by Rae, Nikki
I know he doesn’t mean anything by it but Myles’ name hurts me like he’s throwing knives into my stomach. I went to sleep so I wouldn’t have to think, and here I am, dreaming and thinking. Did we really break up? Did I do that to him and myself? Was there any other way? I find myself thinking about the water again. How simple everything became in those precious moments.
“Right,” he says, interrupting my thoughts before they get carried away. “I’m not here to solve that problem,” he says lightheartedly. “And you’re going to wake up in a few seconds, so...”
I nod as I watch him gather up the trench coat and glasses from the piano bench and carefully put them back on, concealing his face and clothes.
“See you around, Sunshine,” he says, hugging me quickly before opening the door and letting the noise that I can finally hear flood the room. It’s the sound of a million instruments layered over the sound of a snowy television set. There are voices, faint and mixing into the chaos, but I can’t decipher the words.
I wake up in the same bunk I’ve woken up in for the past week. We’ve played six shows in the past seven days. Three shows in Pennsylvania, one in Maryland, and now, if I’ve been keeping track correctly, tonight is Virginia. I can’t describe how it’s been. I can’t put into words how amazing it should feel, being on stage every night with my friends and playing at different venues, selling our CDs and T-shirts to strangers who are probably hearing us for the first time. But I don’t feel any of it. I go through traveling back to the night before the journey even started and failing to stay in the moment.
I turn over and shift the curtain out of the way. All of the lights are on, which I’ve come to know means that it’s dark outside. When I inch my way out of my small enclosed space, I notice that no one else is in their bunks either. They must be in the living area, going over set lists and stuff. Things that I should be doing with them. I quickly go to the bathroom, dress in a wrinkled Violent Femmes T-shirt and jeans before joining them.
“Hey, look who’s up,” Jade says from the table, moving over so I can sit next to him. All the members of Honus are cramped in the small space as well, along with Boo and Trei. Boo and Manny have a laptop sitting between them with what looks like song names written out in a Word document.
My head is still spinning from the dream and I can’t help being weary of Manny. The whole thing was probably some kind of trick, Michael trying to get me to think I’m not safe with the people I’m with so I’ll leave. But I can’t trust anyone.
“What time is it?” I ask.
Manny glances up but Bear answers for him. “Five,” he says, itching at his poofy strawberry blonde beard. I can hear every bristle against his hand.
“You slept for like, fourteen hours,” Trei says, distracting me.
“Yeah,” Boo says, turning to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “Of course. Just tired.”
“You look like shit,” he says lovingly. “It looks like you didn’t sleep at all.”
I shrug, unable to give him any other response.
Jade wraps an arm around me. “You want coffee?”
I shake my head. The thought makes my temples hurt.
“Are you going blond now?” Boo teases.
“What?” I look down, grabbing up the ends of my hair. They’re white, an almost perfect millimeter of white fading into light pink, then a slightly darker, but not quite magenta color.
Suddenly I’m sitting at a table all alone. I recognize it as the hospital cafeteria, the same one I met Myles in the day he showed me the marks on his arms. I’m wearing a beanie to cover the fact that underneath, my dark hair has turned grey. It would scare Sophie, I think to myself. They’re Myles’ thoughts. This is Myles’ memory. I want her to like me–the real me. Not the one that needs blood. Not the one I’m afraid of myself.
I blink and the memory is gone. Of course my brain would pick now, when I haven’t seen or heard from him in so long, to point out that his blood is the reason why I’m alive. That his memories are now mine. And now my hair is changing colors? Awesome.
“Hey,” Manny says, cutting through my thoughts and ending the conversation. “Leave her alone. Everyone adjusts to touring differently.”
Boo shuts up and Manny gives me a small smile before he gets to work on the set list for tonight.
