79
Sasha
In fifty-seven minutes, it will be the new year.
I’m going to start it as Sasha, start it with my new friends. Start it by kissing Lillian. I’m going to start it without a helmet on. I’ll start surrounded by people in TJ’s living room. Start with a good secret inside of me for once, two weeks out from the show I’m anticipating more than any stadium I’ve ever played.
I was dancing a moment ago. My body is beginning to understand how to move by listening to itself instead of by following instructions.
Soon, I think I’ll dance again.
We all needed a party after the relentless last few days.
I’ve been practically living between Quinn’s basement and Lillian’s bedroom, preparing for the show. I’ve slept over at Quinn’s twice, dozing off partway through listening to something for the hundredth time. We’re changing lyrics and designing new Wavelength shirts. We’re cutting and modifying all the old ones to sell as one-offs. I’ve spent hours with scissors and fabric markers watching old sci-fi shows with Quinn.
We’re trying to have a single ready to come out the day after we play at Initialism with Monochrome Stoplight. It will be the first Wavelength recording featuring yours truly as half of the vocals. It’s really revealing how badly we need a bass player. But it’s a great recording o.
“Elevator,”
or it will be once we get it done.
There’s an obvious problem.
Someone else owns my voice.
Based on what I understand of my contract at the Channel, I’m not allowed to release this song. They decide who I’m paired with. If it’s not Augustus, it’ll be another Channel product or a major celebrity. A single with LucSee. Maybe a big British artist.
No matter what, they will choose. These are suits who will tear apart people’s lives over bus money just so they can accumulate it without purpose. Who have strategic meetings about how to portray Jasmine to ensure Augustus gets away with everything. No consideration of his guilt or what it will all do to Jasmine’s life, or what the fans will do to her.
I doubt the Channel’s lawyers would settle for Wavelength’s single being taken offline. When they perceive a threat, they don’t stop until they’ve salted the earth. My influence at the Channel won’t be enough to stand in the way of that.
Releasing this song would put the people I care about most directly in the line of fire. There’s no denying it, and I won’t allow that to happen. Before January 15, I’ll find a way to make sure I’m not on the recording. I’ll generate a new falsehood that means we have to cut my voice out o.
“Elevator.”
I’ll keep my friends safe. I’ll stay undercover and stay their friend. I can do it.
But I don’t have to think about that until after tonight.
Lillian and I arrived at TJ’s New Year’s Eve party late and together. She’s wearing one of Quinn’s suit jackets over her absolute rattiest band shirt and jeans. Because looking clean-cut is for people with picket fences and Lillian would be more comfortable in a picket line. I’ve got fishnets and a leather jacket and a white skirt because it’s not a funeral.
Emelia answered the door. She was out of breath, barefoot, a drink in her hand, talking over her shoulder until she saw who it was.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it,”
said Emelia. To Lillian, not to both of us.
“I said I would,”
said Lillian.
“And here you are.”
There was telepathy between them. A whole conversation happened in a quarter note rest while the warmth from inside was hitting the icy night. Steam filling the air around us.
Then Emelia welcomed us in and pointed to the drinks. She was already a couple in, enough that she said we looked cute together. Either she forgot to give it bite or she genuinely meant it.
I closed the door. Lillian and Emelia seemed unaware of the draft.
Emelia hugged Lillian for a beat longer than a normal greeting hug. But then she hugged me too and went on tiptoes to whisper in my ear. A little too loud for how close she was.
“Please watch out for Lillian’s heart.”
As in take care of it, or make sure it doesn’t hurt me?
She broke away and moved cleanly into.
“There’s people you should meet. Come in.”
The house sprawls and absorbs people. It’s dated, with spaces dropped by two steps and separated by ornate railings. Thick cream carpets that don’t stand a chance once things pick up later. In the room with the best stereo, there’s music playing loud enough to fill the house. When we arrived, people were just standing around and talking and drinking, but there was a restlessness growing wilder.
Half the people we walked past warranted hugs from Emelia too. Lillian casts around a lot of those greeting nods that I could never get the hang of. Emelia introduced me to a couple of friends by saying.
“This is Sasha. They’re in Wavelength.”
She said it like it was a great thing she was happy about, which generated confusion, especially when she wandered off.
