The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  “LA,” I answered, glancing around. “Eagle Rock. Are you allowed to do that here?”

  “No,” she said. Then, “I can never find my damn lighter.”

  Frustrated, she sat back against the trunk, and I remembered my father’s matchbook, still in the pocket of my shorts, all twenty heads unused. I slipped my fingers into my pocket and felt the soft paper. This, I thought, is all I have of him now. Without our studio, without the guitars, this is what remains. I can’t waste it. Not even for her.

  And then I thought, maybe the whole reason I have these matches is for her. Maybe I was supposed to be here, right now, in this conversation, with my father’s matchbook in my pocket. Maybe it means something.

  Or maybe it was just a stupid pack of matches, and it held no significance at all.

  “Here,” I said, offering the matchbook.

  “Fantastic,” Lynn said. “Thanks.” She turned the book over in her hand, and for a second I thought I saw a spark of recognition on her face, thought maybe she’d heard of the Sea Witch. “Cool matches,” she said, and the spark faded to shadow. She tore out a stick, flicking it against the striker in one swift, practiced motion.

  Handing the book back to me she said, “Now I owe you twice.”

  I must have been feeling lucky then, because I blurted out, “I saw you during lunch. Out by the baseball field.”

  Lynn narrowed her eyes at me.

  “I was sitting nearby,” I explained. “I heard the guitars. It was so . . .” I struggled for the words.

  “Oh,” she said. “I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why you helped me.” She inhaled. “Because of them.”

  My stomach sank. “No, that’s not—I mean—I’m a musician too, and the way that they were playing, the uneven rhythm, it caught my attention. But that’s not why I helped you. I would’ve helped you anyway.”

  Lynn laughed then. “Relax. It’s cool. The boys have that effect on people.”

  “Do they go here?” I asked tentatively.

  “Used to. They’ve all graduated now.”

  “So why were they here today?”

  “Because I bribed them to visit me. They’ll do almost anything for free booze, and it really fucking sucks here when all your friends are gone.”

  Closing her eyes, she took a final drag, trying to reach whatever tobacco was left above the stub of filter.

  “You need a ride?” she asked, dropping the cigarette to the asphalt and squishing it with the ball of her foot. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Actually, yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “We just have to make one stop first. Well, two, if you want to get technical.”

  I nodded. Two stops couldn’t take too long.

  Lynn unlocked her door and then reached over to pop the lock on the passenger side. The interior was incensed with a thick, earthy scent that I couldn’t place. She took another cigarette from her pack and said, “Did you know that Mr. Tipton went to high school here? Can you even imagine, being stuck here every day for the rest of your life, never escaping?” She laughed. “I honestly think that’s my worst version of hell.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to escape,” I said.

  Smoke coiled up and spread through the car. I wondered if my mother would be able to smell it on me. I didn’t know what I would say if she did, and a small part of me already didn’t care. I kind of liked the smoldering scent, the tiny piles of ash that had collected on Lynn’s dashboard, in the cup holders, smeared in gray streaks on her steering wheel like the remnants of her own personal brushfire.

  “As soon as I can get out of here, I’m gone,” she said. “I’ll have left this godforsaken state before anyone even realizes it.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  Lynn shrugged. “Somewhere out in open land, with no one around for miles.”

  “Arizona?” I offered.

  “No deserts,” she said. “Maybe Colorado, or Idaho or something. Some place that is nothing like here, without all the bullshit. Or traffic.”

  Lynn cranked down her window, turned up the radio. We pulled out of the parking lot.

  I don’t know what made me say it, in the end. Perhaps it was her laugh, the one I had heard in the trees, and the way it felt like I’d glimpsed an intimate part of this stranger. Or maybe it was the loneliness, black and bulbous, covering me in a tar-like daze that nothing had been able to rupture until that moment. Whatever the reason, I said it, just loud enough to be heard over the crackling sound of the stereo: “My dad’s dead.”

