Five
Kat
As Yet Untitled – COUNTERFEIT.
The city blurs around me, streetlights morphing into sharp, continuous lines with the motion.
Blank, nameless faces vanish into obscurity.
My body refuses to match the city’s pace.
My hands go still. My breath stalls in my chest while the world around me flows forward like a current that only I’m not caught in.
The adrenaline of tonight’s performance dissipates quickly, leaving my muscles feeling heavy. I don’t think I could pick up my guitar right now even if I tried. I can’t shake the lingering feeling of being laid bare tonight—and that was only in front of three people.
Well, it was really only one person.
Something in me tightens when I think about Elias—a coil of warning low in my stomach.
He didn’t just look at me. He saw me. The memory makes my stomach dip.
I’m used to men looking at me, good or bad.
Most of the time, it feels like an annoying little mosquito buzzing, and you just want to swat it away.
But this was different. It’s like he could see right through my mask.
Right through everything I’ve worked so hard to push down deep beneath the surface.
I’ve spent the past year perfecting the art of being background noise.
Blend in. Don’t do anything out of social norms. Smile.
Don’t give anyone anything real that they’ll eventually take away from you.
Although, that went out the fucking window as soon as I met Harper.
But being around Harper makes it easier to blend into the background. She’s everything I’m not, she’s loud, confident, and funny. Guys gravitate towards her, which is perfectly fine with me. But Elias doesn’t seem fazed by her at all. And that is new.
Elias seemed like he didn’t want our performance. He wanted mine.
I tell myself I’m projecting, that I’m being dramatic. I’ve seen the guy twice. Twice. That doesn’t mean anything. The thoughts fall flat because I still feel like I’m marked straight for the fucking slaughterhouse.
Pull it back, Kat. You’ve seen him twice.
I push the feeling down and shake my hands, wringing them together in my lap.
The gentle rocking of the bus is somewhat soothing.
Music has always been the one place where my mind goes quiet—the doorway that shuts out the world.
The space where I can exist, forget about everything that’s been going on and just be.
But tonight, even the familiar vibration of my guitar strings felt wrong, like a noose tugging at the base of my throat.
I’ll find you anywhere, princess.
For half a second, the bus disappears. I’m not sure what jolts first, my heart or my body.
The voice rakes through my memory like tendrils of ice.
My throat tightens as if invisible fingers are pressing into the base of my neck, strangling me from the inside out.
My hands fall from my lap and curl into the seat beneath me in a vain attempt to claw back to reality.
My pulse hammers in my ears as the voice replays in an echo, over and over in my mind.
Not him. Not here.
I look around at the half-empty bus, my eyes settling on an older woman. She’s observing me too, looking me up and down with a gentle expression. I break the connection and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. Counting to five and repeating. I am safe.
I meet my own eyes in the reflection of the bus window.
No wonder she looked at me like that. My eyes are sunken, my ice-blonde hair, usually soft and shiny, now snaked over my shoulders, dull and flat.
If I were the spiritual type, I would say there’s an immense sadness to my aura.
But I’m not—I’m just fucking tired and fighting off a panic attack on a public bus.
My gaze focuses beyond my reflection to the street outside.
People are going about their evening, couples bundled up together hand-in-hand.
As the bus pulls to a stop at the traffic lights, soft jazz drifts through the windows.
The street musician is wrapped in a big jacket with a balaclava obscuring his face, shielding him from the chilly October weather.
He could be Kenny G, and no one passing would ever know.
Everyone around him pays him no attention, the occasional onlooker dropping a few dollars into his saxophone case.
He briefly stops playing to thank the generous stranger before starting up where he left off.
His body moves in time with the music, not a care in the world.
Fuck this.
The thought settles heavy and solid in my chest, and a firm steadiness fills my limbs, loosening all the muscles that had been wound too tight ever since I set foot in Headstone tonight. Music is mine. It’s always been mine.
I grab my phone out of my bag and open my shopping app. The listing pops up instantly. Lightweight, black fabric. Perfect.
My fingers hesitate over ‘buy now’. This is what I need—armor. But what will the others think? Will they laugh at me and dismiss the idea?
My pulse tics in my throat, and I press the orange button before I can overthink it. A strange, breathless laugh escapes me as butterflies fill my stomach, and a small grin forms on my face.
My solution will be at my doorstep tomorrow morning.
“Tether will play two nights a week for the next three months, with the possibility of extension afterwards,” Harper says, reading our contract from her phone.
It’s a Thursday night, which is outside of our usual practice days. She’d called us all earlier today because she wanted to read the email together. Ryland had his first drumming student in months tonight, but cancelled to be here. Luca swapped shifts. We were all taking this incredibly seriously.
