When It Drops

by Alex Dyson

  ‘Come on,’ his sister groaned. ‘How are you going to get better if you don’t give it a go? I can’t drive you around forever!’

  Caleb shrugged.

  ‘Fine,’ Rachel said, squeezing the wheel. ‘So, what were you thinking about over there? You looked like you were zoning out, hard.’

  ‘Um …’ Caleb hesitated. His experience in History class had left him wary of revealing the inner machinations of his brain.

  Rachel removed her glasses and looked into his eyes.

  He caved. ‘Well, I was just wondering why people say “nailed it” when they do something well, but “screwed it up” when they do something poorly. Don’t nails and screws do basically the same thing?’

  Rachel blinked. ‘You know what, Button, you’re right, that is weird. Huh.’

  At least Rachel appreciated him.

  ‘Hey,’ grunted Nat as he opened the back door and slumped into the back seat. His mate opened the opposite door and climbed in as well.

  Rachel glanced at him in the rear-vision mirror. Her eyes moved to the second fourteen-year-old with a bad haircut in the car, then back to her brother. Caleb could tell this interloper wasn’t welcome, and his intestines began shrivelling up at the ensuing awkward silence. He patted his stomach and telepathically told his internal organs, It’s all right boys, you’re not responsible for this one! Hold tight, it’ll be over soon.

  ‘Hello,’ Rachel said to the random in the car. ‘I’m Rachel, what’s your name?’

  ‘Um, Trent.’

  Caleb thought Trent was a much more appropriate name for someone with a mullet.

  ‘Can we go, please?’ said Nathaniel.

  Rachel ignored him. ‘Where are you off to, Trent?’

  ‘He’s coming back to ours for dinner,’ was Nat’s irritable reply.

  ‘Right. Does Mum know that?’

  ‘No, but it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Champ –’

  ‘Can we just GO, please!’ Of all the Cliffords, Nathaniel was the least fond of his nickname.

  ‘Where do you live, Trent?’ Rachel said, ignoring her brother. Caleb could tell she was getting peeved at Nat.

  ‘Um …’ Trent twirled his mullet nervously and looked at Nathaniel.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, can you just DRIVE?! Mum won’t care.’

  ‘Nathaniel!’ Rachel yelled. The car was silent as she turned slowly to face her brother. ‘Not. Tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’ he whined.

  Instead of yelling back, Caleb was surprised to see Rachel take a deep breath and stare out the windscreen. The car was silent again until she spoke in a very small voice.

  ‘It’s been a year …’

  Caleb’s stomach dropped. Of course. How could he have forgotten?

  Nathaniel, who had a knack for complaining about absolutely everything, stopped. ‘Um, Trent?’ His voice quivered. ‘You’ve got to get out.’

  1. Translation for non-Australians – two unkempt boys holding takeaway McDonald’s and smoking cigarettes … next to a bush.

  CHAPTER 2

  Caleb’s dad died on a Tuesday.

  It ruined a lot of things. Father’s Day, for one, sucked royally now. Whenever someone told a ‘dad joke’, it was a lot tougher to laugh. Oh, and talking about the zodiac was annoying now too, because anyone born in the middle of the year would inevitably blurt out the word that took his father away.

  Caleb was pretty quiet even before his dad died, but the 365 days since it happened had been the most silent of his life.

  It made his social life even weirder too, as, with the exception of Miralee, the kids at Riverview now treated him with an extra dollop of pity. Some of them avoided the topic or, more frequently, avoided him completely. Others theatrically overcompensated and tried to relate to him through their own experiences of loss. One girl told him her cockatiel had flown away recently, so she ‘knew how it felt’. Caleb was sceptical about that. For one, it was a bird, not a parent and/or legal guardian. And two, the cockatiel was only missing for a week before turning up again – something that, barring a zombie apocalypse, Roger Clifford would be unable to do.

  That was meant to be a joke. But as Caleb sat down for the traditional Clifford family meal that evening, it turned out his dad had shown his face at the table after all.

  Everyone was sitting in their usual spots: Rachel next to their mum on one side, the two boys on the other. And at the head of the table – where he had sat for fifteen wonderful years – was Roger Darius Clifford. The only difference tonight was that he was two-dimensional, slotted behind glass in a wooden picture frame about the size of a shoebox lid.

