88
Sasha
MONOCHROME STOPLIGHT
with special guests
Wavelength
January 15
Initialism
7 p.m. doors / 8 p.m. music
The posters appeared all over town yesterday. Now we’ve done our sound check, ready to go, full of jittery energy. We’re not scheduled to be onstage for another thirty minutes, but Initialism is already packed. We can hear the crowd’s anticipation from backstage. The show only got announced twenty-four hours ago, and it’s like their fans still can’t believe it.
Everyone’s caught up in the rush. We knew ahead of time, and it still feels like we’ve been scrambling all day to get ready. Emelia’s coming to photograph the show, and we keep texting her all the things we forgot. An adapter of Cyprus’s, my purse, Quinn’.
“luckiest drumsticks.”
Monochrome Stoplight has spent most of the day appearing without warning at local music stores and venues. Doing signings, playing an acoustic song, then popping up somewhere else not long after. They were only briefly at Initialism before heading out on their quest to cover every corner of the city, so we haven’t had the chance to meet them in person yet.
We did talk with their guitarist and their sound person a week ago to make sure we were on the same page about some details. I’ve never seen Lillian take so long choosing her clothes.
Partway through talking, Liv James wandered through the back of the frame in her pajamas. Just when we were all barely holding it together, she ducked into the call.
She said hello and that she was looking forward to meeting us. That it was going to be a great show. Pleasant and unthreatening, without the intensity she radiates when she’s onstage. Like she’d rather be kind than worshipped, and like she was genuinely surprised and pleased that we’re such big fans.
It made me glad to see she had a line, the ability to turn off the ferocity she brings to her performances. Whatever unattainable standard fans think Liv James achieves all the time, she didn’t seem to have to meet it. I tried to internalize that.
You bring part of yourself to the show, but it is a show. No one else will remember that for you.
After, Lillian said.
“I didn’t expect Liv James to seem so … alright?”
“Wasn’t she really messed up a few years ago?”
said Quinn.
“Like having big breakdowns and missing shows and they thought the band was done?”
Cyprus shrugged.
“Maybe she got help?”
Lillian made a dig at the institutionalized wellness industry. Then she got quiet. A few minutes later, once the conversation had moved on, she suddenly said.
“I could do that.”
We all looked at her.
“As you were,” she said.
“Want to talk about that epiphany?”
asked Cyprus.
“I was thinking I’d talk to someone else.”
Quinn raised his eyebrows.
“Were you thinking maybe Liv James could teach you her ways?”
“I’m not commenting on that,”
said Lillian.
“Cyprus, be the mature one.”
“Getting help is fucking scary, and I’m proud of you,”
said Cyprus.
“For real,”
said Quinn.
“If I didn’t know you hated the word,”
I said.
“I’d be tempted to call you brave.”
“You wouldn’t dare,”
said Lillian.
Cyprus tilted her head back and forth, considering.
“To be fair, Liv James does seem very experienced.”
Lillian threw a handful of guitar picks at her head.
Nobody on our end of the call with Monochrome Stoplight fainted or embarrassed themselves too badly, so it was a huge success. It’s killing Lillian not to constantly text Liv James for advice on everything under the sun. Sometimes I catch her with the contact open, just looking at it.
Cyprus took on part of the role of announcing the show locally and spreading the news, therefore the rest of the band and Emelia got recruited to help poster the city.
When we got to the greenroom, there was a note written in permanent marker pinned to the wall. It was on the back of a crossed-out setlist.
Hey Wavelength! Sorry we haven’t gotten to see you yet. We’ll be back before you’re on. We can’t wait to hear you! And if you’re down, you’re very welcome on our traditional post-show food expedition. Recommendations welcome!
Then a huge black heart and Liv James’ signature.
The note’s definitely going to wind up framed in Lillian’s bedroom. Or maybe our rehearsal space. And the consensus food recommendation is Falafel ’Til Dawn.
Monochrome Stoplight’s gear is all over the greenroom. Eventually Quinn psychs himself up to move someone’s leather jacket so he can sit down. He touches it like it’s sacred.
Everyone’s rattling with excitement about sharing the space and wondering if they’ll be here soon and talking through setlists and cues and pretending not to be nervous about how many people are out there.
Cyprus is touching up her dramatic makeup, making me think I should do the same. But I left my makeup in my purse along with my phone. I’m beginning to see that I really undervalued pockets. Cyprus comments offhand that it must not seem like too many people to me.
These things keep coming up. How different my life has been from my friends’ lives. Suddenly, a gulf opens, and they don’t know how to look at me anymore. This stranger is standing with them, this celebrity who’s on a screen or the radio.
It’s improving, little by little. They’re figuring out that I’m not two people, just Sasha. They’re giving me more kindness than I ever thought I deserved, but I’m still scared.
Because we don’t know about anything after tonight. I don’t want to be a part of their past. A story to remember, a moment that doesn’t seem quite real looking back, someone none of them have heard from or contacted in a long time because it’s too weird, because our worlds are too separate.
They’ll have each other. And I’ll have the Channel and a private jet and empty hotel rooms and media attention. I’ll have a fake romance to boost numbers. I’ll be going from city to city to city, wondering where I left myself.
If I want to come out, it will have to be to the entire world in a maneuver vetted by people at the Channel who will try to make me the most acceptable version of myself. Until I’m twenty-one and my contract’s done. By then, my friends’ lives will be far away from mine. A few months of knowing won’t stretch across four years.
The helmet will have to come off.
Once that happens, I’m embedded in the world. I’ve gotten famous enough to never not be. To never be quite the same as other people. To never be able to live this normal exceptional bizarre confusing crisscrossed life out in the open with these people.
In the greenroom, I say.
