I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
— Joan Didion
x.
"He said to not treat me like I'm the child of your divorce." Georgie had looked pleased to be saying it. He'd always liked Ethan better than me. It'd taken me two hours to convince him to call Ethan at all. "And he's not doing it."
It'd been three weeks since I'd seen or spoken with Ethan. He wouldn't answer my phone calls. I couldn't tell Georgie how every time I called and Ethan didn't answer, especially when it went to voicemail too quickly, I had to shut my eyes and listen to the whole message through to the beep, even though it was just a computer reading me the digits of his number. And when I walked the hour it took to get to his apartment building, he wouldn't come to the door. Sometimes I couldn't even get in, and would have to justify it with sitting on the curb to smoke a cigarette or five before leaving again.
I'd looked away from Georgie, clenching my jaw. I'd gotten the phone call a few days ago that we'd made it through the next phase of the contest. It meant an impromptu interview with record executives this Saturday in Denver. We had to impress them if we wanted to move onto the next stage of the competition. I thought I had prepared myself for this; that Ethan wouldn't want to ride up in the same car as me. That he would refuse to look at me. But I hadn't been prepared for a blanket refusal to go. I snatched Georgie's phone and called him back.
"Georgie just tell him to fuck off." For the last three weeks I'd been listening to our demo just to hear his voice. I was surprised to hear it say something new.
"It's me," I'd bitten the two words out. "It's really stupid of you to use the band to hurt me. Your work—you art is being acknowledged. You'd be making a huge mistake not to be there." I'd said it one long breath, half-convinced he'd hung up before I'd finished.
"It's so refreshing to hear you talk about the band." He'd sighed and taken a breath before adding softly, "don't have other people call me for you."
I'd waited a beat for the rest. But it hadn't come. He wasn't even listening. Not really. I'd wanted to reach through the phone and clamp my hands on his shoulders and force him to hear me when I told him that he was fucking himself over. That he was robbing all of us. This was the last chance any of us had. If we lost, I wouldn't have the chance to talk Ethan around, that much had become startlingly clear. For a quick, breathless moment I'd wished he had never told me about the contest. The band had to be successful to keep us together, I knew that, but this was so much worse than playing small gigs and hoping to be noticed.
"You don't answer when I call." I'd said it through gritted teeth because it seemed less tragic now and more childish. I looked up and saw Georgie watching me. I'd turned my back to him, even though I was sure everything I felt about Ethan had been written all over my face for weeks.
"Because I have nothing to say to you." His words had cut in the same part of my chest that had been aching for the past three weeks. I could see now why breaking up with me wasn't enough for him. He couldn't be sure he could hurt me that way because he didn't know how much he meant to me. But he knew how much the band meant. All I could do was curl my fingers tighter around the phone, wishing it was his wrist.
"Ethan, it doesn't have to be this bad." I'd been half-delirious with emotion, not knowing what I meant or if he heard it. When there wasn't a response I'd pulled the phone away and saw the call had been ended. It had felt like the breath had been knocked out of me.
I still hadn't entirely gotten over the conversation. But Ethan's indifference to me felt like a fever I was learning to live with. It was Saturday now and I was sitting in the passenger seat of Henrietta's car. I'd told her she was driving us, knowing she'd be pleased that I wanted anything from her at all. We made it to Denver an hour before the interview, and were double-parked on a side street.
"You're sure he's working now?" I asked Georgie, pinning him with my gaze through the rearview mirror.
"Yeah. But I don't think you should do this." His blue eyes lacked the kind of appeal they might have once had. Now he just seemed like a kid afraid of falling out of favor with his big brother.
"Let him do what he wants Georgie," Henrietta sneered before turning to me. "Just be back in 10 minutes, I have to find a parking garage and I can't afford a fucking ticket."
I got out of the car and swung open the door of the record store.
It looked the same as always; poorly lit, cluttered, with too many posters on the walls to focus on any one of them. There were three girls clustered in the pop/rock section, probably cooing over the latest boy band backwash. I had a flash of wanting to be them. So easily placated by the shallow end of emotions.
