24. Zak
On Link’s birthday, Zak had a strong intuition that everything would fall apart.
She didn’t believe in any sort of sixth sense, but she did have the utmost confidence in how well she knew her friends. Which was why, as soon as she woke up, she informed Chase of her plan to ambush Dallas and Alex.
“Is there any way I can help?” He sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
She looked up in thought as she brushed her hair into a sloppy ponytail. “Alex is a stress eater. Dallas is a stress user, obviously, so we probably don’t want to encourage that one. Not that overeating is wonderful either, but at least it won’t land him in jail.”
Her street clothes were lumped in a pile on the ground, and she rifled through them to find a pair of sweats that smelled clean. Tomorrow morning before they left Pittsburgh, she would shove them all back into the suitcase again as the process repeated.
In true puppy fashion, Snickerdoodle hopped off the bed, betraying cuddles from her favorite person for the promise of going on a walk anywhere and doing anything. After first slobbering all over Zak’s sock.
Zak snatched it out of the dog’s mouth and rolled it on.She didn’t realize that Chase had been paying attention to her the entire time until she finished getting dressed and caught the way his expression softened as she met his eyes.
“And is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.
Zak had imagined today would be the day she thought of Link most of all. His birthday celebrations had always been elaborate and wild because it was the one day of the year his well-off parents handed him a lump sum of cash as a gift—and every cent had gone toward parties with his friends.
But their career milestones had been bigger blows to her. From playing live on Amped for the first time to hearing Chase sing in the recording studio, to seeing his Link’s name in the writer’s credits of their album booklet and the logo he’d designed on their billboard. Link’s legacy reminded her of him more than any number on a calendar.
“I’m doing alright,” she told him. “See you later.”
Dallas didn’t answer when she knocked on the door to his room, but that was unsurprising. It was offensively early in the morning, and he was a notoriously hard sleeper. She resolved to head to Alex’s first and try again later, but right as she raised her knuckles, she heard voices on the other side.
Eavesdropping was an invasion of privacy, but Alex would be a bold-faced liar if he ever told anyone he hadn’t done it to her ten times over.
She pressed her ear to the door.
“Since when do you wake up this early?” Alex’s voice came first.
Then Dallas’s. “Since I couldn’t sleep in the fuckin’ first place.”
“Well. Yeah. I get that.”
“Yeah. I know you get that.”
“So what are we doing here? Playing patty-cake? Pretending we both aren’t thinking about what today is? I thought we didn’t talk about Link. Thought that was too gay for you now.”
“That has nothing to do with it. I know I could’ve been better in the beginning. I had a lot of personal shit to sort through after growing up the way I did. And I know you and I don’t talk about you and him. But…” Dallas’s voice dropped in volume. If Zak wiggled any closer to the door, she would fall through it. “I thought talking to someone who knew him like I did would help. Someone who knew him better than I did, I guess.”
“Of course you knew him, Dallas. I understand it’s a bad day and everything for you, but you’ve never wanted to talk about this shit with me before. You went from being freaked out about who I have sex with, to ignoring that part of who I am, to kind of accepting it. Didn’t matter what I did in my spare time as long as it had nothing to do with your real friend, right?”
“It wasn’t about you, it’s just—he really was my best friend.” Dallas’s voice cracked apart and Zak realized he was crying. Not the kind of tears he hid during other stages of his grief, but raw, ugly, unconcealable ones. “Was I… his? Did he ever say anything about me?”
“You were a part of his life for longer than me, Dallas. And a bigger part than I ever was. It would have taken an even better pretender than Link to fake that sort of friendship. You were a brother to him.”
Zak crawled on the musty hallway floor to peek beneath the door, and—
Barking. Her stupid, indiscreet dog started barking at the ice machine two doors down.
“Shh!” She sat up and snapped her fingers. As if Snickerdoodle knew what “shh” meant when there were too many other, better words to store between those fluffy ears. Like “treat,” “walk,” and “Chase.”
There had to be other dogs here, right? Maybe she could salvage her secrecy.
