Chapter 4
I’ve been staring at the studio ceiling for so long my vision has gone fuzzy, like I’m in the center of a blizzard, trapped on all sides by suffocating white.
Someone threw out the idea that we head back to our apartment to rest a few hours ago after I calmed down, but none of us made any actual moves. Something about a forty-five-minute bus ride out of Reykjavík’s city center to our shoebox-sized apartment we all cram into didn’t seem that great.
Instead, we’re taking turns lying on the studio’s worn-out couch, kidding ourselves that any second we’ll initiate the grueling work that needs to be done.
Skull is spread across the cushions, his long body relaxed, eyes closed.
I’d think he was asleep if it weren’t for the drumstick twirling gracefully between his long fingers.
I have my back pressed against the base of the sofa, Darcy’s head resting in my lap as I play with her hair, looping the pink strands around my fingers, feeling the smooth glide of it across my palm.
She holds my other hand near her stomach, twisting my rings and fiddling with my bracelets.
Kale tunes his violin from the corner, Harry tapping a piano key sporadically for him to work off.
The inability to keep our hands still might be the only thing we have in common, music radiating from our bodies, inevitable even when we’d rather avoid it.
Kale runs out of strings and places his instrument to the side, a low, haunting echo vibrating through the room before silence closes around us like a curtain.
I know I should be working, leading us to make something, but I can’t.
I can’t open that vein—feel and feel and feel in the hopes I create something someone else feels too.
I’m supposed to say something in my music, but I don’t have any story worth sharing that isn’t mortifyingly vulnerable.
Even the idea of getting up and grabbing my guitar, strumming a few notes, exhausts me.
That’s the part that’s most grotesque about depression—how it binds your limbs so you can’t move to do the things that might make you feel, might take you out of the numbness.
Instead, it keeps you chained down as you rot in the stupor.
I know so many artists use their depression for something achingly beautiful—create masterpieces from the hurt—but mine is too dark and wet and grimy.
Too consuming. More and more often, I wonder if I’m too sad to make good art.
I know I’m too sad to be loved. Connor proved that time and again.
We sit in silence for a few more minutes, a dark cloud hovering over the room, then Harry turns fully to his piano, staring at the expanse of keys before cracking his knuckles and wiggling his fingers.
With the bravado of a concert pianist, he bows his head and lays his hands to the ivory, the notes reverberating around us.
A swelling melody fills the room as he plays, and it takes me two bars to recognize the beat, Cardi B’s “WAP” resonating through the room with a deeply emotional undertone, slowed way down to add drama.
I let out a bark of surprised laughter, and Harry looks at me out of the corner of his eye, lips twitching before he tilts his head, putting his entire body into the performance, hands moving with an ostentatious flourish as the chorus plays out.
The words wet ass pussy loop through my mind with the chords.
I’m fully giggling now, Darcy’s head bouncing in my lap as she laughs too.
After a few more bars, Kale picks up his violin, adding an enchanting somberness to the notes.
Darcy sits up, clearing her throat and belting lyrics about doing Kegels with an emotional punch that would make Adele proud.
That’s when I properly lose it, tipping to my side and grabbing my stomach while I cackle.
Skull quietly snorts from his spot on the couch above me, tapping his drumsticks against the wall in time to the beat.
They amp up the theatrics, Darcy singing with her entire soul, Harry standing as he pounds into the keys.
He cocks his head to look at me, a lock of his chestnut hair falling across his forehead as he grins.
I shake my head as I smile back, and that earns me a wink before his focus returns to the piano.
Darcy’s face pops up above me, lined with emotion.
She straddles my hips while I continue to lie in a giggling heap on the floor, her hands moving to cup my cheeks in a dramatic grip as she sings to me about how profoundly she’s a freak bitch.
Warmth balloons in my chest, knowing she’ll do anything to make me laugh like I’ll do anything to make her smile.
When the song finally comes to a close, Darcy slumps against me in a boneless heap, panting as she presses her cheek against my sternum.
Our bodies vibrate together as we continue to laugh, every nerve ending in me lighting up, the stale sadness temporarily lifting from the room.