  I had never actually uttered those words to anyone. Staring at the intricate layers of dust smeared around by her windshield wipers, I waited for whatever happened next. In my periphery, Lynn lifted her cigarette. She didn’t look at me strangely, as I had anticipated, didn’t stumble through apologies, or aphorisms, or the meaningless condolences that everyone but Nick had offered. She leaned her head back against the seat and exhaled. Then she said, “Mine too.”

  Ten

  WE STOPPED FIRST at a liquor store, where Lynn bought a block of Tecate and a large bottle of Jim Beam. I watched the transaction from the car, amazed when the clerk swept through the process without even checking her ID.

  “One down, one to go,” Lynn said when we were back on the road. She wedged her knee up against the steering wheel so that her hands were free to light another cigarette. “Where do you live, anyway?”

  “Orange Park Acres,” I said. “I think that’s what it’s called.”

  She released a plume of smoke. “My very own Uptown Girl.”

  “It’s my grandmother’s house,” I explained. “I’d never been there before yesterday. Actually, before yesterday, I didn’t even know she existed.”

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  There was a pause.

  “Well, if nothing else, at least there’s one benefit to having your life turned totally upside down.”

  I laughed. “What’s that?”

  Lynn tapped her cigarette out the window and smiled. “It’s a lot harder to get bored.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  The streets in Orange were wide and calm. Lynn swerved habitually through the cluster of neighborhoods and I gazed out the window, trying—and failing—to memorize our path. The houses were all brown and nondescript, built in the same simple style, landscaped with similar drought-tolerant shrubs. So I was glad when Lynn finally parked in the driveway of a small, one-story home distinguishable by its disarray. Soaked in the stark light of afternoon sun, the house flaunted a lawn dry as burlap and a ramshackle porch that sagged in the middle. It looked out at a chain-link fence separating the street from two lines of train tracks—one, I would soon learn, that traveled south toward San Diego, the other running north to LA, and then anywhere.

  “Is this your house?” I asked.

  Lynn nodded, stepping out of the car. “Help me carry this stuff in.” She unlocked the trunk and held out the jug of whiskey.

  “I like it,” I said.

  She scoffed. “Sure you do.”

  “I’m serious. It kind of reminds me of my old house.”

  “It’s a total shit hole. But at least it’s my shit hole, so I guess that counts for something.”

  We were halfway to the front door when Lynn abruptly stopped. Dogs began barking from various backyards, a cat skittered beneath Lynn’s car, and then the stillness of the afternoon broke—just for an instant. A breeze swept through, kicking up her skirt, my hair, a sheet of dust. I shielded my face but Lynn let the wind brush over her, opening her body as though in welcome. When the calm returned, she had a contented look on her face.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That gust came out of nowhere.”

  “No, not the wind. The shift.”

  Somewhere nearby, music started to play. “What do you mean?”

  “Earthquake weather,” she sa
id.

  My father had said something to this effect before, once or twice, when we experienced some particularly odd atmospheric change, but I couldn’t remember the circumstances.

  “Oh don’t look so scared. It won’t be the Big One. Not this time.”

  She spoke with such certainty then, and I wanted to know what else she could sense. Could she tell whether a fire would jump a freeway? Did she feel the Santa Anas coming like an itch across her skin?

  But there wasn’t time. She opened the front door and music flooded out.

  “We’re here,” she called.

  Even in the moment, I was struck by her simple choice of phrasing. We. This might have been a casual, unconscious choice on her part, but to me the implications were overwhelming. I followed her into the hazy living room, suffused with a new sense of confidence, and there—slowly materializing through the curtain of smoke and dust—were the musicians.

  Lynn had brought me right to them.

