3. The Text
THE TEXT
“Everyone, this is Gerald. He’ll be helping out with some audits so he’ll be with us through year-end. Be nice to him.”
Gerald does a slow lap of the cubicles. When he reaches my desk he stops, reads my nameplate, and smiles at me.
“Hi Lena.” He taps the top of my monitor. “I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of your reconciliations.”
“I suppose so.” I say.
He laughs like I’ve been funny and moves on. I turn to my monitor, open the group chat, and give the actual news of the day my full attention.
Me: Okay, is it confirmed confirmed? Rebecca and Jo are dating?
Ravita: PHOTOS EXIST. Same brunch. Rebecca had her hand on the back of Jo’s chair.
Marnie: A hand on a chair basically means they already moved in together.
Ravita: The lead singer of The Sirens and the lead singer of the Belladonnas. I cannot believe this!
This was something I already know from Rhonda, so I say nothing.
Marnie: This ENDS the rivalry. I get to like the Belladonnas in peace now.
Ravita: No way, we have to stay strong.
I smile at my phone. Across the aisle, Gerald is arranging his desk and glancing over like he’s waiting for me to look up. I don’t. By the time I surface, I’ve reread the brunch thread four times and answered none of the three emails he’s already sent me about the Q4 file.
Ravita is across from me with her salad and her phone propped against a water bottle.
We eat here every day. Same table in the corner. Same routine: Ravita brings the salad. I bring whatever I grabbed from the café downstairs, which is usually a sandwich and a coffee.
"Oh my god." She slaps the table. "Oh my GOD."
Several people sitting at other tables look at us.
"What? What happened?"
"Riley dropped a new practice video. Twenty minutes ago. Marnie is freaking out right now."
I grab my phone. The group chat is climbing fast.
Marnie: NEW RILEY VIDEO. NEW RILEY VIDEO.
Marnie: Her stick technique has EVOLVED. Cross-sticking in the bridge. I've never seen her do this before.
Marnie: I'm hiding on the floor of the stockroom and I'm NOT okay. My manager is going to fire me.
Ravita: SEND ME THE LINK RIGHT NOW.
I open the video right there in the lunchroom.
Riley is in a practice room with a backward cap and her sleeves pushed up, running through a groove that builds from a basic pocket into layered fills.
The cross-sticking Marnie mentioned is in the bridge—she switches her leading hand mid-phrase without losing tempo.
"Watch her left hand during the hi-hat pattern," I say to Ravita, who's already leaning over.
"I see. That's obscene levels of skill."
"I’m going to do a full breakdown."
"Your followers are going to lose their minds. Fourteen thousand people and they're all about to explode."
I'm already composing the post in my head.
I type a quick draft into my notes app, screenshot two frames, and send a voice note to the group chat.
Ravita: That was UNHINGED. You were almost crying about hi-hat ghost notes.
Marnie: This is why we're friends.
Ravita: Look at the view count!
Marnie: 100K and its only been seventeen minutes.
The response is immediate and effusive and exactly the brand of energy I live for. Three women who met at a Sirens show a few years ago, bonded over Riley Puth's drumming, and maintain a group chat that averages forty messages a day.
Then Marnie drops the grenade.
Marnie: Okay, don't kill me, but I've been listening to the Belladonnas' new EP and their bassist is really good.
Ravita: You’re kidding me.
Marnie: I'm just saying! She's got great tone.
Ravita: Don't forget. We don't like the Belladonnas. That's the whole thing. That's our unifying principle as a group.
Marnie: You do know that the lead singer is dating someone from The Sirens. Jo and Rebecca are a couple. The rivalry is over.
Ravita: But still. We don't like them. We stan for Riley Puth.
Marnie: Can't we appreciate good bass playing and also be Riley devotees?
Ravita: No.
Marnie: You’re being a tyrant.
Ravita: This is a PRINCIPLED group chat. We have standards. Our brand is Riley Puth.
Marnie: You're being ridiculous.
I stare at the chat. Rhonda was on my couch wrapped in my blanket. Eating chicken noodle soup with a fever.
I don’t think I can say any of it.
"You okay?" Ravita looks up from her salad. "You've gone very quiet."
"I’m just tired."
"You've been weird since the concert."
"I'm not."
"It’s weird when you smile at your phone."
My thumb is hovering over Rhonda's contact.
I didn't realize I'd navigated there. I close the app and pick up my sandwich and try to redirect to Marnie's bass player betrayal.
Ravita launches into a passionate defence of brand loyalty that carries us through the rest of lunch with no more questions, but I can feel her watching me.
After lunch I sit at my desk and post the Riley breakdown to the fan account. Four hundred and twelve words about left-hand ghost note technique, annotated screenshots, a slow-motion clip of the cross-sticking transition.