I know this routine by now too. Manny asks his band what songs they want to play, type them out, and our band does the same. We time the songs, making sure we don’t go over the limit that’s given to us, which is usually half an hour to an hour for us and two to three for Honus. Then we send it to the venue, dress, and get to the place for sound check. Then we usually have an hour to eat backstage before playing. Honus goes on as we either work our merch or return backstage. Sometimes we play encores with Honus and sometimes we don’t.
“Pinky?” Manny asks.
I forgot what we were supposed to be doing. “Oh,” I say. “Sorry, what?”
“You want to play a cover first or one of our own songs?” Trei asks.
“I guess one of our own,” I say. “But not ‘Color Blind’,” I add on quickly, thinking of how Myles is stuck to that song and I’m not ready to play it. “It’s too slow,” I explain.
“Yeah,” Boo agrees. “Let’s do ‘Bird’.”
Manny types out the word on the laptop and we move down the list until we have a set of six songs.
Okay, Manny says. “And I think we’ll have time for encore tonight,” he says. “I’m thinking a Misfits song.”
Skinny stops twirling his drumsticks, which seem to have been glued to his hands since we started tour, gets a huge grin on his face and nods, the rest of Honus looking pleased with this choice as well.
“All in favor of ‘Last Caress’ raise their hands,” he says. Boo, Bear, and Peebs raise their hands. “All in favor of ‘Saturday Night’?”
I raise my hand along with Manny, Trei, Ewok, and Skinny.
“Jade,” Manny says when my brother hasn’t voted either way. “What do you want to hear?”
He looks like he’s coming back from somewhere far away. “‘Saturday Night’,” he says with a half smile.
“Okay,” Manny says, typing that out as well.
A few minutes later, the bus stops and we get out. The club we’re at tonight is called “Rampage”. Unlike Midnight, it’s a single building, the name lit up in neon blue above the door. When we walk inside, it looks like an old church that was converted into a venue with a stage.
“Huh,” I say. “This is pretty cool for a place in Virginia.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Boo asks, adjusting his backpack and handing me mine.
“What?”
“We’re in North Carolina.”
“No we aren’t,” I say.
“Yeah,” he shoots back, taking a folded up paper out of his pocket. “See?” he says, pointing. “We were in Virginia last night.”
How is that possible? How could we have played an entire show in a different state and I don’t remember any of it? What else am I not remembering? “No, that can’t be right.”
Boo folds up the paper and shoves it back into his pocket. “Days bleeding together already?”
I grab my backpack from him and nod, knowing deep down that the day hasn’t bled together, it’s just vanished completely.
***
Seven days. That’s how long it’s been since we’ve talked.
No phone calls, no texts. She needs time, I keep telling myself, remembering how hard it was for me when I was first turned. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but I didn’t really have anyone so it was easier. I know what it’s like, being trapped inside yourself for that adjustment period. I hope hers doesn’t last as long as mine did.
I can’t change what I did. I can’t call her every second of the day to make sure she’s not slipping away either. What I can do is follow, keep a close eye. Every place they play, I make sure the protector of that area is present. Michael hasn
’t shown up anywhere but I can’t pretend he isn’t looking. He wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to give up now.
I wish I could stand somewhere closer to her, or maybe backstage. That would be ideal but she doesn’t want me near her and I can’t exactly blame her for feeling that way.
“I think she did well,” Alex says, taking the space beside me, drink in hand. “She didn’t hurt anyone, right?”
She’s said the same thing each night we’ve watched Sophie play. But she doesn’t know her the way I do. I’ve seen how detached she’s been. How she sometimes plays as if at any moment the piano with open its mouth and swallow her up. She doesn’t shed herself in front of the instrument anymore. She walls herself up even tighter. Her hair is thin, turning colors. Not to the point where anyone would really notice, but I can see it. I can see everything, deep inside of her now. Though I can’t feel her pain, I can imagine it just as if it was my own, and it must be bordering on unbearable. She was paler than usual, her eyes were sunken in.
