Ever since I was a kid, I have had this idea that I was meant to be famous. When someone asked me what I wanted to be, the reply came naturally: World’s Best Drummer. This was my fate, and I knew this in the same way that I knew the sky’s blue or that Dave Grohl kicked ass.
To you, this may sound childish. A silly aspiration that should have starved out long before adulthood, but this dream lived. It was a selfish beast that my shaggy head could hardly hold. With claws and teeth, it burst out and ripped apart those I treasured the most. For a rocker, you might be surprised to find I’ve never had darkness in my nature. But this is a past that cannot be recounted without delving into unsavory shadows.
Since you’re already here, stick around. Let me share my waking nightmare with you, not just to get it off my chest, but in the hopes that you can help me. There’s a thing I need to find. It’s time-sensitive. If I am to believe that horrid voice, October is the only month in which it can be located. I’ve been looking for years now, scouring the forest each October, moving from town to town in search of blue among brown.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Following the path I knew I was destined to walk, I started a band in 6th grade. It was just a shitty garage band that included my neighbor Billy (who wasn’t much good at anything in the beginning, but his dad didn’t mind how loud we were), my cousin Tom (all he could play the baseline from that one White Stripes song and tried his damned best not to learn anything else), and my best friend (according to the necklaces we both wear to this day), Lila. She was already smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day and was guaranteed to have that scratchy, rocker-chick voice by the time we graduated.
That probably doesn’t sound like a winning combination to you. You might be imagining a bunch of dyed-hair rejects jamming together on the island of misfit JNCO jeans. I’ll make it worse by adding that we didn’t exactly have ‘proper’ equipment at first. Tom had a kick-ass bass guitar that had once belonged to his father, but the rest of us were stuck with janky instruments purchased from the thrift store.
I’ve only got a few recordings from back then, mementos from those ‘good old days.’ I’ll save your ears from having to experience it. Just imagine what would happen if you were trapped in a small room with an airplane engine, a cougar giving birth, and a toddler who had recently been gifted a 17-piece Williams-Sonoma cooking set. It was rocky, but it was a start. Our start. We constantly practiced to the disdain of the entire neighborhood. I’m honestly surprised they never called the cops… or put up warning signs.
“Mothers of newborns and Vietnam war veterans, beware, noise level dangerously high! Enter at the risk of losing your ears.”
We were mini-menaces, but all that practice paid off. In two years, the summer before we started high school, we booked our first gig. Lila’s aunt was getting married and wanted to go cheap. For fifty bucks, she hired us to play at the reception. I still remember how happy we were when Lila told us.
Tom flushed completely red, equally nervous and excited at the prospect of performing. Billy was grinning from ear to ear, yammering on about buying a bow tie to match the electric blue color of the guitar he’d been gifted for his birthday. I just sat silently and gripped the drumsticks, feeling like the world was finally clicking into place.
I’ll be honest; that first performance wasn’t nearly as good as we thought it was. The wedding video captures myriad discordances; a thousand notes hit wrong. That didn’t matter. Performing for the first time lit a fire beneath us. This feeling washed over us as we took the stage. It was a jittery thing in the beginning, anxious and unstable. My hands were sweating so profusely I could barely grasp the drumsticks, but that feeling slowly morphed into something euphoric. It soaked us, as gentle and pulling as a wave.
Tom, who may have snuck his first beer that night, all but demanded we played songs way out of his comfort zone (and skill level). Billy and Lila screamed so loud that they were too hoarse to utter a word the next day, and I saw my hands blur in front of me, moving to a beat so fast that my mind simply couldn’t keep up.
Then at the end, as we finished the set, all fifty or so inebriated adults stood. I’d never felt so many eyes on me at once. It was so silent that I could hear my heart hammering in my ears, the rasp of my breath. Then someone started clapping, and the rest followed suit. Their applause ran through my body in the same way that the bass drum does. A standing ovation. It was an electric rapture that ran from the tips of my toes up my spine until it exploded in my brain. All I could do was sit there, smiling and panting, wanting that moment to last forever. But, of course, it didn’t.
After that day, my bandmates and I jonesing for the next performance. We were eager to escape Billy’s basement, to get our names out, and shove it into everyone’s faces. It was hard sometimes. Grades dropped, bad decisions were made, and we ignited an electrical fire on one infamous occasion. Billy’s dad was so pissed that day. He came barreling down the steps, threw off his shirt, and cussed us out while trying to beat the fire.
