Bounce

by Noelle August

  Was she listening to us? To me? It’s kind of a shitty/awesome feeling to think that she drives around listening to our music. Like winning second place at something. Good, but not enough.

  Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m heading to Adam’s house. It’s only been a few weeks since I left, but this stretch of PCH already feels foreign to me. The streets of Venice Beach feel more familiar, but still not like what I think home should feel like. Maybe with the millions I’ll make in music I’ll buy some property in Washington with a cabin where I can chop my own firewood or something. I run with the fantasy for a while as I drive, thinking about Skyler walking around in my log cabin, wearing one of my flannels, only one of my flannels. Then I’m at Adam’s house, pulling up to the driveway and I still don’t know what I’m doing or why I came here.

  I let myself in. The living room and kitchen are dark, but the lights on the back patio are on. Adam, Ali, and Mom are sitting at the table out there. Mom is wrapped in a fluffy white throw blanket that’s usually on the couch. On her, it looks like some expensive fur poncho. There’s a bottle of red wine on the table, three stemless wineglasses. As Ali listens to Mom, she absently picks hers up and swirls it, making a small whirlpool of the red wine inside the goblet. Beyond their cozy little scene, the ocean breakers are a glowing blue line against the darkness. A storm swell is coming in, and the surf is bigger than normal, roaring ferociously in the near distance. But Ali, Adam, and Mom seem oblivious to it. Untouchable. Immune to the dangers of such ordinary, pedestrian things as the elements.

  It’s all so fucking civilized and privileged. I grew up with this sort of thing playing out over and over in front of me, since I was five. But I’ve always hated it. And without my dad here to curse and tell off-color restaurant stories and generally dirty things up, I feel more than ever like an alien in this family. I’m the bastard son. A mistake. Just like me coming here was.

  They didn’t hear me come in, and since I’m in the darkened living room, they don’t see me, either. I turn for the door but then I think of what Skyler said, about how I avoid and smash. Here again is an example of Avoidance Grey. I’m doing it right now. I’m never going to escape this thing until I confront it. And I miss my goddamn brother and my mom.

  I turn back and head their way. Then Mom says my name, and I stop.

  “I spoke to your father, and he’s going to be able to make it,” she says. “He’ll come in the day before the showcase and stay until Monday. He’s so excited about it. You’d think he was the one who’s performing.”

  Showcase? What the actual fuck? How do they know about it?

  “That’s great,” Adam says. “The shoot should be wrapped in the Virgin Islands by then, too, barring any problems, so Ali and I will be there.” He smiles at Ali. Ali smiles at him. Adam looks back at Mom, who’s smiling at both of them. “Can you imagine dad watching Grey sing?”

  “Actually, yes.” Mom laughs. “Your father and Grey have always had rock star swagger.”

  Again, what the fuck? Why is she making it sound like she likes that about me? Why have I always heard, “You’re so much like your father, Grey,” like it was a bad thing? My God. I don’t understand any of this.

  I should get the hell out of here. My instincts are screaming leave, leave, leave. But I creep forward like a fucking ninja.

  Mom takes a sip of wine, and stares at the glass for a moment. “Do you think he’ll be speaking with me by then?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Whatever you said to him in August—”

  “Adam, it wasn’t me.” Mom pauses. As the moments pass, I know she’s struggling with whether or not to say more. To finally break silence. She sighs, her decision made. “You know he went to see Lois.”

  “Which should never have happened.”

  “He kept asking me, Adam. And she gave birth to him. Don’t you think he had the right to know? To go see her?”

  Adam has no answer for this.

  She continues. “Your brother and I weren’t getting along. He was letting his grades slip. He was going out all night. He stopped playing basketball, he stopped showing up for dinner. It scared me. You know how I can’t stand apathy.”

  “Mom, Grey’s not lazy. He just hated school. I did, too.”

  “But you had plans, Adam. You were already dreaming. You were already acting on your dreams.”

