82
Lillian
“What happened?”
asks Quinn.
“Why’s Jemma bleeding?”
Cyprus leads us up the stairs and into a bedroom with a huge window overlooking the frozen river. She locks the door behind us.
I stammer something, unable to capture it all or explain why I chose those words to put in the book or why I let it ride around in my bag. Those reworked lyrics from when Emelia and I were together, ones I never sang for her. Call it hope, call it love.
“Sasha’s breaking up with me,” I manage.
They are definitely, definitely breaking up with me. No matter how kind they try to be. It’s what I’d tell them to do. This is how I am. I dig a pit of my own aloneness then throw myself down it. So why suffer through the gestures? It’s enough to know it’s over without the part where they say it to my face.
Cyprus takes a deep breath.
“That’s not Sasha.”
“You don’t know how bad it was,” I say.
“No,”
says Cyprus.
“I mean, that person isn’t Sasha Weaver.”
Quinn’s looking at the window, facing away. There are skaters on the river.
“They’re Alexander Ash. Sasha is Alexander Ash.”
“Don’t deadname …”
I start, and then the syllables he just said land on me. It doesn’t snap into shape, doesn’t fit.
“You’re right, you’re right, sorry,”
says Quinn. He manages to get me to sit down on the bed. He stays close beside me.
“Their name is Sasha and they’re nonbinary and they’re my friend. And they’re also half of Admirer. We figured it out.”
“They don’t look like him. Or like the person from Admirer,”
I say.
“They aren’t the person from Admirer. Augustus is on trial and the other one’s in rehab or whatever. You’ve been talking about it since the summer.”
Cyprus is finding something on her phone.
“The one in the helmet. You’re telling me Sasha doesn’t look like a reflective visor?”
“This is ridiculous! This is Sasha we’re talking about.”
These people don’t lie to me. I trust both of them — from the stage to my secrets. I trust Sasha. It’s all fucking incompatible.
Sasha who just heard what I wrote to Emelia and still wasn’t cruel. Who didn’t seem angry or threatening. Sasha who I wanted to undress with in one of these same upstairs rooms who I wanted to kiss at midnight who makes me drop my guard.
“Lark,”
says Quinn.
“I know about Lark,” I say.
Cyprus sits on the other side of me. They’re both touching me, softly holding me in place. That’s how I know it’s bad, like they’re bracing me for collapse.
“I didn’t,”
says Cyprus.
“I heard them say it tonight and it made me think of this fan theory going around a year and a half ago. When I was obsessed with Admirer.”
“Clearly you still are,”
I say sharply. I try to shrug off her arm, but she keeps holding on to me.
“This sort of thing doesn’t happen.”
“The theory was that Sasha was in love with someone named Lark,”
says Cyprus.
“because they once dedicated their song for Isabelle to Lark. And when they mentioned Lark tonight, I had this absurd idea. What if it’s Sasha? What if this is where they’ve gone? Why not here?”
“It’s literally the worst city and Admirer is famous,”
I say.
“That’s why.”
“Exactly,”
says Quinn.
“This is a place to disappear. It’s nowhere, Lillian. Sasha was at the point where they either had to speak up for or against Augustus.”
“Sasha has an older sister.”
“Ava,”
says Quinn.
“Adaline,”
says Cyprus.
“April,”
says Quinn.
I remember a couple of those. They’re not nicknames. Sasha mixed it up. It’s why I couldn’t remember.
“They lied about other things,”
says Cyprus.
“They don’t live with their family at all. That house, it’s the one where I bought my synth. I just texted the guy I bought it from, who talked to us at Way Alley the other night. Him and his partners rent the suite to Sasha and say Sasha’s a college student. I knew I recognized that house. The Lark thing put it into place. After Sasha mentioned it, I grabbed Quinn.”
“It occurred to me once,”
says Quinn.
“I told Sasha that Alexander Ash’s helmet act was sexy and they laughed in a weird way and I thought, wouldn’t it be the wildest thing if Sasha was from Admirer? Like a silly meeting-a-celebrity fantasy. But since then, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Because of how Sasha sounds.”
“Admirer’s a pop band,”
I say.
“Sasha’s not a pop singer.”
Cyprus is cuing something up on her phone, taking her earbuds out of their case.
“Wavelength sounds so different from Admirer. It hides it. Listen to this.”
She slips the earbuds in for me. I try to watch the video, but she tells me to just listen.
I hear the audio from the night we were at the pool. There’s music playing, an inescapable Admirer hit I remember from a couple years ago. We’re all singing along, but I’m only focusing on one voice. Sasha, closest to Cyprus’s camera. They’re nailing the parts like I’d expect them to do. Flawlessly, but Sasha is a good singer. A great singer. The best singer our age I’ve ever met.
