by Eric Smith
I opened up the freezer to the mini-fridge and of course. Stuffed between two plastic ice trays were the keys and key chains. I swiped mine and ran for the back door.
“Stay cool. Be back ASAP.”
Everything that came next was like a waking dream. It all happened in record time, yet it felt as if time itself had slowed down, stretched out. When your natural instinct kicks in, you become hyperaware of your surroundings. There are gaps in time. Everything is disconnected and stuttery, yet it all flows tranquil and fluid, like a river in the rain. The colors of the bottles in Walgreens were hyper-vibrant. Magnesium. Bright red bottle like a warning sign. This is it. A word shot into my head: PLACATE. Keep them calm. Keep them busy. Marshmallows. Pistachios. Water. Remembering slow moments, like snapshots of the truth. It must’ve happened because I was back at the gym in less than ten minutes with the aforementioned items. We fed Micah the magnesium. Told him it would turn everything right around. Didn’t get a chance to witness the effects. We wished him well and sent him out into the school to be devoured by whatever came next. We made the rest of them sit in a circle and fed them marshmallows and pistachios. It seemed to work. They were mesmerized by the marshmallows and seemed to focus extra hard on the shelling of pistachios.
“You’re a natural,” James said to me, once things quieted down.
“The idea just came to me. There was no thought. I just knew what needed to be done.”
“We should get the hell out of here. Micah’s probably going to shit the bed, and people will come for us,” James said.
“Good thing you were the one who answered the door. What did you even say?”
“That he’s ready to go, been practicing all night, super stoked, but should stop at the bathroom first. Like, for real, magnesium can give you diarrhea. Especially at the dosage I gave him.”
He smiled as wide as the sun.
“I didn’t tell them that part.”
I smiled, too.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
We gathered up the troops and drove off in James’s pickup truck, stashing the four of them in the bed while we enjoyed the comforts of cushioned seating and the radio. They howled through the night, believing they’d discovered the hidden secrets of the universe. As for myself, I discovered something infinitely more important. A true connection with another lost soul in desperate need to be seen for who they are.
Amina was really good at being Gordon’s girlfriend. Like really good at it. She always remembered to pack peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with crunchy peanut butter when Gordon wanted to have a picnic in the park (Gordon prided himself on being spontaneous, but he also got super cranky if his blood sugar dropped too much), and she helped him almost daily with his precalc homework. It wasn’t like she let him copy her own work — Gordon wasn’t like that — but Amina did most of the work. All of it, really. But that was okay, right? Gordon was busy worrying about other things. Creative geniuses didn’t have time to do their precalc homework.
And Gordon was a creative genius. Amina knew this because he’d told her so. At first, his creative genius had manifested itself in the form of sidewalk graffiti. Gordon said walls were overdone, and so he only tagged sidewalks. He also said there was something ironic about people walking on top of his art.
Amina had never quite understood that. She would walk alongside him, feeling slightly uncomfortable that her pink Keds were stepping on his art, but when she looked down at the art, she was always left with a confused feeling in her gut. And it wasn’t the surreal, almost sacred type of confusion she’d felt once when she visited the Art Institute and stood in front of a Picasso painting for hours. This was a disappointed kind of confusion.
She briefly wondered why Gordon was wasting all his time on this. By her estimation, all he’d managed to create amounted to nothing more than a scribbled collection of sidewalk chalk ramblings. She’d seen stronger artistic efforts from her little cousins. But then, as soon as that thought entered her mind, she would push it away.
That was mean.
And good girlfriends weren’t mean.
And Amina was a really good girlfriend.
She would lean into Gordon on their walk, taking her eyes off his sidewalk chalk, and instead pressing her cheek against his army-green jacket and inhaling his scent. Gordon always smelled like lemons. And Amina loved the smell of lemons.
She’d decided she was done being judgmental of the sidewalk chalk art, but she was still delighted when Gordon announced one day that he was going to stop using his creative energy for sidewalk graffiti and instead start a band.
“What kind of music will you play?” she asked him. They were having one of their spontaneous picnics outside. Amina had packed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with the crunchy peanut butter.
Gordon’s light eyes widened with surprise at the question. “Hmm,” he said, “I don’t know.”
Amina took another bite of her sandwich. “Do you play any instruments?”
Gordon blinked as if Amina’s question was preposterous. “No. But I can learn. Everyone has to start somewhere.” He rolled over onto his side and propped his weight up with his elbows. Gordon’s immense confidence was something else Amina liked about him. She thought that maybe being around it would make some of it rub off on her.
“I play piano,” she offered. It seemed like this was something Gordon should know since Amina didn’t just play piano. She really played piano, taking lessons three times a week and performing in high-profile recitals.
