Six
Kat
Crazy Train – Ozzy Osbourne
The dressing room feels smaller than it did an hour ago. The hum of the bar seeps through the walls, filling it with the energy of the crowd. Glasses clink, conversations melt into one, and the sound of the house speakers sit in the background. We arrived at Headstone way before we needed to.
“We look like amateurs,” Ryland had said, but eventually agreed that we needed this extra time.
Bringing our own amps had been completely unnecessary.
The ancient amps we’d used during our audition were not the same ones that are now on stage.
These ones are brand new, the sticky residue from the factory stickers still visible.
There’s easily thirty thousand dollars on the sound system alone.
At least Gareth helped us carry our amps back down to Ryland’s van—we’d never hear the end of it if Luca had to do it.
The air in the dressing room is electric with nerves and anticipation, making my skin prickle. Harper is in the corner, one hand pressed to her diaphragm, working her voice through slow scales. The notes start as a low hum before filling the room with loud trills. Her voice is steady.
Mine definitely fucking isn’t.
Ryland is in the other corner, tapping a stable rhythm on his thighs.
The wooden sticks make a thwack against the denim in perfect time.
Luca and I carefully turn our machine heads to just the right pitch.
No one speaks, but there’s an unspoken understanding—everything has to be perfect.
Because if it isn’t, this disappears—the residency, the money, and the chance to be something other than another band swallowed into extinction by rent and bills.
This isn’t some open mic night or birthday party.
This is Headstone. This is our residency.
Four thousand dollars a night. Over one hundred thousand dollars if we don’t fuck this up.
If I don’t fuck this up.
I glance at Harper as she runs another scale, flawlessly as always.
She deserves this. They all do. Ryland has somehow always produced the cash to keep his gear upgraded—we’ve learned not to ask questions about how.
Luca and his husband put their surrogacy journey on hold so Luca could keep playing.
We all have something on the line. We all have so much to lose, yet they look like they’ve been doing this for years.
I’m the one falling apart. Visibility terrifies me—but obscurity hasn’t exactly kept me safe either.
There’s always that voice in the back of my mind whenever I’m on stage.
The one that’s formed through years of being told I’m not good enough.
I’m too big. Tonight, it’s taking every ounce of my concentration to quieten.
When we played in the past, the crowds were small, and I could see the faces of everyone watching us.
But here at Headstone? It’s impossible. There are too many.
I’m just thankful for the cowl that’s resting on the couch waiting to be put on.
“At least if we bomb, the only one of us that the crowd will recognize is Harper,” Ryland says with a mischievous grin.
Harper flips him off without missing a note of her scale.
When the final E string reaches the right tone, I let out a breath and stand up. My fingers find the cool metal of my necklace, soothing the soft flutter skimming the inside of my chest.
The creak of the door slashes through the tension. Every muscle in my body tightens as I whip my head towards the sound. Gareth strides into the room. I push down the disappointment that it’s not Elias.
“You’re up,” he says, his tone clipped, as he holds the door open for us with a bored expression.
That’s it? No buildup? No warning?
I sling my guitar over my shoulder and pull the cowl over my head.
With the fabric framing my face, any nerves I had soften, settling into a buzz of adrenaline instead of panic.
Noise dulls and my vision narrows as I adjust it just enough to cover my face, but not enough that I can’t see the crowd.
In the mirror, I tilt my head up just enough that my silhouette comes into focus beneath my cowl and I barely recognize myself. A calm washes over me.
I look good.
My ripped band shirt shows off the perfect amount of cleavage, tucked into my leather pants that hug every curve and show off my wide hips and ass.
The pants are the same ones I wore for the audition, but something about the way everything looks with the cowl makes me appear seductive in an ‘I might haunt your dreams later’ type of way.
I’m quickly realizing that I feel so hot because I don’t look like myself right now.
The hallway to the stage feels longer than it did during the sound check.
The bass from the new house speakers vibrates through the floor, syncing with my hammering pulse.
The noise from the crowd is growing louder now as we leave the confines of the dressing room area.
Someone laughs loudly. Glass shatters. The sounds only get louder the closer we get.
I roll my shoulders, adjusting the strap of my guitar until it feels right.
“Right, guys. This is it,” Luca says, gripping his bass by the neck.
“We’ve fucking got this. We’ll play the gig and then we’ll get fucked up,” Ryland says, wrapping his arm around Luca and Harper’s backs, who then wrap theirs around mine for a group huddle.
Harper smells like her usual strawberry and vanilla perfume.
The scent grounds me. Luca squeezes my shoulder once, just letting me know he’s there.
