Chapter Twenty-Seven
Zoe
Teague tells me to wear shoes I don't care about.
She won't tell me where we're going. She told me Saturday, eight o'clock, dress for standing, and when I asked for details she said "trust me" and that was it.
Teague doesn't do surprises as a rule because surprises require planning ahead for someone else's happiness, which requires admitting that someone else's happiness matters to you, which Teague would have denied before meeting me and now just does without commentary.
I wear my second-best sneakers, white with a gray stripe, the ones I don't mind losing. I put on jeans and a black t-shirt because Teague said dark colors and I trust the instruction even if I don't understand it yet.
She picks me up at my parents' house. She texts from the sidewalk because she hasn't come inside yet. She's not ready yet. But I know she'll get there.
I come outside. She's standing on the sidewalk in her jacket with the patches, black jeans, boots, hair freshly shaped.
The mohawk is sharp tonight, taller than usual, and she's got eyeliner on, which she almost never wears, and the effect is: Teague Moran is dressed for her world and she's taking me into it.
"You look good," I say.
"You look clean."
"Is that a problem?"
"It won't be by the end of the night."
We walk. She leads me south past Anthem, past the hardware store, past the bakery, into a part of the neighborhood I don't walk at night because it's mostly warehouses and loading docks and empty lots that Dad would call "underlit." But tonight one of the lots isn't empty.
I hear it before I see it. Bass. A low, heavy pulse coming from somewhere ahead, a sound you feel in your teeth before your ears process it.
Then a snare, sharp and fast, cutting through the bass like a knife through fabric.
Then a guitar, distorted and bright and angry in a way that makes my whole body lean forward.
We turn the corner and there it is.
An empty lot between two warehouses, maybe half a city block, fenced on three sides with chain link.
Someone has built a stage out of wooden pallets and plywood at the far end, waist-high, lit by work lights clamped to the fence posts.
There's a PA system held together with gaffer tape and determination.
A banner strung across the back of the stage reads SCORCHED ORDINANCE in spray-painted letters, red on black.
There are maybe two hundred people in the lot.
Standing, moving, pressed toward the stage.
The crowd is mixed in every direction: ages, races, hair colors, piercings, leather, denim, flannel, one woman in a sundress and combat boots.
The air smells like charcoal and beer and sweat and something sweet, maybe kettle corn, from a cart near the entrance.
"Scorched Ordinance," Teague says. "Best punk band in the city. Possibly the best punk band I've ever seen live, and I've seen a lot of punk bands live."
"You know them?"
"I know Britt. Drums. She comes into Anthem on Tuesdays.
She and the guitarist started the band in Britt's mom's garage when they were seventeen.
" She scans the crowd, locating people, reading the room the way she reads everything.
"The singer is Cal. He's got a voice like a building falling down. In a good way."
"How does a building fall down in a good way?"
"You'll see."
We push into the crowd. Teague moves through bodies with the ease of someone who's done this a hundred times, one hand in her jacket pocket, the other finding my wrist and keeping me close without pulling me.
She navigates us to a spot fifteen feet from the stage, stage left, where the sound is balanced and the sightlines are clear.
She's placed us here on purpose. Everything Teague does at a show is on purpose.
The band is setting up. Three people on stage.
The drummer, Britt, is behind a kit that looks like it's survived multiple wars and is ready for another one.
She's tall, Black, shaved head, tank top showing arms that could give Torres competition.
She's adjusting her snare with the focused patience of someone who knows exactly what she needs and won't start until she has it.
The guitarist is on the left side of the stage, tuning. Short, white, blue hair buzzed close on the sides, a bass guitar slung low across their hips. They're not talking to anyone. They're in the instrument, hands moving on the frets, finding the pitch they want.
The singer is center stage. Cal. He's tall, Black, maybe mid-twenties, in a white t-shirt and black jeans and nothing else, no jacket, no jewelry, no performance.
He's standing at the mic with his eyes closed and his hands at his sides and he looks like someone about to jump off a cliff and he knows exactly how deep the water is.
"When does it start?" I ask.
