17
Sasha
When we were out last weekend, I locked myself in the small bathroom at Falafel ’Til Dawn and gripped the edge of the sink until I thought my hands or the sink would shatter.
I don’t want to keep the truth from these people, but I can’t let them find out about my connection to Admirer. Fame moves me from potential friend to shiny object, I’m sure of it. Even if they kept it a secret, they’d never look at me the same way again.
Then I steadied and reminded myself that no one here has any reason to suspect I’m Alexander Ash. Even though Cyprus is a fan. There are fans everywhere. She was probably at the show we played here last year. But there was no talk of me having gone missing, just going quiet. That’s good.
I looked up a picture of me in the helmet and held it beside my face while I looked in the mirror. I wore it from thirteen to seventeen. Alexander Ash is an idea, and I’m a person. A mirrored visor and a face. It’s awful, but also a line of defense. People won’t connect the two.
I shouldn’t do anything risky like sneak into more shows. I want to be independent and free, but I can’t afford to get in any sort of trouble. I don’t have a fake ID or a fully formed alias. The name on my ID is Alexander Moore. As long as no one says it around Cyprus or Quinn, I’m alright.
I put on dramatic eyeliner for the first time in public. I’m not as behind on gender-coded skills as I might be. Isabelle taught me a lot about makeup, since I’d just go and put on my helmet anyway. She’d help me practice and give me tips while we hung out backstage at charity events or waited for photo shoots.
At the restaurant, I needed a trick to feel invincible. Some days that’s a baggy denim jacket or a sweater. Or a sleeveless white dress I only wear around my walk-up. Other times, nothing feels right or everything does. I try to notice what’s going on inside me on any given day and follow that.
That night, it was winged eyeliner. It reminded me of Isabelle, of friendship, trust and glamour. Invincibility tricks.
Quinn and I are in chemistry class a few days later when he starts quizzing me about who I’m attracted to, which is tricky to answer.
I shouldn’t say it like that. He isn’t pushy, and I know I can respond in any way and it will be fine. He makes sure to add.
“You don’t have to be attracted to anyone.”
I am, though I haven’t worked out a pattern for it yet. At the Channel, it felt a little secondary, or maybe there was no one around that I was attracted to. Not even Isabelle, one of the sexiest teenagers alive according to several questionable publications that overtly fetishized her. Ignoring that bullshit, she’s beautiful and my dear friend and I’m not into her.
I tell Quinn some of the first things I think of. Confidence, swagger, passion. A fierceness of being yourself.
Then I look around the classroom and say.
“People mostly seem so automatic. Or unconsidered? I guess I’m not attracted to gender at all. That’s how I use the word “pan.”
But with some people, I sometimes feel like there isn’t space for them to be attracted to me. Like anyone who’s into me in a totally straight, cis way is misgendering me, which is very not sexy. I just generally feel more comfortable with queer people.”
I realize I’ve been rambling, journaling out loud, so I tag on.
“If that makes any sense.”
Quinn nods.
“Yep. Very excellent. If it’s strange, that’s where we live. Objectively speaking though, and I’m talking data-driven facts here, you and I are by far the hottest people in this room.”
“Based on pure analytics,” I say.
Quinn starts listing celebrities he’s attracted to. He uses a bunch of gay terminology I know and a couple terms I’ll have to research later, but suffice to say the list features a lot of facial hair. To my mild discomfort, it also includes Alexander Ash because, and I quote.
“There’s something so kinky about never seeing his face. Hot take: Admirer songs have smutty subliminal messages.”
I genuinely laugh. I also almost throw up.
I love chatting with Quinn, but I don’t want that to be where my connection with Quinn, Cyprus and Lillian ends. Now that I’m a bit removed from the high of the night when we ran into each other at the Mercury, I’m worried that getting fully swept along with the group was a one-time phenomenon. They are, without a doubt, my favorite people I’ve met since leaving the coast. Along with Isabelle, my favorites ever.
Yet despite having acquired great ways to contact all of them, have I managed to send anything to any of them or initiate any ongoing anything? No, of course not. I’m terrified of real people who treat me like a real person. I deliberately avoid being on the apps that would let me peripherally stalk them. It feels opposed to my goal of experiencing life outside of fame. And the digital world is also probably bent on finding out where I am and what I’m doing.
Quinn’s the one I’ve gotten closest to texting. What do I say? Am I just like.
“Let’s hang out”? I don’t know how this works. What do normal people do? How do you get closer to people you think are remarkable?
It’s hard to be confident when you desperately don’t want to mess up.
And it’s hard not to mess up when every conversation is full of lies.