  “He’s nineteen, Mom! And I was a freak! Not everyone is like me.”

  “You’re not a freak, honey. If you are, then I am. Then your father is.”

  “Then we all are. Overachievers, every one of us. Passion and drive is not lacking in this family. Grey has that, too. He just took a little longer to find it. You should see him around the studio, Mom. He’s figuring things out. And you’ve heard him sing. That’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s . . . ​he’s amazing.”

  How has she heard me sing?

  How in the hell has she heard me sing?

  Did he give her one of my demos?

  My entire body’s numb. There’s no gravity anymore. I’m about to come off the floor and start floating.

  Mom sets the wineglass down and adjusts the blanket around her shoulders. “I know, Adam. I was wrong. I see that now. But you know how your brother pushes me. He kept telling me he wanted to go to Lois. And I broke. I got tired of hearing him tell me how much better his life would be with his real mom. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I gave him her address.”

  “And the joke was on me, wasn’t it?” I say, stepping onto the patio. I can’t listen to this shit anymore. I’m done hearing about slow, lame-ass Grey who needs to be handled with special care. Screw that.

  They all look at me, and the waves are crashing on the beach and in my head. They’re crashing through my veins in cold, forceful swells.

  “How do you know about my singing?” I ask my mom. A sick feeling creeps into my throat. “Who told you?”

  Adam folds his hands together, knuckles going white. Beside him, Alison looks like she’s trying to become invisible. “I found a copy of your demo in your room and gave it to her. There are copies getting around the set, too. The word’s getting out, Grey. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  He’s manipulating the conversation. Changing the thrust.

  “You got a copy and gave it to her,” I say, because that’s the point here. He betrayed me. He did something he knew I’d object to, and I want him to know I didn’t miss that. “What about the showcase?” There’s no way people on set could know about that. Only Garrett knows, and Skyler, and I want to know which one of them betrayed me. Looks like I’m going to have a list of traitors.

  Mom and Adam look at each other.

  “How did you hear about the showcase?” I repeat, my voice going gritty with anger.

  “Grey,” Mom says, “you don’t let me be close to you. You’ve pushed me so far out of your life for the past nine months—”

  “Eight—”

  “Nine, Grey. It was nine months ago that you left.”

  “What does that have to do with the showcase?”

  “I heard your music, and I got so excited.”

  Oh, no. It starts to sink in. No. No way. “Did you . . . ​Did you fucking set up a music producer for me? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  She’s shaking her head now, her eyes going glossy. “You’re so good. I was so proud, and you haven’t let me help you for almost a year, and—”

  “Shut up.”

  “All I did was make a phone call. We’d worked with Vogelson’s record label in New York on some fund-raisers. He loved your demo. He went on and on about it. He said your band was exactly what—”

  “Stop, Mom. Stop. Don’t say anything else.”

  I leave. I drive for a while. North. Then south. Then east. West is the Pacific, or I’d have driven that way, too. It’s almost 3 a.m. when I get to the apartment. I shower and make some coffee and pace around my room for a while. I can’t think. I can’t hold a single thought in my h
ead. It’s like when I hit the basketball court freshman year and had a concussion. I have about a fifteen-second focus window, then I white out again and . . . ​nothing.

  Beth must have slept at Titus’s house, so I open Skyler’s door and step inside. I lie down on her bed for a while and think about her. I find I can focus on Skyler for much longer stretches than anything else. The urge to send her a text is colossal, a clawing thing inside me. I just want to see if she’d answer it.

  By sunrise, I’m on my surfboard, shredding the huge waves at the tail end of the storm. Carving isn’t exactly what I do. I slash. I brawl with the water. When I finally drag myself out around ten, my arms are so spent, they’re already getting sore.

  But I know what I need to do.

  I grab my phone and sit on the warm sand. There are a dozen texts and voicemails from Adam, Ali, my mom, and my dad. I clear them and send my own messages to the guys in the band, asking everyone to come down to the garage. Shane’s still sick so today is out, and with Rez tied up at a recital for his students all day tomorrow, the earliest we can all meet up is Monday night.