  Despite being a photo with no digestive system, Roger Clifford had his very own bowl of beef stroganoff in front of him. That was their mum’s idea. A well-meaning attempt to make it seem as if they were whole again. Make it seem like the heart hadn’t been ripped right out of their home. Instead, it only managed to allow a deep fog of awkwardness to settle over the dining table.

  Caleb, mid-bite, glanced up at what was left of his family. Everyone had their eyes fixed firmly on their strog. The only sound in the room was cutlery scraping on crockery, as if everyone was using their forks to play their bowls like instruments, fusing their off-tempo scratching together to create the piercing percussion of a solemn family band. A family band that had lost its lead singer.

  Rachel stared ferociously at a green bean on her fork. Their mum, whose eyes looked quite red, stirred her bowl. Nathaniel was the only one with an appetite. He was wolfing down his brown sauce and rice as fast as his mandible could masticate. Caleb’s intestines yelled for someone, anyone, to break the silence. Luckily, his sister Rachel stepped up to the plate. Or bowl, in this case.

  She dropped her fork with a clang. ‘Mum, I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is healthy.’

  Their mother stopped stirring.

  ‘Well actually, Rachel, kale has some fantastic antioxidants that –’

  ‘No, not the meal, Mum. The photo. It’s just … can we put Dad back on the mantel, please?’

  ‘Oh. Okay. I’m sorry,’ Monica Clifford said timidly. ‘I just thought it would be nice to have dinner with your father again … I’ll just, um … pop him back.’ Her greying brown hair brushed her shoulders as she scraped her seat back. If Monica Clifford were a sound, she would be a bird-of-paradise in a pillowcase. It wasn’t always that way, but there was no doubt that the toll of the last few years had muffled her usually colourful, vibrant demeanor.

  Rachel looked as though she regretted adding to her mother’s worries. ‘No, Mum, look – I’m sorry,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘Leave him there. Maybe if we just don’t give him his own bowl of food? It’s weirding me out a bit.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. I just thought, since it was his favourite, we could … I’m sorry, I’ll get rid of it.’ Their mum took the spare bowl to the sink before sitting down again.

  This was agony. Most family dinners had been sad since their dad left. Or was ‘taken’ or whatever. But this one was a new level of excruciating.

  The silent eating continued for another full minute until Nathaniel took his final bite, burped, and threw his fork into the empty bowl.

  ‘So,’ he said, surveying the table. ‘If this is a death anniversary party, should we, like, sing “Happy Death-Day” or something?’

  Caleb coughed loudly. Rachel rolled her eyes. Their mum stopped eating and looked down at her bowl.

  Sad.

  No, worse than sad.

  Broken.

  ‘Champ – inappropriate, okay?’ said Rachel.

  ‘But it’s, like, the opposite of Birth-Day!’

  ‘Champ, I’m serious.’

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ call me Champ! It’s Nat, okay?’ Nathaniel yelled.

  ‘What the hell’s your PROBLEM?’ Rachel yelled back.

  ‘What’s YOUR problem?’

  ‘ENOUGH!’ erupted Monica Clifford. ‘Just … enough. Please.’ Her hands were shaking.
The room was quiet. Caleb’s intestines knotted into a lump.

  It looked like their mum was about to say something else. Try to bring her bickering kids into line. But instead she stood, picked up the photo frame, and did what Caleb had seen her do a handful of times since last year: walk gingerly to her bedroom, clutching a photo of their father to her chest.

  Nat rolled his eyes, pushed his bowl away, got up, and walked in the opposite direction, to his own bedroom.

  Rachel rubbed her face with both hands. ‘That kid is impossible,’ she said, half to Caleb, half to herself. She picked up the three discarded bowls before getting to Caleb. ‘You done?’

  Caleb nodded, and she added his half-full bowl to the stack and took it to the sink.

  KSHHHHHHH

  Caleb heard the white noise of the running tap behind him, accompanied by crockery clanging in the frothing water. ‘Need a hand?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m good,’ was the quick reply.

