Slamming of car doors and Axle automatically has his hand extended to Marcus. They haven’t met, but I talked about Marcus in letters and emails. I don’t make connections easily, so that makes Marcus welcomed.
“I’m Axle.”
“Marcus. Things were hot at home, and I needed some place that was cool. Drix said I could crash when needed.”
Axle shrugs like it’s nothing to find a stranger on his doorstep. “Air conditioner is broke most days, and I can’t promise it’ll be quiet, but our home is your home.”
Marcus tilts his head to the house. “Mind if I use the bathroom? Bus broke down on the way here. It would have been faster to walk.”
Axle goes to unlock the door, and my eyes land on the guitar-shaped material case next to a backpack. “You really weren’t messing with me, were you?”
Marcus grins again. “I’m full of it, Drix, but music isn’t something I lie about.”
The light flips on in the living room, and Marcus meets my eyes. “Thought about what you said last week about making plans. If you try for that youth performing arts program, I will, too. Let’s get in and show those rich pricks how to play.”
He picks up his pack, and I lift his guitar. “Is the program going to help you apply?”
Marcus shakes his head. “They told me they’d help me get into a trade school, though. As I said, let’s show those rich pricks that talent beats money.”
Gotta get the audition first, but I keep that to myself. Marcus has a shred of hope, and that can’t be easy after getting out of the program to find no home fire burning. “Meet me in the garage. I want to know if all this self-hype you’ve been rattling about for a year is real.”
He slaps me on my back. “I see you quaking in those boots. You know you can’t keep up with talent like me.”
Axle holds the door open to our house, Marcus enters, and before Holiday goes in, I pull on her sleeve for her to stop. The front door shuts, and my sister looks up at me with those big dark eyes. “Everything okay?”
I keep my voice pitched low because our windows and siding are thinner than paper. “Do me a favor and offer him some food. Some of the leftovers from last night maybe.”
She nods and goes into the house not asking why because she understands. There were times in her life she hadn’t been fed either, and pride has a way of making you deny your aching belly. If Marcus is anything like me—which, from what I know about him, he is—he might not accept the offer with me in the room.
Dominic and Kellen watch me from the street. I don’t know if I’m ready to play music with Dominic again. Music, chords, strings, melodies...that was a shared bond between us, but I don’t know where he and I stand anymore. Not until he tells me the truth about what happened that night—even if it’s only an explanation on why he left me behind. Not until he thanks me for what I might have sacrificed for him. I should invite him, it’s what he’s waiting for me to do, but I don’t and instead head to the garage.
It’s not a place where we park. A car hasn’t been in here for years. What’s in there is more sacred than any church I’ve stepped foot in.
Using the key, I unlock the knob, then use my shoulder to shove the aging and stuck door open. I flip a switch, and the shop light overhead flickers, cracks and snaps to life. The scent of dust, mold and motor oil fills my nose, and I briefly close my eyes with the familiar mixture.
In front of me are guitar stands, cords, amplifiers, speakers, a keyboard, a piano and cases filled with guitars. There’s an electric, a bass, an acoustic and anything else to be thought of, and it’s heaven.
In the back, covered with a tarp, is the only place where I’ve felt like I’ve belonged. More than the house, my room or even my bed. Behind the drums, I used to feel like I was flying, like I was free. Anywhere else, it’s like I was constantly a snake trying to shed dead skin.
I pull off the tarp, a cloud of dust rolls into the air and there’s a tightening in my chest. Last time I saw my drum set was after the gig. I had broken it down, then placed it in the back of a truck. Axle. This is Axle’s work. Only he would spend the time to have tracked down my drums. Only he would have set it back up and covered it up with such care. My throat thickens, and I rub at my face to push the emotion away.
The last words we had said to each other before the arrest had been in anger. He mad at me. Me mad at him. I was the idiot. He was justified. I thought I was smarter, better, but I was too stupid to listen.
