Unaware, Kellan continues, “I want that kind of bond with another musician. I’ve been looking for it my whole life. I think you and I have that.”
When he finishes, I start bawling uncontrollably.
He wraps an arm gently around my shoulders and I fall into his chest. I sob like crazy.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asks nervously.
It takes a few minutes before I can speak between sobs, but I finally squeeze out in a weak voice, “I had that.”
“Had what? I’m confused.”
I sniffle and look into his eyes, “I had what you’re talking about. Mick and Keith. Alex and Geddy. Eddie and Alex. I had that.”
“With Scott?” Kellan asks doubtfully.
“No!’ I cry laugh. “Not even close. I had it with my brother Victor.”
“You have a brother?”
“Had,” I sigh. I smear tears from my cheeks and rest my forehead against my knees for a long time.
Kellan asks softly, “Do you want to talk about it?”
(Let go, Victory. You have to let go of your brother)
I gaze into Kellan’s welcoming eyes. Comfort washes over me. “Not really,” I frown smile.
“That’s okay,” he murmurs. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“But I need to tell you,” I say desperately and grab his forearm. “I’ve never told this story to anybody. I mean, nobody outside my family. I didn’t even tell Scott. But I need to tell you, Kellan. I don’t know why.”
Tears pour down my face.
Chapter 113
VICTORY
I sit up and cross my legs beneath me and drop my hands in my lap.
Kellan positions himself so he’s facing me.
He wears the sincerest expression I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s totally making it easier to talk about this. The last time I really talked about Victor to anyone was my therapist when I was a teenager.
I stare at my hands and say to Kellan, “Victor was killed when I was twelve. In a car accident. He’s my fraternal twin. Was my fraternal twin. Gosh, it still breaks my heart to use the word ‘was’.” I shake my head and sigh. “This is so hard, Kellan,” I plead.
My tears start again.
Kellan takes my hands from my lap and squeezes them in his affectionately. “Are you sure you want to go into it? It looks like it’s breaking your heart.”
“Thank you. But I’m going to. You really need to hear it.”
“I do?”
“Yes. So you can understand why I ran away from you.
He smiles softly, “That doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“Let me explain. When I was young, my dad had guitars around the house. He started playing when he was a teenager. So I grew up with them. It didn’t take long for me and Victor to start playing too. We did everything together,” I laugh thoughtfully. “My dad gave me my Fender Strat for Christmas when I was seven. He gave Victor a blond Les Paul.”
Kellan’s eyes widen, “Oh…I play a Les Paul.”
I nod. He understands the significance of the fact that he and my brother played the same model guitar. Different color, but close enough.
“Me and Victor played guitar together all the time. We were both into all the 1980s shredder guitar players our dad turned us on to. Just like you and me, Kellan.”
His eyes are big and he nods solemnly.
“And not long after that, Victor and I started singing together.”
(singsingsing)
“Kellan,” I say, but my breath hitches several times before I get out the words, “you asked me to sing and play guitar with you.”
“Oh, Victory,” he says softly, “I had no idea…”
“It’s okay,” I lean forward and kiss his cheek once gently.
I continue, “Anyway, my dad was so excited when he heard me and Victor singing together the first time. I think the first song we sang for him was Sergeant Peppers by the Beatles. We’d practice every day after school when he was still at work. My grandma would babysit us and she loved it. Victor would put the Sergeant Peppers CD on my dad’s big stereo all the time, and we’d march around the living room, pretending we were in a big brass marching band. When we did it for my dad the first time one night, Victor pretended to laugh silently when the crowd laughs during the song. I remember. My dad laughed and I laughed too. Then Victor pretended to play the trumpets.” I shake my head, smiling. “Anyway, the first time we did it in front of my dad, he was speechless. His eyes were all big like he’d discovered gold or something.