  We set it up. Eight o’clock at the garage.

  I slip my phone into my pocket and think about how I’m going to tell them.

  I go through all of it. How singing was mine and now it doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore. How we didn’t earn this chance; my family connections made it happen. How I’m not someone whose good graces can be bought. I think and think about how to explain it, but decide on being direct. Direct is best. I’ll just say it.

  We can’t do the showcase.

  Chapter 30

  Skyler

  At the Seventy7 Lounge, Mia, Beth, and I sit in the corner of a brown leather banquette, crammed in between people who are little more than shadows in the dim light coming from old-timey glass chandeliers. I’ve never been here before, but if I wasn’t so hell-bent on the mission at hand I’d probably enjoy the speakeasy feel of the place, the fact that they actually have an absinthe fountain, which makes me wish I could shrink myself to Green Fairy size and plunge in for a swim.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Mia asks, from her position half in my lap.

  Usually, I don’t mind that my best friends consider personal space a wholly optional concept, but tonight my body is one big ball of skittish energy, so I push away, just a bit, and gulp down half of my drink, called a Persephone’s Dream, which makes me think about Persephone spending six months of every year in the Underworld, and how that might be okay because it’s probably quieter there, maybe dark and sultry like this club.

  “The plan,” I tell the inside of my glass, “is to throw a chair at him in the middle of his set.”

  Gently, Beth pushes the glass away from my face, and I set it back on the table. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “The real plan. You wanna wait ’til after he plays? Try to get in there before he goes on?”

  “I guess after. Is that okay? Are you all right with hanging out?”

  “Of course,” Mia says. “But I don’t get why you didn’t say something when you saw him in San Francisco.”

  “And how was San Francisco?” Beth adds. “You get whisked away for some super dream date, and you hardly talk about it? That’s not the Sky we know.”

  A server walks by with a giant charcuterie board for a table near us, and my stomach immediately starts growling again, like this constant annoying serenade. Tonight, however, I’m opting for liquid calories.

  “First, I didn’t see my dad in San Francisco. I chickened out.”

  “How come, you think?” asks Mia.

  I shrug. “Bad timing.”

  “Meaning, you didn’t want to throw a fit in front of Brooks,” says Beth.

  “I don’t think it’s throwing a fit to be pissed off at my dad for coming to my goddamn town without saying a word. Or for leaving me to pick up the pieces with my mother like I’m in charge of their lives. Jesus, Beth.”

  “Whoa,” says Beth. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Sorry.”

  I don’t look at her, but I can feel her exchanging looks with Mia, like I’m not sitting at the table with them. A pizza goes by, and I feel my soul leave my body to float along behind it on a vapor trail of warm, oregano-scented goodness. Then I add pizza to the long list of foods I’m going to totally binge out on when this film wraps.

  “Let’s order something,” Mia says.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say, though it doesn’t sound even slightly convincing.

  “Well, I am.” She flags down a server, and we order some food. “Really, though, Sky. How was San Francisco? Other than the thing with your dad? How’s Brooks?”

  “Well, it’s not like you don’t know him.” I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I sound like an asshole, and to my two best friends. “I mean, it was great. Or would have been great. He’s pretty . . . ​great.”

  Mia laughs and tucks her arm through mine, leaning against my shoulder and looking up at me with her lively green eyes, her face inches from mine. She flutters her eyelashes. “So, was it great?”

  I laugh and feel myself unknot a bit. She’s such a goof. I love her. I love both these girls, and it’s not their fault my dad’s the way he is. Or that I feel stuck between two guys that I wish I could combine into one perfect person. Even though I’m not a perfect person myself. “Yeah. No. He’s awesome. Really. He’s like . . . ​an actual man, you know?”

  “As compared to what?” asks Beth. “A unicorn?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yes, as compared to a unicorn.”