Later that day, I’m on my way through school and I see some bastard who typically has something ugly to say to me about who should and shouldn’t wear the clothes I choose. I slip through a side door, going outside to avoid him, and almost trip over Lillian.
She’s sitting on the back steps among the discarded cigarette butts and shattered plastic slushy cups. I immediately recognize her jacket from behind (black denim, a thousand patches for bands and activism, random zippers to nowhere, rips held together with pins, DIY spikes on the shoulders). Tripping over her in that jacket would eviscerate me.
She’s sobbing so silently that I barely notice in time to stop myself saying hello in a horribly friendly, bright manner. She’s curled up tight with her arms around her knees and one hand clutching a green pop bottle so tightly her knuckles are white. There’s an open notebook sitting by her feet with heavy, dark, scrawling writing in it. I guess there aren’t any good bathrooms here to lock yourself in.
I consider slipping back through the door, but the guy inside is really pissing me off and scaring me a little and confronting him is definitely more of an Augustus move than a Sasha one.
And there’s hurt pouring off Lillian.
I think of her pulling me along as we ran out of the concert. Walking away now feels like leaving her behind, even though I barely know her. I go with my instincts. I unzip my backpack, pull out my headphones and cue up Monochrome Stoplight.
Normal ways of getting to know people clearly aren’t meant for me anyway.
“Hey.”
I say it softly.
Lillian still startles, glancing up at me looking ready to rip the head off whoever’s found her like this. Her face and eyes have the fatigue of someone who’s been crying hard for a long time. She’s halfway through telling me to go to hell before she recognizes me.
“Oh, Sasha. Shit. I mean, sorry.”
Her words are shaky, like she’s just managing to stop the crying for this moment, clinging to a place between waves.
“Sorry, I’m okay. It’s —”
I hold out the headphones, and she grabs them like a life preserver.
I sit on the steps a couple feet away from her and wait while she listens to the closing song on the album — six minutes. Her eyes are squeezed shut. It feels private, intimate, like I should look away even though she knows I’m there. Twice, she says, “Louder,”
though I could already hear the volume bleeding through the headphones when she first put them on.
Towards the end, her body stops shaking.
Lillian waits for the final synth notes to finish echoing out and then waits another few seconds before taking the headphones off and handing them back to me.
“I have class,”
she says. Her face looks wrecked, not like someone who’s going to walk back through those doors.
“I don’t. Want to stay here a little longer?”
Anyone who wants their music at that volume could probably use someone who cares to sit with them.
“No, no, I’m alright. I’m sure you’ve got things to do. I should go too.”
She stays sitting, takes a drink from the mostly full green plastic bottle. She offers it to me somewhat apologetically, and when I take a sip, I see why. Warm orange juice and vodka, mixed strong. I wouldn’t have stomached much of this either.
“The day drinking is not a normal thing, let me assure you,”
says Lillian.
“I bought it off Logan. It’s a special circumstances experiment. Didn’t work.”
She laughs in that trembling way of having just survived something.
“I can’t move. I actually can’t move. See?”
She lifts an arm and lets it drop limply. Laughs again, blows her nose.
“What class are you missing?” I ask.
“Language Arts.”
Saturated in disdain.
“Sounds skippable. We can sit out here …”
I gesture to the overcast sky and the filth scattered all aroun.
“… in this beautiful place instead.”
“And we’re doing Pride and Prejudice of all things.”
“I’m a Jane Austen connoisseur myself.”
I’ve learned that sarcasm is something Lillian reads pretty easily from other people. I’m not entirely certain she knows when she’s being sarcastic and when she’s not.
“Who’s Jane Austen? Does she play the boring one or the sexily rude one?”
“She wrote Pride and Prejudice.”
“So she’s dead?”
Lillian takes another drink.
“What’s the actual point? You can forget me as soon as I’m dead. There are people making great art with language right now. Like Monochrome Stoplight, that’s worth studying. Let me write about Liv James’ lyrics all day.”
“You know Monochrome Stoplight?”
This isn’t some band everyone loves. I only heard of them because Isabelle said that an acting coach once used Liv James as an example of how to stand powerfully.
“I chose that randomly. Well, not randomly. I thought you’d like it.”
For a moment, Lillian’s distress seems to dissipate entirely.
“Okay, so first off, I hate that you read me that easily. But also, top tier choice. Liv James is why I started a band.”
Then there’s something that rattles through her body, like she might resume crying. She drinks again.
“Band trouble?”
I have a self-centered moment of sadness at the thought of discovering the people I think are so wonderful are at each other’s throats. You find something good and it implodes.
“What? No.”
She seems surprised. Hopefully that means there’s no mess between her and Cyprus and Quinn.
