Chapter 1
Now
Funny enough, the lyric I hope you herniate a disc shaving your ass hair and stumble into traffic, Connor McCabe doesn’t lend itself to a decent melody. This fact hasn’t stopped me from dedicating the past four grueling hours of band practice to making it even vaguely musical.
“Cubby, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but screaming directly into the mic doesn’t create a very good sound,” Harry says, pulling off his headphones and stepping away from his keyboard. “So if we could move on…”
“Never took you for a traitor, Harry,” Darcy says, eyeing him closely as she wraps a protective arm around my shoulders. “Do we need to add your name to the lyrics too?”
He throws his hands up in surrender. “I’m here, aren’t I? If I were a real traitor, I’d be pissing around America on tour with Connor, selling out venues and making snow angels in all that studio money.”
Darcy hisses, and I roll my eyes, pretending the truth of it doesn’t slice me in half.
“Jesus Christ,” Kale, one of our newest members, grumbles.
“This is so boring.” He slopes off to the corner, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor while he scrolls through his phone.
His name is actually Harry Kale, but that is absurd, and we couldn’t possibly keep track of two Harrys, so bitter vegetable it is.
I frown in his general direction, and he ignores me per our usual routine. So cute! So fun!
I sigh, rubbing my knuckles against my eyes as a headache looms. It’s moments like this that hurt the most—looking around and seeing this mess we’re trying to call a band when, a year ago, Connor, Harry, Darcy, and I were a cohesive unit.
While becoming successful musicians is the delusional pipe dream of countless people, we actually made it happen.
… Sort of. We were close, at least. We were called …
well, we’ve cycled through quite a few names over the years.
Rabbit Hole, Tongue-Tied, Ivan on My Mind—our inability to land on one doesn’t matter.
What matters is we were on the brink of really making something of ourselves after years agonizing over every note, practicing till our fingers bled, playing at any crap-hole pub that would let us through the door.
We even finagled shoestring-budget tours, playing dive bars around Europe and gaining some recognition on social media.
Well, Connor gained recognition on social media.
Pretty privilege is a very real thing, and he had no problem taking advantage of that.
For the good of the band, he’d say. Now, his chronic flirting with girls in DMs seems less a selfless act to build a fanbase and more another brilliant red flag I ignored. Hindsight blah blah blah.
Regardless, we were honing in on the dream—bigger gigs, opening for bands we love, generating enough buzz and attention to sign with a label.
Granted, that label is based in Iceland and only has a handful of other bands on their roster and we had to relocate to a new country to record, but we had stars in our eyes at the promise of a professionally produced album with real backing, nonetheless.
And then Connor, human wet wipe that he is, mucked it all up, cutting the rope as he reached the peak of the ladder, our deadweight plummeting back into a pit of insignificance.
Now we’re once again nameless, with two new random bandmates our furious producer threw in to replace Connor as we watch his solo star rise.
“Okay, we need a reset,” Darcy says, setting down her bass and rolling out her neck. “Let’s talk it out. Jokull, would you like to start? Any input you want to give the group?”
Jokull, our new drummer, stares from behind his kit, slowly blinking his heavily lined eyes. “No.”
He is the embodiment of the most stereotypical goth person I could ever conjure, and I catch myself frequently wondering if he’s for real or just exceptionally committed to some sort of bit.
He’s the cousin of the owner of our label, Ring Road Records, a tiny “boutique”-style studio in what many call the music capital of the world: Reykjavík.
(No one calls it that.) (Even my record deal is sad.)
Jokull never offers much in the way of input, ideas, or general conversation, but he is an excellent drummer, I’ll give him that.
“Okay,” Darcy says, smile never wavering. “Kale? Do you—”
“Actually,” Jokull interrupts, voice deep and Icelandic accent strong, “I do have something to say.” He unfolds his lanky limbs from his stool, rail-thin frame reaching an outrageous six foot six.
He drags chipped black fingernails through similarly black bangs, shoulders hunched.
“I’ve thought about this for a while now,” he says, eyes fixed on the ground, voice a rumbly whisper.
“And I’d like you all to call me Skull.”
He’s definitely committing to a bit.
