Chapter 61
Hannah
The lights dim in the stadium. The ambient noise of twenty thousand people, stacked from the floor to the rafters, settles into an eerie hush. Offstage, Kenny, Ripper, and I stand in a circle, holding hands.
“May the rock gods bless us,” Kenny whispers, “and allow us to connect to the infinite collective.” His hand trembles. I squeeze it hard.
“Amen,” Ripper says.
“Amen,” I repeat. A spotlight flares in the middle of the pitch-black stage, illuminating a single microphone, which means it’s time. The Future Saints will play our first performance for the Grammys, our last for the world. One night in my old life, then back to the new.
“I love you both,” Ripper says.
“Always,” Kenny agrees.
“And forever.” I grab my guitar. “One last time to give it hell,” I say, then walk onstage.
When I enter the column of light, the audience applauds. I wait for them to quiet before I strum the opening progression of the last song we wrote for the album—my favorite. “Tomorrow Is the Beginning of Forever.”
“You were born of me,” I sing, my voice raw but quiet. It rever-berates through the stadium. “Blood of my blood, bone of my bone.”
Behind me, across floor-to-ceiling video screens, light explodes.
There’s a collective gasp from the audience.
I’ve got my back to it, but I know what they’re seeing: all around me, larger than life, are videos of Ginny.
A different one for every screen, all playing at the same time, Ginny everywhere you look.
Formal videos taken by a videographer, Ginny walking across the graduation stage in her blue Bonita Vista High School robe, Ginny seven years old at a cousin’s wedding, playing flower girl.
Silly home videos of her at the dinner table with brownie all over her face; clapping and riding on my father’s shoulders through the backyard.
Video from Ripper’s phone, a close-up of Ginny sleeping peacefully on the tour bus with a giant, blurred-out dick on her face.
Video from Kenny of her stretched out over Kenny’s legs, trying to do a yoga move but failing, then rolling with laughter.
Ginny staring into the ocean at dawn, her surfboard under one arm, hair streaming in the wind.
I know that in a moment she’ll turn her gaze to the camera and smile brighter than the sun.
I know because I was there, because I’m the person she was smiling at.
I was there. She was there. We were here together. I press my foot down on my pedal, hit my strings with the force of my longing. All I want is for people to know.
Two more spotlights come to life on Kenny and Ripper the moment they touch their instruments, and suddenly the quiet of the song—just my voice and my guitar—explodes, drums and bass ramping up, creating a new urgency.
I press my mouth to the mic, strumming hard. “You were born for me, but I lived for you. You may have gone away, but there’s no end to you.”
I twist around, dancing loosely as I play, and catch Ginny’s face on one of the screens.
She sticks out her tongue, then flips off the camera, the gesture obvious even behind the censors.
Ginny’s still here—no longer a figment born of my imagination, no longer someone I can talk to, but on these screens, captured as she really was.
She’s in the core of me, in my voice, in the hands flying over the strings of my guitar.
“When your body left this earth,” I sing, and Kenny crashes the high hats, punctuating my words as we speed up the tempo. “The sea opened and devoured you. Now you preside over my dreams. Your smile is everywhere, it seems.”
We’re climbing to the top of the mountain. I look to my right and wink at Ripper, jamming at his bass; look behind me at Kenny, whose arms are flying, ready—and we take off.
“Virginia,” we sing, using every ounce of our power, “don’t you listen to the critics. Don’t you listen to the preachers. You will live forever, you gold immortal creature.”
All the video screens shift to the same image, one I chose carefully: Ginny scaling the Sierra Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains, a backpack high on her shoulders. When she gets to the top she looks back at the camera, throws her arms up, and twirls.
Twirls and twirls, a never-ending loop.
“I will make sure of it,” I sing, my voice barely audible over the power of the instruments.
Ripper’s practically melting his guitar, Kenny’s drums are going so fast I can’t imagine the sweat flying off him.
The tempo is relentless, building and building no matter how fast it already seems, just like the song that blew the theater apart in Vegas, but here there’s no moshing, no anger, no revenge—there’s only the three of us doing what we do best for the last time, shoving our hearts into it, giving it all away, trying to show people how epic and terrifying it feels to us to be alive.
I pull the mic down and sink to my knees, an echo of the perfor-mance that started it all, but this time I’m not defeated. I strum madly, bent over my guitar, singing, “I will make sure of it, I will make sure of it, I will make sure of it.”
Kenny hits the last note. Ripper’s riff reverberates. My hands still on my guitar. On my knees, heart pounding, I close my eyes and say one last time into the silence: “I will make sure of it.”
When I open my eyes, the entire arena rises to its feet.