“Dad was never much of a singer. Just the lead guitar man in all his bands. But he still plays amazing,” I smile fondly. “So, Dad had me and Victor perform for his singer friends, and they started teaching us whatever they could about singing. My mom and dad didn’t have money to pay them, so Dad traded them by working on their cars whenever they needed it.
“Eventually, Victor and I started playing guitar while we sang. We did only covers in the beginning. All the classic rock and metal my dad grew up on. At some point, we started writing our own music. When that happened, my dad went nuts. He wanted us to have the music career he never did. Any time he heard about a local gig we could play, he would take us. Churches, talent shows, birthday parties, it didn’t matter. He wanted people to see what we could do. Me and Victor had so much fun…”
I smile and look at Kellan.
“I bet you did,” he grins.
“Anyway, we got really good, you know? We won our junior high school talent show in seventh grade. We played Enter Sandman and Helter Skelter with some other kids we knew who played drums and bass. Victor and I sang it together. The school kids loved it. Then we played More Than Words by Extreme. Just me and Victor on acoustic guitar. I think a hundred girls at the school wanted to be my brother’s girlfriend after that.” I pause and laugh, “Victor lied and told all the girls we wrote More Than Words. The girls didn’t know, and that song was so old anyway.”
I take a deep breath before I continue.
Kellan asks, “Do you want some water or anything?”
“I’m fine,” I smile. “This is the hard part of the story. The summer after seventh grade, there was some battle of the bands up in Fresno at some outdoor summer street festival that me and Victor found online. It was all ages, which was awesome since we were both twelve. We begged our dad to take us. I remember he’d had a hard week at work leading up to the festival, and he was really tired the morning of the show. But my dad never let that stop him. Especially not when it came to Victor and me playing somewhere.
“The show was Saturday night, so Dad slept in Saturday morning, and drank a bunch of coffee for lunch before we drove up to Fresno. The drive was like two hours and I could tell he was tired and yawning a lot on the way up. It was after dinner when Victor and I finally got on stage. But we played our hearts out and had a blast. We even took second place and won two hundred and fifty bucks. Since we had to hang around for the prizes, I don’t think we drove home until eleven o’clock that night.
“On the drive home, my dad was really tired. I was sitting in the back seat and Victor was in the front next to Dad. Victor and I were so excited, we kept talking and talking even though it was so late. I think it helped keep my dad awake the whole way home. When we ran out of things to say, we started singing our songs. Dad loved to listen to us sing. It kept him going all the way home.
“Not that it mattered.
“A half mile from home, we stopped at a stop sign. It was late. My dad didn’t look carefully both ways. Funny how important that is.”
(Stop!!!)
“Maybe my dad would’ve seen the car if he hadn’t been so tired, or heard it if me and Victor hadn’t been singing so loud. I don’t know. It didn’t matter. The lights of the car that hit us were off anyway. I guess the driver forgot to turn them on. So Dad didn’t see the car. I didn’t see it either. But Victor did. I remember Victor shouting
(Stop, Dad!!!)
at the t
op his lungs when my dad pulled into the intersection.
“The police said the drunk driver who T-boned our car never touched his brakes. He was going forty miles an hour when he rammed into our car. The doctors said Victor died instantly because he was in the front seat. I was pinned in the back seat. I remember my dad shouting my name, trying to wake me up.”
(Victory!!! Wake up!!!)
“He thought I was dead too. My scalp was cut and there was blood all over my face. I had to get fifty stitches. See?”
I pull my hair back from my scar and lift Kellan’s fingers to my scalp so he can feel it.
He nods silently.
“After that night, I never sang again. At Victor’s funeral, I promised him in my head that I would never sing or play guitar again. Not without him. And, I sort of believe all the singing me and Victor were doing when the drunk driver hit us was why Dad never heard the car coming. For years, my therapist told me not to blame myself, but I couldn’t help it. I never sang again after the accident.
“For a long time, I barely even talked. I was completely numb and checked out most of the time. It’s not like I had anything to say anyway. I mean, I couldn’t talk without remembering Victor and falling apart into tears. So I tended not to say anything to anybody unless I had to.