  “Everyone, this is Susannah,” Lynn said. “Susannah, these are the boys. Alex, Cameron, Gabriel, and Luke.” She pointed around the circle of them, too quickly for me to register which name accompanied which face—except, that is, for Cameron. He was sitting on the mottled carpet, looking through a stack of scattered records. In his hand was Electric Warrior, I think—no, it was Transformer. At my introduction, he peered up from behind the image of Lou Reed, his soft eyes veiled by a thick curl of dark hair.

  Yes. His name I’d heard clearly.

  “Hi, everyone,” I said.

  The record skipped, jumping forward. The boys had already muttered their hellos, but when they noticed the bottles in our hands, they suddenly became much more interested.

  This was the first thing I learned from Lynn Chandler: alcohol entices people toward you. And though I didn’t yet understand the power that one could attain from this malleable hierarchy, I felt it. They were looking at us, faces expectant, as if we held a holy elixir and also the sole authority over whether they were worthy of it. All that power in my small, soft hands.

  Lynn put the beer down on the coffee table. As the boy with bare feet tore through the cardboard, she motioned for me to join her in the kitchen. “Beer has too many calories,” she said, taking two glasses from the cabinet and filling them with ice. She mixed our drinks—Jim Beam and Diet Coke—with a metal spoon, spilling over the sides. “Cheers.”

  “Can I get one of those?” Cameron asked from the doorway.

  Lynn continued drinking, then licked the aftertaste from her lips. Cameron just smiled and crossed his arms. There was quite obviously something between them. I watched, waiting for an indicator (Was this harmless flirtation? A playful exchange between friends?), but if one came, it was too subtle to notice.

  “I guess I can make you one,” Lynn said, pulling another glass from the cabinet behind her. Her back now turned, Cameron’s attention swung to me.

  “What’s your name again?” he asked, his voice deep and lingering. I wondered if he was the singer. “I’m really bad with names the first time.”

  Lynn clanked the spoon inside the glass.

  “Susannah,” I told him. “Hayes. Susannah Hayes.” Then, after a beat, I added, “And yours?”

  “Cameron Cabrera,” he said.

  “Right. Cameron. Hi.”

  “Hi.” His smile hadn’t flinched; if anything, it grew wider, and I noticed that one of his bottom teeth was slightly crooked, imperfect yet charming.

  “Here,” Lynn said, thrusting the glass at him. Cameron thanked her as she left the kitchen. Back in the living room, the other boys started talking over each other, over the music, and I heard Lynn say, “You know I always pay my debts.”

  “Have I seen you before?” Cameron asked.

  “Doubtful,” I said, gazing into my drink.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I’ve only known Lynn . . .” I calculated the time in my head. “About two hours.”

  He laughed. “That’s a pretty good reason.”

  I smiled and glanced down, noticed his scuffed boots, and knew then that he was one of the guitarists. The song from the trees rushed back to me. God, it was good. Great, even. The kind of song I’d wanted “Don’t Look Back” to be—though I’d have never thought to use that strumming pattern, or let the lead run rampant against the chords. And while I was (admittedly) attracted to him, what I really wanted in that moment was his skill and confidence. To get back to the one thing that had always mattered most.

  So I gulped my drink. I looked directly at him. “I heard you playing guitar at the school earlier.”

  “Oh?” Cameron said, eyebrows arching. “Why didn’t you come over?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know you yet.”

  “You sure it wasn’t because you thought we sucked?”

  “The opposite. I thought you were really good, actually.”

  “Now I know you’re lying,” he said.

  “I’m serious! I don’t know what you usually sound like, but what I heard had that—that thing.” I took another big sip of my drink, and my mind flickered with a memory of my last night in the studio. “My father used to tell me that you shouldn’t get in the way of a great song, that great songs get in the way of you. They create their own plane of emotion, you know? And your song captured that rawness perfectly. It wasn’t conforming. It just was.”

  I stopped. Took a breath. My glass was half empty.

  Cameron said, “Maybe you should find out.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should find out what we usually sound like.”