I was playing the drums for a band that was going places. Locally, we were becoming royalty. Regionally, we were making a name. Nationally, we had people starting to look at us. The fame filled my inflated ego, and I partied and behaved like I thought a rock star should.
That last fight we had was Axle trying to tell me what an asshole I was becoming, and I told him he was jealous. Now my gut twists. Yeah, like I was someone to be jealous of. There’s so much I wish I could take back.
My sticks sit on the stool, and my fingers twitch with the need to pick them up, but what does it say about me if I do? That I’m weak? That I’ll return to paths I don’t want to go down again? I felt like a god behind the drums, and when I was behind the drums, I made every bad choice available. But the thought of playing sends a rush through me that’s greater than any high provided by a needle stick or inhale of smoke.
I slip my finger over the cymbal, careful to move slowly enough and soft enough to not make a sound. Smooth but worn, cold but warming under my touch. A winding inside of me at the thought of hearing the high-pitched crash.
“You should play,” Axle says, and I withdraw, shoving both of my hands into my jeans pockets.
No, I shouldn’t. When I was behind the drums I had no self-control. When those sticks were in my hands, I went to another level in my brain, another realm of consciousness. It was raw freedom, and that freedom made me feel invincible. I was addicted to that feeling, addicted to thinking that I could never die.
But I did die—at least the old me did—and I don’t trust myself to allow that sensation of flying and freedom that comes with playing the drums again. I wasn’t strong enough to handle who I became with those feelings before, and I don’t trust myself now. I’ve got to be better than who I was. I deserve that and so does my family.
“It’ll piss the neighbors off. We’ll do acoustic.” I’m also good at the guitar, and playing the guitar never gave me that manic rush playing the drums did. Maybe I can keep music if I go down another path because the feelings associated with the drums lead me to hell. “Where’s Marcus?”
“Eating and chatting with Dominic about Fender guitars. And the late excuse is sad. We’ve always played late.” My brother leans his shoulder against the door frame. “That’s nothing new.”
“Don’t want to wake up Holiday. I saw she was tired. She’ll want to head to bed.”
“You playing would make Holiday’s year. Since you’ve been gone, there hasn’t been a beat. No one will touch those drums.”
“Because they’re cursed?” I meant it as a joke, but seriousness leaks through.
“Because they belong to you.” Axle goes silent like his words are somehow meant to sink in and make everything okay, but they just bounce off me and hang in the air.
He pushes off the frame and enters the garage. “The rest of us know how to play, can do the counts, but none of us can hold it steady like you. We can’t shift fast enough with the change up in rhythms and still keep the beat. We couldn’t release the sticks like you do to get the same sound. When you played, Drix, it was all emotion, all heart. It was the type of beat I could feel in my blood.”
Yeah. I used to feel it in my blood, too. Playing consumed me, and that was my sin. “I was becoming Dad.”
Silence. The heavy kind. The type I dread. A pit in my stomach because part of me said it so he would disagree. It hurts he’s not offering up a denial.
> “You didn’t commit that crime,” Axle says, “but I was relieved when you were arrested.”
Concrete fist straight to my head, and I hear bones snapping.
“You needed that year away. You needed that program. It gave you something I couldn’t. You were going one hundred miles per hour toward a cliff, and I couldn’t get you to stop.”
Because I wouldn’t listen.
“I know coming home is tough. I know you don’t know how to fit back in. It’s okay not to fit back in. It’s okay to be the person that’s come out on the other side.”
I crack my neck to the side. “That’s it. That’s the problem. I don’t know who I am.”
“But you know who you aren’t. That’s a big step.”
I pick up the banged-up guitar Axle bought me for my birthday when I was younger, claim one of the hundreds of picks left out and sit on a stool. My fingers begin moving before I give conscious thought to the motions. I’m listening to the notes, closing my eyes with the vibrations, twisting the tuning pegs searching for the perfect pitch.