"You need to go." The manager was standing behind the counter with her hands already on her hips, prepared to smack my wrist with a ruler or some other trope of old people trying to stop us from not following the status quo. She was a middle-aged woman with dark roots, thinning purple hair, and thick black glasses. I'd only seen her once before now and even then she hadn't acknowledged my presence.
"I just need to talk to Ethan for a second," I said, leaning against the counter. I was exhausted of this go-between nonsense that Ethan was forcing on me. How could he care so much and so little at the same time?
"No. He's in the back. He's not coming out until you leave. So you need to take your high school drama out of here before I fire him for not doing his job." It occurred to me that everyone was on Ethan's side. If he was hiding in back rooms or ignoring my phone calls or avoiding places I was it was my fault and there was no way that Ethan should be expected to act any different. A stack of vinyl records were sitting precariously on the edge of the counter. I wondered if he had just left them there. That she was going to fire him was such a fucking joke I wanted to clutch my stomach and laugh until I puked all over the counter. Instead I just swallowed my spit.
"It'll just take a second," I said, glancing over at the backdoor. He must have seen Henrietta's car. Or Georgie had texted him. The thought alone pissed me off enough that I wanted walk the ten steps it would take me to go into the back. Or go hold Georgie up by his sweatshirt strings and ask him if he wanted to ruin our chances because he didn't want to leave his boyfriend for the summer it would take to tour if we won.
"Leave. This is a business. We're trying to work." I took a step away from her. Was Ethan listening? Was his ear pressed against the swinging door because no one was there to see that for all of his aloof posturing it was all a lie and he was just as invested in this as any of us?
"Fine," I said loudly. "Fine, stay here. Work here today. Work here forever!" For a second I questioned if he was really back there. Was this worth it? I looked over at the girls now staring at me, gaping slack-jawed and only looking away when I flipped them off as I stalked toward the exit.
I threw open the door and got into Henrietta's car.
"Fuck him," Henrietta said without asking me what had happened. I grabbed her pack of cigarettes from the cup holder and lit one. I slammed my foot against her dashboard.
"Fuck everyone," I responded because for all of this bullshit I still couldn't completely blame him.
xx.
We'd spent the last 45 minutes on one side of a long, polished table answering a set of questions from two label execs. I'd never really seen this side of the music business yet. It felt more like my job interview at Harbucks than a doorway to a being a successful goth rock band.
"I really think you need to calm the fuck down," Henrietta said under her breath as we were coming down the stairs from the conference room we'd been in.
I waited until we'd gone out the glass doors to respond to her and by then my words felt deflated. "We had to be the only band that came in without their fucking singer." I ran my tongue hard over my teeth.
"Are you kidding?" Georgie said from behind me. "I thought they seemed really interested in us." I rolled my eyes before I'd even realized I was going to. He just wanted to feel less guilty about making it so easy for Ethan to avoid me.
"We looked unprofessional, incompetent, and uninterested —we're a joke."
I hoped that Ethan was laughing. When we'd gone around and introduced ourselves they kept looking between me and Georgie waiting for one of us to identify ourselves the singer. But it was Henrietta who jumped in with the excuse we'd agreed on ahead of time for where Ethan was. That he was visiting relatives out of state. Might as well have said the dog ate him for believability.
Henrietta finished buttoning her coat and glanced up at me. "It made it seem like we aren't desperate."
I laughed when she said it. Because I was so desperate for this to work that saying anything otherwise felt like some eternal untruth.
"Aren't we?!" I yelled more to the world than to her. At the cars, at the air, at the cement. Maybe I could punch the brick of the building we had just left. I wanted the whole thing to crumble. Isn't that what people do when they lose complete control of their lives?
"Jesus, Dylan!" she grabbed my arm which I hadn't realized was already clenched into a fist and forced me to look at her. Her eyes were steely and coated in thick black mascara. "It would have been great if Ethan had come. He didn't. But guess what, I know how to answer questions too. And after the first minute neither one of those producers realized they were missing anything." Henrietta always thought she was just as good as Ethan. Maybe better. At writing songs, at singing, at picking set lists. None of it was true. And everyone knew it. If the execs in that office were tricked it was only because they didn't know what they were missing.