Teague checks her phone and pulls me closer. "Now."
Britt counts in. Four clicks of the sticks, sharp and precise, and then the bass drops and the guitar rips open and Cal opens his mouth and I understand immediately what Teague meant about a building falling down in a good way.
His voice is enormous. Not loud. Enormous.
It fills the lot and bounces off the warehouse walls and hits me in the chest and I feel it in my lungs, in my ribs, in the soles of my feet through the concrete.
He's screaming but he's screaming words, and the words are about the neighborhood and the rent and the fences going up and the people being pushed out, and the guitar underneath is a saw blade and the drums are a heartbeat and I have never heard anything like this in my life.
The crowd moves. There's a pattern to it, a surge toward the stage and a pull back, and bodies are pressing into bodies and people are jumping and the air gets hot and thick and I'm in the middle of it and I don't know the rules.
Teague's hand finds my waist. Steadying me, keeping me upright in the surge. She leans close to my ear.
"Move with it. Don't fight the crowd. If you go down, I'll get you up."
I move with it. The crowd surges and I surge with it and Teague is beside me, solid, her boots planted, and she's moving too, her body doing the thing it does when music takes over, which I've seen in her apartment when she plays records but never like this, never full-body, never with two hundred people and a PA system and a singer whose voice sounds like concrete cracking.
The first song ends. The crowd screams. Cal wipes his face with his shirt and says "We're Scorched Ordinance and we're from right here" and points at the ground and the crowd screams louder and Britt counts in and the second song starts and it's faster than the first.
I'm sweating. My sneakers are getting stepped on.
Someone's elbow hits my shoulder and I don't care.
The music is so loud and so physical that my body has stopped processing it as sound and started processing it as weather, as an environment I'm inside of, and the environment is alive and angry and joyful in a way that I didn't know anger and joy could share a frequency.
Teague is smiling. Not the almost-smile, not the controlled version she offers when she's amused and doesn't want to show it.
A real, open, full smile with teeth and the pink of her gums showing, and she's watching the stage with the face of a person in a church she built herself, and I understand now why she loves this music.
It's not about the volume or the aggression or the leather and patches.
It's about the freedom of standing in a crowd and feeling something at full force without apology.
It's the opposite of editing. It's broadcast.
It's how I feel all the time.
I grab her jacket. Pull her toward me. Kiss her, hard, with the bass shaking the concrete under our feet and Cal's voice tearing through the air above us and two hundred people around us who don't care, who are in their own moment, who are too busy being alive to notice two women kissing in the middle of their church.
Teague kisses me back. Her hands on my face, rings cold against my jaw, and she tastes like beer and chapstick and she's warm from the crowd and the music and her mouth is the best thing in this lot, better than the PA system, better than Cal's voice, better than the surge.
We break apart. She's grinning. I'm grinning. The third song starts and we stop kissing and start moving because the music demands it and we give it what it demands.
Four songs. Five. Six. The set is relentless and perfect and each song hits harder than the last. Britt is a machine behind the drums, every hit precise, sweat flying from her arms. The guitarist plays like they're arguing with the instrument and winning.
Cal screams and sings and talks between songs about mutual aid and tenant rights and a community garden that got bulldozed last spring, and the crowd screams back because this is a conversation, not a performance, and everyone in this lot is part of it.
After six songs, they take a break. Cal says "we'll be back in fifteen, get some food, the nachos are mandatory" and Britt stands up from behind the kit and stretches and the guitarist sets their bass on the stand and hops off the stage.
"Nachos," Teague says. "Follow me."
We push through the crowd toward the back of the lot, where a folding table has been set up next to a charcoal grill that's sending smoke and smell into the night air.
Behind the table is a woman in a Scorched Ordinance shirt serving what can only be described as nachos on a baking sheet.
A full sheet pan of chips, pulled pork, cheese, jalapenos, black beans, sour cream, lime.
Actual food. Served on industrial bakeware.
"Two," Teague says.
"Teague!" The woman leans across the table. "Britt said you'd come."
"I told her I would."
"Who's this?"
"Zoe. My girlfriend."