There’s something wrong. She’s beginning to have symptoms we get when we don’t feed for long periods. She’s starving herself. I know better than anyone else what that looks like. I’m grateful that Honus has already played and there’s only one song left. I don’t want to watch her suffer anymore. I can’t tear my gaze away from the darkened stage as some generic rock music plays overhead and the crowd starts their chants for one more song.
“She’s mostly okay,” Adrienne joins in, gently clapping me on the back. “Will you relax now?”
I appreciate them both coming with me and I appreciate their words of encouragement because I know they’re just trying to help, but I can’t believe any of it. They can’t feel what I feel. Not with her.
She isn’t fine. And because she isn’t fine, I can’t be fine. I can’t uncross my arms, let my muscles relax, or take my eyes off of the stage until I know she is done for the night, that the monster inside of her will stay subdued until the lights go out for the final time. Until I can get to her, convince her to take care of herself so she doesn’t put anyone at risk of being hurt, including herself.
“I may take you up on your offer,” I tell my friends, my vampires. “From before.”
Alex tips her drink in my direction. “Sure,” she says with an uneasy smile.
“Whatever you need,” Adrienne agrees, moving away from me and wrapping Alex up in a hug from behind.
The music begins again and Sophie is back onstage; I knew she would be. Manny wouldn’t pass up the chance to have her sing for him again. I know I wouldn’t. They’re singing a song I recognize, from not so long ago, from a band I heard in passing but never had much interest in until I met her.
When the lights hit Sophie, she looks momentarily blinded, but she regains her composure fast enough that no one else would have been able to notice. Her voice has come back from sounding so tightly wound as well. When she sings, it comes from deep within her chest, flowing out of her and into the crowd like she has crafted each note especially for every person who has attended. Like at any given time, they can reach up and grab a part of her that she is choosing to share.
For a moment, I close my eyes and listen too, wanting desperately to grasp as well, some part that I haven’t seen in a long time, one that I vowed to protect and make new again. This was one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She is beautiful, every part of her. The ones she hides and the ones she shares. Always.
It takes a nudge from Adrienne to break me out of the trance Sophie’s song has put me into. When I open my eyes, she is not in front of the microphone stand where she was when I shut them, but at the edge of the crowd, where the stage becomes a sea of people. Their hands and fingers lap at the toes of her boots and up her calves, practically begging for her to dive in. I can’t do much besides pray that she doesn’t listen to them. If she enters the crowd, there’s no telling what could happen.
But just as soon as that thought passes, before I have any real time to form a reaction or a plan to get her out of there, she is being carried, walking on the hands and faith of the people in the audience. They erupt in cheers, excited that she’s accepted their invitation, supporting her weight as she continues to sing the song, a slow smile spreading across her mouth. Sophie’s eyes are closed. She’s finally losing herself, the way she used to when she played. Like the first time I saw her sing and shed her armor. She doesn’t know anyone in the crowd, but she’s trusting them not to let her fall, to keep her raised up so she can finish the song, and I smile too.
It’s subtle, so I don’t think Alex and Adrienne or the few other vampires in the club can notice it and it’s always been hard to put into words. The air becomes thicker around me, as if the oxygen has turned to smoke. I have to grip my hands around the railing at the edge of the balcony in order to keep my balance.
“You okay?” Adrienne asks, his carefree tone gone.
I keep my eyes trained on Sophie below us, not answering his question.
She’s abandoned walking. Now she’s falling, sinking into them. I recognize the look on her face. I know it quite well. It’s the same one I feel spread across me whenever I feed. Whenever the monster within me is soothed and quieted.
She’s draining them.
Only this isn’t blood. This isn’t fangs. This is energy; this is the essence of being. It’s only something we use sparingly, when blood isn’t around, and even then, it can’t keep us going forever. This takes centuries to learn and more time to perfect in order to not harm the human you take the energy from. She shouldn’t even know how to do this, let alone drain an entire room.
“Is she?” Alex asks.
“Yeah,” Adrienne answers.