“I mean, kind of, but no.”
“You don’t have to answer.”
Lillian rolls her eyes.
“If I don’t want to answer, I won’t answer, no worries.”
Even in this moment, slivers of bravado.
“I had a fight with … my ex, I guess. It was very not great.”
“What happened?”
I manage to make it sound empathetic. Which it is, though curiosity is also a significant factor.
“Unreconcilable creative differences.”
It’s a joke that she follows with a sort of sad half smile.
“I just haven’t seen her since we broke up in the summer. I’ve been route planning around the school to avoid her. And today I accidentally got into the elevator with her.”
“You accidentally —”
“The doors were almost shut! I went running yesterday and today my legs object to stairs. I didn’t know she’d be moving a cart of books. She’s one of those helpful, good people.”
I can’t tell if she means that as a compliment or something utterly hateful.
“I tried to say hello and ask how she was doing because I care about her. She didn’t take that well. Now I’m drinking on the back steps and I can’t move. You need your heart to be working to move.”
She picks up her notebook and writes something in it, pressing so hard that the tip of a stubby pencil dents the page. She keeps talking while she writes.
“It does create band problems. Normally, she’s the other singer. We’ve been trying to rework everything.”
Lillian bumps the bottle.
We both watch it wobble and tip and spill and roll down the steps. It leaves a trail of orange liquid on the concrete before landing empty at the bottom.
Lillian closes her eyes tight and swallows. She’s working so hard, almost says something, but I guess she’s out of quips and flippant comments. I consider trying to set her up for another or trying to find a different way of helping her hold herself together.
“You seem like the sort of person who gets punched in the mouth, wipes the blood off and keeps on fighting. You’re not down for the count.”
“That’s very sweet.”
That one only sounds sarcastic. It’s genuine, I think. She’s looking hard at the bottle like she’s focusing on keeping the tears down.
“But today I am. Sorry to disappoint.”
There are times when you’re done with the show. I understand. It takes guts to admit it.
“Do you …”
There are actual metal spikes on the shoulders of her jacket. Everything about her says, touch me and you’ll die.
“Do you want a hug?”
Lillian leans toward me slightly.
At first, holding Lillian is like jumping on top of a grenade and praying it doesn’t explode. I slide across the step and put an arm lightly around her. She grabs the other one, wraps it around her, clings to it. My breathing doesn’t want to stay even once her body’s next to mine. Hers is split into pieces. I try to take slow breaths, counting them in my mind.
“Keep time with me,”
I say quietly.
We each focus on this one thing.
On aligning.
We breathe together until we’re grounded.
Until we’re in four-four time.
Until the world becomes steady.
When the school door slams open behind us, Lillian pushes me away from her like we’ve been caught in a compromising position. Two guys talking loudly barging past too close to us. There’s fratty country music playing thinly from inside one of their backpacks. One of them crushes Lillian’s bottle under his feet so the last of the makeshift screwdriver trickles out of the cracks.
“Turn down the rednecks!”
she yells after them.
I knew she had too much snarl to stay crumpled.
I have a moment where I almost slip up and admit that I’ve met that country singer. I want to tell Lillian about it, because he was the asshole his songs suggest and we could mock him together. I would stay on these back steps and exchange stories if I had any true ones I could tell her. I want to listen to Monochrome Stoplight with her.
Because somehow, despite everything, sitting here with Lillian makes me feel honored. It’s nearly impossible to catch people in moments where they aren’t performing or running at all. They have to trust you. I trust Lillian, and I was being fully myself with her.
Except for the part that’s an international popstar.
Something inside me has stopped running too. For the first time since I texted Isabelle my plan. Or since this spring when I got the call that Augustus had been arrested and I was worried, angry, isolated, under orders to talk to no one. Or since I put on the helmet. Or since I first auditioned. Or since my dad told me and Augustus.
“The whole world’s going to know you’re kings.”
Lillian’s already on her feet, tucking her notebook into her backpack.
“I really shouldn’t skip this entire class. I need a decent grade somewhere. I’ll see you around, Sasha.”
The door swings shut behind her.
I’m not sure what just happened.
Out here, it’s gray. There’s a distant siren and some wind in the leaves of the trees around the school. It might rain. I hope so.
I think I care what happens to Lillian.
That scares me. I want to chase after her and say.
“Wait. I need to know about wanting to be forgotten when you die. I have to learn that. What do you need to do before then? Do you know how to stop running? Me neither.”
I’d say.
“Want to figure it out with me?”
There’s a gust of wind. When I wear types of clothes that are new to me, the air moves differently around my skin.
When I feel new things, the air moves differently around my skin.