After a few seconds of silence, Harry starts at the piano again, playing around with the keys so the quiet doesn’t linger.
I watch him toy with his instrument, the way his hands spread and stretch, how he keeps his lower lip held between his teeth as he tries something new.
Harry is beautiful in a way of contradictions.
Wavy, reddish-brown hair that’s always a few inches too long, sticking up in angles from how often he runs his hands through it.
His nose is on the larger side, sharply defined and drawing focus, a crook in the bridge from a childhood fight.
It balances his wide mouth that’s always kicked up in a boyish smile.
And those eyes. Flame-blue and framed by dark lashes, his eyes could stop anyone in their tracks.
Everyone talks about how gorgeous Connor is, and that’s true, but I’ve always thought Harry was the beautiful one between the two.
Harry taps out a stilted melody—moody and slow—repeating it a few times. He trips over a key, but something about it clicks a mental gear into place.
“Add an A minor to that?” I say, sitting up suddenly and causing Darcy to topple off me. She shoots me an undignified pout. I distractedly pat the vicinity of her shoulder, my eyes locked on Harry.
Without pause, Harry seamlessly does as I ask, and the notes wrap around me, my focus turning inward, a golden thread looping through my mind. I trace the progression. Track where it should go next.
“Take the E minor, B minor to the five?” I scramble on hands and knees across the carpet toward him.
The chords play out, something intimate and sad with an almost hopeful note at the end.
“Minor two, to the five, to the one?” I say, eyes fixed in a trance while fuzzy lyrics dangle in my periphery.
I know better than to grab at them. They’ll slot into place when they’re ready.
He keeps playing, hands spread across the keys as he explores further up the scales.
There’s something vulnerable in the way Harry plays, pouring raw emotions into the tips of his fingers.
“Darcy, can you—”
A deep rhythm vibrates from her bass, creating a ripple through my brain and down my spine, causing me to shiver. She reads my mind, amplifying the whisper in my head, playing it so perfectly a lump forms in my throat. Sometimes I wonder if she knows my thoughts better than I do.
Pieces start to crystallize, the colors of the song inking into my vision—dark blue, streaks of gold, a violent splash of pink, the same shade as Darcy’s hair.
I whip around, eyes spinning as I try to pinpoint Kale, but he already has his violin to his shoulder, chin lovingly cradled at the base.
He drags the bow across the strings, something quivering and sharp mixing with the swelling music around us.
Skull moves to his kit and joins in, his offbeat drumming grounding the sound, making it fuller, richer.
Harry continues leading us, the piano melody becoming stronger, surer. He’s added an optimistic lilt, something that starkly contrasts against the drama of the chord progression.
I stand, snatching up my guitar and slinging the strap over my shoulder, following their lead. Darcy winks at me, and my heart could burst from the excitement, the smile spreading across her face. I fish out my phone from my back pocket, tossing it on the table after hitting record on a voice memo.
I start to mumble-sing, humming along to the melody as I search for words. For the first time in a long time, I don’t hold myself back, I don’t bite my tongue to pieces in fear of the inevitable imperfection.
A fool of me and a fool of you,
I regret you now, but what’s a girl to do?
Phrases continue to tumble out, some good, some nonsensical, others undeniably awful, but I don’t care. This moment isn’t for perfection, it’s for creation.
Dreams of us stuck in my mind,
but you always mocked the things that shined.
Darcy’s voice joins the sound, rough and lovely, a bit higher than mine:
Wore your empty promises like a tattoo on my skin,
Your losing battles, I just can’t win.
My focus flashes to her, our eyes hooking and holding as the music continues to dance around us.
Her smile is equal parts joy and disbelief.
It’s been so long since we had a moment like this—one that feels almost otherworldly, like we’re making something more than music with how in sync we are, how starkly and terrifyingly rooted in the present we are.
Darcy and I have always toyed and played with music like this, but the purity of creating in this way has dimmed over the past few years, so much of my focus centered on trying to impress Connor, make something that would win me a rare smile or crumb of praise.
I smile back at her, nose stinging and pressure building behind my eyes. Which is stupid and dramatic, but I’ve felt so disconnected from music, from the thing that makes me whole and human, that it’s like gasping in a breath after nearly drowning.
