Last Things

by Jacqueline West

The phone in my pocket is just a phone. The guys know this. They’re nice about it, which makes it sting a little more.

  We all shut up and read.

  At the end of a potholed road a few miles beyond the small town of Greenwood, somewhere deep in the Northwoods of Minnesota, you’ll find the Crow’s Nest Coffeehouse. And inside the Crow’s Nest—on Friday nights, anyway—you’ll find the future of American metal.

  My heartbeat switches to double time.

  On this Friday night in mid-April, just like every other Friday night for the past year, Last Things takes the stage. The crowd, which packs the coffeehouse from wall to wall, screams. The band launches into a blistering set of twenty original songs. Some are reminiscent of Tool’s mathematically swirling rhythms, some hint at the beautiful melodic lines of Opeth, and some sound like nothing but themselves.

  There’s the link to the video. “Superhero.” In the still image, my head is bent, my left fist clamped around Yvonne’s neck, my strumming hand an upward blur. The other guys aren’t visible.

  From the driving, distorted pulse of “Breakdown,” to heartbreaking, stripped-down solos like “Deep Water,” Last Things has cultivated a sound that’s drawing fans from as far off as Minneapolis.

  The three-piece ensemble, featuring Jezz Smith (bass), Patrick Murray (drums), and Anders Thorson (lead guitar, vocals), has been playing together for four years. A deal with a major label is just around the corner.

  . . . But first, they have to finish high school.

  “We all agreed that we’d wait to sign anything until we had our diplomas,” says drummer Murray, 18.

  “We can’t wait to sell out,” laughs bassist Smith, also 18.

  Smith and Murray are talented musicians, the foundation of a tight ensemble. But Thorson’s skills as vocalist, guitarist, and composer push the band into another sphere.

  Oh, Jesus. It takes every single muscle in my body to keep the smile off my face.

  Onstage, Thorson is an engine of sharp, wordplay-heavy lyrics, a vocal range that goes from pitch-black growl to rich baritone, and guitar skills decades beyond his age. But as soon as he sets down the guitar, he’s self-effacing. Almost shy.

  When asked how he feels about being called a prodigy, his face clouds.

  “I don’t like that term,” he says. “It’s just years of lessons and practicing and sitting in your room alone. Just being an obsessive loser, basically.”

  He’s even more reticent about his songwriting process.

  “I don’t really have a process. Ideas come to me. I write them down.”

  “That’s what he’s like,” says Murray as Anders ducks away to pack up an amp. “He can’t really talk about music. He just plays it.”

  What’s it like working with someone like Thorson?

  Smith grins. “You know how you’ll be driving down some empty country road and some maniac passes you going insanely fast, and without even thinking about it, you’re suddenly going ninety miles an hour, trying to catch up? Yeah. That’s what it’s like.”

  Aw, Jezz. The gratitude and guilt both come so fast, I can feel my face turn red.

  Last Things will play the Crow’s Nest every Friday and Saturday night between now and the end of August. Metal fans: Here’s your chance to say you heard them before the rest of the world.

  Because the rest of the world will hear.

  When I finish, it’s quiet. I’m not sure if this is because the other guys are still reading, or what. My cheeks are flaming so hard, I don’t want to turn around.

  “Holy crap,” says Jezz at last.

  Patrick sounds dazed. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  Jezz laughs. Jezz’s laugh is this high, crazy cackle that always makes other people start laughing with him. “I wonder how insane the crowds will get after this.”

  “Yeah. He really liked us,” says Patrick. “Well, he really liked . . .” He jerks his buzz cut in my direction.

  Here we go. Good thing I hadn’t let myself smile.

  “It wasn’t just about me,” I say quickly. I swivel the chair sidewise so I can see Jezz and Patrick without facing them head-on. “It was about us. And I barely talked to him.”

  “Which adds to the mystique.” Patrick puts on a reverent voice. “You’re in another sphere.”

  “Dude.” Jezz punts him lightly in the shin.

  “Whatever,” I say to a heap of shirts and socks on the end of Jezz’s desk. “I hate it when they call me ‘the front man.’”