Unease flickers low in my gut, and I push it down, pulling Luca and Harper tight before we all release and take our positions on stage.
The stage lights blind me for a second, and I adjust my face covering.
The crowd is bigger than I expected: they’re not packed shoulder to shoulder, but there’s still way more people here than I think any of us anticipated.
My pulse thunders, and my knees begin to tremble.
For a split second, I imagine missing the first chord.
That thought is enough to make me want to throw up.
The residency would dissolve before my very eyes.
My band would hate me. I’d have to quit my job because Harper wouldn’t want to be around me.
I’d have to go back to sleeping under the expressway, but this time without a tent.
The sharp sound of drumsticks counting down breaks me from my spiral, and I strike the first chord right on time.
The relief instantly floods my chest, but it’s only fleeting.
Sweat from my hands slicks against the strings, and I adjust my grip quickly, the fear of slipping making me hitch a breath.
The entire room fades away, and I’m back to where I need to be.
My body, lit with adrenaline, moves with the music we’re creating. My hands move across the fretboard as if independent from my body, from instinct alone. I’m aware of the movement of bodies in the crowd as they hear us for the first time, the soft nodding of heads to the beat building.
By the fourth song, beads of sweat have formed on the back of my neck and drip down my back. Thankfully, I chose a black band shirt tonight, or else I wouldn’t be able to turn my back to the crowd. I make a mental note to never choose another color to perform in.
I move towards the edge of the stage during a riff, and the front row surges forward.
Hands reach towards me, and someone shouts my name—not Kat, but “guitar girl.” A guy in the front leans forward, trying to peer under the edge of the fabric as I lean into a solo.
He’s trying to be subtle, probably harmless, but my chest tightens anyway, and I step back without breaking rhythm, nodding my head so the cowl drops further over my face.
The next chord comes a fraction too late. Not enough for the crowd to notice, but I notice. I glance over at Ryland, and his face lets me know he noticed too.
I block out the crowd in front of me. Their energy is too infectious, and I can’t afford to be affected by it.
I focus instead on each note I’m playing, letting it sit and reverberate under my skin.
The shouting from the crowd dampens, and in this moment, the only thing that exists is me and my guitar.
Each song blends into the next, my shoulders dropping and my grip on the neck relaxing, a half-smile curving the edge of my mouth after each perfectly nailed solo.
I look up to the crowd. What was a small ripple of movement is now a full-blown typhoon.
As the final note rings out, the bodies slow, and screams of approval ring out above the music.
My eyes drift over the bobbing heads, riding the high of their energy. Their curiosity is sated, and now they want more. They lean towards us instead of away. Chants of “one more song” fill the room—but I barely hear them because that’s when I feel it.
Not see it. Fucking feel it.
The air shifts, and the base of my spine stiffens.
I scan the room again, slower this time.
And there he is. At the back, meeting my stare with his own.
His dark hair is pulled into a low ponytail, and his eyes bore into mine.
He leans against a concrete pillar, a picture of boredom, but something else simmers under the surface.
He sticks out so much. If he were here earlier, I would have seen him.
I would have felt it. Elias isn’t drinking.
Isn’t talking. Isn’t moving. He’s just watching us—no, not us.
Me. His eyes pierce through the energy of the crowd and hit me right in the fucking chest. The cowl does absolutely nothing to shield me when it comes to him, apparently.
My fingertips tingle, fighting against the creeping numbness as my brain screams at me to run off the stage. There’s something dangerous about him, and I still can’t tell whether he wants to fuck me or kill me—or maybe both at the same time.
There’s about six feet of space around him, like no one wants to get too close to him. At least it’s not just me he has that effect on.
I pull the cowl down lower, avoiding his eyes. Shield in place, but it does nothing to protect me from the sensation of being watched. I glance at the rest of the band, who are readying themselves for the next song.
“All aboard!” screams Harper into the microphone.
The deep sound of the Crazy Train bass line fills the room, and the crowd erupts. I cast a quick look toward Elias. A half-smirk painted on his face. He looks… impressed?
I don’t have time to dissect his facial responses.
I flex my hands as my fingers quickly find their positions.
By some divine intervention, I hit the first note right on time.
The screams of approval mixed with the sensation of being seen swirl through my head.
I absorb the energy of the crowd and let it fuel me, like oxygen to a fire.
My head falls back, drunk from the energy, and I completely lose myself to the music.
I chance a glance at Elias, and I could swear I see his lips move. My fingers don’t falter. But something inside me does. Because I almost convinced myself that he mouthed the word mine.