“This actually feels like the most exciting show of my career. Opening for Monochrome Stoplight? At the best venue I’ve ever been in with the best friends I’ve ever had?”
“Aww,”
says Quinn.
“I’m a puddle.”
He’s air-drumming, only half there.
“I really mean it.”
Lillian sits beside me on the back of the couch.
“Don’t tell Christensen you think so highly of Initialism. It’ll go right to his head.”
“Being friends with a major celebrity hasn’t affected my ego,”
says Cyprus.
“It remains at a healthy stable level oh my god Liv James just texted me I am an insider fear me love me. She says they’re on their way over.”
“Why not tell me?”
asks Lillian.
“I’m bandleader.”
“Because I text right back instead of overthinking it and replying eight days later,”
says Cyprus.
“At least I don’t make euphemistic mistakes,”
says Lillian.
“That was one time!”
We really are ready for this show. I can feel it. Everyone’s relaxed enough to be joking around. When Emelia ducks in to drop our things off, she says no matter what happens, the crowd seems thrilled to be here and we’ve got their hometown mercy.
“Should we tour?”
asks Lillian.
“We could tour once we’re out of school.”
“If we toured,”
I say.
“I’d be ready to throw you all off the bus within an hour.”
“Love you too,”
says Cyprus.
“The van,”
says Quinn.
“It’d definitely be a van. Cyprus, how many miles does your station wagon have left? We could all wedge in there.”
They understand I’m afraid they’ll use me to get famous, so they don’t mention it. They pretend we can carry on in our obscurity. But we all know at some point either everything will change in their lives, or Wavelength will be without me. It’s all too much uncertainty. Something to worry about later.
While Quinn and Cyprus get into a vigorous debate about the station wagon, I move closer to Lillian. Not touching. We agreed that was too confusing for right now, yet not reaching out to her is something I feel through my entire body.
Around that circle at the New Year’s Eve party, before Emelia picked up the book, that might be the last time Lillian kissed me. Already it’s faded, a little hazy with alcohol.
I don’t want all this to be the past decaying. I want to keep making this story every single day.
“I can’t wait to be onstage with you again,”
says Lillian.
“And you look gorgeous.”
“You too.”
“You know that’s not what I’m going for.”
“You look fearsome.”
“Thank you kindly. I’ve got something to show you.”
She pats down her jacket’s innumerable pockets and eventually emerges with a crumpled piece of paper. It’s a medical form that she stole and covered in her own words. At the top, it says Fortune’s Waltz.
Once I’m finished reading it twice, I look over at her. Her face has the apprehension of artistic vulnerability. It tells me that the song came from right inside her instead of from careful consideration.
“You wrote this in the hospital?”
“On the second night, once my family had gone home. The doctor kept saying how lucky I was to have come through alright. And I was thinking about how maybe Fortune is queer. And maybe Fortune’s tired and they love us and good luck isn’t as glamorous or as clear as we think. I got another tomorrow. Maybe that was Fortune.”
“It’s my new favorite. I’m not just saying that.”
She pulls the sleeves of her jacket over half her hands.
“I know. I can see when you’re telling the truth.”
“And have I been?” I ask.
I want to earn that trust back no matter how long it takes. And as quickly as I can, because time isn’t infinite and I miss it desperately. I want to have eyes people look into and know they’re safe with, a voice they hear and know things will be alright.
She’s about to say something, stops, considers. Maybe taking back scathing words I deserve.
“Yes,”
she says eventually.
“The first fifteen days of this year have all been true. And the more I think about it, the less it all feels like a lie before. You’re not a lie.”
“Admirer is a bit of a lie.”
“I meant Sasha,”
says Lillian.
“Sasha’s not a lie. To me, you feel like truth. I’m not done learning you, but you’re my kind of truth, the way other people believe in religions or love songs.”
There’s nothing I can possibly say to that except that I feel the same, and if I say that, then I will say I love you.
Now isn’t the moment.
There’s the show and Emelia and Admirer and the heart that Lillian scrubbed off her hand.
“Are we playing this new song tonight?”
I say quickly.
“I’ll learn it right now.”
“There’s not even a melody yet.”
“So …?”
“We’re not going to write it in the next twenty minutes,”
says Lillian.
“I’m game.”
Lillian genuinely considers it for a second.
“This one’s going to take some time. I was wondering though if you’d maybe want to write it with me? If you want. The Channel will never know. With this song, it seems right, and I know you come up with great melodies and —”
“That’s the easiest yes I’ve ever given,” I say.
Lillian bumps my shoulder.
“The easiest one?”
Quinn calls.
“I thought you two were on a break.”
“Stop this flirting or get a room,”
says Cyprus.
We hear the back door of the venue open, and we all stand up, as if sitting down is too casual to meet Monochrome Stoplight. I grab my purse so I can at least fix my lipstick.
“Deep breaths,”
I say to Lillian.
“Deep breaths yourself,”
she mutters. She does take one though.
I pull my phone out of my purse and immediately see a stack of unread messages from Isabelle.
Lillian’s too focused on being moments from a face-to-face interaction with Liv James to notice how my body tenses when I open them.
Isabelle’s texts — frustrated, worried, caring, always on my side.
But from the first sentence, I already know what the last will be.
Her words are the end of inevitability tearing through me, hollowing out everything I was going to use to sing.
I once wrote I’m safe.
I’m gone.
But there was never a corner of the earth far enough or a new home dear enough to stop them kicking down my door.
The terror of going back catches up and crushes me.
I can hear Monochrome Stoplight talking down the hallway, and in that moment, I can’t disrupt Lillian’s joy.
I want to hold her in my mind like this.
I take my own deep breath.
“I’ll be back in a second,”
I say, and slip out the door to the stage.