  “Well, you are,” says Patrick simply. “You play lead. You sing. You write everything now. You stand in front.”

  You write everything now. The words hit like a dart.

  Patrick and I used to write together, way back when we were coming up with our first original, totally crappy songs. Over time, as better songs started coming to me, with the lyrics finished and all the parts already complete, I switched to writing on my own. It was faster that way. And the way the songs came, overwhelming me, filling up my head, I couldn’t move or think or do anything else until I’d let them out on paper. It wasn’t my choice.

  But Patrick doesn’t get that.

  “You want to write some songs?” I spin around to face him. “Seriously. You want to write something? Go for it. Go ahead.”

  That’s not all I want to say. I want to ask if he’d like to be the one awake at three a.m., unable to stop until he gets the songs out. If he wants his brain to be like a radio where someone else keeps switching the stations. If he practices until his whole body hurts, and if that just makes him love it more. But I don’t. Because that would get too close to something dangerous.

  Patrick hesitates for a sixteenth beat. “No,” he says. He looks straight back at me. His voice has gone back to being as steady and cool as usual. “I don’t do that. That’s yours.”

  I take a breath.

  Patrick is not the kind of guy you’d normally find on a stage. He’s the kind of guy you’d find in the back of a garage, modifying an antique car or fixing a short in an electrical circuit. He’s in on this because he likes the music. He likes the drums, because they’re the perfect mix of physical strength and technical precision. He likes Jezz. And he likes me, most of the time. When I’m not being a jerk.

  Patrick and I stare at each other for a second. His expression doesn’t soften—nothing about Patrick is ever really soft—but eventually I see it shift, and then there’s nothing bitter in it anymore. It’s just my best friend, looking back at me.

  “And I’m sure as hell not going to write anything,” Jezz cuts in. “Unless I can just set some Dr. Seuss words to a Rage Against the Machine bass line. So it’s a good thing we’ve got Mister Other Sphere writing for us.”

  “Yeah,” says Patrick. “Right.”

  “I know I’m right.” Jezz’s tone brightens. “Hey. What do you call a drummer who just broke up with his girlfriend?”

  Patrick blinks. “I don’t know.”

  “Homeless.”

  Patrick gives a one-syllable chuckle. “Good one. So, a drummer walks into a bar . . . Ba-DUM-chick.”

  Jezz laughs his crazy laugh. I want to laugh, too, but I don’t think the sound actually comes out of my mouth. I’m still feeling something—something heavy and dark, down in the pit of my stomach. Like the sign of something bad about to start.

  Jezz slides sideways off the couch, hopping to his feet at the last second. “You guys want a can of pop? There’s more Mountain Dew in the fridge.”

  “Throwback or regular?” says Patrick in the way someone else would say, “Cabernet or Zinfandel?”

  “Both, I think.” Jezz turns to me, eyebrows up. “Anders?”

  It’s too warm down here. My skin itches, like the words of the article are still crawling all over me. I lurch to my feet. “Actually, I’ve got to go. I need to get to the studio a little early today.” A lie. What I really need is to be outside, alone, away from that article, away from the reminder that somebody is always watching, l
istening, waiting. “See you guys on Monday.”

  “Okay,” says Jezz. “See you Monday.”

  “You don’t need a ride home?” asks Patrick.

  “Nah.” I can’t quite look at him now. “I can walk. Or call home. But thanks.”

  I charge up the basement stairs. Yvonne’s case swings heavily in my hand.

  It’s bright outside, everything tinted yellow by pollen and clear sky and late April sun. My first impulse is to hit something. A cinder block. A cement wall. Something hard enough that what gets hurt is me.

  You can’t be the lead in something without it putting other people in the background.

  And you can’t just keep taking what you didn’t earn. You need to pay for it somehow.

  But you can’t just stand outside punching a wall, either. Not in the middle of a small town, where everybody knows your name and your parents’ names and your grandparents’ names, on a sunny Saturday morning.