Harry trips over a key change, and we all share a shaky laugh, Kale’s quick hands covering the hole. Skull carries the rhythm, his brows knitted in concentration as he plays. We continue to toy with the sound, taking it down different twists and turns, aimless lyrics thrown in and out.
The song builds toward the inevitable bridge, and I watch Darcy’s clever fingers pluck notes straight from my heartstrings as I fumble out words that rise to the surface of my throat before I can question if they work.
Stab myself in the back, just to prove to you,
Go ahead, ask me to do it again, and I would.
Who else are you going to find to stand where I stood?
They may love you, but no one will ever treat you half as good.
The early melody repeats, and Darcy and I bumble out a choppy chorus, trying to remember what we sang earlier, smiling with a laugh at the curled edges of our voices.
Finally, when it feels like this thing we’re making has embedded under our skin, we come down, the last few notes of Harry’s piano echoing in the room.
It’s silent for a few moments, all of us staring in bewilderment at each other, panting and flushed like we ran a marathon.
Then we burst into screams of excitement.
“We made something. We actually fecking made something,” Harry cheers, sliding off his piano bench and charging at me. The second my guitar hits its stand, he wraps me in a hug, lifting my feet from the ground and spinning us around.
“I’m so excited I could cry,” Darcy says, lying flat on her back, one hand ostentatiously draped across her forehead. When Harry lets me go, I trip over to her, planting my hands on either side of her shoulders, touching my nose to hers before collapsing on top of her in a tangle.
“I didn’t think we actually had it in us,” Kale says with his usual level of snark. But when I look at him, his smile is genuine.
“Skull, I loved how you brought it all together,” I say, trying to roll off Darcy.
She doesn’t let me, cinching her arms around my middle and hugging me closer.
Skull’s solemn mouth is kicked up on one side, and he bows his head slightly, which is basically the equivalent of him jumping up and down, shrieking with joy.
“All right, that’s enough chatter, innit?” Darcy says, wiggling out from under me. She hops up, clapping her hands like a bubbly little drill sergeant. “Places, everyone, let’s keep at it.” She grins down at me, grabbing my hand and hoisting me to my feet.
She drapes her arms over my shoulders, eyes twinkling.
I sometimes get lost in those eyes of hers.
They aren’t startling blue like Harry’s.
No, they’re much darker. Easy to overlook if you don’t study her closely.
Her irises are an indigo so deep, they’re nearly black, like the inky darkness of the sky right before dawn.
But they change with her mood—little cracks of silver threading through like bolts of lightning when she’s intensely focused; pure violet when she lifts her face to the sun; dark and stormy like the ocean when she’s mad.
My twin brother, Oliver, is a walking encyclopedia of color theory, and he once tried to tell me which Pantone shade her eyes are when I was describing them to my mums over dinner.
I’d told him to piss off, explaining that her eyes held so much depth and nuance, they could never be defined by one silly color swatch.
He’d stared at me like I spat in his supper.
But I’ve spent so much time looking into Darcy’s eyes over our years of friendship, it would be impossible not to notice stuff like that.
Harry starts up the melody again, tugging me back down to earth, and we assume our spots, trying to re-create what we did.
We take it slower this time. And the next.
Pausing between verses, tweaking bars, rewinding the phone recording and arguing over what chord progression we hear, what chord progression we think would be better.
We strip that magic down to its bare bones, building it back up, note by note. We play with it until our fingers are stiff and our heads ache and we have something close to done.
We know better, though.
No song, no piece of art, is ever truly finished.
There’s always one note, one chord, one beat of silence that you chase, desperate for perfection.
But that’s the beauty of art: It’s a snapshot of imperfection poised at the threshold of everything it could but never will be. And it’s lovely for that all the same.
“All right, lads, that’s class,” Harry says, rolling out his neck and cracking his knuckles. “But I can’t hear that song one more time or I’ll lose it.” Skull nods in agreement, setting his drumsticks down and resting the back of his head against the wall.
“We actually did something,” Kale says, the slightest hint of pride in his apathetic voice.
“That we did,” Harry agrees, smiling at him. “So let’s get to the pub to celebrate.”