  He’d expected this answer. Rachel was always at her most content organising things by herself. Family holidays. Caleb’s homework schedule. She was a machine. And then, when their dad got sick, she really ramped up. Their mum, being a nurse, had their dad’s medication sorted, but Rachel made it her mission to ensure he stuck to his therapy. Colour-coded appointment calendars. Organic meal plans. Motivational quote flip-books. At-home exercise circuits. She organised it all.

  Not that Dad had followed the plan.

  He was the most chilled person Caleb had ever met. Always smiling. Always joking. Even after the diagnosis, Caleb had to remind himself that cancer was a serious illness, because Dad didn’t seem to be affected at all. A bit skinnier, and with less hair, sure, but still the same guy. Caleb thought back to the time he’d caught Dad down the side of the house, gaunt and bald and wearing a pale blue dressing gown. He was meant to be resting, but instead he was tucking into a can of beer, which Rachel had strictly forbidden. He’d simply given Caleb a wink and had another sip. It was such a Nat thing to do, although his little brother’s cheeky streak had definitely become wilder without his role model in the picture.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Rachel asked from the sink.

  ‘Not much,’ Caleb replied. ‘Just wondering what we can do about Nat.’

  Rachel sighed and scrubbed at a particularly stubborn spot. ‘Well, what would Dad do?’

  Whenever Caleb seemed indecisive, Rachel would hit him with that question. But it was becoming harder and harder to tell. If Roger Clifford were a sound, he would be … Damn, Caleb didn’t know for sure anymore. Each time he recalled a memory of his father, it was slightly less vivid than before. Like he wasn’t remembering the actual event, but the last time he remembered it. Each flashback made the mental image blurrier. Like photocopying a photocopy.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Caleb finally replied. ‘He probably would have laughed at “Death-Day”, to be honest.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rachel scoffed. Then she added, ‘Look, Nat will grow out of it, I’m sure. Now, you should get out of here. Go and do some homework or something.’

  Caleb nodded and got up from the table. He had some ‘or something’ to do.

  Caleb lay on his bed, earbuds blasting Sigur Rós at a borderline-unhealthy volume. He was deep in his Melancholy Nights playlist, and didn’t know what the Icelandic band were saying, but with their wailing notes and melodies, he sure could tell how they were feeling. It was an incredible skill, that. Communicating through music. Caleb wondered whether he would ever be capable of making a song that could convey so much emotion. If he could take the feels he was feeling now and give them a body. A frequency. A life.

  He inhaled. Well, there was no time like the present …

  He got up and traversed the room to his makeshift music studio. It wasn’t much. A sample pad, a microphone and a second-hand desktop computer sitting between two speakers. But it was his favourite place in the world. The place he’d spent the majority of his time ever since he’d discovered the music-making program GarageBand. His computer chair welcomed him home with a rusty squeak. It was falling apart, but his dad had found it in hard rubbish one day and so Caleb couldn’t bring himself to throw it out.

  He nestled his posterior into the torn silver vinyl and wobbled the mouse. The black screen sprung to life and Caleb paused for a moment, taking in the incredible desktop background picture once again. It was a photo Rachel had taken from the back of the amphitheatre at Splendour in the Grass, a music festival. A massive stage surrounded by thousands of people just as the sun was setting. Caleb loved it. She took it when she’d gone with some mates after they all turned eighteen, and even as a thirteen-year-old Caleb had been extremely jealous. He wanted more than anything to go to Splendour himself. To be among that crowd as the acts came onstage. To cheer and dance. To experience music not via an app, but as it left the fingers of the people who created it. Caleb had begged to go with Rachel, but neither she nor their mother would allow it. Apparently thirteen-year-olds weren’t allowed to attend music festivals. Rachel promised that one day she would take him. That day had almost come last year, but unfortunately tickets went on sale about the same time they found out what ‘palliative care’ meant.

  Caleb realised he hadn’t even thought about going this year, even though the festival was coming up in a month or so. When you’re generally miserable, the idea of actually having fun becomes a weird, foreign concept.

  Caleb took his cursor, swooped it across the Splendour crowd and clicked on the Ableton icon. (He’d graduated from GarageBand to Ableton when he’d discovered that’s what artists like What So Not and Alison Wonderland used.) Exchanging his earbuds for his oversized headphones, he clicked the two scariest buttons in the amateur producer’s whole world.

