Battle of the Bands

by Eric Smith

  “There are days that I pretend that I’m okay, but I’m not, and that’s okay. You’ve seen me bare and you’ve seen me there. You are the one that hurt the most. How could you? Oh, baby, how could you?”

  A brief and slow instrumental break.

  “I loved in the shadows of the night, waited in the dying light. Running in between our history and a future mystery. I’m not losing sleep. Even though you cut me deep. How could you? Oh, baby, how could you?”

  My eyes scan the crowd. I see Fin there with his friend Aimee, and they’re swaying with each other from side to side like they’re at prom. It seems like people are actually enjoying this song that we came up with in Charity’s parents’ garage a few weeks ago when we first found out about this event.

  I make out Orlando in the crowd, and he’s holding hands with that Goga guy from his new band. I close my eyes as I sing, transporting myself into the music, away from here, so I can focus.

  When the last C chord rings out, the whole crowd’s cheering with applause and loud screams. I even catch a few people in the front row wiping away tears from their eyes. And shoot, before I know it, I’m doing the same.

  There’s something about the lyrics that just hit me all over again hard in the gut.

  I loved in the shadows of the night, waited in the dying light. Running in between our history and a future mystery. I’m not losing sleep. Even though you cut me deep. How could you? Oh, baby, how could you?

  We’re backstage with all the other bands, huddled up waiting to hear the results on who’s winning the first, second, and third place prizes. I summon the courage and confidence from somewhere, maybe deep within the core of the earth. “Guys, I have something to tell you both.”

  “Shhhhh! They’re about to announce the winners. What if it’s us?”

  “No, listen to me, Trey,” I say. “This is important, too.”

  “What’s wrong?” Charity asks. She grips my hand, her fingers interlocking with mine. I don’t know why something always has to be wrong. But her words trigger something inside me, and instantly, there are tears streaming down my checks, dripping off my chin. This feels so fucking hard. I play back some of Fin’s words: You can’t keep yourself in a box forever.

  I swallow hot boiling spit before opening up my mouth.

  “I — I — I’m . . . I think that I’m bisexual,” I say, stumbling over the words like rocks on a sidewalk. “And I don’t want anything to change between us, but I just thought that I had to be honest with myself.”

  “Holy shit!” Trey says. “You’re serious.”

  “I am,” I say, unsure of why I’d say that as a joke. “I’ve known for years that I at least liked . . . guys.” I get that feeling like my entire body wants me to throw up, but I don’t and can’t.

  “Whoa” is all Trey says next, but Charity seems absolutely stunned.

  I take a deep breath. “And there’s something else,” I add. “I hooked up with Orlando when you and I first started dating, Charity,” I admit.

  She lets go of my hand, which is sweating bullets now. “What? What do you mean?” She wrinkles her forehead and takes a step back.

  “Like, you know —” Suddenly, my words leave me for a moment. I don’t want to talk about everything I did with Orlando right now.

  “Butt stuff!?” Trey blurts out loud — so loud other people who are waiting to hear the Battle of the Bands results crane their necks around to listen. “What’s everyone looking at? Mind your business,” Trey shouts. Everyone turns back, returning to their own conversations again.

  I nod at Charity like we’ve got this telepathic way of communicating the truth.

  “You did it with Orlando? But we haven’t even done it. You said you wanted to wait to do it with me.”

  “Ohhh. Shit.” Trey puts a fist up to his mouth like he’s watching someone get sucker punched. In a way, my news is sucker punching.

  “I know I said that. And I feel like a dickhead for doing stuff with Orlando.”

  She looks puzzled, and I can see the tears pooling in her eyes. She’s hurt, pissed, sad, all of these at full capacity. “I don’t . . . I don’t even know what to say right now, Q.”

  “So, you’re telling us that you’re bisexual? That’s actually kind of dope. Give me a hug. Thanks for telling me.” Trey opens his arms, and I meet him there for a hug, feeling a mixture of happiness, relief, and curiosity.

  “But are you breaking up with me?” Charity asks once Trey and I break away.

  “No,” I say. “I mean — I don’t know — I mean, maybe, but I don’t want to. I don’t think I want to. All I know is that I had to come clean, come out, I had to tell you the truth.”

  Charity pulls me to the side, and she lifts up my chin. God, I love her dimpled smile, her freckles around her nose, her medium-brown skin like caramel, and the way her hair curls into coils. “I know I’m supposed to say something supportive. I don’t know. But right now I don’t think I can. This is a lot. I know it’s a lot for you, but it’s also a lot for me.”

  I look down at my shoes. I feel so damn bad. “I know it’s a lot. I’m sorry.”

  “I just think . . . it would’ve been nice to know all of this sooner. My cousin just came out a few months ago and she’s eleven. But everyone’s different. Maybe you weren’t ready. I get it. Sorry, I’m externally processing all of this. Can we — can we just talk about this later?” She wipes away more tears, and I want to wipe them away for her, but I don’t want to attempt to do it and have her reject my help by swatting away my hand.

  “Sure. Yeah . . . we can talk about it later. Are we . . . good for now, though?” That feels shitty to say, or at least the way it comes out does. “I don’t want to go out there and accept first place if you’re mad at me. You matter more than any Battle of the Bands prize.”