  I stand at the end of Jezz’s driveway for a minute, taking deep breaths. Then, when I feel a little less freaked out, I turn and head down Franconia Street.

  I walk downtown—or what passes for downtown in Greenwood. Six blocks of cafés, junk stores, dentists’ offices. You could sleepwalk from one end to the other in three minutes. I keep my steps slow. I’ve got hours to waste, and nowhere to go, and a guitar in my hand, and $3.75 in my pocket.

  At Sixth Street I turn right, away from Main, toward the park. You don’t look like you’re loitering if you do it in a park. I shuffle past the rows of old brick and clapboard houses, under trees flaming with fresh gold leaves, past alleys and yards and streets all still half asleep and Saturday-morning quiet.

  I’m in the middle of a block when it attacks me. The line. Rhythm. Lyrics. Melody tangled into the words.

  Damn it.

  I shove my hand into the pockets of my jeans. No pen. No paper.

  Goddamn it.

  I spin around on the sidewalk, searching the ground, like there might be a notebook and pencil just waiting there. More words are coming. They pile up in my skull, water behind a dam.

  Hold on. I could text it to myself. Every text costs money, as Mom and Dad will be sure to remind me. But hopefully it won’t take more than two to get it all down.

  I set Yvonne’s case on the sidewalk and pull out my phone.

  Shadow Tag

  Turn + turn again

  as fast as I can

  You’re still beside me

  No matter how I run

  you’re behind me

  holding tight to my ankles

  And if I fall

  if I stagger into the street

  if I stumble

  that’s when you’ll finally catch me

  The music swallows me up. I’m lost in it; I’m in love with it; it’s inside of me, but it’s so much bigger than I am that I can’t hold on—

  And then a car horn blares right beside me.

  I jump. Like a moron. I barely manage not to drop the phone.

  “Hey,” calls a voice.

  Frankie’s deep blue car has pulled up beside the curb, purring softly. Frankie cranes around Sasha, who’s sitting in the passenger seat, and beams out at me. “Need a ride?”

  “Um—not really.” My vision wavers. My brain is still scrambling after the song like a kid chasing the string of a runaway kite. “I’m just . . . walking.”

  “I’m dropping Sasha off. She spent the night,” Frankie says.

  Sasha smiles at me as though this is fascinating information.

  “Oh,” I say. Great answer, moron.

  “Then I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Frankie says. “Frankie’s Taxi Service. Come on. Get in.”

  I can’t think of a single excuse. Not even a stupid one. I pick up Yvonne and climb into the backseat, like a little kid sitting behind his babysitters.

  “So,” says Frankie over her shoulder as she pulls back into the empty street, “what were you up to this morning? Being a wandering minstrel?”

  Her inky brown eyes meet mine in the rearview for a second, and I finally remember to put on the rock-star face. I raise my chin. Lower my eyelids.

  It’s stupid, yeah. I know why Frankie likes me.

  But I still want her to like me.

  “I was at Jezz’s,” I say.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Sasha. “That big article just came out.”

  My chest tightens. “How did you know?”

  “Jezz just shared it. He tagged you.”

  The back of my neck starts to prickle. I have the stupid urge to look out the rear window, just to see if someone’s staring in. This freaking town.

  We pull up to Sasha’s house, which looks like something you could order out of a catalog. Frankie turns into the driveway, and Sasha hops out and runs inside.

  “Come up here,” says Frankie, patting the passenger seat. “Unless you’re actually going to pay me for the ride.”

  I climb out and into the front, leaving Yvonne in back, hiding my raw knuckles in my pocket. Frankie waits for a moment, her perfect face turned toward me. She’s wearing this funny little smile, like she knows something I don’t. Her hand rests on the gearshift. There’s a beat, while she just smiles at me and I try not to smile back at her, and then Frankie puts the car in reverse. I realize only as we’re bumping out of the driveway that she was waiting for me to kiss her.

  God, I’m dumb.

  I guess I should have known. I’ve kissed her before.

  Once.

  Once, if you go by number of sessions.

  If you go by number of seconds, or by number of individual lip-to-lip contacts, it’s a lot more than once.