“But it wasn’t long after the accident that my mom and dad started trying to get me to sing and play guitar. They told me they missed it and it kept the memory of my brother alive. But I couldn’t do it. It hurt too much. And it didn’t seem fair to Victor. If he couldn’t sing and play, I wasn’t going to.”
Kellan asks, “So, how did you end up playing guitar again?”
“My dad. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I ever would’ve played again. My dad is so awesome.”
I start sobbing and Kellan holds me tight.
Several minutes pass before I can talk again.
I say, “One night, maybe a year and a half after Victor died, my dad put on a recording of me and Victor playing this haunting heavy metal instrumental we wrote called Andromeda. It was kind of like Orion by Metallica from Master of Puppets.”
“That’s an awesome song,” Kellan says.
I grin, “We sort of ripped it off, but our own way. Anyway, my dad put on the recording of me and Victor in his office. I was in my room doing homework. I knew the recording, but it didn’t sound right. It sounded like someone was playing along with it. Maybe Victor’s ghost, I don’t know. So I got up from my school books and walked into dad’s office where he had his own amps and guitars, so I could see what was going on.”
I take a deep breath, “When I saw Dad playing along to the track with Victor’s blond Les Paul, I freaked out. Victor had brought that guitar with us to the summer festival in Fresno the night he died. The guitar was in the trunk with my Fender when our car got hit. It was the only piece of Victor that survived the accident, as far as I was concerned. For whatever reason, watching my dad play the guitar freaked me out, like he might break it or something, and then Victor would be gone forever.
“I remember screaming at my dad that he couldn’t play Victor’s guitar. I mean, screaming. I hit him and slapped him all over the back, screaming at him over and over, ‘You can’t play Victor’s guitar! You can’t play Victor’s guitar!’ I probably talked more in those five minutes than I had the whole year leading up to that night.
“But my dad just turned up his amp and wailed on that Les Paul, playing Victor’s guitar part in Andromeda. Dad knows how to play most of our original songs. He loved jamming with us at home. When I realized Dad wasn’t going to stop playing Victor’s Les Paul along with Andromeda, I sat down in front of him on the floor and cried into my hands. When he finished the song, he started over. He just kept playing it and playing it. At some point, I was out of tears. I picked up my Fender and plugged into another amp in Dad’s office and joined in with him. And the recording of Victor. When my dad realized I was playing, he muted my recorded track in the mix. So it was literally me and my dad playing along with my brother’s guitar track and the bass and drums. The three of us played that duet over and over for two hours. Just me and Dad.” I sigh, “And Victor.”
I pause, crying softly. I look up into Kellan’s compassionate eyes and say, “I think we were trying to say goodbye to Victor.”
Kellan nods and looks at me with open understanding. In silence, he comforts me.
“After that night,” I say, “I knew I had to keep playing guitar. For Victor. But I couldn’t sing without him. Something about hearing my voice without his was too much. I tried a couple of times, but it always felt wrong. Oddly, when I played the old songs with Dad, and Dad played Victor’s Les Paul through Victor’s amp, he could phrase his notes just like Victor and you’d swear it was Victor playing. But when it came to actual singing, I just couldn’t do it without my brother. No one could replace his actual voice.
“I’ve always kept my promise to Victor that I would never ever ever sing again without him. Not without my brother.”
(never ever ever sing)
I sigh heavily, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m dying inside because I don’t sing. Sometimes, I can’t stand the idea of not singing. When I hear an amazing singer, like you,” I stop and look at Kellan sincerely, “putting it all out there with your voice, I get so jealous I want to die. But Victor is dead. He can’t sing. Out of respect for him, I just don’t.”
I gaze into Kellan’s eyes. He projects this amazingly understanding soothing softness.
I’m crying again.
He looks at me for a long time and says, “Maybe your brother wants you to sing. Because he can’t.”
(singsingsing)
My heart stops.