After a few seconds of silence, Axle grabs his acoustic guitar, sits on a stool across from me and starts tuning his instrument by ear, as well. I’ve dreamed, literally dreamed, of this moment for a year. Me making music again...there’s not another feeling like it in the world.
“I’m thinking of applying to that youth performing arts school,” I say as casually as I can. Marcus is a good guy, but he can have a big mouth. If I don’t spill, Marcus will. “The application deadline is in a month.”
Axle’s fingers freeze, then he’s smart enough to keep tuning. “What instrument will you audition with?”
“They have to accept my application before the audition.”
“What instrument?”
When the hell did he become an optimist? “The guitar.”
“You’re a beast on the drums. Don’t throw that gift in the trash.”
I don’t want to, but I don’t trust myself. “We all switch up playing something one time or another. It’s time for me to give up the drums.”
“The drums are who you are. The rest of that bull you had going on before you were arrested, that was the aftermath of ego. That was you allowing Dad to play with your brain. Dad’s on tour, and I told him if he rolls back into town, he’s not welcomed here. The house is mine. Custody of both of you is mine. He’s gone. Playing the drums doesn’t make you Dad. How you decide to behave once you get some fame, once you succeed, that’s what’s going to separate you from Dad.”
Dad taught me to play drums. He was the one who hooked me up with a band that had success. He was the one that showed me how a real man celebrates his success—with a needle. “I can’t risk it again. I don’t want to return to who I was from before.”
“You won’t.”
My hand lies over the strings to stop any sound. “You don’t think I know the drums aren’t to blame? I know it was me. I know I made the wrong choices, and I’m scared as hell that I’m going to choose wrongly again. Getting back into any type of music scares me, but it’s the only thing I’m good at. It’s my only shot of doing something worthwhile. I can choose to look at it that music destroyed me, but I’m not. I felt like a god when I played the drums, and I don’t trust myself to feel like that again and make the right choices. I’m trying here, Axle. Try with me.”
“I’ll try with you.” Marcus walks into the garage, half of a ham sandwich in his hand. “Not sure what we’re trying, but as long as it doesn’t violate parole, I’m in.”
Marcus unzips his case and extracts his electric guitar and wiring. Outside the garage door, in the shadows, there’s movement. First Dominic hopping the fence to go home, then Kellen leaning against the fence between our house and hers, watching me.
Guilt feasts on me because playing without Dominic is sacrilegious, but so is how Dominic is dumping on our friendship by not opening up to me about why he left me behind after I passed out the night of the robbery. I’ve done my part, a year of it, and it’s time for him to tell me the truth. Only then will he and I play.
Ellison
Forget my mother and Sean, my father is never going to let me out of the house. The three of them took turns yelling at me, berating me, making me feel like the sludge of humanity because I wanted to play Whack-A-Mole. Because, as my mother explained, I lied by omission.
Now, all of them, along with other selected staffers for my father, are downstairs in his office, each trying to figure out how to contain me, the media abomination. I messed up yesterday, and I’m quite aware there’s no way my parents will ever allow the internship now.
I’m in my room, on the floor, laptop in lap, and I’m trying to find my happy place. I’m coding, and the code isn’t running correctly, but that’s okay. I find it calming to take something apart that doesn’t work, discard the broken parts, find ones that do work, and then piece it back together to make something functional—to make something new.
My cell buzzes, and I consider ignoring it, just like I’m ignoring any social media account and the news. Another buzz—it’s the fourth one in a row. Most of my friends have texted, wanting the behind-the-scene details to everything they’re seeing on the news, but I’ve remained silent. Another buzz, and I’m plain annoyed at the spamming. Though the urge is to throw something, instead I set my computer gently on the ground, and I swipe my cell:
Henry: You okay?
Henry: Answer.
Henry: Answer now.
Henry: Answer now or I’ll call your dad again and tell him you snuck out four months ago to go on a date.