Of course she didn’t play “rock and roll” music. That wasn’t why Dr. Leyla Aboud and Dr. Mazin Aboud — Amina’s parents, or, as she referred to them, “the Docs”— had invested in her piano lessons. But still, she knew a little something about music.
“I know, babe,” Gordon said. “But this is different.”
Amina stared down at her half-eaten sandwich, ignoring the unpleasant feeling settling in her gut. Gordon smells like lemons, she reminded herself. And he’s done with the sidewalk art scribblings.
After a few weeks, Gordon had assembled his band — his best friend, Tommy, on drums; his friend Marissa on bass; a guy Gordon knew from art class named Pete on keyboard — and Gordon, of course, was slated to be the lead singer.
When Gordon had first told Amina that he’d picked Pete to play keyboard, Amina had felt a little bit sad. Even maybe a little bit mad. But Amina was good at handling feeling a “little bit” like lots of things. A little bit was no big deal. She was able to quickly brush aside those little bits like crumbs, convincing herself that Gordon’s choice had been for the best. Besides, how many romantic relationships had been spoiled because of a band? Amina didn’t know the exact number, but she was willing to wager that it was a lot more than a little bit.
So the band formed. Without Amina. And the band practiced. Less than Amina thought a new band should probably practice, but they practiced nevertheless. Amina brought peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to their practices. She even brought bottled waters, as the Docs had taught her to be slightly suspicious of public water sources.
Gordon named the band Raging Mice. Amina wasn’t sure how she felt about the name. But she pretended to like it for Gordon’s sake. And the more she pretended to like it, the more she found herself actually liking it.
The band’s first show was held in a local coffee shop, Bean and Ballad. It was less of a show and more of a slot at an open mic night, but everyone was excited. Especially Amina. Even if she was one of three people there. She clapped enthusiastically after each song, even though none of the songs were that good.
But that was okay. Bands took time to get better, didn’t they? That’s what the practices were for. All those hours logged in Gordon’s parents’ garage. All those peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches that Amina made, bottles of water that Amina purchased, piles of precalc homework that Amina completed for Gordon because he just didn’t have the time.
He was busy with the band.
Amina, at the time, had found that answer to be rubbish. It seemed implausible. But now it was happening to her. She had these words in her head. Words paired with chords. What she was hearing was music.
She didn’t say anything to Gordon at first. She wasn’t sure how he would feel about it. Plus, she wanted to make sure that she was right — that what was inside her head was actually music.
She plotted out the songs on the piano. Sometimes tweaking them a bit from what she thought they’d sounded like when she had the initial spark in her head. The songs flowed from her fingertips. There was something exhilarating about playing her own music — music she’d come up with! — instead of just following a songbook.
A few weeks later, she wrote out one of her songs and handed it to Gordon.
He looked at the rumpled notebook sheet. “What is this?”
“A song,” Amina said.
“You write songs?”
Amina took a deep breath. “I do now.”
Gordon couldn’t read music, but Pete, the piano player, could, and Amina was thrilled when she heard Pete play one of her songs for the first time. From there, Amina gave suggestions as to what the bass line should sound like, the drum rhythm, and exactly how Gordon should deliver the lyrics she’d written.
Or, rather, the lyrics that had, almost like magic, been whispered to her. But that wasn’t something she shared. Not even with Gordon.
Soon enough, the band had a repertoire of four or five really good songs. Like, really good. Though Amina of course wondered if she only thought that they were really good because she’d written them.
Amina’s stomach was in knots the night of the show where the band was supposed to play their new songs for the first time. They were back at that same coffee shop, signed up for the fourth slot. There were ten people in the shop this time. Apparently one of the people signed up for open mic night was a slam poet with a growing local audience. Amina clutched her soy latte. She was too nervous to drink anything, but she was happy to have something to do with her hands.
The band came on. Everything was how it always was — everyone else in the audience seemed distracted, bending their heads down to look at their cell phones, murmuring to their neighbors, walking up to order another cappuccino.
But then something miraculous happened. People started to look up from their phones. By the third song, someone was even recording the performance. Amina’s heart thudded in her chest. She listened as Gordon sang the lyrics — her lyrics, her magical lyrics — as Pete played the piano chords — her chords — as Marissa played the notes on the bass — the notes Amina had suggested. By the time the show was over, Amina was glowing with pride.
After that show, things only got better for the band. They got invited to play at real venues. People started showing up at the shows because they’d heard of Raging Mice and their songs, not just because they wanted a latte.
Gordon wanted to capitalize on this. The band said yes to everything they were invited to. And started to print T-shirts and hats and posters that they sold at their shows. Or, rather, that Amina sold, sitting at a table and hawking the merch.
She didn’t mind this, though. It gave her a chance to chat with the fans. She loved hearing what their favorite songs were, the particular lyrics that they couldn’t stop humming or scribbling on the outside of their notebooks.