“We can’t let her do that,” Alex says in my direction, but I can’t take my eyes off of Sophie. Not for a second.
Without any word from me, Alex disappears, running down the stairs to the emergency exit. Below me, Sophie melts into the crowd. Some people let go of her, moving away from the more dense areas of the audience to catch their breath. They will think it’s only because of how hot it is in the room, how sweaty the other bodies are pressed against them. They wouldn’t even begin to think the real reason for their sudden rush of dizziness or nausea. They wouldn’t know the real cause of that dull ache in the back of their skull.
Even though she seems to be draining them fast, the people are relentless in their efforts to grab a part of her. When one person disappears to get some air, another takes their place. They engulf her with their hands, their mouths fighting for equal time to share the microphone with her as the song builds up to its last few lines.
Fortunately, Adrienne finds the fire alarm before it goes any further, and instead of the song ending in Sophie’s voice, feeding them more of herself, it ends in a shrill panic.
***
I don’t remember going onstage. I don’t remember playing through our set or going to our booth to sell merch when Honus went on and I don’t remember going back onstage to play the encore. All I remember is my pulse pounding in my ears, sweat, and breath. And then a loud screech as I was pulled off of everyone and shoved outside.
We’re standing by the bus, waiting around for some reason, when Manny walks back out of the exit door. “Okay,” he says. “They want us back on the bus so we can get to the hotel. The club managers are saying there’s no point in going back onstage now when we were pretty much done anyway.”
The collective members of Honus sigh and curse under their breath but I honestly can’t be bothered. I just want to go back to sleep, where things are still complicated, but at least I don’t have to pretend. At least I’m not looking over my shoulder.
I would settle for just lying down and not moving for a while. I feel so heavy, like there is the weight of a hundred peoples’ problems and worry and heartache sitting on top of me in addition to what I was feeling before the show.
And there’s this strange buzzing in my head, like a mosquito I can’t see or catch. When
I turn my head in the direction of where I think the sound is coming from, it’s the entrance to the club, which I can only see half of because of how far away we are. There are people exiting, some scrambling the building really is on fire, some nonchalantly walking just far enough away from the building to make the security guards happy. One face sticks out amongst the mass of people.
A guy with short blond hair is wearing a leather jacket with patches on it and jeans, but I recognize how thin he is under the thick material, how much his cheekbones stick out and how dark underneath his eyes are. My heart thuds loudly in my ears and he smiles at me, most likely hearing the sound.
But when I blink, it’s not Michael’s face staring back at me from a distance, it’s just a random person I don’t recognize. He’s wearing the same leather jacket and jeans. His hair is dyes half purple, half red. Did I really see Michael, or was it just me? Are his memories more real to me than what I’m actually seeing?
Jade wrapping his arm around my back breaks me out of my thoughts. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, noticing that the rest of my band as well as Honus are already getting back on the bus.
“Ready?” he asks, trying to poorly conceal how concerned he is.
I nod again, and it seems like it takes more effort than ever to get my legs to lift from the pavement, my feet to move in front of one another.
As soon as we’re back on the bus, while everyone else is talking and setting up some video game on the TV, I make a beeline for my bunk without bothering with any of the covers. I think more than one person asks me what’s wrong but I don’t want to answer. Maybe I don’t know how to answer. All I know is that no one should have to feel this heavy all at once.
Chapter 11
All for Show
“Crash into my arms. I want you. You don’t agree, but you don’t refuse. I know you.”–Morrissey
The crowd erupts in a vast wall of white noise. I’m not sure how loud it actually is or how loud I’m hearing it, but adrenaline pumps through me and I don’t care. I don’t even have to think as I take the microphone at the front of the stage. There is no announcement made; a guitar plays the first few chords and Manny begins. I don’t have much time before I have to follow them. I didn’t think it was possible but the crowd becomes even louder when they recognize the song. The throbbing in my temples is back but I push it aside, concentrating everything I have into the lyrics:
