by eden Hudson
“Whatever,” Clare says. “Danny gets what I’m saying. Don’t you, Danny?”
I try to say “sure,” but I can only nod. Shouldn’t I have been more nervous when Shannon walked into the coffee shop yesterday and asked me what I was doing in Brooklyn? Or when we were screaming at each other in the street as if no time had passed at all and we were still petty, insecure high schoolers? Instead, I feel the way I did five years ago at KillPop—as if the rest of our lives are riding on tonight.
Down in the center of all these thousands of seats is the stage, blocked off by metal gates and security guards wearing black jackets with yellow lettering. The Derringers have really come a long way from doing shows in bars and clubs. I can remember stories about Mena having to throw down her sticks and fight people off of the stage so the band could finish a set. And I was there on nights when Shannon or Terrie or Anna would jump off the stage and let the hands of the crowd carry them around. It didn’t matter whether Shannon stayed on stage and sang back then, because I was the only one who knew the words.
Clare turns around again and changes his mind about where we’re going.
“I’m starting to lose my faith in infallible coyote instincts,” Noah says.
“Humans built this mess,” Clare says. “If something with some sense had designed the place—”
Noah takes the tickets and looks around. A few minutes later, he’s found an usher who lets us know we’re in the wrong section and takes us back out and around most of the building until we’re walking downstairs toward the stage. The usher lifts the rope on a reserved section that’s only seating about eight or ten people so far. We’re so close I can count the stickers on the opening band’s lead guitar.
“This isn’t right, is it?” I say.
“What, did you think she’d send you crappy tickets?” Clare asks.
I shrug. I don’t really know what to think, but I’m pretty sure that guy over there is Trent Reznor, Shannon’s music idol. Does she know he’s here? Is she backstage running around, humming to herself, half-dancing, the way she always used to when she got so excited she couldn’t hold it in? I try to remember that I don’t have any right to be jealous anymore.
Clare nods at a dark-haired girl. “That’s that chick from that one show, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Saved by the Bell,” Noah says, doing a great job of pretending he doesn’t care.
Clare cackles and stabs his finger at me. “I told you he watched Saved by the Bell!” Then he yells at Noah, “Could you be less black?”
Now everyone in the reserved section is looking at us, including the girl from Saved by the Bell and the guy who might be Shannon’s music idol. I can feel my face burning. I duck my head and look away.
“Try to act like you’ve got a shred of sophistication,” Noah says.
“Not on your life,” Clare says.
“In fairness to him, he really did tell me he caught you taping Saved by the Bell and I didn’t believe him,” I say.
“You talk even more like a hillbilly when you’re embarrassed,” Noah says.
“At least I’m not the big, black dude obsessed with Saved by the Bell,” I say. “Now that would be embarrassing.”
There’s a final cheer for the opening band. Whatever Noah says next is lost in the uproar from the crowd.
The lights go out. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until I hear the guitar. Through the flash of cameras, I can see Shannon and the rest of the Derringers running onto the stage as she cranks out a riff that fights back the darkness. The lights come on.
There’s a pop when her mouth hits the microphone, then she screams, “Jesus Christ—”
My heart stops and I pray that she’s not going to sing it, that I’m either hallucinating or this is any other song in the world.
Shannon’s fingers dance up the neck of her guitar.
“—love me. Why won’t you just love me?”
Everybody else in the stadium is on their feet, screaming and singing along. I drop into my seat. My legs are numb. All of my body is numb.
“Jesus, Love Me” is the song that really launched the Lost Derringers. It was the first major-label single they released. The rock stations couldn’t play it enough and the Christian interest groups couldn’t protest it enough.
Shannon and I had only been broken up for two months when the song came out. Coffee hadn’t occurred to me yet as a way to fight sleep, so sometimes at night I’d go outside, get in my car, and turn the radio on, flipping through the channels until I heard her voice. That night, I turned the radio on just as the DJ announced “Jesus, Love Me.”
Critics were always describing Shannon’s style as intense, full of raw power, and it was, but that song—it was something else altogether. My favorite book back then was Holy the Firm, and while I listened to Shannon that night, I couldn’t think of anything but Annie Dillard’s description of the moth flying into the candle, becoming the wick.
Tonight in Madison Square Garden, Shannon half-screams, half-sings the chorus and it bores down into my chest until I can’t breathe.
I would have died for you,
Been crucified for you,
But you want me alive and in pain
So you don’t have to hurt, too.
Despite the music and the noise of the crowd, Noah’s voice makes me jump.
“You okay, Country?”
I stand up.
“I can’t be here,” I say. I squeeze past Noah.
“All right, let’s go,” he says.
“No,” I say, looking back at Clare. He’s jumping around, yelling and dancing like everyone else. Clare’s only a year younger than me, but at the moment it feels like I’m twice his age. “Someone’s got to keep that guy from doing anything stupid backstage.”
“He’ll understand,” Noah says.
“I’ll be fine. You guys have fun. I’m just going back to the hotel.”
I manage to get out without looking at the stage by focusing on putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. Shannon starts another song, but it sounds the same to me—like she’s self-immolating and no one is trying to stop her. We need her to burn so we don’t have to.
Shannon
He left.
It’s been a long time since I played for an audience and saw someone in the crowd—just one person instead of a blur of faces and bodies—but tonight I picked Danny out immediately. I knew where he’d be sitting because my reserve tickets are always in the same place. While Take Back was playing, I watched to see if he and his friends would show up. They did. They looked like they were having a good time. Then when we did our run-out and the lights came up, I saw Danny in his seat, head down like he was praying.
Then he left. Just got up and walked out.
Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he hates me more than he thought and he couldn’t stand to sit through a concert.
For me it was just the opposite. Seeing him sitting there took me back to playing gigs in high school, back to when we had to beg his parents for permission so that he could come. They didn’t approve of my music, but they never said anything against it unless I asked them outright. They left Danny to form his own opinions. And Danny always seemed to understand, if not intellectually why I needed to make the music, then on some bone-deep level.
Danny’s friends are still in the reserve section. The lanky blonde guy is thrashing like he goes to rock concerts all the time. I play to him for a while. I love people who can still get lost in the music. They make it seem worth all the bullshit.
Then I see her. She’s coming down the stairs, all long, shapely legs and melted-caramel skin, beautiful and dark and deadly. I can’t believe no one is freaking out at the tar-black wings that slope neatly behind her back, folded and at rest. An angel of sin and destruction.
When she’s at my eye-level, the angel stops descending the steps and looks into my eyes. I should be in full-on panic mode, but now that I can see her—all of
her, not just a flash of her wings—I feel weirdly calm.
Anna bumps my arm with her elbow.
“What are you, high?” she asks without missing a lick. “We’re in the middle of a concert, Shannon. ‘Lucky Scar,’ verse two.”
Anna walks her bass back to her mic, but I don’t jump back in. I crank up my volume until the feedback drowns out the rest of the band. Let the techs worry about that. Then I start up the pulsing, burning melody I’m hearing in my head and I lean into my mic.
“All right, boys and girls,” I yell. “I’m fucking sick to death of playing for the man, obeying their rules about their shows and their stadium. Their security to make them feel better. This is my fucking band and my fucking life and if they want a piece of it—a piece of me—they can come and fucking get me themselves.”
Danny
I forgot that the usher led us around to a different section, so when I get outside, I have no idea where I am. I try walking around the building to find the entrance we came in. There was a subway station a couple of blocks from it. When I get about halfway around the building, I see Shannon’s friend, Tiffani, standing outside a fire door, smoking.
She watches me, but doesn’t say anything.
“Hi,” I say. “Smoke break?”
Tiffani looks me up and down, then asks, “Shouldn’t you be inside?”
It seems to take a lot of effort to shrug. The muscles in my shoulders don’t want to cooperate.
“You’ve probably seen the show enough times to know what it looks like,” I say.
She takes a drag on her cigarette, then she nods.
I exhale. “Me, too.”
The light down the block changes and cars pass. A few have music playing and their windows down to let in the cool spring air. I try to wonder why anyone here would want that when all I can smell is exhaust and trash, but I think I understand. Anything is better than being boxed in for one more night.
“Are you Shannon’s girlfriend?” I ask Tiffani. “I mean, are you two dating?”
“What if we are?” she says.
“If I find out you’re drinking off of her, I’ll stake you,” I say.
She gives me a look like I’m insane. “What are you—”
I look her in the eyes—they must’ve been brown while she was alive, but they’ve faded to the color of brushed bronze—and dare her to mesmerize me.
“I don’t like to stake vampires because I know where you’re going when you’re done here,” I say, “But I’ll do it if it protects her.”
Tiffani drops the act.
“I don’t like killing preachers because I know where they’re going,” she says. “But I’ll do it if she asks me to.”
A man in sweats jogs past, headphones blaring the Lost Derringers.
When he’s gone, Tiffani cocks her head at me and lets the smoke roll out as she asks, “How did you know?” She touches her teeth with her thumb. “The concealment is supposed to be good for ten years.”
“They’re not showing,” I say. “I saw a picture of you and her on the cover of the National Enquirer a while back.”
“She’s really been enjoying the crazy stories that magazine keeps putting out about her ghost photos,” Tiffani says. “Bounty on those shots is around one-fifty these days.”
I don’t know why the price bothers me so much. To Tiffani, probably to Shannon, too, it’s just a fact of life.
Tiffani offers me a cigarette.
“No, thanks.”
“Seems like you could use one,” she says. When I look at her, she explains, “Tension. I can hear it, see it, smell it even.”
For a while, we watch Tiffani’s smoke float up and disappear into the light pollution.
“Why don’t you stop her?” I ask.
“I can’t.” The fact that Tiffani doesn’t need clarification scares me. It means everyone can see Shannon tearing herself apart, but nobody knows how to stop her.
Sirens start up in the distance. Somewhere in this city, someone needs help badly enough to call for it. Can the ambulance even get there in time with all this traffic?
Tiffani’s pager beeps. She flicks her cigarette at the street and pulls the pager off her belt.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Shannon.”
Then we’re running. Or I am, in a dead sprint, just trying to keep Tiffani in sight. I knew vampires were fast, but I didn’t realize how fast. I have just enough time to thank God that we didn’t go back to the hotel and get cleaned up before the concert—in my Sunday shoes, Tiffani would’ve lost me right away—before she blows through a door and slows her pace to human.
When I catch up, a crowd of people are yelling at Tiffani, all trying to be heard as they jog toward another door. No one notices me follow them down the tunnel and out into the auditorium.
“—don’t know what she’s thinking. They’ve already called in the police—”
“—two security guards injured that we know of—”
“—just stopped in the middle of a song and went off. Did she take anything other than the anxiety pills that you saw?”
“—they’re going to say she incited a riot. Garden management—”
Most of the seats in Madison Square Garden are empty. The security gates are gone and an ocean of bodies is pressed against the stage. People are jumping around like it’s a mosh pit. Others are climbing up onto the stage and dancing or diving.
Shannon is this redheaded flame in the middle of it all, banging against her guitar and screaming. The microphones and stands are long gone and it looks like the band doesn’t know the song, like they’re just jamming along with Shannon, taking their cues from her.
Tiffani and the entourage of suits are still yelling at each other, trying to figure out how to deal with this. From what I catch, it sounds like the riot police are on the way.
“We’ll spin it,” I hear the blonde guy with glasses shout. He’s the guy Shannon was yelling at last night at the police station. Her manager. “Jenny? Where’s Jenny?”
“Here. I’m on it,” a woman yells. She has a cellular phone to her ear and I wonder whether she can hear anything in all this. “You just get this shut down before the band gets pepper-sprayed or gassed or something. That’s the last thing we need before the pre-tour shots, to—Hello? I need you to put me through to the officer in charge of—”
“—if anyone gets trampled to death—”
“Lawsuits? Oh, no, honey, the damages alone—”
“—fucking nightmare—”
Chaos. In the midst of it, Shannon looks more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. Powerful. Some kind of new world goddess. She created this storm, and out of the thunder of the crowd, she conjures a chant.
Come and get me, come and get me, come and get me…
Shannon
Everybody pitched such a fit when I got my lawyers to renegotiate the terms of my contract to exclude shows on Friday nights, but ticket sales were better than ever when we started playing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I guess no one has anything to do those nights—including getting in trouble with the law, because except for us, our holding cell tonight is empty.
“I thought I was done being arrested after Mena left,” Terrie says.
“I think we’re just being detained,” Anna says, getting up and leaning against the far wall so that she can look down the hall.
“Don’t you get detained at the scene?” Terrie asks.
“I think if we’ve been fingerprinted, we’ve been arrested,” I say.
They both look at me.
“Well, thanks for that,” Terrie says, rolling her eyes.
That’s the most she’s said to me in at least a year, and even though it’s sarcasm, it feels good. I look down at the black smudges on my tights, then press my fingerprints to a clean spot to see if they’re dry yet. Nope.
“It did rock pretty hard, though,” I say.
Terrie snorts.
We go back to ignoring each other. After a while, I hear a door open down the hall. Anna perks up. Then she shakes her head and leans back against the wall.
A cop is escorting Bro past the women’s holding cell on the way to the men’s.
“Thanks a fucking lot, Shan,” he yells, kicking the bars with his worn out sneakers. The cop makes him keep moving. “I didn’t have a record, damn it.”
“Weren’t very much of a drummer, then, were you?” Anna snaps back.
“Yeah, were you planning on murdering someone and getting away with it because they didn’t have your fingerprints?” Terrie says.
Bro’s out of our sight, but they keep after him, yelling to make sure he hears.
“He wanted to go into law enforcement,” Anna says.
“No, public office,” Terrie says. She crowds the bars. “New Meat for President!”
I laugh. “You guys are still calling him that?”
Terrie comes back to the bench and sits down.
“It’s only been a year since Mena left,” she says. “Just seems longer.”
Does it ever. I should apologize for getting them arrested. Make it up to them somehow. I don’t know what they’d want, though, and I’m not sure how to ask.
The door opens again and this time Anna looks relieved.
Corey comes stomping down the hall with a cop in his wake. When they get to the holding cell, the cop messes with a set of keys on a carabiner until he finds the one that unlocks our door.
“Shannon Colter, Terrie Gilbert, Annamarie Lance,” the cop reads from a piece of paper, “Your bail has been paid and you are free to go on the condition that you attend your court dates as detailed in your release paperwork. Follow me, please.”
“What about Bro?” I ask.
“Your drummer?” the cop says. “He was belligerent with an officer and we found a bottle of unidentified pills in his pocket. We’re holding him overnight.”