  File>New.

  The naming box popped up.

  Crap.

  This was always the hardest part.

  A name. A name for a song that didn’t exist yet. Hmm.

  Nup. Nothing.

  Listen, he told himself. You can always change the name later! Just type what you’re thinking. He took a deep breath in through his mouth and exhaled through his fingers on the keyboard.

  C.A.N.C.E.R. > Enter.

  The Ableton work screen popped up. Caleb steadied himself over his keyboard.

  Here goes nothing, he thought.

  As it turned out, that was correct, because ‘nothing’ is exactly what happened.

  Sure, there were several hours used up with drum loops, some electronic bleeps and bloops and a whole lot of reverb, but at the end of it all, he hit the backspace key a lot more than he hit his drum pad. As a result, Caleb made the captain’s call to pick up the entire song file and drag it into his recycle bin for no reason other than it was absolutely terrible.

  He slumped back in his chair and looked around the dimly lit bedroom. Dozens of faces stared back at him.

  They were his heroes, looking over him in poster form from their Blu-Tack balconies. Kevin Parker from Tame Impala, pictured barefoot in a rehearsal space. Woodes glowing blue behind a microphone. Jake Townsend in front of a brick wall, smiling confidently under his shaggy hair. These were literally the coolest people in the world. People he would give anything to be. But tonight they looked as if they were embarrassed to be there. Like the opposite of the Mona Lisa, their eyes seemed to be deliberately avoiding him. Even the cartoon-red lips of the Rolling Stones logo seemed uncomfortable. Like if Caleb went to kiss them, they’d swerve away and mutter something about not wanting to ruin their friendship.

  Caleb stared longingly at the gallery of talent on the wall. When these people made noise, other people listened. They cheered and paid money. Their music connected with other humans in a way Caleb could only dream of.

  In need of a confidence boost, Caleb hastily opened his private SoundCloud playlist – it was where he stored all the tracks he’d finished and was at least moderately happy with.

  There were only four of them.

  Yes, i
n the entire time he had been producing music, there were only four songs Caleb could say were ‘finished’. He stored them under his artist name, BVTTON, which was just his family nickname with a ‘V’ instead of a ‘U’. Both to make it cooler and easier to google, a trick he’d learned from Scottish band CHVRCHES.

  Caleb hit play on the first song. This was called ‘Cityscape’, and was a bit of a slow burn he’d written after a school excursion to the city. He’d tried to make it eerie, with dark synths that arpeggiated throughout to create the feeling of walking among the skyscrapers with busy people bustling around you.

  Next up was ‘Minute’, a faster dance song that was exactly 120 bpm so it could be in time with a clock. Caleb tapped his hand on his thigh as the high snare drum tapped in time too. The clock sound effects he’d found made the whole thing regimented and orderly.

  The end of ‘Minute’ flowed on to a short track with trap-y drums he called ‘Total Swarm’, because the tone he’d found in his sound library reminded him of bees. This was the heaviest of the four, channelling some of the big drops from videos of music festival sets he’d watched on YouTube.

  He was in the midst of imagining himself playing one of those festivals when the mood changed completely and the final song on the playlist began:

  ‘Ella’.

  This one was his most … personal song. It went for four minutes and eleven seconds and was about the girl he’d had a crush on for, oh, maybe five years. The first line, well, it left nothing to the imagination –

  Westlake, you make my chest ache

  Caleb listened through gritted teeth.

  You know there used to be a time you were my best mate

  The soft, driving first verse continued in that vein for a while, before opening up with a flourish of fake strings into a euphoric chorus.

  I don’t want to be cold to you

  I just want to grow old with you

  Caleb remembered the day, almost a year ago, when he was home alone and got the guts to sing that at full volume. Production-wise, it was definitely Caleb’s best song, but that was slightly tempered by the fact that since writing it he still hadn’t talked to Ella Westlake. There was a time when he’d imagined he could show her the song. Use it as an ice-breaker to finally douse the animosity that had existed between them since that first horrible afternoon at Riverview. The day Caleb’s life changed.