But those thoughts, and all the other ones, rattled out of her head as soon as Alex opened the door and it hit her in the head.
“Fuck!”
Alex stared in disbelief as she scrambled to her feet. His face was red, his cheeks streaked with tears. “Well, I didn’t ask you to spy on me.”
“And I didn’t ask Dallas to go on a big, long soliloquy in there.” She rubbed her head. “I came to check on you guys, but then I didn’t want to ruin the moment…”
In fact, she should’ve walked the other way and let them have at it. That conversation was long overdue.
“I wasn’t going on a sol-soli-lo—kee? Whatever the fuck you just said. See? I can’t go on one, ‘cause I don’t even know what that shit is.” Dallas stuffed his hands in his pockets. As though he couldn’t figure out what to do with himself now that there was evidence of the actual, vulnerable, human emotions camping out behind all the drinking, joking, and outbursts.
“Well, are you happy now?” Alex asked. “Can you cool it with the reconnaissance shit? I’m perfectly fine. In fact, you can leave, too”—he gestured to Dallas—“I just want to sit alone in my room and sob into the box of chocolate cupcakes that I’m going to eat for breakfast.”
She could read between the lines. Alex had been forced to handle most of the difficult times in his life alone. Today was not going to be one of them.
She barged through the door and plopped cross-legged onto the floor, dragging Dallas down with her. The box of desserts in question sat in front of the dresser, next to Alex’s game console and a few empty beer bottles.
“I like chocolate cupcakes.”
“Then you should’ve bought your own.” He closed the door and sat next to her. Then, handed her and Dallas each a cupcake anyway.
Snickerdoodle crawled onto Dallas’s lap and dozed off again as he scratched between her ears. Bitching about getting hair all over his black jeans as he made room for the dog to snuggle closer.
Zak peeled back the cupcake wrapper, licking away the frosting from one side. “Are we going to keep talking? Or am I going to let you boys crush me at”—she glanced at the cartridge—“Diddy Kong? What kind of name is that?”
Alex took the out she had casually offered up. He raised a brow. “Let me? Have you ever even played a video game?”
“How hard can it be?” She picked up the controller with her free hand and messed around with the buttons. “I have the finger dexterity of a god.”
“And the ego of one, too, apparently. I knew the fame would go to your head. Typical guitarist.”
“Jealous of how much cooler guitar players are.” Dallas cleared the cupcake crumbs from the corner of his mouth with his tongue. “Typical drummer.”
They exchanged semi-smiles. Eating cupcakes turned into an excuse to sit together silently. Which turned into Zak making good on her suggestion and losing several rounds of that ridiculous game. By a wide margin. Not because she let them win, but if it came up later when everyone was in better spirits, she would insist that she did.
Alex polished off his second cupcake and washed it down with his third IPA. “You didn’t have to check on me. It’s not my first rodeo with this whole grief thing. I’m a seasoned veteran at this point.”
Zak opened her mouth to tell him that was exactly why she decided to check on him, but another knock sounded at the door.
Alex got up to check the peephole. “What’s this, Z? Did you phone a therapist? Hire a barbershop quartet?”
“Order room service, hopefully?” Dallas tossed out.
“I brought beer.” Edge came through the door first, holding up a six-pack in each hand.
Chase followed behind him. “I brought breakfast. Which now seems like the wrong choice, compared to beer.”
“Not at all, Krispy,” said Dallas. “Not at all.”
“Dear god.” Chase’s nose wrinkled. “How is it even worsewhen you abbreviate it?”
Alex made room for the rest of their band amid the aftermath of the beer and “breakfast” that had already taken place. He gave Zak a pointed stare as Chase sat to her right, and Edge next to him. “I think I’m starting to like your boyfriend better than you. You showed up here and ate my food. He showed up here and brought me food. And you.”
Alex was talking to Edge, but looking at the six-pack as he did so. He checked the temperature of one of the bottles by placing his fingertips on the glass neck. Pleased with whatever he felt, he grabbed it and popped the cap off on the side of one of the dresser drawers. “You of all people didn’t have to come. I know you and Link weren’t always on the best of terms. Rightfully so. He could be a real douchebag.”
