by Leah Johnson
Peter throws an arm around my shoulder, and I don’t roll my eyes and shake it off. I don’t even want to. Instead, I wrap an arm around his waist and give him a quick squeeze. Olivia’s bare arm brushes against mine, and I feel the rush of that feeling everywhere.
I’ve always heard people say things can be electric, but I didn’t understand it until this moment.
I wonder what my old classmates would think about the snapshots of me from this weekend if they ever saw them. I can imagine it now. Me smiling down at a buoyant, beautiful girl. Peter with an arm around my neck, making some kind of ridiculous face at the camera. The four of us taking gulps from our water bottles at the same time and laughing when we realize how in sync we are. To see me in this moment would be to see a version of me that no one from Ardsley Academy has ever seen before.
I feel so far away from that Toni right now.
“It’s perfect,” Olivia says, handing me the photo. I look down at her and think about what a strange and wonderful twist of fate that full sign-up sheet and stupid scavenger hunt turned out to be.
“Nothing’s perfect,” I say, Toni the ice queen slipping through somehow. I don’t even mean it. I hand the picture back even though I want to keep it, keep this, forever.
“I disagree.” Like she’s read my mind, she unzips the fanny pack around my waist and slips the photo inside. “This.” She zips it shut and looks up at me. She smiles so small and sweet it takes everything in me not to mess things up by wanting more like I almost had last night. “Is perfect.”
Peter drops his arm from my neck and cups his hands around his mouth to cheer. Everyone else starts whistling and shouting, and I know that means DJ Louddoc must be coming out on stage, even though I can barely see over the mass of bodies in front of me.
When I see freedom, I see a stage, the beginning moments of a show, the slow rise of the lights and the burgeoning hum of an audience welcoming their favorite artist into the space. In this moment, I am the audience. This time last year, I was imagining myself from the stage, looking out into the faces of people who wanted nothing more than what I wanted: to be both grounded and lifted away all at once.
But then my dad died—was taken from me—and I hadn’t picked up my guitar again until last night. Until I played for Olivia, and then spent the rest of the night and this morning playing with her. And things felt right, like my body was mine again, completely at ease. The gut-churning anxiety that had been roiling for months, for years probably, if I’m being honest, was gone.
“Are you ready?” Olivia turns to me and shouts over the music. She pushes her heart-shaped sunglasses up into her hair and smiles. I am ready, I think. Maybe I’ve always been ready for this and didn’t even know it. The crowd starts moving forward, shuffling us around, and their screams are getting louder and more insistent as DJ Louddoc sets up and I’m looking at her and she’s looking back at me and my heart’s a marching band, big and brash and impossible to ignore and in that moment—
I almost don’t hear the bang.
My dad was shot to death in a gas station robbery gone wrong.
We were on our way to Indy Classics, the music shop near my house. He had only been home from tour for an hour when we left, but he yawned and slid his feet into his boots, grabbed his coat, and wrestled me for the keys to his pickup before we got in the truck. The pickup is old, and doesn’t have an aux input, so he thumped his hands against the wheel as he drove and tried to get me to find the harmony in an old Loretta Lynn song he was singing.
I needed sheet music. I didn’t need it so much as I just wanted it. Or, I didn’t want it so much as I wanted to spend time with my dad and knew that if I told him I needed it, he would abandon the nap he was planning to take before my mom got home and drive me to the store instead. I wanted to spend time with him but I had no way of knowing that we’d stop and that stop would be the last one he’d ever take and—fuck.
Let’s try this again.
My dad was in the wrong place at the wrong time—in a country where anyplace and anytime can be the wrong one.
Classics is exactly two and three-quarter miles from my house. I know that now, even if I didn’t know it then. At exactly one-and-a-half miles from my house, there’s a Shell gas station that sits short and squat back off the main road. It is dingy. The lighting is poor—the parking lot half-glowing under a single, flickering lamppost and a buzzing bulb over one of the two gas pumps. It is not the type of place you should go in by yourself at night.
I know that now too, even if I didn’t know that then.
“Oh man, let me run in here real quick! I have been craving some Hot Chips. You know how hard those things are to find on the road?” He turned off the street and into the parking lot with a broad smile. He reached over and tugged at one of my locs before turning up the heat. “Don’t freeze to death while I’m in there, alright?”
I smiled and reached over to run a hand over his bald head—our usual exchange. He had locs like mine once upon a time, back in the day. I wasn’t old enough to remember them, but they’re right there in his picture from Farmland, his long hair pulled back into a low ponytail as he smiles next to Anthony Kiedis. His face was without lines in that picture, just a slight crinkle around his eyes when he smiled. His smile never changed, but his face eventually did.
When I looked at him in the low light of that parking lot, he looked tired. Like maybe the road was taking the same toll on him that it was taking on me and Mom.
“I could’ve sent you some Hot Chips, Dad,” I said as he pushed open his door. A rush of cold air swept the cab, and I shivered. He looked at me and said with a wink, “Nah, kid. Finally getting the things I miss while I’m away makes coming home even better.
“It’ll only take a second, I promise!” He shouted as he jogged inside.