Kellan mutters, “Maybe your brother wants you to sing for both of you…”
(singsingsingsingsingsing)
Have I been betraying the spirit of my brother for ten long years?
(SINGSINGSINGSINGSINGSING)
I slap my hand over my mouth and start wailing. My whole body spasms as ten years of sadness comes pouring out.
Chapter 114
VICTORY
I wake to the smell of warm bagels. Blue sky drifts through the open window at the head of the bed.
Kellan’s bed.
I hear him moving around quietly in his kitchen.
I slide my feet onto the floor and grab my panties and t-shirt from the pile in the corner and pull them on. I tiptoe toward the bathroom, hoping to get there before Kellan sees me.
He turns the corner of the short L-shaped hallway holding two plates with bagels and cream cheese, “You look beautiful.”
After all the crying I did last night, he has to be lying.
I shoulder past him, “I have to use the bathroom.”
When I close the door behind me, I hear him call through the door, “Nice ass, Gigi.”
I smile to myself while I take care of business.
When I walk out of the bathroom, Kellan is on the couch, bagels untouched, “Ready for some food?”
“Sure,” I say and sit next to him, curling my legs beneath me.
He hands me a plate.
“Sorry about last night,” I say.
He’s about to bite into his bagel, “Sorry? For what?”
“All that heaviness I laid on you.”
“I don’t mind,” he bites his bagel and chews heartily on a big chunk.
“You don’t care we didn’t have sex last night?” I ask cautiously.
He shakes his head and chews.
I laugh, “I so don’t believe you.”
When he finishes chewing, he wipes his lips with a paper napkin, “Yes, I’d love to have crazy heavy metal sex with you, Gigi. But not if it means we can’t be in a band.”
I still have a hard time believing Kellan would forego sex for a band.
He says, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
I arch an eyebrow, “It’s a bit hard to swallow.”
“That’s what she said,” Kellan
says lightning quick.
“Lame!” I giggle.
“Look, I’ll prove it to you. Join my band. I mean, let’s form a band. We can play with my buddies Dubs and Joaquin, or whoever we agree on. It’ll be our band. You and me. Equal partners. We can write all new material or whatever you want. But I want the band.” He holds out his hand for me to shake.
I stare at his hand suspiciously. This is really hard. I don’t think I’m ready to jump into it. I giggle tentatively, “Are you sure you don’t want to just have sex? I’ll even throw in a blowjob if it’ll sweeten the deal.”
He gives me the arching eyebrow that says, “Are you serious?”
Then he shakes his head.
“Gigi, I want the band.”
Chapter 115
VICTORY
The line of ticket holders for the L.A. Gunslingers show runs around the outside of The Cobra Lounge and way up the side street toward the Hollywood Hills. The doors don’t open for another two hours, but I’ve already been bringing gear inside for the last hour and stashing it in the back of the building with all the other equipment from competing bands.
The afternoon is hot and the crowd wears concert t-shirts and shorts or tight skirts and revealing tops. Rocker chicks love to put their boobs front and center. I distinctly smell pot coming from three different groups of people huddled in line as I walk past.
I’m in my studded tight leather stage costume. Heavy metal assassin and deadly sexy. My long hair flows behind me as I walk up the street. My All Access badge dangles from a red lanyard around my neck.
Guys stare and whistle and leer. I notice a few of the ladies throwing dagger eyes at me.
The daggers bounce off my assassin costume. I grin to myself.
Some random guy wearing a Megadeth shirt says, “That’s her!”
Someone else mutters, “That’s the girl on YouTube!”
I still haven’t figured out what the hell video I’m supposed to be in. Not that I’ve looked very hard. I’ve been way too busy with Rock & Roll High School, my band, and everything else. I’m starting to think someone caught me on camera in a changing room at a lingerie store and sold the video to Girls Gone Wild or something equally stupid.
Victory RUN: Collected Victory RUN 1, 2, 3 Page 53
