingers are fine. You’re the best guitarist in the city. You’ve got your Mohawk. We are not going to eat it.”

  The lights go out. It’s almost time.

  “I can’t remember the set list,” Shiloh says.

  “God, our minds are so not in this,” Alex says. “Jay’s going to puke, Shiloh forgot the songs, you’re going to run off to save your girlfriend.”

  “Look at me,” I say. They’re so rattled it takes them a minute to do it, but when we do all look at each other it has an instant calming effect. “I am here. I am in this, and we’re going to slay. Jay’s nerves are going to settle twenty seconds in like they always do. Shiloh, the set list is the same as always, just follow my cues. Alex, you’re our Mr. Positivity. Shake this off and have fun. Come on.” I hold out my fist. They stare at it for a minute before they finally smile and fist bump me.

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” Alex winks.

  We take the stage as Benny is getting to the end of his intro. Ideally, we should have already been up here, but whatever, as long as he says the Suicidal Angels and we start playing it’s all good.

  “The Suicidal Angels!”

  Jayden starts us off. Once he gets past the first few notes he’s fine. It happens every time. He’s the biggest baby in the world before we start, and by the end he has the best presence up here.

  “I’m calling up the dead. Awakening the sickness in my head.” The crowd is crazier than usual. They’re losing their minds because they haven’t seen us in so long. It’s like rediscovering your favorite toy after it was lost for six months.

  “I am my own insanity, the reflection of my lies.” It feels so good to sing. I forgot how liberating it is. Just scream. Scream out what’s buried and everyone will listen. For once, everyone will listen.

  “Drown me in the blood of yesterday’s heartache. I am tomorrow’s tragedy.” The guys are on it. Alex is hitting every beat. You can’t even feel our time apart.

  “I am tomorrow’s tragedy.”

  It pulses through me. It vibrates the entire room, and the eyes watching me are a warm blanket. Someone understands. All this anger. The pain. The rawness. You all understand. We’re all in cells of the same hell.

  “You guys are sick, huh?” I yell. They scream back at me. “You’re all fucked too, aren’t you?” They scream louder. “I am tomorrow’s tragedy. Why can’t you be enough for me? I’m not who I’m supposed to be, someone please come and bury me.”

  The applause keeps going long after we end the show. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it go so long. We jump off the stage. We don’t make it ten steps before Brad is by us. He has to lean close to my ear and yell for me to hear him.

  “You guys really are good,” he says. “I had a feeling about you.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I yell.

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, look, I have to go, but I’ve got some nine o’clocks I want to give you. Once you have more of a following we can talk about a better slot.”

  I think I’m trying to say yes, but nothing is coming out. I’m just smiling. Brad holds out his hand. It takes me a second to realize I’m supposed to shake it.

  “See you Friday.” He turns and disappears into the crowd like this is just a day in the office for him. When I turn, the guys and Benny are all staring at me again, waiting for the news they couldn’t hear in the chaos.

  I want to keep them in suspense, but I’m grinning ear to ear. “Friday at nine.”

  “Yes!” They whoop in unison and jump all over me. I laugh as I endure them bashing into me in excitement. They turn their attention to the row of shots Benny has lined up on the bar. Good ol’ Benny. I push past the guys and give him a long hug.

  “Good to see you again, kid,” he says.

  “I’m so sorry, Benny. I missed you.”

  “Hey,” he says. “Forget it.”

  The celebration goes on, but Jaselle slowly creeps back into my thoughts. She’s still in jail, and as furious as I am with her, I can’t ignore that. My fix of shoving it into the soil of my emotions is temporary at best, and the issue is starting to sprout. Benny was right. Coming back to the Chapel, to my friends, my family, it’s air when I’ve been choking for so long. My thoughts are linear again, free if only for this moment from the spiral they’ve been trapped in. Even if it’s all a mess again later, for a moment, I’m me. For the moment, I am a human being who is separate from Jaselle, and I know I’m not happy. I know this is wrong.

  “Benny, you think I could bartend with you tonight?”

  He looks puzzled but ecstatic. “Absolutely. Of course, you can.”