“I still considered him one of my closest friends.” Edge pushed the whole package of beer toward Alex. “He was family. Whether he felt the same or not.”
“He did.”
Edge nodded.
There weren’t two people in the world more different than Edge and Link, and in spite of that, Zak loved them both. Edge with his big brain and even bigger heart. His quiet demeanor, his one-step-ahead approach to life. Link had always dreamed of twenty steps ahead, but ended up acting on split seconds of impulse that dragged him twenty steps behind instead.
Zak always imagined the reason they used to constantly clash had been that they each wanted to be more like the other. Not that it mattered now.
Alex tipped back the beer bottle and took a generous sip. He peered into the Styrofoam containers Chase had brought, full of eggs three ways and potatoes and meats. Then the paper bag, full of bread. “I see Zak told you I like to eat my feelings.”
Dallas, and Snickerdoodle, lifted their heads and sniffed the air in tandem. “Is that bacon?”
“No wonder my dog loves you.” Zak grabbed a piece and dangled it over his nose. “Same brain.”
He grabbed it with his teeth, biting off half before tossing Snickerdoodle the other half and filling a paper plate with breakfast.
They ate in an untroubled, yet unyielding silence. Everyone thinking about the man who was always still in the room somehow, though the anniversary of his death would be the next date marked in red.
Edge was the first to start talking again. “My favorite birthday of Link’s was the year we drove all the way to Portland for a ZZ Top concert, and the hotel lost our reservation. And everything else was booked out, so we slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Zak’s car.”
“That would be your favorite. You got the passenger seat.” Dallas stuffed a forkful of hashbrowns in his mouth. “Meanwhile I was sleeping in the back. With my buddy, and the guy who was apparently fucking him from the back.”
Alex gave him a wry smile. “That was a joke, wasn’t it? You just made a joke about it, and it didn’t even sound that pissy.”
“Don’t push it.”
“My favorite Link-birthday was the year we played at that music festival in San Diego,” Zak recalled. The corners of Chase’s mouth tugged up when everyone else chuckled at the conclusion they knew was coming. “We got the whole crowd to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and that one guy in the front handed him a joint and peer-pressured him into crowd surfing, but halfway through, they dropped him on his ass.”
And though Alex and Dallas seemed consoled by the memories they traded, when it came time for one of them to do the same, they simply exchanged glances. Zak hoped it was a silent promise to finish their conversation later, as a look of solace washed over Dallas’s face.
Something like closure.
Zak had been there the day Edge had his first seizure. It had happened during school, at lunch. They had been eating sandwiches and talking about math class, and he’d frozen up in the middle of what he was saying, collapsing forward onto the table. His muscles started jerking so violently that his body had slid right off the laminate bench and into a puddle of his urine on the floor.
At fifteen years old, neither of them had the first clue about epilepsy. Back then, for the two most terrifying minutes of her life, Zak had thought she was watching her best friend die.
Ten years later, she understood it was just how his brain worked, and he understood how to manage it.
But it still sent her into shock when his body slammed against the hollow floor panels backstage in Pittsburgh.
Murmurs broke out among the road crew. Zak had to push aside well-meaning staff to get through to her friend as she counted the seconds. His longest seizure had capped out at four minutes and seventeen seconds, and most were half that, but she wasn’t spit-balling it when it came to his safety.
“Hey, I’m here. You’re okay,” she tried to say calmly, though she knew he couldn’t hear her.
She wadded up her jacket and placed it under the back of his head. He had already knocked himself pretty hard, but at least it would prevent further damage as his muscles twitched and convulsed.
“Move all that shit out of the way,” she told the onlookers as she saw Edge’s arm get dangerously close to jerking into his own instrument.
Most of the team knew about Edge’s condition. They had to when it interfered with so many aspects of his life. Working a normal job had always been difficult enough for him, let alone one that came with late nights, booze, drugs, and mountains of stress—his four main triggers, the last one especially.