“Skull?” Harry echoes. “As in—” He points to his head, and Jokull—sorry, Skull—nods.
After an extended moment of silence, he sits back on his stool.
“Right,” Darcy says, drawing out the word. “Wonderful. Welcome … Skull! Thank you for sharing that with us. Does, er, anyone else have anything they’d like to add?”
“Yeah, I do,” Kale says from the corner.
“Shocker,” I mumble.
He shoots daggers at me, then stands, arms crossed and mouth twisted in a sour frown as he looks at the room at large. “Cubby is one more meltdown away from me walking. I’m an artist. My job is to make art. I can’t work in an environment with more melodrama than a twelve-year-old’s diary.”
My anger spikes, and I step toward Kale. “First of all, there is nothing more melodramatic than saying your job is to make art, you pretentious roughage. Secondly, I’m not melting down. I’m—”
“I agreed to join this band because you had a unique sound. A clear vision of what you were trying to create. Not this disjointed bullshit,” Kale spits back.
“You joined because you had a few viral videos playing violin and jumped at the first offer someone sent your way to join a band to get over your ex-boyfriend dumping you,” I snap. “You’d still be in a basement in Ohio if it weren’t for us.”
Kale scoffs. “You really need to reevaluate who needs who in this situation. I’ve gained us more social media hits in a month than you’ve had in the three years since you released a single on Spotify.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Darcy says, her own temper flaring. “Connor screwing us over accomplished that. It’s only from morbid fascination that anyone gives us a listen now.”
The room goes silent as a crypt, the truth of Darcy’s statement oozing through the cracks in the cinder block walls. Connor went behind our backs, pursuing an invite from a stateside producer to record an EP about our messy relationship while he was still the lead of our band.
We ended our relationship eight months ago after being on-again, off-again for four and a half years.
And it was amicable. Totally fine. Took him all of two weeks to start bringing random girls around, but I played the cool-girl role to a T.
I’d spent the years we were together learning over and over again that showing any strong feelings was a surefire way to look pathetic and foolish so that by the time we were officially done, I didn’t feel much at all.
And while I’d come to terms with the fact that I was too difficult to put up with in a relationship, too needy to love, I never for a second doubted that Connor would be faithful to the band in a way he could never be faithful to me.
This band has been our everything for so long, the idea of abandoning it is gross and sacrilegious.
But apparently that was one more thing I subscribed uneven feelings toward.
Now he’s using the brutal tumult of our time together to fuck with the band I’ve put so much of myself into creating, and it makes me want to burn cities to the ground.
But I can’t. I have to still be the cool girl because any huge display of emotions will only magnify the microscope Connor’s stunt has put me under.
You wouldn’t think the lyrics “You roared like a bear, caught my attention / Was that just reality suspension? / Cuz now you’re meek as a mouse in our bed / Touching you fills me with dread” would land with anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but the label execs liked the song so much, they offered him a fat deal, which he jumped at immediately.
The single hit number five in its first week.
I’m teetering between lashing out further at Kale or collapsing into my black hole of self-pity when Sigrún, the owner and CEO of Ring Road Records, walks in. She’s also our producer. And publicist. And artist relations manager.
When we were first courted by Sigrún to sign with Ring Road, it was continually mentioned how the label has an intimate approach to creating an album … A more accurate term would be one-woman-operation.
“You need a name,” she says without ceremony, pushing aside our long-forgotten tea to plop her large binder and computer on the shabby table near the door. “A band is nothing without a name. You are a gaggle of starry-eyed nobodies playing pretend at being rock stars without one.”
“Good to see you too, Sigrún,” I mumble.
I like Sigrún, I really do. She’s young and sharp and has built a label that—while not huge—is genuinely creating cutting-edge music and slowly attracting more attention.
She doesn’t take any bullshit, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to work with her.
But she’s also the most painfully honest person I’ve ever met—giving my autistic twin a run for his money—and sometimes I want to beg her on hands and knees to stop challenging the strength of my stiff upper lip.
“How about the Moody Loser’s Club?” Harry chimes in, fingers tapping a lazy melody on his keyboard.
“How very helpful,” Darcy says, lips pursed.
“Tell me it isn’t accurate.” He gestures at our defeated faces, then strikes a minor key.