I did not think to stop him as he climbed out of the truck and shut the door. I did not think that his desire for his favorite snack food and my desire to spend time with him could be mistakes. I didn’t think of anything except how glad I was that he was home, and how eager I was to find a way to keep him.
I did not pay attention as the man in the hoodie walked in.
I did not see him as he held a gun up to the cashier and demanded the money in the register.
I did not watch as my dad tried to intervene.
But I heard the gunshot.
I saw my dad hit the linoleum floor through the dingy glass, and the man in the hoodie run out into the night, stolen money no doubt tucked into his pockets.
I don’t remember stumbling out the door, or falling to my knees next to his body, blood soaking my faded black jeans, or screaming as the cashier fumbled with his phone and finally called the police. I don’t remember running into the parking lot after the ambulance that hauled my dad’s body away. These are things I only know because I was told. The rest of the night comes and goes in flashes.
But I see it all clearly now—the images flit in front of me like a highlight reel of the worst night of my life. My ears are ringing, and I can’t breathe, and the tips of my fingers are tingling like even my blood has forgotten how to circulate properly. My mouth tastes like copper. There’s a hand on my face and someone in my ear whispering, Come back to me. You’re okay. You’re alright. Come back to me. You’re safe. I promise.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
I don’t know what’s going on or why Toni has suddenly gone stock-still next to me, but I’m freaking the hell out. I can’t even hear whatever DJ Louddoc is playing now because all I can think about is helping Toni. Her breath is coming in small, tight-sounding hiccups and it’s so much like an asthma attack I instinctively reach for my inhaler to hand over. I realize it’s not that though, because I’ve never had an asthma attack make me go as glassy-eyed as she is right now.
I manage to push our way out of the crowd, her hand in mine as I not-so-politely elbow people out of the way until I can ease her to the ground and settle her against a tree. I don’t know what h
appened, I’m not sure what to do, and Toni’s eyes are closed now like she’s completely vacated her body, so I do the only thing I know how to do. I talk.
I hold on to Toni’s biceps and repeat a mantra of, more than anything else, wishful thinking. “Come back to me. You’re okay. You’re alright. Come back to me. You’re safe. I promise. You’re at Farmland. You’re with me, remember? Bad things don’t happen at Farmland. You’re gonna be fine. I swear.” I say it with as much ferocity as I can muster, as if my belief in what I’m saying alone is enough to make it true.
Her breath starts slowing down, her chest rising and falling more evenly, but she’s still not back to normal.
I slide my hands down her arms to hers. I link our fingers together. I squeeze just this side of tight enough to bring her back, here, to this moment, with me.
When she finally meets my eyes, it’s like she doesn’t recognize me. Or, well, not that exactly. It’s more like she’s seeing me for the first time. I don’t know what to make of it, all I know is how relieved I am to have her back.
“Toni!” Peter runs up to us, Imani trailing just behind him. His hair falls out of the lazy half-bun he has it in and flies around his face as he kneels down before Toni. “I didn’t know where you guys went. I’m sorry, dude. I forgot about the sound effects. I should have known. I should’ve warned you. I didn’t even think.”
He hugs her like it’s second nature, and Toni practically falls into him. She tucks her face into his shoulder, and he murmurs something that I can’t hear. Toni nods, just once, and he pulls back but keeps his hands on her shoulders.
“Known what?” I look between the two of them, but Toni refuses to look at me. “Peter, what happened?”
My instincts scream: What did I do?
“Nothing.” It’s the first thing I’ve heard her say since the set started, and it comes out low and gruff. “This isn’t—” She stops herself and rubs a hand over her face. “I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?” I’m missing something and I don’t know what it is.
Peter and Toni seem to communicate wordlessly again, and Peter is the one to answer. He squeezes my shoulder and for the first time since we’ve met, looks genuinely sad. He helps Toni to her feet and looks down at me with a frown.
“Sorry, Olivia. I think this might be the end of the road.”
The two of them walk away, and Toni looks absolutely wrecked as she leaves. There’s tension in every inch of her body, and it’s all wrong. I don’t know what happened or what’s happening now and I want to go back to this morning when it seemed like things were working out and me and Toni were on the same wavelength—the rightness of the way our voices sounded together still covering me like a blanket.
I have to go after her.
“Olivia, wait! What are you doing? Didn’t you hear her?” Imani jogs to catch up with me and plants herself in my way. “She wants to be left alone. She practically said she doesn’t want you around!”
“Of course I heard her!” But the string of this weekend, of all the good that seemed to be weaving together, is unraveling before my eyes and I don’t even know why. “Which is why I have to go after her. If she leaves, all this—all weekend—was for nothing.”
I don’t know what Imani’s upset about, but then again, I feel like I never know anymore. I can’t seem to do anything right in her eyes. Despite the fact that maybe she didn’t want to come to this festival originally—but look what it got her! She hasn’t ignored Peter all morning, has even smiled at him a few times, which for Imani is like offering someone her hand in marriage. I did that. But she doesn’t even care.