They’d made it through the first leg of the tour upholding his seizure-free streak though, and some na?ve part of her had hoped the pattern would continue forever. For his sake, all thoughts of the band aside.
“What do you need me to do?” Chase asked.
“Get everyone out of here,” she answered when the movements stopped. Edge’s eyes were still closed, his lips purplish. “Thank them for trying to help. I don’t know, whatever nice people like you do. Then help me get him back to his room?”
She focused through the noise of people walking around as Chase carved out a calm corner.
Edge woke up disoriented, staring around at the room like it was one he’d never seen before, while she sat patiently waiting for him to make the first sound. Or rather, the first articulated word. Because the first sound was his groan of pain as he placed his hand on his side.
“Fuck.” He blinked, hard and slow. “We have a concert tonight, no?”
Her heart crumbled as she smiled at him and said, “It’s fine, don’t worry about that. I’m taking care of it.”
Zak didn’t have the first clue what to do about the show, but that was for her to figure out while he focused on not feeling like shit—which he undoubtedly did right now. The only sure fact was that he wouldn’t be going out there tonight.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s only Pittsburgh. There are more exciting cities. You can catch the next one.”
“I hope they don’t have you mic’d up right now.”
“It’s fine. The Pennsylvanians know it, too. They’ve got Philadelphia on the other side of the state. There’s a reason Elton John didn’t name the song ‘Pittsburgh Freedom’.”
“Probably because that name sounds like shit.”
Zak pushed the concert to the back of her mind and sat with her best friend on the ground as she waited for him to gain some clarity.
Eventually, he propped himself up with a heavy groan. “God, I feel like I ran full force into a fucking brick wall. I didn’t miss that.”
“I bet.” She offered a smile. “Let’s get you back to the hotel. The floor probably isn’t the most comfortable place to rest up.”
“But the band…” he trailed off.
“Seriously, it’s no big deal. Dallas and I both know the bass part. Not as well as you, obviously,” she disclaimed, “but enough to get through the night. Whichever of us takes lead guitar can simplify the rhythm on a loop pedal or something.”
Chase returned at the tail end of their conversation. If he was concerned, he masked it well.
“Promise me you’re not giving up lead.” Edge, reluctantly, grabbed Chase’s shoulder when he knelt. “They came here to see you play, Zak. Dallas can’t pull off your solos. Nobody can.”
“I forget how demanding you can be,” she said. “You hide it well behind that friendly face.”
It was a promise she wouldn’t make because it was a promise she couldn’t keep.
She didn’t actually know whether Dallas could play the bass line. Half the time she didn’t trust that he had memorized his own lines, but he always managed to pull through, and so she let the rest slide. For a notoriously unstable guy, Dallas had the rhythm stability of a metronome and the pitch stability of a digital tuner. Walking proof in her mind that, to some extent, musical talent had to be genetic.
She would sort it out with him when she got back to the arena.
It would be fine.
They would figure something out and get on with the show. It wasn’t like they hadn’t discussed contingency plans for this exact worst-case scenario before.
But what they hadn’t discussed was what would happen if Edge had a seizure two hours before their show, and then, one hour before the show, Dallas was still nowhere to be seen.
What was the contingency plan for when everything—absolutely everything—went to shit?
Zak paced as the team scrambled to find their missing guitarist.
And paced.
And paced some more.
“Can anyone get a hold of his cell?” someone said.
“When was the last time you all saw him?”
“This morning,” Alex and Chase both answered.
“Yeah,” she said numbly. “This morning.”
Minutes ticked by.
Zak tried to figure out if there was any possibility of her being able to play three guitars at the same time.
The next time Scott walked by, Zak grabbed his arm.
“We’re on in an hour. Where the fuck is Dallas?” She tried her best not to sound as freaked out as she was, but the last time the man had been unaccounted for, he’d been passed out against the side of their tour bus with an open head injury. “Did anyone check his room? I’m going to check his room.”
“That’s the first place we checked.” Scott held his hands out in an effort to mediate her ensuing panic. “I’ve got people on it, they’ll find him. Just focus on being ready for when they do find him.”