Honestly, I’m surprised he continued to let us use the basement after that, but he did. Billy’s dad was a pretty good guy. Constantly checking up on us, bringing down snacks and water bottles. Sometimes even offering the guest room to Lila or Tom without being prompted. He paid attention to us in a way I wouldn’t appreciate until much older.
We were little shits, but not all of our problems were caused by us. One of the most significant issues was Tom’s mom. Aunt Linda. She was a self-proclaimed “future citizen of Heaven” and got evangelical about Rock and Roll being nothing more than devil’s language. She’d wax on and on about how it made society fall apart, turned kids gay, and made way for deviancy. She was always making a scene, trying to get my mother to turn against me, and calling Lila names as if she weren’t twenty years older.
She tried talking to Billy’s dad sometimes, no doubt intending to take away our sacred place of practice, but the man never listened. “I just think it’s irresponsible letting them practice on a school night,” she’d say, and Billy’s dad would always respond with the blankest face, “Oh, really?” And she’d keep going on and on only to receive the same empty “Oh really?”
Linda was, simply put, a deeply unpleasant woman. If Tom’s bass hadn’t originally belonged to his late father, she’d have burned it. She would probably have made a big deal about sending it back to his creator in flames. She’d ground him only for Tom to sneak out. I don’t think he’d have thrown himself so hard into music if she hadn’t pushed him. Thanks to Linda, Tom spent nearly every waking moment in Billy’s basement, practicing as if his life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
We were starting to get pretty good. Billy and Tom were always scouting the newspaper, looking for the next gig. Lila screamed along with every song on the radio, regardless of the genre or if she knew the lyrics. Her voice was quickly developing into a deep, more mature tone that was drawing the attention of, well, pretty much anyone with ears.
We felt invincible. When we performed together, it was like we combined into one form. An indefectible amalgamation that exhaled music as easily as breathing. I’ve never felt a more exhilarating feeling than those performances. It didn’t matter where we were. Shitty pizza parlors with a health inspector score below 70 might as well have been the super bowl. My destiny to become a famous drummer felt inevitable.
The end of our high school days was rapidly approaching. Our peers were scrambling, but we were different. We knew where we were going. Straight to the top. This wasn’t just a stupid teenage dream without any basis for it. I still don’t know how he’d managed to swing it, but Tom got us a live meeting with a record label. It was going to take place three weeks after graduation. The future that was slowly rearing its head over the horizon looked almost too bright to look at. But, as is with life, problems emerged.
After telling us about this life-changing deal, Tom just stood there, fiddling with a loose thread on his jacket, looking grim for someone who had delivered good news. Lila asked why.
“They want to hear our new stuff.”
“New,” I echoed. “What do you mean?”
We devolved from elation to a cold panic. We didn’t have new stuff. Even though we’d been a band for almost six years, we’d never written a single song. The label was not interested in that. They wanted to hear us play something original. Tom, being too afraid that they wouldn’t have given a cover band the time of day, agreed we would.
Being the stupid, hopeful teenagers that we were, we recovered quickly.
Weren’t there tons of famous songs written over the span of a single day? Led Zeppelin banged out Rock and Roll in less than an hour, and the Beatles wrote Yesterday in under a minute. We had over two months. We could do it, right? We’d come this far. Overcome house fires, Lila’s interfering sisters, and Tom’s zealot mother. We could definitely write a song.
“Guys,” Tom said slowly. “We can do this. I’ve never believed in something as much as I believe in us.”
Billy smiled at him warmly, and Lila’s cheeks flushed ever so slightly. I felt the fire in my stomach grow with Tom’s words.
“This is our future,” he finished. “I know it.”
We were smiling so hard our faces hurt, and we held onto each other in a desperate group hug, vowing we would achieve our goal. Lila ran home and got her poetry books, Tom and Billy were hunched over a composition notebook, trying to rough out a melody, and I was where I always was: banging away on my drums.
We kept at it every day. Final exams came and passed… not that any of us ‘passed.’ Graduation was rounding the corner, but the song still wasn’t ready. We made an earnest attempt, but we just couldn’t find the music. Every time we thought we had something; the chorus would evade us or the notes would start sounding sour and discordant.
