The Beauty That Remains

by Ashley Woodfolk

  I set the candle atop a small mountain of snow, and after a few tries, the flame catches. It flickers and moves a bit as small breezes try to blow it out, but we block the wind with our bodies and stare at it in a weird kind of reverence.

  Dante keeps watching it burn while I read the rest of your cards and look at the photos and arrange the flowers in a way I know you would have liked. And when I blow out the candle, my eyes are stinging, but I feel more hopeful than I have in weeks.

  “Maybe I can drive us home,” I say, looking up at your brother. His eyes are wet, too.

  Dante puts his arm around my shoulders and kisses my temple. He presses his nose deep into my hair, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

  But we don’t leave until it’s almost completely dark.

  BRAM IS BORED so he sees how long he can hold his breath.

  1,017 views | 9 months ago

  “Aden and Nico found a singer for their band,” I say to Gertrude.

  “Anyone you know?” she asks.

  “No, thank God. Some girl from Aden’s school. Her name’s Constance Lo, and get this, she goes by Lo.”

  Gertrude laughs. “So it’s like you’re still there, kind of.”

  “Only if Aden calls her L and Nico calls her Logo. I just take it as a sign that they miss me,” I say.

  “Who wouldn’t?” Gertrude agrees.

  I clear my throat. I study my reflection in the mirror behind her head. My hair is sticking up all over, now that it’s all grown out, but I still look better than I have in months. There are no dark shadows under my eyes, and there’s a bit of color in my cheeks. I’ve actually been sleeping, and it shows.

  Gertrude gets a little more serious all of a sudden. “So you seem like you’re feeling a little better about things.”

  I nod.

  “How are you feeling about Bram?”

  I shrug. “Aden said I was still in love with him.”

  “What do you think?”

  I shrug again. “He was just my ex,” I say, but even I don’t believe those words.

  “I think he was a little more than just that,” Gertrude says.

  She’s right. Bram was an arrogant bastard with a gorgeous smile, a big heart, and a loud laugh. He was a jock and a hopeless romantic and everything in between. He was kind of an ass sometimes, but unbelievably sweet when you least expected it. But that was just Bram. Moody, goofy, brilliant, beautiful Bram.

  I loved him.

  I still love him.

  “Yeah,” I say, and when I look up, Gertrude’s face is wide open. “Trudy,” I say, and she rolls her eyes a little, but she smiles. “I guess I’m ready to tell you about him now.”

  I stand up and walk to the window. Gertrude turns to a new page in her notebook.

  We both take deep breaths, and I begin.

  “When Bram and I broke up, I told him I hoped he’d die alone. And when it really happened, I didn’t want it to be true—that he was dead, that he’d died all alone. I regret what I said, and I never told him I was sorry. And now I know it doesn’t matter how or why he’s gone. Just that he is, and I have to figure out a way to be okay with it or I’m gonna ruin everything good in my life, if I haven’t already.”

  All the drinking, all the smoking. Skipping school all the time and lying to everyone. I lost another band, my parents are pissed, and my grades are shit.

  I need to fix everything, but I don’t know how.

  “I know what I don’t want to do anymore,” I tell her as tears start to burn my eyes. “But I don’t know what to do instead.”

  Gertrude lets out a deep breath, like she’d been holding it since I first came to see her nearly five weeks ago.

  “Logan,” she says, pressing her lips together. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me that.”

  It’s not at all what I was expecting her to say. It catches me totally off guard and kind of makes my throat feel tighter than it already was.

  I nod.

  “I know these last few weeks have been difficult, but you’ve been doing great work. Grief is tricky. But we can figure it out with a little bit of patience and a lot more of what you so generously just offered to me.”

  I must look confused, because Gertrude says, “Honesty.” Then she grins a little. I smile back.

  I talk about Bram for the next forty minutes. I don’t talk about the mess he’d gotten himself into or any of my crazy detective work. I don’t even mention the sex tape. I just talk about Bram the person. I tell Gertrude about how he used to cross his eyes at me from across the room at parties or if we were in detention together, how he’d always bring a Cherry Coke to our tutoring sessions. I tell her about how great he looked in the tights that were a part of his football uniform and that sometimes he’d wear them around his apartment when I came over, just because he knew I liked them. I tell her about how he named my band.

  And she listens. Sometimes she smiles, and other times she writes things down. But mostly she just watches me. She asks me questions, and when I answer them…I know it sounds stupid, but it feels like she holds each truth I give to her in the palm of her hand.

  “I’ve been writing songs again,” I tell her. “I just hope I don’t always need something super dramatic to happen to write. That would suck.”

  Gertrude looks thoughtful, and I can’t tell if she’s going to drop a truth bomb or push me to say more.

  “Maybe it’s not the trauma that sparks your creativity,” she says after a moment.

  Truth bomb it is, then.

  “Maybe,” she continues, “it’s you speaking your truth. Remember how you told me once that secrets were safer?”

  I nod.

  “Maybe they’re more dangerous than you think.”