Now she knew exactly what her father looked like when he was lying. “I can’t very well focus on the show if there isn’t going to be a show, now can I?”
“It’s not the end of the world if we have to call for a raincheck. They build time into the schedule to account for things like this. Sometimes accidents happen. People get sick.”
“He’s not fucking sick and it’s not a fucking accident, and you know it as well as I know it.”
Zak hadn’t realized she was yelling. Not until everyone backstage turned their heads to catch a glimpse of her and Scott’s conversation.
She took a deep breath, for clarity. But the only clarity that came was: What if they do find him? What if they find him like Alex found Link?
“Zak.” Scott’s hand came down on her shoulder. His eyes, for the first time, were steadying as they each let out a heavy breath in sync. “We’re doing everything we can.”
It wasn’t enough.
“Rescheduling isn’t a bad idea anyway. The sound would be better with all five of us,” Alex said. Way too upbeat for the way she felt about the idea.
Sure, cancellations happened. But only a third of the way through her first tour? Because of something completely avoidable?
She clenched her fists. “It’s not about that. This is the first one. The first canceled show. Just like every time he takes a first drink. Smokes a first cigarette. Lights his first spoon. It always starts with one. How many will there be? How many will it take for him to decide the music doesn’t matter anymore? The band doesn’t matter?”
She was rambling. Spiraling. She didn’t have the answer, but she did have clarity on one thing. There would never be another day where she waited backstage with trust that he would appear. She would doubt him at every turn.
Dallas had fucked up many, many times, but he had never let the band down like this.
“He might not be high,” Alex hedged.
“Say it to me straight. Tell me you actually believe that.”
“Of course I don’t actually believe that. I’m playing devil’s advocate.” Alex frowned. “But you need to chill the fuck out because you cannot control whether he’s high or not.”
Zak sifted her fingers into the hair at her scalp and talked herself into not pulling it out. “I knew better than to trust him with this. Why did I trust him?”
“Don’t go down that path,” Chase said. “You always beat yourself up for trusting people instead of blaming the people who betrayed your trust.”
“I assure you.” She leveled him a hard stare. “I’m blaming him.”
She knew the show was canceled when Scott came in minutes later, looking as guilty as she’d ever seen him.
“We found him.” He delivered the news like a Stage-4 cancer diagnosis. “He’s alright.”
“Alright, as in, he ate some bad shrimp, but he’ll be fine to play tonight? Or alright, as in, he’s alive for now, but high off his ass and we’re canceling the concert?”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Zak,” he said, which answered her question on its own. “It doesn’t end well. It didn’t for me, and I had it better than most. Maybe it’s time you start looking into back-ups.”
“You don’t mean back-ups. You mean replacements.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“You’re sugarcoating the ones you say to me.”
Scott grew quiet, which was when Zak realized all the motion backstage had stilled long ago. “I’m going to work with the venue to see about rescheduling tonight’s show.”
It had to be a bad dream. There was no way they’d lost two members in one night. They had all been together only hours before. Laughing and crying in equal sums. Playing video games in Alex’s room and eating breakfast on the floor. Only, she’d seen luck turn like this—whiplash.
The night before Link died, they’d played one of their best gigs yet. They had tried out songs for the competition they were going to be a part of. For the first time, they all had something tangible to look forward to for the future of Saint of Spades. They’d grabbed burgers and shakes together at the diner next door while Zak complained about having to go to work and Link told her, “Chin up, buttercup. You won’t have to work there much longer!”
“Scott,” Chase called out.
The sound of his voice transported her back to the present. To the person who didn’t have to tell her to believe in him, because everything he did proved that she could. She wasn’t sure when she had started associating Chase with trust, hope, and all good things in the world.
At a time when their band was breaking down right before a performance—when death, addiction, and abandonment were so fresh in her mind—having Chase on her side had become synonymous with strength.
Had she noticed, before, that she’d never doubted whether he would have her back? Whether he’d fight with her for all that mattered most to her?
Did he know she would do the same?
Chase took her hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze that felt a lot like an, I’ve got you.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I have an idea.”