One of the guys in the couple we met said.
“Didn’t Emelia used to be in Wavelength?”
His boyfriend looked at Lillian holding my hand.
“Didn’t you used to date Emelia?”
The two of them attributed the whole thing to the oddness of band relationships and neither Lillian or I was in much of a position to challenge that explanation.
After a couple drinks, I was feeling more uninhibited than anyone with my scale of secrets should feel. I went to find Cyprus. She was high and using two croissants to explain, in great detail, the relationship between punk, new wave and the original Mean Girls.
“Can I talk to you?”
She took a bite of croissant and closed her eyes.
“Like talk?”
“Just quickly.”
“I’m bringing Gretchen and Karen.”
Based on context, I assumed those were the croissants, not who she was talking to.
Once I got her into a quieter hallway, she offered me half of Gretchen in exchange for my aid, though I’m not sure with what. I accepted. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
“Cyprus?”
“Yes, babe.”
I actually like that, but anyways.
“What is going on with Emelia? Is she going to murder me, or are we friends now?”
She stares lovingly at Karen.
“It’s like eating butter, but hills.”
“Cyprus.”
“What?”
“What is Emelia doing?”
“She’s done being sad. Friends, envy, pssh.”
She made a vague hand gesture.
“She loves Lillian. You’re sharing the load. Emelia works like she’s happy she’s happy. Like a, what’s that thing?”
I could only shrug. “Empathy?”
“A carousel! The old-school rave. Carousal? That has the word arousal in it.”
She snorted and took out her massive feathered earrings and gave them to me.
“Wear these. They’ll bring out your eyes. Not the birds. Let’s dance, babe.”
“I like that.”
“Everybody knows it.”
We danced ourselves slightly more sober, settled on the floor. It’s less than an hour until the new year and we’re talking about our heroes and working very hard not to mention Liv James and spill the secret show. All us Wavelength people are here, Emelia too, and Jemma and someone with a blue mullet named Denis who took all of ten minutes to hit on every person in the circle. In other circumstances, perhaps. It’d be despite the blue mullet though.
“It’s got to be Elliot Page,”
Quinn’s saying.
“I mean, king of heart for always.”
“Too easy,”
says Lillian. She’s lying on her back with her head resting on my leg. She found a green plastic ukulele somewhere and she’s trying to play along to the song in the background.
“Narrow it down.”
“Elliot Page, in Hard Candy, when he takes off the red hoodie and he’s wearing the gray tank top. Not the seduction stuff, the vigilante stuff.”
“Something for everyone,”
says Cyprus.
“For my hero, I choose Lillian.”
Lillian’s trying to play a solo over the song outro.
“Because I’m a fashion icon?”
“Because you care so damn much.”
Lillian says.
“How dare you insinuate I care about anything? God is dead, life is meaningless, rage rage rage.”
She looks quite pleased.
Denis says someone who seems like more of a hair inspiration than anything. Jemma says LucSee.
I say.
“I can actually really see that,”
but can’t elaborate on it without revealing that I’ve spent a fair bit of time with her idol.
Emelia picks an old film star, because of grace and the way she walked and her composed strength. A quiet invincibility.
It’s reached Lillian and I. Lillian says.
“This ukulele is my hero. I’d make a pinup calendar of it. Stalk it, worship it, marry it.”
I know I should be silly like her, laugh off things close to my personal life.
Instead, I say.
“This isn’t someone famous, but I met this person named Lark as a kid. It was for like less than ten minutes. But they let me talk about myself without assuming anything. Their whole existence opened up gender space for me, and they told me there are more than two options when no one had ever told me that.”
“What did you say their name was?”
asks Cyprus.
“Lark.”
Emelia’s tearing up a little.
“That is the sweetest.”
She raises her plastic cup and says.
“To Lark and all the queer people before us!”
We all toast enthusiastically to that.
As I swallow, feeling the heat of the alcohol down my throat, I remember Lillian saying December is when you feel alone. New Year’s Eve. Celebration tinged with sadness. My heart’s exploding because I found my way here, breaking because I wasn’t in this place all along.
Lillian was right about feeling loneliness, but it’s something I’m remembering, not feeling. It can’t touch me right now.