Saint Anything(104)

Layla: Eric just informed me that my outfit isn’t meta enough. What the hell does that mean?

Not enough black? I wrote her back.

Mac: Our sound check sucked and everyone’s fighting about clothes. Kill me now.

You’ll be great, I replied to him.

There was a sound out in the hallway, past my half-open door. I paused, listening. A moment later, I heard my mom moving around the War Room and went back to my phone.

Lot of people here, Layla had written in the interim.

Nervous?

No. A pause. Then: Yes.

Another beep. Mac: Might have to smack Eric. For common good.

Try to resist, I wrote him back. Hear you have a big crowd.

Showcase does. Not us.

Typical, I thought. Back to Layla.

Not right w/out you. Wish you were here.

Beep. Mac. I flipped back to his screen. Rather be at Commons Park with you.

It was dizzying, carrying on both of these conversations at once. So I was grateful that I could give them each the same answer.

Me too.

It was seven forty-five when Irv sent the HiThere! invite. I hit ACCEPT and then he appeared, his face taking up the entire screen. I could barely hear him, the noise of the crowd was so loud.

“They are taking the stage,” he reported, as a girl with platinum hair bumped him from behind.

“How was the first band?”

“Awful. Basically amplified screaming. We’re lucky there’s anyone still here.” He shifted, letting a guy in a leather jacket pass. “Everyone’s in place but Eric. He’s . . . Oh, here he comes. He’s making his entrance through the crowd.”

I lay back on my bed, smiling. “Of course he is.”

Some music was beginning, just a couple of chords, a bit of drumming. “Okay,” Irv yelled. “You ready?”

Outside my doorway, someone was passing by. But for once, I didn’t care. “Yes,” I said. “Show me.”

I turned my phone sideways just as the picture changed. Thanks to Irv’s perfect vantage point and massive reach, I could see the entire stage, as well as the first row of the crowd pressed up against it. There was Eric in his fedora, angling himself at the microphone. To his right was Ford, shuffling his big feet. And on the other side, Layla, in her cowboy boots and a red dress, hair pulled back loosely at her neck. Eric glanced at her, smiled, and began to play.

Nervous for them, I touched my Saint Anything pendant, then turned up my phone volume as loud as I could. As Eric launched into the lyrics of the Logan Oxford song I knew by heart, I reached to the picture, pinching it further open, closer in. A moment to focus, and I found what I wanted. He was bent over his drums, playing hard, his hair hanging in his face. Maybe I was the only one looking closely. I’d never know. But he wasn’t invisible, not to me. There you are, I thought. There you are.

*

Any word?

Not yet.

It was after midnight, and all the bands had performed. Now it was just up to the judges and showcase sponsors to pick a winner. Meanwhile, we waited, everyone else at the club and me in my room. I was trying to study, but couldn’t focus, distracted by Mac and Layla’s collective nervousness (I had never texted this much in one short period, which was really saying something) as well as the noise I kept hearing from the room next door. Not just talk radio this time, but the sound of packing. Angry packing.

I hadn’t realized it was happening until after their set was over. They’d played well, with Layla’s song a highlight, and although the final chorus from the last number got a bit bungled, I was pretty sure nobody else noticed. Throughout, the music was loud, even through my phone speaker, as was the applause and cheering that followed it. Once Irv and I hung up, it was suddenly very quiet. That’s when I heard the first thump, followed shortly after by the knock of a drawer being slammed shut. By the time the closet door slammed, my parents were outside my door.

“Ames is leaving in the morning,” my mom told me when I opened it. “We just wanted to let you know.”

Another bang. My dad raised his eyebrows. I said, “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” he told me. “It was a mutual decision.”

The continuing racket of the next hour said otherwise. Every drawer opened was closed with emphasis, the closet door rattling its frame after each use. It was concerning enough that, in the sudden quiet during one of Ames’s smoke breaks, I went over, poking the door open and peering in. I glanced over my shoulder, then went to the bed, where a row of boxes sat waiting. One was filled with books, paperback novels and a couple of titles about recovery and addiction. Another held some linens and towels, a few balled-up socks. The last was odds and ends: coffee cups, lighters, charging cords. In one corner was tucked a stack of pictures.

The one on top was of him and Peyton, standing on a sandy beach, probably during their Jacksonville trip. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were smiling. I flipped to the next: my brother again, this time at our kitchen table, a coffee drink at his elbow. He had one eyebrow raised, half-annoyed, waiting for the shutter to click. A shot of Ames and Marla standing in front of a Christmas tree. The last, at the bottom, was from Peyton’s graduation dinner at Luna Blu. I remembered my mom handing the waitress her phone so we could all be in it. My brother was in the middle in a crisp white shirt, my parents on either side of him. I was next to my mom, with Ames beside me, Marla on his other side. We were all smiling, the twinkling lights above us blurring as the flash popped.