Over her shoulder Georgie was nodding. I bet she was loving this. I shook my arm out of her grasp. "It was an interview for the band. We're not the band."
"Neither is Ethan!" Henrietta's purple lips stretched around the words.
"I don't see how they were supposed to take us seriously," I said, not caring that I was repeating myself, it was still true. "Without a singer."
Georgie was leaning against the wall sucking on his lipring thoughtfully. "They were probably thinking if they're this good without a frontman; I bet they're amazing when he is around." Henrietta made a face at him like he'd gone a bit too far. "And you were really great too, when they asked us about our influences and other musical questions," Georgie added. "The guy said, 'I'm sure you'll be hearing back from us,' I mean, how can you not take that as a good sign?" Georgie's word vomit screamed trying too hard and I wanted to nod just to make him stop. It didn't matter anyway. It was all over. Ethan had fucked us over or he hadn't. There was no point in dragging this out anymore.
"I really think it went amazing," she was quieter now in a way that made me believe her more. Without the haughtiness in her voice, she seemed like someone recounting facts, not trying to win an argument. "They were clearly impressed with the demo; I mean they said that they were surprised we were all so young. Anyway, that interview just seemed like a formality. I think they'll probably judge it based on the demo alone."
I stared back at the building like maybe I hadn't seen it right until now. How much could I really trust my own judgment anyway? The whole time I'd felt the weight of the empty seat next to me, turning my body so I didn't have to see it out of the corner of my eye. Anyway, given the personality of half the bands I've met at gigs, Georgie alone could have wowed the interviewers. The one interviewer and I had bonded over our shared obsession with Peter Murphy. Maybe that's how things like this happened; you meet someone with enough power and happen to like the same things.
"Come on, I'm fucking freezing," she said, breaking my focus, and leading the way towards the parking garage. I almost felt bad about the quick way she glanced back at me to make sure I was following her.
"It went great," Georgie said next to me. I was going to tell him that I'd heard enough. But his cellphone was pressed to his ear. He laughed at something I couldn't hear, and I wished he had been talking to me. I faced forward again, staring at the striped tights Henrietta was wearing. She'd dressed up for today, I only noticed now that it was over.
When we got to the car I slumped into the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. My anger had been stomped into a heavy dread that sat in the back of my throat. I tried to replay the interview in my mind, focusing on the positive things that Georgie and Henrietta pointed out. They had seemed impressed with the demo. Maybe it was enough, maybe that was all that mattered.
I leaned my head against the window, the sleepless night before catching up with me. Henrietta had left the music off, so the only noise was the intermittent clicking of her turn signal. I only opened my eyes when the motion of going forward stopped and we made a wide turn.
"What are you doing?" I lifted my head up to stare out into the diner parking lot she was pulling into alongside the highway. I could see her car mirrored in the reflective siding covering the building.
"I'm hungry; I've been driving all day." Over the door hung a blinking sign with a clock in the center that said 'Round the Clock Diner. People were probably murdered here and never heard from again. I wondered if anyone had come here hoping for it.
"Eat when you get home," I said, turning to her. Being in Henrietta's presence for the interview and the car ride was necessary, but eating lunch with her seemed to cross some line. But I should have known she'd find a way to exploit this situation.
"We still have another hour." She grabbed her bag from the backseat as Georgie's finger hovered over the seatbelt buckle.
"So?" Any charity I'd been feeling earlier had been recycled in the stale air of the car too many times.
"So I'm driving and I want coffee," she said as she opened the door. A gust of frozen air rushed the heat out of the car. She stood in the doorway looking down at me with a frown.
"Well I don't want to go to the diner." I stopped myself from saying with you. I'd probably thrown enough tantrums for the day.
She sighed like I was a child refusing to take a bath. "Jesus. Then stay in the car." The car shook when she shut the door. She didn't say anything to Georgie as they walked in together.