  * * *

  —

  On the bus ride home after my session is over, I push in my earbuds and queue up a few of the live recordings I have of Unraveling Lovely playing this teen club, The 715, last summer. I’d set up my phone on the side of the stage before every show, so I have hours of us playing, sounding like fucking badasses, ripping up the stage, as if we owned the place.

  Dante, Rohan, and I had talked about recording an album after the tour, but post–Battle of the Bands, it never happened. We were the real thing. We had something special, and everyone who came to see us thought so.

  I turn the music up louder when the song I’m playing gets to my favorite part. It’s a bridge that me and Rohan wrote together, and even as the critic in me is picking every single note apart, I close my eyes and sit back. I love the song that much. It’s imperfect, but I want everyone in the whole world to hear it.

  My parents kind of ambush me when I walk into the house a half hour later. My mom is holding an official-looking letter in her hand. I can see a seal at the top of the stationery, but that’s about it. Even though my dad has his arms crossed, it still looks like he’s seconds from ripping my head off.

  “Can you explain yourself, young man?” my dad asks before I even take my coat off. He only calls me young man when he’s “really disappointed” in me or when he knows I don’t have a legitimate excuse for whatever I’ve fucked up.

  “Um,” I say. I don’t even know what they’re mad about. I’ve been such a shit show lately; it could be anything.

  Then it’s Mom’s turn. “Logan, we know you’re better than this,” she says. That’s when she hands me the letter she’s holding.

  It’s from school. It says that as of last week, I’m officially on academic probation. Luckily, I had a strong first semester, and that’s keeping me afloat. But if my grades drop any more between now and finals, I can kiss graduation goodbye.

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Logan, language,” my mom says at the same time as my dad says,
“ ‘Shit’ is right.”

  “I can try to ask for extra credit. There’s only two classes where I need to bring my grade up,” I lie. I try to remember the last time I did homework for any of my classes, and then I remember what I decided before I left Gertrude’s office—to stop lying. To stop keeping secrets.

  “That’s actually not really true,” I say. “I probably need to ask all my teachers if there’s anything I can do to help my grades. And…there might not be enough.” I look at the letter. I’m even flunking phys ed, though I feel like I have a legit excuse for that one.

  My mom looks like she’s gonna cry, and God, I fucking hate the look on her face.

  “If I totally screwed myself over, I’ll go to summer school. I never really wanted to go to college anyway,” I tell her. Then she actually does start crying. She turns and presses her face into my dad’s chest. I look at him, like Can I go? He nods and gives me a face, like We’ll discuss this later. I’m grateful.

  Before the letter, my head had been full of memories of Dante and Rohan, so it’s weird when I get to my room, flip my laptop open, and see a message sitting in my inbox from our old band manager, Shay.

  She says Rohan has a new band that isn’t nearly as good as Unraveling Lovely. She says she wants to surprise him and get us all back together at least for one night. Dante has already told her he’s in. Then she proceeds to tell me I owe her, I owe all of them, and she isn’t wrong. The last line of the message says, I don’t know what was going on with you that made you do what you did, but knowing you, it wasn’t just nothing. You don’t have to tell me what it was, but we can’t make this show happen without you. Something about that line is what makes me want to do it. Considering that Undying Light is moving forward without me, I’m feeling pretty expendable at the moment. Her message makes me feel wanted; necessary. And that’s exactly what a cocky dick like me needs to feel.

  She signs the message:

  Don’t be a dick,

  Shay

  And I remember what it was like taking orders from a bossy sophomore while we were on tour. I grin.

  I look at the letter from school basically telling me I’m a total fuck-up, which, if I’m being honest, I already knew. Then I look at Shay’s note telling me I’m a fucking rock star (I mean, that’s basically what she’s saying). I know I have to deal with both, but it’s easy to know which to respond to first.

  BAMF // SASHA’S SENSES REVIEW…UNRAVELING LOVELY

  Looks like: falling apart

  Smells like: teen spirit (duh)

  Sounds like: every band you’ve fallen in love with and nothing you’ve ever heard before

  Tastes like: bittersweet symphonies

  Feels like: being put back together again

  5/5

  Logan Lovelace, Feb. 8, 11:59 p.m.

  Shay,

  It’s so crazy that I got your message today. Funny thing is, I hadn’t written much for a while, but lately, something is different. I wrote three songs yesterday. Lol. So would I be down to meet up with Dante and Rohan? Absolutely. I’m more worried they won’t want to see me. I know I owe them an apology. I owe you one, too.

  L

  That’s what is waiting for me when I open my laptop a few days after sending Logan the message about the reunion show. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to respond at all.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” I yell out loud. I pump my fists into the air. I text Callie to see if she found out what spring dates The 715 has available for the reunion show.

  Then I call Deedee to make sure Rohan is still in the dark.

  I send a group text to Dante and Logan, asking them if they’re free around seven. By noon, I’ve heard back from both of them, and they can make it. So I send them the details about when and where they should meet me. A few minutes later, they both agree.

  I’m ecstatic, and I’m dying to tell someone. I can’t tell Rohan because the surprise is for him, and Callie and Deedee already know. I text Jerome, but I know he’ll probably just text me back with “Ok” or “Cool”—he won’t give me the enthusiasm I need. So I walk to Mom’s bedroom and knock on the door.