At least Lila seemed to have an easier time finding words to put to the song. She’d always carried a pleather purple notebook with her name scrawled along the spine:
PROPERTY OF LILAC WHITE
I had assumed it was a diary for the longest time, but it wasn’t. I would never have been able to guess what was inside of it until she sang for us. The book was filled with love poems that transitioned easily into beautiful lyrics. They lilted under her voice. The tone deeper and softer than it was when we covered other bands’ songs. Her voice was so unique and dark. I’ve still never heard anything that sounded quite like it.
Lila was destined to be a star, and I didn’t realize it until that moment, but apparently, there was a lot I had noticed. Until she sang from that book, I hadn’t even the slightest inclination of her feelings for Tom.
It was painfully obvious that she had sung for him. The lyrics were full of hope and longing; you could hear her heart reaching through the microphone. Her hooded eyes lingered on him, narrow hips swaying to the music in a magnetic way that pulled her closer to him.
For a moment, I was jealous—just one moment. I’ll admit it. Then I stuffed that ugly green feeling into a box because: What the fuck? Lila was my best friend. I’d watched her eat her boogers and half a worm in second grade. She wanted to date Tom, OK. I didn’t have a say in what either of them chose to do.
I looked over at Tom, expecting him to be enraptured by her performance. He’d never had a girlfriend, probably on account of Linda. Lila was one of the few girls he managed to interact with. This should have been the perfect scenario for Tom, but he just looked uncomfortable. His posture was tight, his leg bouncing in the same nervous way it always did before a show, and he refused to look at Lila. At first, I thought that maybe he was embarrassed, but he was my cousin. I may have been blind to what Lila felt, but there was one thing I could be sure of. I knew what embarrassment looked like on him; it was a shade between cherry red and strawberry pink. Tom was as white as a ghost.
I swallowed, feeling something settle within the pit of my stomach.
That invincible feeling washed away as Lila sang. Tom shifted, his entire body angled at the door. He looked like he might bolt at any moment, but Lila didn’t notice. Her eyes closed, long fingers with chipped polish reaching out as she swayed.
When Lila finished what she had of her song, Billy immediately hopped to his feet. He made a big show of clapping as loud as possible, wolf-whistled, and then blew a chef’s kiss. He crooned about how perfect of a song it was. As soon as Lila dropped her guard, Billy ditched the nice guy act and started harassing her about who the song was about.
“Corey from homeroom? No? Hmmm… Mike? Maybe it’s one of us, then?” He had the biggest shit-eating grin; one arm wrapped playfully around her as she stared at the ground. “Is little Lila secretly in love with one of her bandmates?”
And in the quietest voice, she responded with: “Maybe.”
Billy immediately stiffened his posture. He was as rigid as a man who had gazed into Medusa’s cursed eyes. The arm wrapped around her was still there, but now his fingers were no longer grasping her shoulder. They stood straight out like five awkward daggers.
A moment passed.
“Haha!” Billy yelled. “You got me there for a second, Lilez” He stiffly removed his hand in a way that looked robotic. “When’d you get funny?”
And Lila just said in that same quiet voice, brown eyes still locked onto the concrete floor of Billy’s basement: “It’s not a joke.” Then she asked if she could have a moment with Tom. Alone.
We obliged.
Billy paced outside of his own house. Every now and then he’d turn to me and either ask half a question or start a statement and then cut himself off in favor of resuming pacing.
“Is this-?”
“No, he wouldn’t.“
“Could he-?”
“Lila is going to-“
Meanwhile, I just stared at the door. I kept imagining them walking out together, standing hand in hand with big smiles. I should have been happy with that image, but my gut twisted. I didn’t want to see them together. Why? Well, I wasn’t sure at that moment. I remember racking my brain, trying to find why two people shouldn’t be together if they liked each other. Then a reason dawned on me.
“This will mess up the band,” I said to Billy. “Band members can’t date. That always causes problems.”
He shot me a careful look that bordered on the edge of judgment. “We don’t even know…” he trailed off, his feet finally planted in one place. “Let’s just chill out. Lila might be-“
Billy was cut off by his door banging against the siding; Lila came stomping out of the house. She ran without saying a word or even looking at Billy or me. Tom stepped out onto the porch. His face was pinched up in a complicated expression torn between guilt and shame. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he called softly.