Henry: I’m dialing.
And I’m texting, quickly, because I need more drama like I need a hole in my head.
Me: I’m okay and it wasn’t a date. It was a group of guys and a group of girls. That’s it.
Henry: There were boys, correct?
Me: Yes.
Henry: It was a date.
Did I wish it was a date? Yes. Was it a date? I sure as hell hope not. Some boy who spent most of the evening looking at my breasts and who kept trying to touch me instead of talking to me isn’t what I want a date to be.
Me: I hate you.
Henry: I can live with that. I saw the news. Who was the asshole you were with?
Me: There were two guys harassing me. I don’t know who they are.
Henry: Them I’ll figure out. I’m talking about the guy there’s a picture of you looking all googly-eyed at. You’re too young to look at anyone like that.
I groan. It’s long, it’s painful and the back of my head hits my fluffy bed. The media is having a field day with a picture of me and Drix. No wonder all my friends are demanding details. I go to an all-girls school, and besides the times I’ve snuck out with friends to go to parties where there were boys, I don’t date. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to date. It’s not that I’ve been told that as much as there’s been this unspoken agreement. Boys are a complication.
Me: At least you agree with Mom and Dad on something.
I stare at my cell, waiting for his response, and my lips lift because I shut him down. Then I frown as another message appears.
Henry: Were you on a date with this Pierce guy?
Me: I really did just meet him. And I wasn’t looking googly-eyed at him.
Henry: Do we have to have the sex talk now? If so, here it is—you’re becoming a nun.
Neanderthal.
Me: I’m not Catholic.
Henry: Semantics.
The last thing I want to do is talk boys with Henry, and I silently thank the doorbell gods above when the loud chime rings through the house.
Henry: Can you come down to Grandma’s today?
I’ll probably never be let out of the house again. Me: I’ll try for tomorrow. Doorbell. Gotta go.
Barefoot, I pad along the plush ca
rpet of the hallway, down the curved stairs, then cross the hardwood of the foyer.
I open the door and the late spring heat creeps in. When I lift my head with my practiced smile to greet whichever member of Dad’s staff has been summoned, my eyes widen and sweet nervous adrenaline floods my veins. The type that tickles and makes me feel like I’m floating.
It’s not Dad’s staff. It’s dirty blond hair sticking up in a sexy way, defined arms, broad shoulders and dark, beautiful eyes. My mouth drops open to speak, but absolutely no words are formed. There’s no way this is real. I want it to be real, but my mind can’t seem to find a reason why this is at all logical. Standing on my doorstep is the main lead of last night’s dreams. It’s Drix.
Hendrix
Elle was beautiful yesterday—perfection from a magazine—but today she’s my type of perfect. Cutoff jean shorts, a T-shirt that clings to her curves, blond hair piled upon her head in a messy bun and she wears black horn-rimmed glasses. Gotta admit, it’s the sexiest sight I’ve seen in over a year.
Those blue eyes go from big, round shock to narrowed and, once again, intimidating. “What are you doing here?”
I hook my thumbs into my belt loops and wonder the same thing. “My brother received a phone call from a guy named Sean Johnson an hour ago who said I needed to show.”
Her mouth moves to the side, and I follow the action more closely than I should. Elle has lips made for sin. The kind I would have worked my magic a year ago to spend an evening kissing. Me and sin, though, aren’t friends anymore, and I’m supposed to be avoiding temptation.
“That sounds like Sean. Super control freakish and bossy.” She widens the door and steps aside to create a path for me. “Come in, then, and I’ll track him down for you. Though it wouldn’t be hard for you to find him yourself. You just have to close your eyes and feel for the dark energy of the Force.”
Sean Johnson’s the guy Axle talked with the most after we signed on for the program, and Axle would agree with the dark Force association. My brother said that the guy wasn’t an ass, but was pushy. “A good friend of mine is a Star Wars fan.”