Ravita: Your post is going viral. The Sirens’ official profile just reshared it!
Marnie: LENA. LENA. LENA.
Ravita: LEGEND. You queen.
Marnie: Wait. WAIT. Riley commented! She put a drumstick emoji and a heart emoji!
I stare at my phone. The comment is only two emojis. But it's the most validation I've felt in my life.
Marnie: RILEY PUTH ACKNOWLEDGED YOUR EXISTENCE.
Ravita: This is transcendent. This is the highest achievement of your life now.
I stand up and throw both my fists in the air. Susan from the other side of the office looks my way.
“Sorry, I just wrapped up a huge client file.”
“Well done.” She gives a small nod and went back to her work.
Marnie: (voice note—incomprehensible screaming)
Ravita: That was beautiful. That was pure joy.
Marnie: I will never recover from this.
Ravita: Okay this OFFICIALLY calls for a celebration. Saturday at my place. We are finally doing the Sirens scrapbook.
Marnie: YES. I’ve been hoarding ticket stubs like a raccoon. I will bring the good washi tape.
Ravita: Bring everything! Photos and clippings!
Marnie: I call dibs on the Jani spread.
My two best friends have spent three years building a shrine to a band, and the bassist at the centre of Marnie’s favourite spread is my older sister, and not one of them has any idea. I react with a heart.
I send the group chat an excited GIF and then, without deciding to, I’m in a different app with my thumb over Rhonda’s name.
What is she doing? Is she feeling better? How is her conversation with Jo?
Instead I type:
How are you?
And then delete it.
I close the app, put the phone face down, and open the spreadsheet.
Saturday, Ravita’s living-room floor is a crime scene of glue sticks and glossy four-by-sixes. Marnie has laid out three years of Sirens shows in chronological order and is defending her filing system like it’s on trial.
“Dublin goes before Manchester,” she says, “because that’s when Riley changed her cymbal setup and the whole feel of the band shifts, and if you put Manchester first the spread doesn’t tell a story.”
“It’s a scrapbook, not a documentary,” Ravita says, already reaching for the washi tape.
“Everything is a documentary if you love it enough.”
I’m supposed to be doing the Jani pages. I have a stack of photos of my own sister mid-bassline, hair in her face, and a pair of safety scissors, and I keep not cutting. My phone is face down on the carpet and I can feel it there the way you feel a held breath.
“Lena.” Ravita is looking at me. “You’ve trimmed the same photo four times. It’s a circle now. It’s basically a coaster.”
She plucks the over-trimmed photo out of my hand and holds it up beside my face, one eye shut, appraising. “Has anyone ever told you that you and Jani have the same face? Like, the exact same face when you concentrate. It’s uncanny.”
“We do not.” I take the photo back a little too fast. “I have a rounder face.”
“If you say so.” She’s already losing interest, reaching for the washi tape, and I get to breathe again.
“Sorry. Miles away.”
“You’ve been miles away for weeks.” She says it lightly, but she holds my eyes a beat too long before Marnie hauls her back into the Dublin-versus-Manchester war.
I glue Jani’s face into the centre.
I spent three days of picking up my phone and putting it down. Of opening the text app and closing it. Of composing messages in my head that range from breezy to stupid to honest, and deleting all of them before they exist anywhere but my brain.
I think about the vending machine at the airport. How close she stood. How she smelled up close—bergamot, vanilla and a curl of sandalwood. How if I’d turned my head three inches I’d have been at her neck. My ears go hot.
On the next morning, I couldn’t take it anymore, I type: B7 or C3?
I press send and put the phone face down. If she’s forgotten, I can call it a wrong number and take it to my grave.
I hear a notification and pick it back up.
Rhonda: Always B7. Pretzels are not snacks.
I grin at my phone.
I type back. She types back. I type again. She answers before I've finished the sentence.
Pretzels are healthy, and fun to chew.
I'm telling you pretzels are for suffering, they have no joy.
All food is joy if you eat it right.
That's the most unhinged thing anyone has ever said to me and I've been on tour with Sandy Gauntlet.
Who is that?
My guitarist. She once ate a raw onion on a dare and then played a ninety-minute set without drinking water.
Oh ew.
She threw up in a guitar case afterward. It wasn’t even her guitar case!
Let me guess, it was yours?
Yup.
I laugh out loud at my desk. Susan across the room glances over. I pretend to be looking at the reconciliation report and type another message under my desk where nobody can see.
You let her back in the band after that?
She bought me a new case. It was almost worth the trauma.
Was it?
No. That old case smelled for weeks. I took it out to the fire escape to air it out, and my neighbor told the building manager about a weird smell.
Oh no.