“Whatever!” Lila cried.
Tom’s eyes looked glossy. when he drew a deep breath, I thought he might let out a wail, but instead, he screamed: “FUCK!!” That was probably the only time I’d ever heard him say it. “God damnit!” Tom kicked the side of the house. “I can’t believe I just fucking lied to Lila!”
Billy’s dad ran out, spatula in hand. “What are you-?” The man froze, seeing Tom’s anger.
“It’s all her fault!” Billy shrieked. “I hate her! I hate her so much!”
I stood stagnant, looking between Lila’s rapidly retreating figure and Tom. I might have just stood that way forever if Billy didn’t jam his hands in his pocket and tell me to help Lila. “Me and dad can handle Tom.”
“Is this about your mom?” I heard Billy’s father ask softly as I dashed away. I didn’t hear Tom’s response.
My heart hammering faster than any beat I could ever play, I ran after Lila. For a girl that smoked like a train, she could run. When I finally caught up to her, already sitting out on the porch of her house with a half-drunk glass of water, I lied to myself and pretended she had a more significant headstart than she did… and also that she must have changed into those three-inch platform shoes when she got home. I opened my mouth, unsure if I would question or comfort Lila, but all that would come out was a wheeze. She had black streaks dried upon her cheeks, and her mouth was pulled into a deep frown, but my pathetic wheeze made the beginnings of a laugh escape her lips.
“Let’s get you a drink,” she said.
After that, we sat on the porch, not talking much. At first, I tried asking some questions, but she shot me down quickly. We just sat and listened to music until the sun changed from a bright white circle to a soft-boiled egg breaking over the horizon. The golden light streamed over us.
“Am I not pretty?” Lila asked out of nowhere. “Not that I care. I shouldn’t care, but. Be honest. Am I ugly?”
“Did Tom say you were?” My knuckles pressed into the soft cushion of her patio furniture, waiting for her answer.
“Not really,” she said. “He just- he said I wasn’t at all his ‘type.’ Isn’t that the type of thing you say when someone’s not pretty?”
So, of course, being a young, dumb teenager who was half in love with their best friend and barely even aware of the fact, I told Lila precisely what I thought about her. That I’d seen her do some of the grossest shit imaginable (lick a porta potty seat on a dare, pee in a bottle only for all the urine to get on her arm and skirt, blow her nose into a pillow case and then lie back down on that very same pillow. You get the point), but I still thought she was the most beautiful, talented girl I’d ever met. I told her that she was meant to be a star. I could feel it in my bones that she would be a household name one day. She was that extraordinary. I’m not sure how long I talked, but my throat felt dry by the time I finished.
Lila said my name, and there were tears in her eyes. She choked on a sob and opened her mouth to say more. I’m not sure what. Maybe thank you, but the words weren’t coming out. She held up her necklace. We’d gotten it when we were six, and it proclaimed we were best friends forever. It had been a long time since we’d done this, but she held out the charm expectantly. I leaned in and connected my half of the heart to hers.
They fit perfectly.
The chain had felt longer when we were children; after puberty, the necklace fit me the same way a choker would. It fell only slightly looser on Lila’s dark, slender neck. This meant we were close enough that I could feel her breath on my face, could smell the unique fragrance of raspberries and smoke. I thought she was going to kiss me for a moment, but then the screen door flew open, banging against the side of the house with a rattle that caused us to jump apart.
Her younger sisters ran out, chasing each other for some reason or another.
Lila furiously rubbed her eyes with her fists, a smile on her face. “I don’t deserve a friend like you.”
I felt pride at having helped her, but there was an unfamiliar ache in my chest at the word ‘friend.’ If I’d confronted that feeling, perhaps if I weren’t so scared of my own emotions, things would have turned out differently. Better.
The next time we were all in one place was our graduation. We were all supposed to celebrate together, planning on driving a couple of towns over to a Mexican restaurant that never checked IDs. It was supposed to be a happy day. All of us together; a toast to the end of our academic career, to the beginning of our music career. But our plans soured.
Lila showed up to graduation with a strung-out, twenty-something guy on her arm. She looked like a mess. Her hair seemed almost purposefully in disarray, and her lipstick was just a red smear.
After the ceremony, we all gathered, but Lila politely declined coming with us, saying that her plans had changed. She had plans with ‘Jeff.’