  “Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t—I’m sure all of your songs are great. I just thought that what I heard was really . . .” All the words that had gushed, unbridled, from my mouth were now collecting like lumps in my throat. I tried to swallow, to think, to climb out of whatever hole I had dug for myself, but my mind faltered.

  “Weird,” Cameron said.

  “I was going more for ‘unexpected.’”

  “No, I mean . . .” He smiled, flashing the crooked tooth, and I felt something in my stomach clench. “You only heard this small part of one song, one time,” he began. I started apologizing again but he spoke over me. “And somehow you’ve managed to pinpoint this feeling I’ve had about it. Like you understand the essence, without anything more than a verse.”

  “Chorus,” I mumbled.

  Cameron paused, searching me.

  “What do you play?” he asked.

  “Guitar.”

  “You good?”

  I rubbed my left thumb against the smooth tips of my fingers. “I’m okay.”

  He nodded, and I thought that was that. I had blown my chance—hijacking the conversation and steering it right off a cliff.

  Until he looked back to me.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s the chorus. It has to be the chorus.”

  Then he laughed. My heart fluttered with relief. And that’s when it truly hit me: in this brand-new city, without the gauze of preconceptions or the shadow of my past, I could be anything. Anyone. I could make my history as mysterious as my father’s. I could make my future whatever I wanted.

  I could belong here.

  “Listen,” he said. “We’re playing a show in Costa Mesa next Saturday to kick off this mini tour we’re doing. Can you come?”

  “I don’t have a car,” I said.

  “Lynn will drive you.”

  “Would that be weird?” I asked, scrunching my nose. “We just met, and already I’m asking for favors?”

  “Hey, Lynn,” Cameron yelled.

  “Hey, what?” Lynn yelled back.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Can you bring Susannah to the show next Saturday? She doesn’t have a ride.” His body was angled toward the living room as he spoke, but his eyes stayed fixed on me, his smile the only invitation I needed.

  “Sure,” Lynn said. “I owe her.”

  I don’t remembe
r much of what else we talked about that first day as we sat in Lynn’s living room and daylight began to wither. There were a lot of names I didn’t know, bands I hadn’t heard of, glasses and bottles becoming empty in our hands. At first the conversation was difficult to follow, but that hardly mattered; it was their energy that captivated me most, the way the current of their lives suddenly engulfed me and swept me along, as though I’d always been part of the flow. The boys, I learned, had played all over Southern California: at the Roxy, the Echo, the Whisky a Go Go—so many of the same venues my father spoke of. They had been there, were part of that world, and I didn’t even want to get up and use the bathroom for fear of missing something that might bring me closer.

  Ultimately, though, I had no choice.

  Through the bathroom’s narrow walls, I could still hear them laughing, recalling one funny show or another while someone picked at a guitar. I flushed, washed up, tried to rough my hair in the mirror, but it remained flat. I looked wan—like someone who spent too much time indoors watching reruns of The Price Is Right. And I had a strange urge then to press my left hand, full palm, against the grimy, water-spotted mirror. I counted to five before pulling back. For the first few seconds my imprint stuck, and then the markings faded, ghostlike. The mirror looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in years, but still I grinned at my own distorted reflection, knowing that even if this entire afternoon had been a mistake—some glitch in the cosmos—and I never saw any of these people again, the smudge of my hand would remain.

  Back in the living room, the sun had fallen behind the horizon, outlining the train yard in a fuzzy orange glow. I sat down on the sofa, next to Lynn. She rested her head on my shoulder and her hair poured over my shirt, the red strands mixing with my black.

  “You probably need to go home,” she said.

  “Probably.” I knew that my mother would be furious by now. I pictured her in Vivian’s kitchen, tapping her fingers against a crystal wineglass, planning the precise words of her scolding. I imagined all the ways she would punish me. I didn’t care.

  “I could get used to you,” Lynn said after a minute, after neither of us moved. “Having another girl around. Usually I only have Josie, and even Alex admits she can be a little much.”