Chapter 30
thirty
CASS
“JADE SUCKS DICK.”
Or so the graffiti-covered mirror tells me in silver Sharpie, right next to my left ear as I stare at myself and try to get my eyeliner even. My hand is shaking enough to turn a sharp wing into a seismograph reading of my current mental state, but I’m hoping it’ll be dark enough so nobody sees.
The fluorescent light above flickers, strobing my reflection like a shitty horror movie. For a second I’m there, and then I’m not, and then I’m there again. And, if I’m being honest with myself, the disappearing version looks more put-together.
Steady. You’ve done this a thousand times.
Except I haven’t. Not like this. Not hollowed out and running on fumes.
The girl in the mirror looks exactly like she’s supposed to. Choppy bleached pixie, check. Black tank top ripped in strategic places, check. Combat boots that have seen more bar floors than a health inspector, check.
Every piece of the costume firmly in place.
But I hate her.
Not me.
Her.
The version everyone expects—the snarling frontwoman who takes no shit and gives no fucks and definitely doesn’t spend entire nights staring at the ceiling wondering if she’ll ever stop being such a spectacular disappointment to everyone who makes the mistake of getting close.
Stop it. Focus.
I drag the liner across my lid again, and this time my hand cooperates long enough to get something close to symmetrical. Small victories. That’s what my high school guidance counselor used to say before she gave up on me entirely.
My gaze catches on the corner of the mirror where someone’s stuck a faded band sticker, for some local act called “Whiskey Funeral” that probably broke up five years ago, their logo already peeling at the edges. There’s a chip in the glass right through the middle of it.
Another name nobody remembers.
I think about my amp.
My real amp.
The most important piece of gear I own, now living with a guy who told his teammates I didn’t matter. But it’s dead to me now, and even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t knock on that door and look at his face and relive him saying not that serious like we were nothing.
A sound at the doorway makes me look up.
Joel.
He’s standing there with his bass case slung over one shoulder, his wiry frame rigid, and his perpetual five-o’clock shadow is closer to seven-o’clock tonight. His dark eyes are doing that restless thing they do when he’s working up to something difficult.
Neither of us speaks.
The silence stretches, every unresolved argument from the last month hanging between us like a sustained dissonant chord. Somewhere around an A-flat diminished seventh, which is music theory for this is about to get messy.
Joel clears his throat. “Look, about what happened at the last show, I’m sorry.”
The words hit like a wrong note in a song I thought I knew by heart, because Joel doesn’t apologize. Joel argues. Joel pushes. Joel has been riding my ass about my amp and the band’s “trajectory” for so long I’d started to think it was just part of his personality.
I search his face for the catch, but can’t find one.
“I’ve been hard on you, Cass,” he says. “Tonight’s not the night to rehash all of the shit. I just wanted to say—” He stops, jaw working. “I know things have been tough with that guy you were seeing, and I’m not going to worsen it.”
I hadn’t told him about Ben, but somehow he’d found out, and he’s decided to put away his guns. “Thanks, Joel,” I say.
It’s not a full mea culpa. He hasn’t acknowledged that his constant pressure for a cleaner sound was part of what got us here, and he doesn’t admit that the “trajectory” he’s been pushing for is one I never agreed to, but it’s more than I expected.
I smirk. “Did someone coach you through that? Because I’m pretty sure you just located a single human emotion, and I want to mark the calendar!”
Joel’s mouth twitches up into a small smile, clearly glad—like me—to be back on relatively normal ground. He rubs the back of his neck. “Well, now that you mention it, Milo may have threatened to quit if I came in here and started another fight.”
“Bold of you to assume he’d follow through.” I laugh, feeling light for the first time in days. “That man loves our discount at Frank’s too much to—”
“Cass.”
I stop.
“I mean it.” He meets my eyes. “Tonight is about the music, and whatever else is going on, we can figure out later. OK?”
I don’t know what to do with this. Part of me wants to grab onto the kindness like a life raft. The other part—the part honed by years of the Revolving Door—screams to reject it. To push until it shatters and proves itself hollow like everyone else’s kindness.
Milo materializes behind him like the patron saint of bad timing. His drumsticks are tucked into his back pocket, and his thick-rimmed glasses are slightly askew. He catches my eye, then looks at Joel, and when neither of us offers an explanation for the weird moment, he shrugs.
It’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve got.
Joel steps forward, and before I can register what’s happening, his arms are around me.
It’s the worst hug I’ve ever received—neither of us knows where to put our hands, and his bass case keeps sliding off his shoulder and bumping my hip.
His chin lands on my head at an awkward angle. It’s terrible, but it’s also happening.
I thump him on the back, harder than necessary. “You’re still an asshole.”
He laughs. “Yeah. I know.”