Things went downhill from there.
Lila altogether scrapped the beautiful love song she’d shown us in favor of scathing lyrics about an unfair rejection that slowly morphed into something painful that seemed to point more towards Jeff than it did Tom. The music got darker and darker. Lila started showing up late with puffy eyes and injuries. She would shut down if I said anything about the scrapes on her knees or the bruises that she insisted were from a bad bicycle fall. I kept quiet, thinking that that was best.
My heart ached to listen to her, feeling like it was stabbed when we tried to play together. That musical synthesis that made me feel as if we were one when we played had withered away. Two weeks until the performance, I felt like we were no longer a band. Lila stopped coming to practice altogether, texting us increasingly lame excuses for why she couldn’t meet up. This thing we’d spent six years building, it couldn’t just fall apart. The four of us had grown up together, had found our passion together. It just couldn’t be that something as fickle as temporary emotions and stress could cause us to fizzle out. We were invincible once. Now, I wasn’t even sure if we were friends.
Long gone were the days when we’d spend the whole day practicing our favorite songs and the night sitting around a fire, talking about shows, celebrities, and any stupid passing thought that had the misfortune of crossing our overcaffeinated, sleep-deprived minds. The world suddenly became a lonely, silent place.
I found an old video a few days before our audition. We’d set up my mom’s camcorder to capture footage from one of our very first practices. I remembered Billy bouncing around excitedly, calling it our debut video and wanting to mail it to MTV as soon as we had it done. I hardly recognized our past selves.
We were short, scrawny little things with inexplicably chubbier cheeks. The bass guitar Tom had inherited from Uncle Jon looked like it weighed more than he did, but he held it up, diligently playing ‘Seven Nation Army’ with his tongue stuck out in concentration. Billy and Lila shared the mic to his mother’s karaoke machine, head-banging as they screamed lyrics so loud that nothing could be made out through the static. Then there I was, sitting in the back. I expected my face to be on the drums as I was still learning them. That was when I started to fall in love with music, but I wasn’t looking at my drums. I had the dopiest smile on my face, all my crooked teeth in view, as I stared at Lila.
Maybe the music wasn’t the only thing I’d fallen in love with. The pain in my chest grew as I watched the video. I felt homesick. Like there was this crucial part of my life that had suddenly vanished. I wanted to get it back.
The next afternoon, just two days before the record label meeting, I went to Billy’s house for practice with the camcorder. I wanted to see if my bandmates would react to the video as I had. If seeing their younger selves made them feel as lost as I did. Surprisingly, I was the first to arrive at Billy’s (well, except Billy himself, of course). I was his neighbor, but it was rare for me to be the first one to arrive. Tom seemed to live at Billy’s practically, and even Lila beat me on occasion.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Lila flaked again,” he answered. “Plans with Jeff. And Tom. Ugh.” He let out a dramatic noise halfway between a sigh and a grunt. “He’s having major mommy issues again. He’ll be here after they work it out, though. Anyway, I’m glad you got here. First, there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.” Billy looked rough. His energy seemed boundless at times, but now he just looked drained. Dark circles lined the bottom of his eyes, and his skin was so pale that his freckles stood out like black marks.
Based on his appearance, I expected him to tell me he’d tell me about an unfortunate run-in with a vampire or initiate an emotional conversation. Maybe to talk about the rift between the band or the more personal rift that separated Tom and Lila… but nope. It was more of a professional conversation. He was worried about the upcoming meeting, about blowing a shot at something he’d never even thought he’d had a chance at.
“We need a song,” he said. “And, I think just maybe I’ve found something that can make one. Tom says it’s stupid, but…” he trailed off. “Just wait here, okay?”
When Billy returned, he had his laptop. It was thicker and bulkier than the sleek little computers we have today, but it was peak technology an odd decade ago. “I found this website,” he told me eagerly. “It’s complicated, but it generates audio.” He went on and on about how awesome it’d be if this worked. “Lila’s lyrics- I’ll be honest, They’re getting too dark.”
I nodded in agreement as Tom continued booting up his laptop. There was something that we left unsaid about Lila and the things we heard her sing. I still don’t know if she was merely getting her feelings out or crooning out cries for help.
Cries that I ignored.