I watched them disappear through the front door as my fingers drummed against the window. It was cold here and a couple of old people in the booth by the window were staring out at me like I was preparing to deal drugs to local third graders. I ducked my head down and scrapped some of the polish off my nails. I could feel them continuing to watch me through the two layers of glass.
I slammed the car door and stood in the parking lot, walking to the other end of the building. Between Denver and South Park, we were nowhere. In front of me the highway felt too close and all I could think about how quick and how easy it was for someone to vanish down it. I pulled out a cigarette and hadn't even lit it before deciding it was too cold to stand out here and smoke. I was surprised it wasn't snowing. I placed it back in the pack; it was clear it had been disturbed. Nothing ever goes back the way it was. I stared at the crooked white tube longer than was probably mentally healthy before admitting defeat and pushing the door of the diner open.
Henrietta passed me her menu when I sat down next to Georgie. They already had coffee but Henrietta waved a hand at the waitress and made her bring me a cup.
"They have sweet potato pancakes," she said as I scanned the menu, knowing that's what I was looking for.
I shrugged and kept reading, trying to convince myself to get anything else when the waitress took our order. Over the speakers 1950's love songs played too loud. At first I thought it was to block out the roar of cars on the highway. But more likely it was for the benefit of all the old people hunched over their booths complaining about how big the portions were. I had to glance up at Georgie and Henrietta just to remember that I was one of them, that I was still young.
"Sweet potato pancakes." I mumbled. The waitress made me repeat myself and I sneered at her back as she walked away.
Henrietta pulled her writing notebook from her bag and started crossing something out. Georgie was on his phone texting next to me. I stared down at my coffee. I guess this is how I'd spent most days of my life. When my coffee was cool enough to drink, I pretended that I'd willed it so.
xxx.
I waited until Henrietta had disappeared around a corner before walking away from my house. It was too early to go home, and I didn't want to anyway. It felt defeatist, accepting the day for what it had been. The sky looked like it could barely hold its own heaviness – a party decoration left up too long with wilting tape. I hoped it would fall.
I rounded the corner thinking of the way they said we'd be hearing back from them. I turned it over in my mind. They might just say that to everyone. Or it might mean that we'd hear back either way.
The soles of my converse were wearing out, and it felt like my feet were scraping against the concrete as I walked with no real destination. The cemetery gates were open as I passed, and I thought it was as good of a place as any to pass time. I almost didn't notice that anyone was sitting on the only bench until I was in front of it.
"Leave," I said, hoping that I was still best at securing the graveyard, if nothing else. I'd had enough of putting on a show for one day.
"Hi Dylan." Mike had a habit of dismissing my annoyance like it was a quirky personality trait.
A drawing pad was open in his lap. He ran his thumb over the dull tip of a charcoal pencil as he looked back at the weeping stone angel he was sketching. I thought about the time when we were kids and he told me that he was just as dark as me, maybe darker. It was no truer now.
He took a breath and turned back to me. "If you give me ten minutes I'll sketch you mid-eye roll." At least he was self-aware.
"Draw me and I'll drive that pencil through your heart."
He smiled a bit. He would probably always be amused by vampire references. I wasn't sure if I thought that was dependable or just sad.
I was annoyed by everything about him in this moment; his crossed legs, his shiny doc martin boot hanging over the ground, his fingerless gloves, the way he'd taken both of his headphones out of his ears and wrapped them neatly around his iPod before slipping it back in his bag. His fingers moved so deliberately I was briefly entranced. I held my eyes shut for a moment before looking away. I was just tired. I picked up his pencil case before sitting down on the bench next to him.
"Put out your cigarette please," he said, glancing over at me. "It's killing us both you know."
"I wish I could pick and choose." I blew the smoke against his hair, hoping it would blot out the bright green dye. He twisted his face away from me and breathed into the wind. I hoped he realized that this redneck town had more cancer in its fresh air from everyone's 1980's compact car emissions than I had in a pack of cigarettes.
"At least there's no such thing as second-hand heroin," he said when he was sure it was safe to turn back.
