42-Kit
The more I try to write, the louder everything gets.
Constant buzz or vibration usually settles my head enough to get something on page, but tonight it only shakes my handwriting.
The notebook’s a shambles of crossed-out lines, metaphors that don’t land, and a melody that slips through my fingers the second I try to catch it.
What started as journaling to get the noise out turned itself into a poem before morphing into a song.
Silver’s in the bunk above, headphones in, listening to an audiobook.
They took the very stern “fuck off” I gave them an hour ago and, bless them, actually listened.
I love their instinct to hover, but I can’t handle it tonight.
Not when my thoughts claw at the inside of my skull in an attempt to free themselves.
My nerves are stretched thin enough to snap.
The bus is a crowd of bodies, bags, and gear shoved into every crevice, but it’s more sensible than flying. We’re not private jet big. We still live on wheels and petrol fumes, sleeping in bunks that stink with the sweat of ghosts from past tours.
A knock vibrates beside my bunk as Seth asks, “You done sulkin’?”
I scratch out a line about Zach’s hands—how her gnawed nails and cracking knuckles truly show the storms she’s weathered. “I’m not sulking.”
“It’s been a week, mate,” he says, like I haven’t been counting every bloody second.
I’ve replayed that night over and over; Zach waking up terrified in the wrong room, shaking so hard I thought she’d break apart in my arms. As if I haven’t replayed the fear in her gaze every time I close mine, guilt feasting on my insides like a parasite.
Security’s been a nightmare since. Protocols were doubled and schedules shifted now that everyone’s on edge.
Pamrata couldn’t even go out to celebrate her bloody fucking birthday on the third of October.
The girls more than made up for it at the hotel, but still—I keep telling them, pleading with them, that if anyone needs to get hurt, it should be me.
“It innit yer fault.” Seth sits at my feet, his stocky frame crouching awkwardly into the narrow-height space. “’Twas a misunderstandin’. She’s okay.”
“Is she?” I finally meet his kind eyes, so dark that my gaunt-self sneers from their reflection. “Would you be fine waking up like that? Would you just shake it off?”
Seth’s face falls, and it’s like any light in him went with it. I shut the notebook and toss it aside, dragging both hands through my hair. I can’t sleep; Endymion haunts every dream, whispering truths I don’t want to hear. The noise in my head needs numbing.
Pills. A drink. Something stronger than grass.
I’m like a ghost haunting my own life. Performing, but not living. The bus slows, then stops, brakes squeaking from the rainstorm we drove through an hour back.
“We got a leak in one of the tires, so we’re stoppin’ for a fill and a stretch while they change it. C’mon, mate.” Seth says, patting my leg as he stands. “You could use the sunshine, ya miserable bastard.”
I open the shade to endless, flat, golden cornfields somewhere in the Midwest.
“Fine,” I mutter, grabbing my bomber off the hook as I scramble out of my bunk.
Seth taps the raised wooden frame above. “Ya comin’?”
Silver yanks out one earbud, wrinkling their dainty nose as they sneer at me. “You deal with the wanker.”
I flick them off, and they return the gesture with a cheerful, “Up yours, arsehole.”
We step off the bus and Seth lights a couple of cigarettes, handing one to me.
Yensil comes out of the tiny shack of a store with a bottle of candy-blue liquid that’s bigger than his jacked forearm.
Fishing his spinner from his jacket with his other hand, he comes up to us, the light shifting from red to green to indigo as he twirls it.
Taking another drag, I turn from the two-pump station and walk along the single-lane road. Petrol mixes with cow dung, even though there are none in bloody sight. Sunny sky stretches wide, streaked with thin remnants of rainclouds.
“Where’s everyone?” I ask, noticing ours is the only bus.
“Equipment’s too heavy for these bridges,” Yensil explains, his stare focused on something in the distance. “They stuck to the interstate to get a headstart on setup for tonight’s show while we get this tire fixed. Girls and the rest of the crew are about fifteen miles back.”
Zach.
Ever since that night, I’ve been irrationally concerned about her.
It started with a simple worry of her recklessly going into crowds, but now I think about everything.
The rickety van that she insists on her and Cooper driving through long stretches of road at night, a mishap with the catwalks, her nightmare of an ex, and about a million other moments that can go wrong.
She brushes things off as though she’s invincible, but a single second can—
I shake the thought away and stare out at the farmland.
“Where’s your head at?” Concern’s etched deep into Yensil’s features. “You look like hell.”
Seth stops in front of me, forcing me to a halt. “If this is too much; the tour, the pressure, aw’ that, we can talk to Greg. We can sort somethin’—”
“No,” I say briskly, “No, come on. We deserve this. We’re almost halfway through the tour. If we stop now, it’ll all be for nothing. We’d owe everything to these shonky, pompous suits.”
“But—”
I raise a hand. “I’m fine.”
The words taste like ash.
“You sure?” Yensil twirls the fidget spinner as I suck down more smoke.
I envy his resolve; the ability to decide something and stick to it because it’s the right thing. He quit smoking two weeks before his daughter was born. Four months later, he still hasn’t touched a cigarette.
“Is it Melody?” Seth asks, and I go rigid. Her name slices through me like it always does. “Her birthday’s comin’ up, an’ I don’t—”
“Oi,” I snap, cutting him off as I turn on my heel. “I just haven’t been sleeping well. And since Greg refuses to let me have any medication, I suppose I’ll have to deal with it.”
Gravel crunches beneath our trainers as the wind rustles through the cornfields. The sun is warm on my face, but it doesn’t reach the knot freezing my core.
“You know,” Seth says as I flick my finished cigarette aside, “ya don’t have tae carry everythin’ yerself.”
“We’re here,” Yensil adds from behind me. “All of us. Even when you’re being a stubborn little shit.”
“Jus’ don’t shut us out, ya?” Seth nudges my shoulder as I slow my pace. “We’ve seen you at your worst, and we’re still here.”
I don’t know how to fully let them in without breaking what I can’t put back together.
“Yeah.” I nod anyway. “All right.”
It’s the closest I can get.