“The way this thing works is you upload audio files and text, and then it spits something new based on what you gave it. It’s not perfect. It limits how much you can add… but I’ve been playing with it. We could feed it some of the good stuff. Aerosmith. Maybe Paramore. And then I thought we could add some of Lila’s poems.” Billy cleared his throat. “The old ones, I mean.”
I shifted the camcorder from one hand to the other. “Okay.” I took a breath. “Can we add something from here as well?”
“Sure!” He smiled. “I can add it; let me go get the cord.”
He had the computer screen facing me, so I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he was typing away.
“Here, while I grab it, you look through these.” He gently placed the computer on my lap. There were various files on the screen labeled Test.1 - Test.12. “Again, not perfect, but I think we can get the basics and tweak it from there.” Billy started to go up the stairs but then stopped halfway up. Without turning to look at me, he said: “Will you call for me if Tom comes?”
“Sure,” I quickly responded and pressed play on the first recording. It was awful. Even our recording from 6 years ago sounded better than the garbage my ears were subjected to. It was a mishmash of random, metallic sounds, two power saws fighting to the death. Half a minute in, I clicked on the second recording.
It wasn’t much better, but my ears didn’t find it as offensive. I could make out the faint sounds of a keyboard… an eerie, inhuman hum beneath the cacophony. Each recording got a little better than the last. When I reached Test.10, it started sounding like a song. The guitar, drums, and bass were all separate entities performing together. There were still no lyrics, just that eerie hum, but it was loud enough to be heard clearly as it moved from note to note.
As I clicked on the next one, the computer exited the window. I’m not sure if I clicked the wrong thing or if maybe the software had crashed. Either way, that’s not what I was thinking about. Billy’s background was the icing on the ‘I spend so much time up my ass I have no clue what is going on around me’ cake.
They were at the beach, wearing matching Hawaiian shirts and looking much happier than they had the past couple of weeks, but that’s not what drew my attention.
“What the fuck,” I whispered as I stared at the way Tom and Billy’s hands were laced together. Tom stood on the tips of his toes, pressing a kiss to Billy’s cheek. “How long…?” They looked younger in that photo. Years younger. Before I could get my thoughts straight, I heard Billy walking down the steps. I quickly shut the computer.
“Woah,” Billy said with his crooked smile. “You closed that awful fast. You weren’t looking at something you shouldn’t have, right? I mean, I get it. We’re teenagers but come on, dude. I left you alone for five minutes, and you gave my computer a virus!?”
I just stayed silent, looking at the computer. I’m not sure what my face looked like then, but it must have given away my distress.
“Fuck,” Billy said. “Dude. I’m just messing with you. Are you okay?”
“No,” I told him, and then he sat down across from me, setting the cord down. “Do you want to talk about it?”
And I really didn’t, but I needed to. I told him how selfish I’d realized I’d been, how I felt like I had ignored him, Lila, and Tom—neglected our friendship. The only thing I had focused on was music; I’d unknowingly sacrificed my feelings and our relationship. I told him I was sorry for choosing to be blind and ignorant. Then I admitted something to him.
Something I only got to say out loud just that one time.
“I’m in love with Lila.” Billy didn’t look all that surprised. “I didn’t even know I was, but I have been for a while. Maybe even forever.”
He grasped my shoulder in a tight but reassuring hold. “We’ve let things get out of control,” he said in a low voice. “All of us.”
After that, we kept talking for a while, much melodramatic fluff that wouldn’t mean much to you, but it was what I needed. Probably what Billy too required. Eventually, our conversation steered back to the direction of our future, the band’s future.
“I think we have a shot,” he told me. I felt it again, that sensation of being more than myself. More than just an individual. I wasn’t alone. Billy laughed. “You know, we’ve all just been stupid. In twenty years, this is what we’ll discuss in interviews for our 8th revival comeback tour. The night we got all stupid, talking about feelings for…” he glanced at the time on his Samsung. “Damn! A whole hour? Fuck this! Let’s get the band back together!”
And my heart literally felt lifted, as if some heavy burden that had been weighing on it was removed. I half expected my body to start floating, no longer bound to the earth by its troubles. I was happy. Hopeful…
“Why don’t you get Lila and Tom on the phone? I’ll finish loading this up,” he motioned to the camcorder and his laptop. “And by the time they get here, we’ll be able to listen to our first hit together.”