  It was December, at a party at Blake Skoglund’s, way out in the country. It was one of those parties that nobody was actually invited to but that everybody knew about anyway. By nine o’clock the crowd got too big to fit inside the garage and started spilling out into the sheds and the snow and the woods, getting drunk and loud and frostbitten.

  I’d never spoken to Frankie Lynde before. She came to the Crow’s Nest every Friday night, but so did everybody else at Greenwood High School. She was always in the middle of a whirlpool of loud, laughing friends who were way more interested in one another than the music. They probably wouldn’t even have noticed if we’d launched into a medley of Disney songs.

  But suddenly, there she was. By herself. Walking across the Skoglunds’ garage, straight toward me.

  I was standing beside a metal tub packed with snow and cans of pop.

  Frankie pointed down into the tub. Her fingernails were painted silver. “Would you hand me something?” she asked.

  If I hadn’t been leaning against the wall, I would probably have looked over my shoulder, just to make sure she wasn’t talking to somebody else. I looked down into the tub instead. “Which one do you want?”

  “I don’t care. I just want something to do with my hands.” She smiled at me.

  Frankie Lynde smiled at me.

  I felt like someone had just unzipped the front of my chest.

  A rush of icy December air slid through my rib cage. My heart shivered and thumped harder. Frankie Lynde, smiling, looking straight at me with those deep brown eyes. I didn’t know that actual human beings could have eyelashes so thick and dark and long.

  I grabbed a can of Coke.

  “Thanks.” She took it. Her fingers brushed my skin.

  “Whoa.” I gave a little jerk backward. “Your hand is colder than the can.”

  She laughed. “I know. My hands are always cold.” She leaned a little closer. “But that doesn’t mean I’m a dead girl. I swear.”

  Jesus. She was quoting my song to me. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life knew the words to one of my songs.

  “Oh,” I said, like the giant idiot I was. And am. “That’s good.”

  “They say, ‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ right? I guess the moral is: Don’t trust anyone with warm hands.” Before I knew what was going on, she g
rabbed my right hand, pressing her smaller, softer palm to mine. “Hmm. Warmish. But not coldheartedly warm.” She turned my hand toward the dusty ceiling lights, staring down at my palm like she was reading the lines. “Wow. Do you have any actual skin, or are your hands just one big callus?”

  “Yeah. The guitar will do that to you.”

  “That seems mean,” she said. “That something you love would hurt you.”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that just how it works?” The words came out before I could even think about them. They made me sound way deeper and darker than I deserved.

  Frankie gave a little laugh. Music. Sound perfectly arranged in time. “Maybe. I guess.” She still hadn’t let go of my hand. Now she turned it over and touched her fingertips to mine. “Can you even feel anything with those?”

  “Yes.” There was a little rasp in my voice now. “I can feel that.”

  She looked up at me. Smiled again.

  I don’t even know how it happened, but next we were in the three-season porch at the back of Blake Skoglund’s house, on a low, afghan-covered couch that smelled like bonfires, and my lips were on hers, and hers were on mine, and her cold, soft hands were sliding up under my shirt, and even in the freezing air, even with my unzipped rib cage, my skin was burning, and I couldn’t feel the cold even when the shirt was on the floor, because Frankie’s fingers were in my hair, and my fingers were everywhere, everywhere—

  And then it was late, and cars were crunching down the gravel driveway, and Frankie was smoothing her hair, tugging her jacket back on, and giving me one last small, soft, teasing kiss. And then she slipped off into the house, and a few minutes later, I’d collected enough strength in my burning, shaking body to get up and drag myself home.

  And that was that.

  People knew, of course. In this town, everybody knows everything about everyone. Almost.

  I guess I could have said something. I could have done what the guy is supposed to do. I could have asked her out. Asked her to be my girlfriend. Even though that would have felt like handing her a can of Coke and asking her to pretend it was champagne.

  I could have. Because I got the sense afterward, from the way she looked at me, and the way she kept coming to the shows, and the way she didn’t avoid me, that Frankie didn’t regret it. That she might actually be interested.