51
Sasha
Three weeks after I joined Wavelength, we’re backstage at the Pilgrim, where our set is next.
The guy on sound, who looks like he’s only a couple years older than me, sticks his head into the greenroom.
“You guys good to go?”
Lillian tells him to give us a couple minutes.
I’m ready, buzzing, not sure what we’re waiting for.
We set up our gear after the last band finished a great set.
I’m already covered in sweat from dancing.
The Pilgrim’s built in an old movie theater with a concrete floor that slants just enough to be very uncomfortable.
I have firsthand experience from a show we saw here a couple weeks ago.
And we joined the crowd for the first set tonight.
People don’t care how the venue is.
It’s packed and alive out there.
In theory, the first band was too explosive to be a good act to follow.
But I love being after excellence, and that’s not unearned confidence.
I’ve had some great openers.
It’s a young crowd, but we’re still the youngest band here.
I’m used to that too.
I’m wearing tall boots and a short dress and I’m ready to tear this place down.
“Bring it in,”
says Lillian, drawing us into a huddle.
Quinn has to spin his hat around so we can all press our heads close together, arms around each other’s shoulders, strong against the world.
This is being part of something like I’ve never been before.
You can’t be this invincible alone, and with Augustus, I always felt alone.
Lillian’s in leader mode.
I’ve seen this part of her since I joined the band.
Whatever inconsistency and chaos chase her around for much of her life, she sets it aside when she runs Wavelength.
In rehearsals, she doesn’t like to stop until things are perfect, and neither do I.
She doesn’t mind telling me to sing better, to change a part, to make us all quit goofing off because we’ve got a show in three days.
In the crowd during the first band, she pulled me close enough to hear her between songs.
“I changed my mind!”
she yelled as people cheered around us.
“Come in on the first ‘please’ in ‘Elevator.’”
I nodded back. I’ve got it.
Since the night I joined the band, it’s been relentless.
Three weeks where every conversation between Lillian and I has been about music or Wavelength.
Getting me up to speed, working on how I fit in vocally, sorting out parts.
Lillian will send me a song at two in the morning by a band who existed for six months in a city I’ve never heard of.
She’ll have a suggestion.
How on one verse of a song I should try doing the timbre thing that the singer does in the bridge of what she sent me.
I’ve been practicing on my own too, memorizing the set and getting my voice back in shape.
I love it. It was never the music I needed to get away from.
Lillian’s reinvigorated. Or she has something to latch on to. It’s hard to tell the difference. Either way, I’m in.
Personally, I’m throwing myself at this like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Cyprus has kept becoming more invested in Augustus’s trial, and every time she mentions it I have to push down a clenching inside me. She’ll wonder aloud if Admirer’s tour will come back here if Augustus gets cleared. She’s up to date on all the lawyers and every person who testifies and the delays the trial keeps hitting, each one sparking hope in me.
But slowly, inevitably, it progresses. Today Cyprus told us it had resumed again. Lillian grinned at me when I followed her cues and steered us back toward Wavelength like I’ve been doing since I joined the band.
I put up walls of sound against realities I can’t stand.
“Whatever happens,”
Lillian says in the huddle backstage at the Pilgrim, and her eyes are blazing close to mine.
“it’s on me. Especially for you, Sasha. I brought you in on belief and didn’t give you much time. We’ve put this together fast. Don’t worry if it’s a little rough. There are going to be nights when we play better, when we’re tighter. But let’s set a high bar for passion. Let’s set a high bar for sheer fucking noise. We are here and present and powerful in this world.”
Cyprus holds out her phone in the midst of us.
“A hype tradition,”
she says, and starts playing a song I recognize from watching TV on Lillian’s couch.
It’s the raucous, campy nineties pop-punk theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel my energy rising. I want to do this with these people and listen to this theme a hundred more times, until the song brings a rushing sense of belonging and readiness for anything.
The song crashes to an end and we move through the ratty back hallway of the Pilgrim toward the stage. Lillian’s talking right up until we’re there.
“Remember, unless Sasha’s singing lead, you’re following me. If I repeat or skip a section, follow me. I’ll get us to the end or die trying.”
I stop hearing her the moment I see the first sliver of the audience from side stage. It’s new and it’s home and I’m the last to step out, taking the mic stand to the left of Lillian as the lights go down.
Quinn counts us in.
There were shows with Admirer that blurred by, highway driving, reaching the final song and not remembering how I got there.
With Wavelength, I feel awake for every moment.
The lights in my eyes, unfiltered by a visor.
Taking my microphone off the stand.
Never putting it back.
Crouching at the front of the stage.
Reaching out to touch people’s hands.
Laughing with eyes I meet.
Because who am I to reach toward?
The weight of sound around me.
The unfiltered kick drum beating across the stage.
Cyprus.
Quinn.
Lillian.
There’s Cyprus playing a synth part with one hand while panning her phone across the stage, across the crowd. She only appears still because she’s doing too much to bother with extra performance.
Her head’s bobbing slightly as she triggers a sample to start us off, adjusts a dial, her hands adorned with rings big enough to catch the light. Sunglasses inside. Behind them, I know her eyes never stay focused on one thing for long.
There’s a moment when I stumble in my boots. It’s not a very high heel, but it’s more than I’m used to. A panic inside me. What am I doing? To walk out and sing and perform and be seen by all these people when I’m dressed like this? A moment where I feel certain someone watching me right now hates me and the stage is louder than I’m used to and maybe I’ve lost my place and I glance back.
And there’s Quinn. He knows where I need to be, has the whole song held together. Plays a part and gives me the smallest shrug to say what does it matter, you tripped in your boots. He mouths something at me that I can’t understand. Smiles. Whatever it was, I know it means he has my back.
The first song is a little bit sound check part two, with us hammering through it as the guy on sound gets the levels sorted out. That’s what you get for being one of the openers. At a converted movie theater.
With Admirer, they mixed the opener worse than us on purpose until I put a stop to it. I’m not for depriving anyone of beautiful sound.
By the second song, I can really hear my voice blending with Lillian’s. She doubles some choruses, cranks up the intensity, takes it down. We all stay with her. She plays solos, homed in on her strings at times, and likes to be facing Cyprus or Quinn when she starts a song.
She makes a lot of eye contact with me. It reminds my body of a vibration between us, something that’s been set aside for a future record while we work on Wavelength and this show.
But there was a second when we were sitting on her floor with our backs against her bed listening to something for the fourth time, trying to get a sense of it. She was leaning against me, and one of her hands brushed my chest. I willed my body not to respond, not to gasp or curl toward her or pull away with surprise. Her hand stopped, rested there, gripped my shirt, then moved to hit play on the song again.
I remember that all the time.
The show builds toward the first time Lillian and I will sing a big note together live.
We reach the end of our third-last song, and she lets her voice carry before the final chord falls. My voice rings with hers, holding a high note above her until I feel like I’m about to give out. Watching to see when her hands will drop across her strings one more time to bring it to a close.
The crowd hears it. They cheer louder for that song. That note. Augustus and I sang together our whole lives and I never felt the power of our voices merging the way I feel this.
Where the whole world gets suspended.
A song later and we’re about to start the last one of our set. We’re in the mix of applause and talking that seems to happen between every song at a show like this. Grab their attention, lose it again. That won’t do at all, not for this song.
I look over at Lillian and say.
“I’m going to make them quiet to hear you.”