Chapter 13 #2
When the first hit lands—Eli’s snare cracking the air like a starting pistol—I feel my whole body click into place.
We tear into “Blackout,” and the garage becomes a mouth with our song in it.
Drew’s riffs cut bright and mean; my bass crawls under the floorboards and shoves the walls; Miles plays like he’s trying to outrun his past life.
I sing like I’m telling the room a secret it has to keep.
We finish in a clatter and stare at one another, chests heaving, grins feral.
Eli whoops. “That’s the opener.”
“Again,” Miles says. “With the click.”
We run it until our forearms burn, until the words stop feeling like ink and start feeling like blood. We stitch the transitions, shave the dead spaces, decide on where I’ll count under my breath and where Eli will tick us into the pocket with two soft cymbal taps.
Between takes, I check my phone. A text from Ollie:
Ollie: Film till 8. Weights after. I’ll be there around 10 if you’re still at it.
Me: We’re gonna be at it until the god of noise tells us to leave.
Ollie: Tell him I said hi.
It’s ridiculous how much that line warms me.
We tackle “Cinder.” It’s heavier, angrier; it sits lower in my throat, a growl shaped into melody. On the third pass, something clicks. The chorus lifts and doesn’t come down. Miles’s harmony snaps into the exact right sour-sweet interval, and Eli grins like he stole something.
We break to suck water and air. Drew sprawls on the concrete, sweat making abstract art on his chest. “Lantern’s gonna cry,” he croaks. “Bartender’s gonna be like ‘I wasn’t ready.’”
“Bartenders are never ready,” Eli says, then flinches as a cable pops. “Ow. Who kicked the snake?”
“Me,” I admit. “It tried to bite me first.”
Miles points a warning finger at both of us. “Do not anger the snake before ‘Wire.’”
The name sends a little shock through me. “Crimson High” is the one that stalks me when I’m alone, the one I hear when I’m watching him walk away and I want to be unholy.
We dim the garage lights and kill the overheads until there’s just a string of cheap LEDs along the wall. The room feels smaller, closer—like a stage in a place that matters. I take a breath and nod.
We play “Crimson High” like we mean it.
The first verse is a low heat; the pre-chorus tightens a fist around the ribs; the chorus is the fist closing.
It drags. It crushes. It blooms. I let my voice crack where it wants to crack, trust it to carry what the lyric won’t say out loud.
There’s a place near the bridge where everything drops out but bass and a heartbeat kick; I step forward, feel the neck under my hand like the spine of something alive, and the note hangs in the garage until I swear I can see it.
When we stop, nobody speaks. Then Miles laughs, a single stunned bark. “There it is.”
Eli nods. “Closer.”
Drew wipes his face with his shirt. “I’m going to cry on purpose onstage so the crowd thinks I’m deep.”
“Please don’t,” Miles says. “Your sincere tears look sarcastic.”
We run the whole thirty minutes, start to finish, no stops. I time us. Twenty-nine minutes and twelve seconds.
Miles taps the laptop. “We can add eight seconds of feedback before the last chorus. It’ll breathe.” He looks at me. “You up for the patter?”
“No patter,” I say. “Just a ‘We’re Steel Saints, thanks to The Lantern’ at the end. Keep the mystique.”
Drew groans. “God, you’re exhausting.”
“Correct.”
At ten, the side door cracks. A tall shadow fills the rectangle of alley light, and then he’s inside, hood up, cap low, hands stuffed into his pockets like he might be cold or he might be hiding or both.
“Hey,” he says. It’s just for me, but everybody hears it, and none of the guys are surprised. Nor have they questioned what the fuck I’m doing lapping up every bit of attention I can get from the closeted basketball captain.
They know enough, and what they don’t know for sure, they’ve read between the lines. They’re also my ride or dies—something I’ve promised Ollie, which was my way of reassuring him his presence in my life will not become gossip.
“Captain,” Drew greets him, because he can’t help being an asshole.
“Hey, Ollie,” Eli says, kinder, grabbing a spare stool and shoving it toward him with a foot. “You here to judge us?”
Ollie slides the hood back, offers a small, tight smile that’s code for I’m tired and I don’t want to talk about it. He sits, elbows on knees, the picture of relaxation if you squint and ignore the stiffness in his shoulders.
“From the top?” I ask the guys.
“From the top,” Eli says, sticks twirling.
We play like he’s a scout, like he’s a meter that tells the truth.
I don’t look at him until the bridge of “Crimson High,” and when I do, I catch him watching me like the room is less loud than my face.
