Black Bird of the Gallows(58)

In the light of the new day, the fire’s burning low.

Can’t stop searching, for some spark of hope.

Find your way to dry land, the sea will drag me down.

Swimming to the far shore, to the lonely underground.

You’ll be gone before I’ve drowned.

Before I ever make a sound,

I’ll never make a sound…

There’s an instrumental bit between the two verses, and I glance at my friends during the break. Lacey plays one keyboard part live. Not easy, considering she has to split the keyboard sounds in order to include a little violin bit she added. Deno’s head is bent over two tablets. He’s manually mixing the tracks of this song we frantically built this week. I’m on the guitar, backing up the track I recorded earlier today.

This is the most “band-like” of my songs, and the difference between my usual DJ set and this semi-live performance feels so… I can’t describe it. The music flows, moves around me like a living thing. It’s organic, growing. Being created one beat at a time. My voice comes out clear and dreamy, and I don’t have to force it. While I’m singing, there’re no nerves, no fears. We should be on the stage, not in the booth. It shouldn’t surprise me to realize this, but it does.

I launch into the second verse and chance a glance at the crowd. Artie’s keeping the lights off me until this song is over. Blue light undulates like water on the ceiling before shifting to purple, then red. Light, made to look like flying birds, plays over the crowd.

Euphoria rolls through me, filling my head with the glorious sensations. I thought I knew myself. I thought I knew what music did to me, but this beats everything. Playing my own music is triumph, release, freedom. It’s the sun on my face on the first warm day of the year. Cool water in the blistering heat.

A weight shifts, sloughs off like skin from a shedding snake. And suddenly it doesn’t matter what my classmates think of this. If they laugh, or never come here again, or beat my ass in the parking lot at the end of the night. It doesn’t matter. My throat tightens with emotion at the sight of my two friends up here with me. I wrote the words and much of the music, but I wouldn’t be here without them. I don’t even know how to express how grateful to them I am, for being here, all along.

Then the song ends. Reality returns.

Silence. Dead air.





26-a warning sign


My heart pounds. My hands start to shake so violently, Deno reaches over and turns off my amp to avoid a discordant mess.

Then the boom of applause. Whistles. Feet, stamping for more.

Oh my God.

They liked it.

A white spotlight hits me square in the face. It’s hard and honest and renders me completely blind. I push my glasses to the top of my head and try not to squint. “You know me as Sparo, but some of you know my real name.” I turn to Deno and Lacey. “This is the ridiculously talented Lacey Taggert on keys.” Lacey offers a regal nod as more applause and whistles break out. “My musical partner, my friend, Deno Steinway, on everything else.” I turn and bow to them. “Both of you, thank you.”

Deno’s surprised mouth whips up in a grin. He leans over to the mic. “And let’s hear it for Sparo, aka, Cadence’s own Angie Dovage,” he says, and the crowd erupts again. The energy flows over me, fills me, and none of it feels tainted, contaminated by the darkness of my mother’s mistakes. If anything, my experiences have made music the empowering force in my life. The thing I used to do to forget myself is the thing that has made me more myself.

Tears prick my eyes. I flick the sunglasses down over them, watery from both emotion and that intense spotlight. I glance up toward Artie, and the light fades. Deno’s deft fingers fly over the tablet to start up the next song. It’s another one of ours, a faster, older one, recorded on a day long before we considered doing anything like this. The crowd woots. If Kiera Shaw is out there booing, she’s being drowned out.

And then I see him.

Reece.

Alone in the center rear of the floor. Arms crossed, feet apart. He looks like he’s standing on the deck of a ship. Thank goodness there’re no vocals in this song. I’d never get them out. Our gazes meet through the rush of spinning purple light. He doesn’t smile. There’s an intensity about him that pricks my senses. I push it away. A surge of aimless anger hits me square in the gut. Why did I have to go and fall for a guy like this? Someone unable to stay in one place. Someone who spends his life chasing death. Feeding off it. Having feelings for him has cursed me, too.

My gaze moves to my laptop. To the floor. To anything but him. I’ve ignored him for the better part of this week. I can do it for a few hours more. From the corner of my eye, I see Lacey pluck Deno’s shirt and point as a shadow falls over the booth.

Reece leans over the side, head tilted toward me in a distinctly birdlike manner. His eyes are intensely black, and his irises look bigger than usual. The hair on my arms stands up. My fingers tighten around my laptop. “What is it, Reece?”

He winces at my clipped tone. “The air has changed.” His voice is even, but his face is urgent. The skin around his cheekbones appears pulled taut. Shadows dip under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks. He looks…tired, hungry. He leans forward and drops his voice. “It’s time. You need to get out of here.”

I set the laptop down with a quickening pulse. “Are you sure?”