  I pass behind the bar and start taking orders. At first, people are confused. I’m the star of the show, not the help, so I turn it into a proper after-party and use the soda nozzle to shower them all with water. It turns into the best fun I can remember even though it’s tainted by the darkness underneath. Soon they’re throwing more money at me in tips than I’ve had collectively in the last year.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Inmates can start making calls again in two minutes. When I got home last night and found out I couldn’t talk to Jaselle for seven hours, I about came unglued. The cycle of confusion, desperation, and rage is a storm that’s taking everything out of me. The only way I could keep myself sane was to learn more than I ever cared to know about how getting someone out of jail works. Not only will it require more money than I have, but doing it last night as Jaselle wanted wasn’t even in the picture. Thank God I didn’t run out on the show. The idea I even considered it sends me into fits of anger. After all we’ve been through, I don’t know what she can possibly say to me, but I can’t wait to hear it. The clang of the house phone ringing splits my thoughts. I swipe up the receiver and listen to the recording announcing an inmate from the Denver Detention Center is calling. When I accept the call, the line opens.

  “What happened?” I demand.

  “Rainn, God it’s so good to hear your voice. I need you to get me out of here, baby. It’s awful. I can’t stay in here.” Her voice is strangled with tears. This must be how she was with Noah.

  “Wha—”

  She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’m so scared. Please, you have to get me out.”

  I want to grill her about how she ended up in jail a few hours after she said she was going to bed. I want to hold on to this anger like a lifeline, but one of the things that attracted me to Jaselle from the beginning was her solid disposition. Nothing makes her flinch. Bar fights, breakdowns, suicide art, hard drugs, a gun in the face, she’s strong, calm, and cool. Anything that can make her act like this has my attention.

  “What is it? What’s scaring you?”

  “This place. The guards, the girls, I’m not safe here. They’re fucking crazy. I just want to come home, baby.”

  “I don’t know how much it’s going to be,” I say. “They set it at your hearing.”

  “It’s this afternoon. You have to be ready to get me out right when it’s done, Rainn. I can’t stand it here. It won’t be more than a grand. Probably less.”

  “A grand! Where the hell am I supposed to get a grand?”

  “I don’t know, but you have to find it. Please get me out, Rainn. You have to.”

  I sigh and rub my eyes. The whole thing is so surreal I can barely engage with it. I feel so far away. “I bartended at the Chapel last night and made a hundred and fifty. If I keep doing that I’ll have enough in a week.”

  “A week!” She breaks down, a complete puddle. “No, baby, please. Ask someone, ask Benny.”

  “I can’t ask Benny,” I say, but her panic is contagious. My skin is crawling as I search for another answer.

  “The guys? Your mom? Anyone, Rainn.”

  The id
ea of asking anyone is repulsive to me. I’ve hurt them all so much already. If she’s even thinking like that it means she’s already been turned down by Noah and her mother. “I can try to sell some things. And I’ll work. I’ll work around the clock until I have it.”

  “Sell some things?”

  “Your paintings. Is that okay?”

  She scoffs. “Yeah right, you know how many times I’ve tried to sell those? They’re worthless.”

  “Jaselle, what happened?”

  “There’s no time for that, Rainn. I only have ten minutes and it’s almost over.” She must be watching a clock, because just as she says it the recording kicks in to say we only have thirty seconds left.

  “These fucking girls are going to kill me. You have to get me out. We can talk about it as much as you want then, I promise. But please, you have to get me out. Promise me.”

  “I’m trying, Jaselle.”

  “You have to, baby. Promise.” A woman’s voice drifts into the background. I can’t make out the words, but the tone is mean. “I won’t make it in here.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” I say.

  “Don’t leave me in here.” Her shell is gone, her armor soft. She’s naked and crying, begging without shame.

  “I’m not,” I say. “I’ll find a way.”

  The call drops off and returns to a recording I cut off by slamming the phone down. “Goddamn it.” I slam my fist on the kitchen counter. I try to play back the woman’s voice in the background, seeing if I can pick out any semblance of a word. Were they yelling at her? Is she really in danger? Why would she be? It’s just jail. She’s not in San Quentin, for God’s sake. But she’s an oak. She doesn’t cry wolf.

  Not a single question is answered. Not an ounce of pressure has been released from my chest. I still don’t know what she did or who she did it with or what she can possibly plan to say for herself, and yet I know I will do this task she’s begged me to do. It’s like she threw all her fear at me and I reflexively caught it, and now that I have it I have to handle it. I’ll get her out because my sanity depends on it, because this hole in my chest is unbearable, because I need to look her in the eye while she explains her lies, her betrayal. I need to see what that looks like.