I laughed a bit into my cigarette. "I was never doing heroin you twit." He stopped shading the ground around the base of the statue. He sat back against the bench, glancing over at me like he couldn't tell if I was serious. I wondered if it had bothered him, imagining me turning his cash into something to shoot into my arm.
"Geez Dylan, you seem particularly touchy tonight. Did you want to talk about it?" It was almost unfathomable that someone could deliver that last part without a hint of sarcasm.
"Talk about what?" I turned to him with what I hoped was an incredulous look. "Our feelings?"
"I'm not goth; I don't deny that boys can cry," he said, poking me in the arm with his pencil, completely ignoring my clear disinterest in the subject. For a second I thought he'd driven past Ethan's apartment building and watched me sitting on the curb wiping my eyes on the edges of my sleeves. But it was more probable he was making a Cure reference. Not both, he wasn't that clever.
I stared down at where the pencil had touched me. "No, that's just you when you run out of cherry-flavored lip gloss." I said. He just licked his lips and turned back to his drawing. He was halfway through a sketch book that was marked by post-it notes labeled with different subjects. Some said friends, another said still life, the post-it at the section he was in now was labeled angels.
For a second it was important that he knew I hadn't been funneling his money into some insatiable drug addiction. "I was recording a demo for my band and I had to pay for the studio time." It sounded so innocent when I boiled it down to the barest facts. Maybe everything did. I thought about writing it on a piece of paper and sliding it under Ethan's door.
"I'm surprised your band didn't already have a demo," he said, effectively taking all the fun out of bragging. He smudged the charcoal with his finger.
I took a final drag of my cigarette before throwing it in the direction of the statue he was drawing. "There was a contest and you had to submit one. If we win we get a record contract."
He raised an eyebrow. "Wow, a record contract. I knew that you were serious about your band, but that'd put you on a whole different level."
I was glad someone knew I was dedicated. Mike was probably just pretending to be interested though. I shouldn't hold on too tightly to anything he said. He just didn't have it in him to be an asshole like me.
It was starting to flurry a bit as we sat there, and he packed his notepad into his bag, obviously jumping on the first excuse to escape. I stared at the Minor Threat pin stabbed through a corner of the canvas bag, and the travel mug that was leaning against it. He would be the type of person to bring a travel mug places. I was going to say so out loud but I could feel Mike staring at me, his hands unmoving as they rested against his bag. I swallowed my comment down and waited for the inevitable excuse to leave. But he didn't say anything.
He was staring at my collar with a heavy expression. I knew what he was seeing; a purple bruise that was stretched over my clavicle. I'd been so careful to keep it covered at the interview today in front of the people there. I guess I had forgotten Mike counted as a person too. I tugged my coat closer to my neck, continuing to watch him until he met my eyes, daring him to say something about it.
But for a while neither of us said anything, he turned back to the statue he had been drawing. It looked more interesting in charcoal than it did in real life. I tried to decide if there was anything meaningful in the idea as I lit another cigarette. He didn't complain this time and I was a little disappointed as I blew the smoke down away from us. I hated when someone learned something about you that made you into more than a caricature of a person. It was usually when people started expecting things from you. I was tired of never meeting anyone's expectations of me.
When he turned back to me I stared at the plaid scarf draped around his neck. It wasn't even a real scarf, just thin fabric; he must be cold too. "So when do you find out if you've won?" he said. If he was still searching for the bruise or signs of more I couldn't tell. He probably wasn't; I knew better than to assume.
I felt a pang in my chest. I didn't know why. I tried to ignore it as I struggled to remember what I was supposed to be talking about. My mind was stretched in too many directions to travel from one end to the other. I took a drag of my cigarette. "We made it through the first phase. I'll probably hear something back soon."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you won," Mike said without a trace of jealousy. I wondered how many other people felt genuinely glad for others. I was sure I didn't know any of them. "You already play like someone with a record deal."
I looked away from him and at the accumulating snow on the bench between us feeling like I should compliment his band too or something. But I could tell that he didn't expect me to. That he was sincere and friendly and that's why people liked him. That's why he'd always have friends.