Those are my words, Amina thought. My whispered words. And people love them.
Of course Amina worried sometimes that she’d stop hearing the songs. That this gift that had been given to her would suddenly dry up and disappear. Sometimes she’d go two or three days without hearing a single note, and she’d think, This is it. This is the end. But it was never the end. The songs always came back.
One day, a particular song popped into Amina’s head. It was unlike any song she’d written before. Braver, rawer. It got into her bones. She couldn’t wait to share it with Gordon. So when school let out that day, she rushed to Gordon’s house. The band always practiced in his garage. She expected to be early but figured she could kill the time by playing around on the keyboard, trying to see if the notes sounded as good aloud as they did in her head.
But when she arrived at the garage, she heard a rustling.
“Hello?” she called out.
There wasn’t any answer. Just more rustling.
She pressed the button on the garage door opener she’d been gifted months ago. When Gordon had put it in her hand for the first time, it had felt like an amulet of immense power. A gesture of acceptance. A commitment.
But now, something didn’t feel right. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. The garage door opener in her palm was slick with sweat.
Amina had been right to sweat. When the garage door finally opened, it revealed a very uncomfortable scene: Gordon and Marissa trying to untangle themselves. It was painfully clear that moments ago their faces had been smashed up against each other. Gordon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Hey! Amina!” he said.
Amina glared at him. She wasn’t sure what to say. Her head was blank with white-hot anger. She didn’t have a pithy or clever breakup speech. The fury roared in her gut. She squeezed her hands into fists. She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. She wanted to smack Gordon. She wanted to smash everything in the garage.
But she also wanted to play her song. That beautiful song.
And so that’s what she did. She walked over to the keyboard and began to play the song she’d heard in her head earlier.
The amazing song. The song that was definitely the best song she’d ever come up with. Her shoulders hunched over the keys, and her body felt like someone else was controlling it almost — like she was simply a puppet. She banged out the song, singing louder and clearer than she ever had. Usually, she was shy when she demoed a song. Careful to remind everyone a hundred times that she was not actually a singer — that was Gordon — and this was just how she imagined it would go.
But this time she sang the song like it belonged to her. Like it was hers.
“Damn!” Gordon said. He’d managed to take several steps away from Marissa, as if by moving he could make her forget his previous indiscretions. “That’s an amazing song, Am. I can’t wait to play it.”
Amina stood up from behind the keyboard. Her movement was careful and precise. “You won’t be singing it. This song belongs to me.”
“Come on, babe,” Gordon said. “That’s a perfect song.”
“It is,” Amina said, looking over her shoulder at him and Marissa. “And it’s mine.”
“But — but —” Gordon’s bottom lip trembled. “How can we win Battle of the Bands without that song?”
A cold indifference rolled down Amina’s spine. It was chilling. But it also felt refreshing, like stepping into a cold pool of water. She turned around once more to look at Gordon.
“Please, Amina,” Gordon pleaded. “The band isn’t any good without you.”
“I know,” she said sharply.
“Well, what are we supposed to do?”
Amina’s eyes flashed. “I don’t know. But it isn’t my problem anymore.”
It felt really good to say that. The words tasted like candy on her lips.
The next day at school, Amina marched up to the booth where they were taking sign-ups for Battle of the Bands.
“Hi, Amina,” Lilly said. “You already signed up Gordon a few days ago, remember?”
“Uh,” Amina said, swallowing, “I’m not here to sign up Gordon.”
Lilly quirked her head with interest. “You aren’t?” Lilly looked down at what appeared to be a complicated spreadsheet. “You also signed the band up for a spot at the merch table. So really, no worries. You’re on top of it.”
“I want to sign up,” Amina said, her voice wavering a little. “Myself.”
Lilly’s eyes filled with surprise, and Amina tried not to be hurt. “You?”
“Yes,” Amina said. No quivering in her voice this time.
“Okay,” Lilly said cheerfully, pushing the sign-up sheet toward Amina.
Amina didn’t have a band name because she didn’t have a band. She wasn’t even sure how this all worked. But she figured if she’d been more or less managing Gordon’s band for the past year, she would be able to get herself up onstage. How hard could it be?
She wrote her name down on the sheet in a clear, neat script.
“See you at the show,” Lilly said. “Good luck.”
Amina gave her a small smile and walked off.
Now the day was here, and Amina wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking. Writing songs was one thing. Singing them in front of tons of other people was another. When she’d first walked into the theater, she’d been greeted by the other kids who were selling merch. They’d assumed she’d be sitting beside them. Amina barely managed to get out that no, she wasn’t with Gordon anymore, and actually she was here to perform herself, without stuttering.
And when she saw the rest of the band, she felt completely undone. Marissa was sitting with Pete behind the merch table. The anger roared in Amina’s gut, and she looked away.
“Amina!” Pete called out.