When we pull apart, Milo’s still watching from the doorway, twirling a drumstick between his fingers. The corner of his mouth quirks up. We all know we’re not fixed, because the philosophical divide about our sound is still there under the surface. But for tonight, we’ve declared a truce.
I take one last look at myself in the graffiti-covered mirror.
The eyeliner’s more war paint than aesthetic choice tonight.
The girl staring back still looks hollow, but she’s standing.
You’ve performed through worse. You’ve performed through Camden.
You can do this.
“Time to go,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
We do the ritual. It’s stupid and superstitious and we’ve done it before every single show. Milo starts the beat, two drumsticks against his thighs. Joel picks it up, slapping his palm against his bass case. I add my voice, not singing, just a low growl that builds into something feral.
The growl becomes a scream—all three of us, voices crashing together in a sound that’s pure, unfiltered want. Want to matter. Want to be heard. Want to prove every asshole who ever dismissed us dead wrong. It lasts maybe ten seconds, then there’s silence.
Milo grins, feral.
Joel’s eyes are bright.
My hands have stopped shaking.
“Let’s fuck some shit up,” I say.
We walk out to the main room of the Firehouse.
We’re the first slot of the night. Sacrificial lambs they book to warm up the crowd before the “real” acts. But, despite that, the venue is already filling—restless college kids nursing the cheapest beers, a few townies at the bar, and some industry-adjacent types lurking near the sound booth.
Everyone’s here to judge.
I drag my new gear onto the stage, the amp looking exactly as wrong as it did in the store. A sleek, black, digital-modeling solid-state with more settings than a spaceship dashboard and less soul than a corporate earnings call.
It cost more than my rent.
I hate it.
But hatred is simple. Hatred is clean. Hatred doesn’t require me to think about my beloved amp in the hands of an enemy. The same hands that had roamed over my body, finding joy and wonder, like broken things were sacred to him.
Like I was sacred to him.
I plug in with more force than necessary and run through a quick sound check. The notes ring out clean and bright, exactly like they’re supposed to, but they’ve got all the warmth and character of a medical diagnosis for a common cold.
Congratulations, your tone is clinically excellent and emotionally dead.
Joel catches my eye from across the stage.
“That sounds clean as hell, Cass,” he says. “No hum, no crackle. The judges will love it.”
“Yeah, well.” I adjust the settings because I need something to do with my hands. “Had to be done.”
“What happened to the old one?”
“Threw it in the trash.” The lie comes out flat. “Burned me one too many times.”
I feel Milo’s gaze on me from behind the kit. When I look up, his eyes are narrowed behind those thick-rimmed glasses. He knows I’d sooner cut off a finger than trash that Fender, but he doesn’t push it, leaving space for the truth to emerge when it’s ready.
I turn back to the amp and strum a chord. The sound that comes out is... accurate. Perfect pitch, perfect sustain, perfect fucking everything. It’s like a simulation of music, the sonic equivalent of kissing someone who’s got all the various mouth bits but feels absolutely nothing.
This is the sound of giving up.
Forcing myself to focus on anything but the piece of shit amp, I turn to face the room, guitar hanging against my chest, and finish tuning by ear. Then my gaze snags on a table near the bar, and everything stops like it does in the movies.
There’s three guys in PBU Hockey jackets.
They’re impossible to miss—loud, taking up space, radiating the kind of easy confidence that comes from never being told they don’t belong somewhere. I recognize them immediately, because it’s many of the same guys from that party and from O’Neil’s.
Nash sits at the center, holding court the way pretty boys do, permanent smirk firmly in place. Stiles is next to him, the one with the mouth and the over-gelled hair. Then there’s Rook, checking his phone with half a smile, texting someone who matters.
I look for him.
I can’t help it.
My eyes sweep the table, the bar, the door—searching for the tall frame with the hands that used to trace the constellation tattoo on my hip like he was memorizing it. But he’s not here, and I realize for a brief moment that I’m disappointed.
But then his voice replays in my head.
Not that serious.
And my armor slams back into place.
Well, fuck him.
The part of me that survived Camden rears up.
And let them watch.
I crank the volume until the clean signal starts to distort. The digital modeling strains to keep up, algorithms trying desperately to make ugliness into something palatable. It can’t—not entirely—and I’m glad, because I’m going to steal whatever soul I can out of this piece of shit.
I scan the hockey table one more time. Nash is saying something to Stiles that makes them both laugh. Rook is still texting. None of them are looking at the stage, and I wonder if they even know who I am and what their bullying helped to destroy.
I curl my lip, muscle memory and spite fusing into something functional. For a moment I’m sixteen again, standing in the pit at my first punk show, learning that the only way to survive being seen is to stick your elbows out and be a vicious bitch.
And making sure no one ever sees the real you.