Giving Billy some space to work, I went outside to the porch. I tried calling Lila first. It rang- just a couple of times- then went to voicemail.
“You’ve reached Lilac White!” Her voice sang in a falsetto that cracked as she drew out her last name.
“But you haven’t because this is just her voicemail!” Billy snorted.
“Which she won’t check….” Tom finished.
I didn’t bother leaving a message, so instead, I texted her. I still have those text messages in a manilla folder labeled with red ink: EVIDENCE.
‘Hey, I no ur w jeff, but can u stop by Billy’s after?’
‘Plz, its important!!’
While waiting for her response, I dialed up Tom. No answer there either.
A fire truck passed by; its siren was a devastating screech that nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. I wondered where it was heading. I remember thinking maybe the old lady next to Tom’s place. She was in the late stages of pancreatic cancer, and her wails of pain sometimes bled through the walls.
My phone barked, taking my attention away from the fire truck and alerting me that Lila had messaged back.
‘I know you have a crush on me.’
Saliva caught in my throat, and I sputtered out a cough. What could that message mean? My mind raced. Was she angry?
‘I see the way you stare at me.’
‘Checking me out every time I bend down to pick up the mic.’
‘Trying to look down my shirt.’
I was panicking at that text message. Fuck, did I really do that? I hadn’t noticed if I had, but I hadn’t noticed many things. I hoped that I had never made Lila uncomfortable. I texted her back.
I’m sorry :(‘
‘I relly didn’t mean 2’
Lila immediately texted back with:
‘Then stop it!’
‘Do you honestly think I’d EVER want to be with you?’
‘I never want to see you again.’
‘None of you pieces of shit.’
I didn’t realize I was crying until a fat tear plopped onto my leg and rolled off the curve of my knee.
‘You can’t mean that’
A police car passed by, its siren wailing loudly, but I could barely hear it. It was like there was cotton in my ears. I couldn’t process anything other than those harsh words glaring at me from the screen.
‘Lila’
‘Dont say that.’
My heart sank from my chest to rest upon my guts. It turned into an icy, black thing that weighed a million pounds. I half expected its weight to pull me to the ground and bury me under an ocean of sadness.
An ambulance barreled past, siren screaming, but I hardly even noticed.
‘Lila’
No answer came.
I tried calling, but all I got was her voicemail.
I’m not sure how long I sat out there. It must not have been long, but it felt like an eternity had passed. I kept rereading our conversation. Each time I felt the pain attack my chest with renewed vigor. Eventually, Billy came up to check on me.
He was sweating profusely, but his hand was colder than ice when he grabbed my arm to get my attention. Blue eyes blown wide with panic, he looked off toward the sirens. “Why are you crying?” He asked in a quiet, fearful voice. “Did something happen to Tom?”
“No,” I answered. “Tom still isn’t here yet.”
Two police cars passed by; they were also heading in the direction of my cousin’s house. After what happened with Lila, I didn’t think my stomach could twist any farther, but it lurched once more. Dread enshrouded my form, causing every little hair on my body to stand at attention.
“Billy,” I whispered as I watched the smoke rising from somewhere in the distance. “Why did you ask about Tom?”
“The computer,” he said, not seeming to be talking to me. Billy stumbled backward, his eyes caught on the sky. “No!” He sucked in a deep breath, the kind you take after having been underwater for ten seconds too long. “Don’t let it be right!”
He was barefoot, but instead of slipping on the sandals beside the entryway, he ran towards Tom’s house. I followed after. I kept telling myself that the ambulance had nothing to do with Tom, but something about that wouldn’t sit right. Panic squeezed my lungs, preventing me from drawing a full breath.
“It’s just the old lady,” I told myself. “The fire truck. The ambulances. They’re here for her.”
Then I rounded the corner. Tom’s house looked normal save for the various rescue vehicles parked haphazardly on the lawn and the smoke that filtered through the chimney. The last part wouldn’t have been unusual if we weren’t in the middle of one of the worst heat waves June had ever seen. That smoke was a long, black streak against the blue sky.
There was a strong smell in the air. On the surface, it smelled like meat, but underneath, it was an acidic, chemical smell that made my nostrils flare. I nearly gagged as I got closer. It didn’t smell right. A loud shriek drew my attention to Tom’s front door. All I could make out was black hair with bits of grey whipping back and forth as a woman thrust her body around the same way a worm on meth might.