"What do you know," I mumbled. I shifted away from him, a bit embarrassed by what he'd said.
"Well I am in a band too, you know." He had an eyebrow raised. Where did people go to get taught how to act during social dialogues? I always felt two tones behind the conversation.
"Is that what you call sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar and flicking your hair over your shoulders?"
Mike laughed and tugged his hair behind his ears. "I can't help that I was born beautiful."
"More like pay $80 for a cut and dye job at a trendy barber shop." It was probably the first effortless conversation I'd had in weeks. It felt like he was stage whispering the script from the wings. How long had it been since I'd spoken with someone where there wasn't something to be won or lost?
"And what would you advise? That I dip my head in kool aid and slice the edges with a butcher knife?"
"You sassy bitch," I said dully, rolling my eyes.
Mike leaned back, looking pleased as he stared out at the headstones.
I finished my cigarette and stuffed my hands in my pockets, wishing it would just stop snowing. The flurries were turning into flakes and beginning to coat the ground, I had a panicked notion that we'd both be buried alive if we didn't move right now. But he was digging through his pockets for his keys.
"Let's go to Tweek Bros. I'll buy you a coffee if you explain how to record a demo." He stood up, stretching his back a bit. I wondered how long he'd been here before I showed up. He started walking to where his car was parked alongside the curb. I didn't know how I'd missed it walking in. I could see the Paramore bumper sticker from here.
It was barely dark. And now that it was snowing this bad, if I didn't go with him, I'd have to sit here until I was sure my mom was home. Maybe I would freeze to death.
"Come on Dylan," he said, making my name way more sing-songy than it sounded from anyone else's lips. He was waiting between the gates for me like this was something we did all the time, and of course I'd come.
"Fine," I said more to myself than to him before stepping in the imprints his boots had left in the snow. "You don't have to be such a fag about it though," I mumbled.
Mike turned back to me, "I am Count Fagula, right?" I looked at my chapped hands. I didn't know if that was a joke or if I'd reached the end of Mike's daily charity quota.
We sat in the car as we waited for his wipers to clear off the snow already piled on the windshield. If I stayed quiet long enough maybe he would forget I was here.
"One day when you go through puberty I'll teach you how to drive a car." Mike said as he flicked on the heat.
"Why so I can go from one end of this shitty of town to the other…but quicker?"
He laughed, "Yeah so you can realize what a waste of time it was… but quicker." We both watched a flatbed truck go past with a Are you following Jesus this close? bumper sticker. Mike let out a hiss of air, "I hate it here."
South Park was a waste of both of our time. With the street lights flickering on over the snow, it seemed ignorant of its own uselessness. I picked up Mike's CD case and started paging through it.
"Who made you all these mixes?" I asked, staring at the different handwriting in sharpie on the blank CDs.
"Admirers," Mike said, blinking away his despondent expression to flash a smile at me. If any other person had said that I'd think they were fucking with me. I ran my fingers over the curling ends of the L in "love" that some girl had written carefully, hoping it would matter. I closed the CD case and put it back at my feet. How did anyone listen to mixed CDs other people made them?
The heat was blasting cold air against my cheeks, and I tried to make myself smaller. There were barely any cars on the road and the ones that were, were going extra slow, Mike included. I would have mentioned it if I didn't think I'd be setting myself up for another dig at my driving ineptitude.
"Mr. Tweak said we could play another gig tomorrow night." He obviously felt the need to fill up the silence. I wished you could just tell people that you weren't just around them for the conversation.
"That's something," I mumbled.
"I guess it's not really your scene."
I shrugged.
"You'll have to tell me when your next show is, now that you're going to be famous; I'll be able to say that I saw you before you sold out."
"Yeah," I said, trying to imagine our next show like I really thought it would happen. I felt the hinge break off my emotions again, and tried to swallow the feeling. "We'll never be fucking conformist sell outs."
I don't know why I said it like that, because I knew Mike would laugh and I could be a caricature again. Maybe that's all we both had going for ourselves.