I don’t have to figure it out though. Every second I stand here arguing with Imani is a second that Toni could be scared, or hurting, or—I don’t even know. I should be there for her. It feels like more than an obligation of our deal now. Somewhere between the moment she patched my foot up and the moment she smiled a smile so beautiful for that snapshot that I knew I could give her the photo and I’d still never be able to get that look out of my head, Toni became someone I’m scared to lose.
And not in the temporary way I’m used to either. Not the way I felt about June or Katie or Jared or Moira or Nick, people I clung to because of what they could make me feel about myself for however long they had their eyes on me—because I was scared of what it meant to be a person they didn’t want. I don’t want to lose Toni because when she looks at me, I don’t see someone who can fix me; I see someone who believes I don’t need fixing.
I can see Peter and Toni getting smaller and smaller as they move away, and I step to the right to try and get around her, but Imani stands in my way again.
“You made me a promise.” She tilts her head up defiantly and points at my chest. “You pinky swore, Olivia. Since when do we break those?”
She has to understand. I need her to get that I’m not doing what I usually do. This isn’t about me wanting to kiss and date and spend the rest of my life with Toni. This isn’t some fantasy. This is bigger than my dreams of storybook romances. For once, I need her to trust me.
“You’ve been following after her all weekend, Olivia. And I tried not to blow this for you because it seemed important, but—” Her face twists, and I can see it hitting her. The way I’ve spent more and more time with Toni, even when I didn’t have to. The fact that I didn’t even try to fight Peter for my sleeping bag and tent last night. “This isn’t about the competition or that stupid scavenger hunt anymore.” She closes her eyes and lowers her voice so much I can barely hear it. “You promised me.”
I feel her disappointment like a blow to my chest. There’s nothing more sacred between us than our promises.
“And you say you aren’t hiding anything about the hearing. But you are.” She rubs her thumb over her pinky ring and her voice gets a little brittle. “I know you are.”
I don’t answer, because I know telling her the truth will ruin everything. I can’t salvage what happened with Troy. But if I keep quiet, I can keep things from getting worse.
I want so badly for her to get it, so I grab her hands and squeeze. This isn’t like all the other times. This isn’t like Troy. This is me, no costumes and no gimmicks to get Toni to pay attention to me, and she seems to like me anyway. I can’t mess this up, because I think this could be real.
“And I made her a promise, too, Mani. I have to fix this. I can fix this.”
I try to ignore the look of betrayal on my best friend’s face as I walk away.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
“T, you gotta tell her,” Peter says. He hands me a frozen lemonade from a nearby food stand and urges me to drink it. “You can’t run from this. I don’t think you even really want to, to be honest.”
We made it to the other side of the Core before I finally felt okay to just sit down again, like there was some invisible string tying me to the worst panic attack I’d had in months that could snap if I just walked far enough. I pull my knees up to my neck and rest my chin on them. I need to get my bearings. I need to figure my shit out. I’m all over the place right now.
Peter is right. I need to face whatever it is I’m running from: The fact that my entire future is up in the air, the fact that I miss my dad so much it feels like it’s going to crush me, the fact that I want Olivia more than I’ve ever wanted another person and I have no idea what to do with that. But I don’t even know where to start.
“What if I do?” I ask. Peter sits cross-legged in front of me, waiting me out. For someone who talks so much, he’s surprisingly good at silence when it counts. “What if I’m not cut out for this? What if all I’m good for is leaving?”
Like my dad goes unsaid between us.
I want to trust Olivia, and that scares me. I’ve never wanted that with anyone before. And giving her this, telling her about my dad, is as close as I can allow her to be to me. Losing him a final time after losing him time and time again to a tour or to playing in someone’s studio session over the course of my lif
e is an open wound. Will always be an open wound.
When you open yourself up to someone, when they know your most vulnerable parts, what’s to keep them from hurting you? When I finally say all this out loud, I realize it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever admitted to another person why I am the way I am. Why I push away instead of pull closer, why I retreat instead of advance.
“I think you gotta start asking who you’re really protecting by lying to yourself, you know?” he asks. He yanks some grass out of the ground and sprinkles it on top of my boots. “Cause the way I see it, the running hurts more than the standing still. And besides.” He grins. “You let me in. And look how that worked out.”
And like he summoned her by saying her name, I hear Olivia’s voice before I see her face, and I can tell just by the sound of it she ran to catch up with us. I feel guilty, especially considering how bad her asthma has been in this humidity, but I can’t bring myself to look up at her. I’m mortified.
No one has ever seen me like that, fighting my way back from a panic attack, except for Peter and my mom. I didn’t used to have them. They started after my dad died, and have occurred more often and more intensely for the past few months. Anything can trigger it: from something as extreme as a car backfiring that sounds too much like a gunshot, to something as simple as hearing a song that reminds me of him.
It’s like I’ve been trying to hold my life together with both hands, but they’re shaking too much to maintain a decent grip. When I have a panic attack, it’s me at my weakest, at my most fragile. I vowed I was never going to let anyone see me without my guard up, ever. It’s the only way I’ve managed to protect myself for as long as I have. But I couldn’t this time. And not only that, but Olivia managed to bring me back to the surface quicker than I’ve ever been able to on my own.