“You sinners!” She cried out, her voice cracking with every vowel. “You’ll regret this! You’ll burn for this!” It was Tom’s mother and behind her stood a police officer.
I still remember my first thought: that the police officer was some sort of punk. After all, what could they have done in this quiet, repressed house that would warrant a fire truck, ambulance, and multiple squad cars? The cop didn’t look like he could have been much older than I was. When they turned, I saw that my aunt was wearing handcuffs, the officer behind her gripping her wrist and shoulder with a bruisingly tight grip. Billy was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had already been arrested, I thought.
“What are you doing!?” I yelled and ran over to them. “Let her go!”
The officer didn’t respond. Linda kept thrusting her body back, stamping her feet onto the ground to hit the one who held her captive.
“You!” She bellowed as I approached. “This is your fault! With your devil music! You made him this way!” I felt something wet run down my face. She’d spit on me.
Linda cried out as if in pain. I’m unsure if the cop had tightened his grip further or if she’d stomped too hard and hurt her foot. Either way, it didn’t stop her from spewing garbage in the form of hate speech and slurs. None of that needs to be repeated. It won’t take long to find someone regurgitating the same bullshit if you want to hear.
Linda ended her tirade with: “Leviticus 18:22! You’ll burn! The lot of you will burn!”
I felt the spit run down my face, unable to do much except watch as the officer forced her into the back of his squad car. There were more coming, a cacophony of sirens all around. Next to the porch, a girl wearing an EMT uniform was vomiting into the bushes. The meat smell had gotten more pungent and sour. I hesitantly started towards the house.
“Hey,” a voice called. “Kid, you can’t go in there!”
“Stop him!”
I heard footsteps behind me, but all that did was urge me to run. Entering the threshold, there was smoke inside the house. It wasn’t enough to be opaque, but it stung my eyes. Half-blind, I turned left to go into the living room. It was a familiar place; many Christmases and Thanksgiving had been spent here. Even if I couldn’t see, this was practically home territory. I needed to get inside. To figure out what was going on and help my cousin.
“Don’t run!” The voice shouted. But it was too late for me to take that advice. The hardwood floor was coated in a thick, slippery liquid. My shoes lost traction, and I slid backward.
I opened my eyes, and suddenly three people were standing around me: The girl from the bushes and two men.
“You okay?” one of the men asked.
I touched my head; it screamed like a bright white flare. I brought my hand up to rub it, and when I took it away, it was covered in blood. “Fuck,” I whined, trying to sit up, but the girl placed a firm hand on my chest. “My head.”
“Don’t move your neck,” she ordered. A little string of orange bile was still attached to the corner of her mouth. “That was a bad fall.”
“Tom, This-“ Billy’s voice choked out a sob. “it can’t be you.”
“Jesus,” said the girl, and they all turned away from me. “How did he get in here?”
Going against their medical advice, I sat up and saw something in the fireplace that I wish I hadn’t.
It was Tom.
But at the same time, it wasn’t. He looked like a Halloween decoration. Out of his face, where his eyes used to be, was a butcher’s knife. His body looked posed, sitting on his knees with his hands clasped as if in prayer. Tom’s body, his features, his scars, the freckled skin he loved complaining about, all of that was gone. What remained was a corpse with blackened skin, flaked in areas to reveal the red muscle underneath. His bass sat beside the fireplace, blood still dripping from the cord.
Billy sat on his knees in front of the mantle. His bare feet were covered in blood. He had his arms stretched out as if he were going to try to grasp the thing that Tom had become, but he was frozen, as still as any statue.
I looked down at the blood all over the floor… all over the couch… all over me.—Tom’s blood.
I saw my hands shakily rise. The red dyed everything a deeply unsettling shade of crimson. The world whirled, the room span and the only thing that stayed in focus was my cousin. I think I cried out his name before my vision went black and-
I’m sorry.
I just.
I can’t write this anymore.
I thought I could get through it, but it’s like opening closed wounds. I can hardly see the screen through my tears. Anyway, it’s getting dark, and I still need to go to Lila.
Later this week, if I can, I’ll come back and tell you the rest, and maybe… maybe one of you can help me end this nightmare and put the dead to rest.