The light hits his jawline and puts a little silver in his eyes.
My hands don’t shake, but they think about it.
We end, and the room hangs in a silence that’s only ever good or catastrophic. Ollie clears his throat. “You’re ready,” he says. That’s the same phrase he gave me on the couch, and I should not feel as proud as I do hearing it twice.
“Notes?” Miles asks, half teasing.
Ollie thinks like it’s a real question. “Maybe cut three seconds between the first and second song. Don’t let people clap without realizing they’re clapping. Make them chase you.”
Miles blinks, then points a pen at him. “Noted.”
Drew leans back, impressed. “He’s right.”
“Of course he’s right,” I say before I can stop myself, and feel my ears heat because I sound like a teenager with a crush.
We run the transition again—no breath, a splash of cymbal into the opening riff—until it snaps like a trap. Drew records a thirty-second teaser on his phone: a smear of light, the silhouette of my bass, Eli’s sticks flashing. He holds it up. “Caption?”
Miles says, “Minimalist. ‘Seven days.’ Date. Lantern tag.”
Drew counters, “How about ‘prepare to cry tears of joy.’”
“Seven days,” I say. “Lantern tag.”
Drew posts it before I can second-guess how naked it feels to announce something you haven’t earned yet.
The next hour is sawdust and sweat. By the end, my throat is a little raw, Eli’s hair is somehow wetter than water, and Drew’s fingers have that faint red dent where strings punished skin. Miles packs with surgical care; he will disassemble you if you touch a coil he has already coiled.
We spill into the alley, steam rising from us in the cold. Ollie hangs back with me while the others argue about pizza versus burritos. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to. He’s close enough that his sleeve grazes my wrist when the wind nudges us together.
“You looked alive,” he says.
“I am alive,” I reply, and he gives me the patient face he uses when I’m being myself on purpose.
He tips his chin at my throat. “Hurts?”
“A good hurt.” I roll my neck. “I’ll drink tea. Miles will microwave honey and tell me I’m a fool. I’ll pretend to listen.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “I want to be there.”
It comes out like a confession. I know what it cost him to say it. He can’t be seen at a club off campus with a queer rock band and no plausible deniability. He can’t be in a room where a phone could turn a moment into a story he isn’t ready to explain.
He’s already risked that once, but that was with the cover of his teammates. But more than that, he has a super-early bus to head to a game on Saturday night. If his coach discovered he was out the night before, there’d be hell to pay.
I shake my head, gentle. “Don’t risk it.”
His mouth tightens. “I want to.”
“I know.” I let my arm brush his again, a whisper of contact under the streetlight. “We’ll make the walls shake hard enough that you’ll feel it from anywhere.”
He huffs a laugh. “Cocky.”
“Correct.”
Drew yells that democracy has selected burritos. We pile into Miles’s van; Ollie bows out, touching the brim of his cap at me like we’re in a movie from the fifties. I watch him go until the taillights turn a corner and the alley looks ordinary again.
The next seven days are speed and grind.
We build rehearsal into our bones. Mornings, Miles texts new click tracks and obsessive notes (he’s right; he’s always right); afternoons, we run the set until the transitions feel like breathing; evenings, we break gear down and pack it back up, because the only way to be fast is to be practiced.
We print DIY flyers at the library and pretend not to notice the student worker rolling his eyes at us.
We argue about fonts and end up with the one that looks like it has dirt under its nails.
We stick them where we won’t get fined: cork boards, phone poles, the café I work at where the patrons secretly love me because I don’t charge regulars for double shots.
The teaser post from the garage gets a sprinkle of likes and a handful of comments we read out loud in ridiculous voices.
Someone from freshman lit replies, Didn’t know you were in a band?
? and Drew responds, We’re a rumor that sounds good.
Drew puts up a story of his guitar picks with the caption Six days to chaos.
Miles just posts a photo of a setlist and writes 6 at the top like a threat.
At night, between running order and lyric polishes, I steal time with Ollie.
We’re getting too good at the dance: hallways nobody uses, stairwells that forget people are people, my apartment when Drew is at work and Eli’s on a date and Miles is locked up in his room, the hush that falls in the practice room right after I click the slide lock.
We don’t pretend it’s platonic in private anymore.
We don’t make promises in words either. We make them with hands on shoulders and foreheads pressed together and the quiet that happens after we both stop talking.
Four days later, I’m dead on my feet at the café when my phone buzzes with a text from him.
Ollie: Film room exploded. Team dinner. Won’t make it tonight.
Me: Be a hero. Eat carbs.