“Blah, blah, blah…” Harper continues, her thumb flicking through what I presume is corporate jargon. “The set will last sixty minutes, and Tether will be compensated four… thousand dollars a night?”
There’s a communal exhale as all of our collective mouths form the same silent ‘O’. Looking around the room, we all wear similar expressions of shock. Four thousand dollars. A night. I do the math automatically. Two nights a week. Eight thousand. Three months? Almost a hundred thousand dollars.
“They added a zero by mistake. They must have… right?” I gasp, my brain frantically trying to imagine that amount of money.
Harper shakes her head. Her eyes flick over her phone screen, making sure she read the words correctly. “No, it’s in here a couple of times. It’s four thousand dollars,” she almost whispers, like she’s afraid to say the words too loudly or the number will disappear.
“Well, it’s in the contract now,” Ryland says, leaning back against the couch, shrugging his shoulders like he’s completely unaffected by this. I can see the ideas forming in his head already.
“I’ll finally be able to take Jared on a weekend in LA. He’s always wanted to go,” Luca muses, excitement filling his eyes.
My thoughts drift, allowing myself a brief moment of fantasy.
An apartment that doesn’t smell like damp and mold.
Rooms where paint doesn’t peel. Neighbors who actually mind their own business.
Maybe in an area closer to The Ground, so that I don’t have to wear seven layers to walk to work in the winter.
Or maybe I can finally afford to own a car.
“We should use the money for the band,” Ryland says, already calculating how to spend the money.
Harper and Luca let out frustrated sighs.
“Yeah, but we need to use some ourselves, Ryland,” Harper replies, her phone coming to rest on the wobbly table beside her as she readies herself for a bickering match with Ryland.
My attention narrows to my backpack and the solution resting inside it. I toy with the necklace at my throat, feeling the familiar sense of dread creeping its way up my spine. Before it has time to take hold, I stand up.
“Guys, I have an idea,” I blurt out as the bickering stops and their attention turns to me. I push down the sharp panic clawing its way up my body as they eye me with curiosity.
These are your friends, Kat. Not a pack of hungry wolves. Calm down.
“So, I was thinking,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady despite the tremble I feel coming on. “We need a way for us to stand out, to stick in people’s memories. A way for people to think of us. Branding, if you will.”
I’ve rehearsed this spiel no less than twenty times since the package was delivered earlier this morning.
I tried all the different ways of speaking the words so they didn’t sound like I wrote them down, and repeated them in front of a mirror for an hour.
All the effort falls flat on the floor as the words come out soulless anyway.
My hands shake as I pull the solution out of my bag.
The fabric is softer than I remember from when I first opened the package this morning.
I hesitate for half a second before pulling the black cowl over my head.
The room around me dulls instantly, and sound muffles at the edges.
My peripheral vision narrows just enough, and I feel instant comfort.
My shoulders drop slightly as my posture eases.
“What the fuck is that?” Ryland asks, leaning forward with a puzzled expression. His voice sounds farther away with the dark fabric resting against my skin.
“It’s a cowl,” I say, and for once, my voice doesn’t tremble. “It’s a way to draw the focus away from us so that people focus on our music. Not our faces.”
Not our fear.
I don’t say that part out loud.
“Plus, it adds some mysticism,” I continue. “Gives people something to remember.”
Even though I can feel all their eyes on me, something solid settles in my chest. I don’t want to run. My hands still at my sides, and I tilt my head up, letting them all see me from under the cowl.
“I can’t wear it,” Harper says with a tinge of sadness in her voice, like she really didn’t want to say it and also doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. “It’ll mess with my vocals.”
“I know,” I reply. I ran through this exact scenario in front of the mirror earlier. “I don’t expect you to. Just the three of us,” I add, gesturing to Ryland and Luca.
My eyes travel around the room, and I see confused faces staring back at me. I pull the cowl off my head, noticing the solid feeling in my chest dissolve.
“There are just so many bands like us in Bridgeport. We need to stand out.”
As the words leave my lips, they lose their momentum and crumple at my feet. If I were back in middle school, I’d definitely have ran out of the auditorium and thrown up in the bathroom by now.
Luca rests his bass against his amp and walks up to me, gently taking the cowl from my hands and pulling it over his head. He tugs it slightly, adjusting it around his head.
“People don’t deserve to look at my beauty anyway,” he says with an invisible flip of his hair.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding as laughter fills the room. A familiar hand rests against my forearm and gives a little squeeze.
“We’ll do it, Kat,” Harper says, her eyes filling with an emotion I can’t place.
A surge of gratitude fills me as I look at my band. No matter what happens, my port in the storm is here. For the first time in years, I have a safe harbor.