  “Come in,” she says. When I open the door, Mom is sitting in the middle of her bed, her laptop open, her cell phone vibrating, and a planner and a few pens all around her.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say. I’m kinda sad that Mom is working on a Saturday morning when she promised she was going to try to work less, but at least she’s home instead of at the office. I guess a drastic change like that doesn’t happen overnight. I start closing the door again.

  “No, Shay, come in,” Mom insists. “I was just—” She flaps her hand, dismissing all the stuff around her. “It’s not important. Come here.” Mom pats the bed beside her.

  And I can’t help it. I dive onto the bed, Mom laughs, and I tell her all about Unraveling Lovely and my brilliant surprise for Rohan.

  * * *

  —

  I get to The 715 right before the show starts. Our Numbered Days is performing first. I’d wanted to get here early, but Mom took forever doing my hair. I’m rocking a few thick cornrows in front and an afro in back, a hairstyle I’ve only ever let Sasha do for me. It makes me feel closer to her, even though it was Mom’s fingers knitting together my bushy hair instead of my sister’s. I still can’t believe I actually asked Mom for her help.

  I maneuver through the dense crowd to the table I asked Rohan to reserve for me—it’s right up against the left corner of the stage. There’s a bigger band playing tonight after Our Numbered Days, so the place is exceptionally full. When I finally push past the last human wall surrounding the place where my table should be, I see Callie and Deedee waving. Then I notice Logan’s red hair around the same time as I spot Dante’s mop of black.

  “You guys made it!” I shout, reaching out and pulling Dante in for a hug.

  I look at Logan, and he says, “Look, I know I’m a dick, but the music is about to start so I’ll make this quick. I fucked up at Battle of the Bands. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend, and I couldn’t deal. I’m not trying to make excuses—there are no excuses. I just want you to know what was going on with me. Anyway, I’m sorry. And…I’m sorry about Sasha.”

  He says this in a rush, and I cock my eyebrow at him, but I get it. I reach out to hug him, like I’d planned to do all along. “I forgive you, I guess,” I say, and he squeezes me even tighter. “You’re still a dick, though.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “Hi, Autumn,” I say, hugging her next. And I notice Dante looking at her, like she’s a secret he doesn’t want to share.

  When Our Numbered Days takes the stage, I yell the way I normally would. But a part of my heart stays at the table, where two-thirds of the band I really love is sitting.

  I know the exact moment when Rohan spots us in the crowd. He’s in the middle of the first song, and he glances our way. He frowns a little, like he can’t quite make us out, which he probably can’t with the bright lights and the crowd. But as the song ends and the spotlight swivels away from him, he looks in our direction again, and his eyes get two times wider.

  Holy crap, he mouths. Holy crap.

  I tap Dante and Logan on the shoulders to make sure they see Rohan seeing them together for the first time in way too long.

  Forty-five minutes later, Rohan climbs offstage and pushes his way through to us.

  “What are you guys doing here…together?” he shouts so we can hear him over the house music that’s playing while the next band gets set up. He grabs Dante’s hand and slaps his back in an embrace. He hesitates with Logan until he leans toward Rohan and whispers what I assume is an apology in his ear.

  “Shay messaged us,” Dante says. “Says you were thinking about giving Unraveling Lovely another chance.”

  “Although,” Logan adds, “Our Numbered Days isn
’t half bad.”

  Rohan grins and then turns to me like I’m a lighthouse and he’s lost at sea.

  “You did this?” he asks, and I nod. “Why?”

  I want to tell him that it’s an apology for how I’ve been running away from him and everyone else. And that it’s a thank-you for the intervention; for always being there for me, even when I made it hard for him. But it’s more than that, too.

  “I guess I just wanted my old job back,” I say. “Really, really badly.”

  He laughs. “Thank you,” he says. “Seriously, I don’t even know what to say.” I try to look away, but he won’t let me.

  “Ro, it’s cool. I mean, I want to go to another UL show probably as much as you want to play another one. Plus, you know Sasha would love it.” I grip his shoulders, and before I can say anything else, he lifts me up off the floor, and I scream until he puts me down.

  “So,” he says when my feet are planted on the floor again. “You guys want to come over or what?”

  “Duh,” Dante says.

  As we head out to the parking lot, I’m right beside Logan.

  “What kind of songs have you been writing?” I ask.

  He pushes the door open with one hand and squints into the dark, like he’s thinking. The sun went down hours ago, but the stars still haven’t shown up.

  “I’ve written, I shit you not, twelve songs in the last week, after a pretty long dry spell. So, to be honest, it’s a little bit of everything and kind of all over the place.” He turns around to look for Rohan, and he’s right behind us.

  “They’re probably total trash. But I’d love to pick that dude’s brain and see if he thinks they’re any good.”

  In Rohan’s dim garage, Logan unrolls the notebook that’s been peeking out of his back pocket all night, and he and Rohan huddle together looking through the pages of scribbled writing, like they’re sacred scripture. Dante and Autumn flip over a few buckets they find in a corner, and then Dante gets a pair of drumsticks from his car. He beats out quiet rhythms while Autumn looks at her phone and hums along.