Then Cyprus plays the original recording. The voice younger, but there’s some innate resonance between them, one that meshes perfectly when Cyprus plays the two recordings stacked one on top of the other.
I think of the command they had over the Pilgrim.
How they got everyone to be quiet.
I think of how easily they recorded their vocals.
Of how I’ve never met their family.
I’ve never seen a picture of one of their friends.
And they keep us away from that house.
I’ve never seen any of it besides their bedroom on video.
Never from a different angle even.
Their own entrance.
Their stories from the west coast.
How they spoke about Augustus’s trial.
Their older sister, always in trouble.
They didn’t want money from the gigs.
And they were nervous to have pictures taken of them.
Their hesitancy to join the band.
When they disappeared after getting close.
What it took for them to walk into school.
“Now watch,”
says Cyprus.
“The All My Love tour. Remember Sasha saying they once fell into the drum kit in a show?”
In the video, there’s music building, a huge crescendo, lights sweeping and flashing all around. Both Augustus and Alexander, or Sasha maybe, are running. They’re going from the heart-shaped B-stage out in the crowd back to the mainstage. Augustus at the very edge, hands reaching up toward him. Making it back for the big start of the song.
The one in the helmet overshoots when they try to jump onto the huge monitors in front of the drum kit. It sounds like a cartoon when they hit it. The voice laughs and says, “Ta-da!”
I can picture Sasha smiling as they untangle themselves.
I close my eyes, try to take even breaths. Quinn’s holding my hand in both of his. Usually, an obvious solution is true, a plausible explanation. Sasha must have some other reason for lying about so many things.
The next thing has played automatically. It’s Sasha introducing a song. I hear it and that’s immediately what I think. I don’t think it’s Admirer. It’s Sasha with a sea of voices interacting and responding.
“I admire every one of you,”
they’re saying. Huge applause.
“I love you, each of you. No matter what anyone else says, you’re my brave souls. Whoever you are. Here, here, can I borrow that for a minute? Thank you.”
I open my eyes, and on Cyprus’s screen, I see someone in a helmet reach into the crowd and emerge with a pride flag. They drape it around their shoulders. Then they put one finger to their visor and hold their other palm down and gradually, gradually, they make the entire stadium silent.
“Anyone who tells you there isn’t enough love to go around is lying. This is for all of you, and this is for Lark.”
Sasha starts into a simple love song and everything in me wells up toward crying. I love them. Then and now. I’ve got to sob about it.
My body won’t let me.
It goes totally flat, and it’s so much worse. I’m watching this happen in third person, like I’m a security camera in the corner of the room. Pixelated, choppy.
I see Quinn comparing pre-helmet headshots of Alexander Ash to current pictures of Sasha, and I know that face. Even young, it’s the same. I’ve held it in my hands. I see Cyprus explain the timeline of Sasha’s appearance alongside Alexander Ash’s accounts going quiet.
I see myself knowing it’s true, but I don’t feel it.
I need something.
Noise.
Comfort.
Chaos.
Pleasure.
Anything to detach further or have a feeling — because I just watched Sasha come through the bedroom door and Cyprus say we figured it out.
From far off, I hear Sasha talking.
They’re saying it’s true it’s true it’s all true.
Apologizing.
Everyone’s confused and doesn’t know how to interact anymore.
Cyprus angry, saying how could Sasha get into a relationship with me while keeping that secret.
Quinn unable to make light of it.
Sasha’s said sorry a million times now.
They’re saying we have to be careful.
They say they can’t let the media do to us what it did to Jasmine, which just makes Cyprus more furious at the risk they’ve taken.
Death will be this distance compounded.
That fear, these far-off voices and this room, it’s all claustrophobia pressing down on me.
Kick-start or drown it out.
I stand up. I look Sasha in the eyes, but I see it from the wrong angle. So I miss what might be my last chance to get a good look at that beautiful face. I’m holding out my hand, the one with the heart on the palm.
“What’s this doing here? Whose heart is this?”
“It’s mine,”
says Sasha.
“It’s there because that’s the first place it’s belonged.”
“Not anymore,” I say.
I follow myself through the door, down the stairs. Getting farther into the house, more lost, telling Quinn not to follow me. I grab a bottle from someone, glare off their objections. Lock myself in the basement bathroom. Finish the bottle. All in my body. Scrub at the palm of my hand. The heart outline is imprinted. Stained.
Back porch, the wind not enough.
There’s a bicycle. Maybe if I move fast enough. Maybe if I get cold enough.
Wake up. Numb it out. I’ll take either.