  “Okay,” says Mia. “So far, we’ve got that he’s a man and not a unicorn. What else?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just, he’s got this great feeling of, I guess maybe I’d call it purposefulness. Like he knows what he wants, and then he goes and gets it. He’s ambitious and smart.”

  “And hella sexy,” adds Beth.

  I nod. “And hella sexy for sure.”

  Mia moves away so she can fix me with one of her I’m-digging-through-the-contents-of-your-soul-now looks. “And the chemistry’s good?”

  “Really good.” My mind brings me back to the hotel after we left the club, to Brooks holding my face in his hands, kissing me, sweet and warm, like settling into a bath on a chilly night. Not pushing but direct. Simple. He’d pressed his lean graceful body against mine, urgent but not desperate, until I mustered the will to usher him back to his room.

  “So what is the plan?” Beth asks.

  But at that moment, the lounge lights dim, and my dad walks onstage and gets behind the elaborate drum kit.

  How does he have money for what’s now—I count—a sixteen frickin’ piece drum set but can’t pay the damn bills?

  My pulse spikes. I can’t see him well in the dim light, behind all the equipment, but from here he looks younger. His hair’s doing something different. It’s longer maybe. And he looks leaner and a little wolfish.

  Usually, he gets pasty and more and more bloated on the road—all the beer and fried foods—but now he looks like he’s running marathons. For some reason that pisses me off, too. That he’s not just on the road now but healthy, thriving, while my mom worries herself sick in their crappy little farmhouse in the middle of a bunch of land she doesn’t know how to manage.

  Maybe slinging a chair’s not such a bad idea after all.

  The rest of the band comes on, mostly the guys I remember, including Frank, their smarmy lead singer who used to hit on me when I was like fifteen years old.

  Our server brings the food, and I order another round of drinks for the table, but mostly for me, as the Forevers launch into their first number. They’re tighter than they used to be. Or more sober, I think. All of these guys look leaner, a little more upright and well-scrubbed.

  I remember going shopping with my dad before he left on a tour when I was sixteen or seventeen. He stood in front of a three-way mirror, trying on leather jackets, and said, “You don’t have to fall apart or fade away, kid. Yo
u can just get better.”

  That’s what they’ve done. They’re better. They look better, and they sound even better, though they were always good. My dad even sings a couple of songs from back behind the drum, something he never used to do. His voice is a little thin but true. Clean. It’s all so clean that I get angrier as they charge through one song and the next—covering a ton of classic rock, a few modern hits, and a couple of originals.

  My dad’s finally gotten his shit together—but not for his family. Just for his music.

  They finish, and I’m up and out of my seat, practically crawling over Beth, before they’ve even left the stage. I head down a dark side hallway, past the bathrooms, to a holding area in the back crammed with stage equipment. So many of these clubs are alike. These back rooms stacked with bottled water, club gear, plastic-wrapped pallets of bar mix.

  A door opens, and I’m face-to-face with my father.

  He gives me a curious, interested look and then his expression reforms to one of mild panic. He didn’t know me, I realize. For a couple of seconds, my own father didn’t recognize me.

  “Holy shit, kid, you’re a surprise!” He draws me in for a big hug while the other guys pour into the room around him. I feel myself stiffen in his arms.

  “Frank, guys, look who’s here,” he says. “Skyler.”

  “Jesus, you’re a knockout,” says Frank, giving me a once-over that makes me feel like I’ve got ants crawling over me. “Finally legal, too, huh?”

  “Cut the shit, Frank,” says my dad. “He’s just kidding,” he tells me.

  Right.

  “You do look great, though, sweetheart,” says Ted, their bass player. He gives me a kiss, leaning down like a giraffe looking for low-hanging leaves. He’s about seven feet tall and stick-skinny. It’s possible he’s my godfather, though I wouldn’t trust any of these guys to handle my moral education. “I like the pink hair.”