  She smiles, and usually I’d see the gap in between her teeth, but this one is tight-lipped and bittersweet, so I can’t. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re cool.”

  Trey signals us to come back over toward him and wait in anxious expectation for our band name to be called. He’s nearly biting his nails, and it’s kind of funny, watching him, but the whole time I can only think about one thing, thanks to Fin, and that’s that maybe the liar this whole time wasn’t love and wasn’t my sexuality and wasn’t the world and wasn’t Orlando. Maybe this whole time it was me? Maybe I was so content with this secret box I put Orlando and me in that I lost myself along the way — or pieces of myself. I’ve been keeping the real me hidden all this time, and I’m finally ready to break free.

  That’s what this is.

  My breaking-free moment. I’m peeling back the tape of the box I’ve put myself in.

  I’m ready to break free, and opening up to Trey and telling Charity the truth feels like a big first step for me. I know I’ve got a lot to work through with Charity and there’ll be a series of bumps to ride in the days to come, but I’m ready for them. Until then, I’m content with being here with my best friend and my mega-awesome, fantastic, beautiful girlfriend who didn’t completely explode on me when I told her that I’m bisexual and that I did things with Orlando behind her back. I don’t expect things to be easy, and I’m silently praying that Charity won’t break up with me after tonight. I don’t know what the future holds for us and our relationship, but I’m okay with not knowing right now. I’m just so fucking pumped that I have them — OGs who don’t take the easy way out, like Orlando, who love me enough to stay here even when things are messy.

  Have you ever felt that moment

  The beat where your heart stops thrumming

  Your thoughts start coming

  And your world won’t ever go back, go back?

  Have you ever lived that feeling?

  It’s almost too raw and reeling

  In a blink you’re smart

  It’s the start the start of the end of what’s gone and

  Have you ever felt that moment that moment that moment that moment that —

&nbs
p; My boyfriend of two years is talking to me.

  Talking? Ranting. In my direction. I cannot hear a word coming out of his mouth, but I can sense that he is not going to let up anytime soon.

  I’m watching his lips. I had them memorized long before I even kissed him, that perfect valley in his perfect upper lip, and now all I can see is a bubble of spittle that forms and pops in the corner of his mouth over and over and over again as the rant continues apace.

  The wind blows past the front stoop and his blond hair hardly moves. He’s wearing gel. I am dating a guy who wears hair gel, not just for shows but for school, for trips out to the store to get a soda. And he wears it specifically to look dirty. To look like a real person who’s, like, lived.

  He stops talking, and the sudden silence startles a blink out of me. He stares at my hand.

  I’m holding my keys.

  “You gonna lock the door or what?” he asks.

  I turn away, fitting the key into my front-door lock with completely numb fingers, and he starts up again.

  “They’re such complete posers, you know? Like they seriously think you can make music that matters from, like, the carpeted basement of their subdivision Tract House Number Two.”

  Okay, so, I’ve caught up now. He’s talking about Safe & Sound, which I should have immediately guessed, because he’s always and forever talking about them. You would think he wrote fan fiction about them, they take up so much space in his brain. He wants me to nod and agree and cheer him up — Yeah, Aaron, they’re a high school band, they’re all gonna work for like an ad agency one day, you and Big Talk are the real deal — but instead I hear my own voice, a flat drone, saying, “I live in a subdivision.”

  “Yeah.” He rolls his eyes slowly, languorously. “But. You know what I’m saying.”

  He lives in a McMansion on a wooded eight-acre property five miles outside of town, but because he dislikes his parents, he thinks that lends him an air of authenticity as a musician, and holy, holy, holy . . . I cannot breathe. How am I dating this person? How has it lasted two years? What is happening?

  My heart is beating so fast that stars are gathering, but my boyfriend doesn’t notice. He’s ambling toward the car, speculating about what songs Safe & Sound will play, snickering to himself. He can only amble, can only snicker, not belly-laugh, because his pants are so tight that I had to zip them for him.

  I zipped. His pants. For him. No less than ten minutes ago. Oh my God.

  He’s stopped talking again. “What’s the matter? Are we going, or . . . ?”

  I just blink.

  He blinks back. “Were you . . . ? Did you want to change clothes? We don’t have that long, Jess, but I mean . . . I guess I can wait.”

  He leans against the hood of my car, checking his phone.

  I inhale fire and exhale: “Why would you think I wanted to change clothes?”

  He doesn’t look up from his texting. “I was just surprised that’s what you chose to wear.”

  I’m wearing jeans and a black tank top and black boots, and there is nothing wrong with what I’m wearing, and I finally, finally know that.

  He must sense the gamma waves of rage radiating from my every pore because he looks up slowly and pockets his phone. “No, you’re right, you . . . I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be onstage, so who cares, right? It’s cool that you’re willing to, like, fade in when you need to. Ahhhh, you’re perfect.”

  He steps forward, half smiling, head cocked, beckoning. I vaguely remember this expression working in the past, the gravitational pull of it, the way I would step forward and melt against him.

  I walk briskly toward my beige Buick, an ancient hand-me-down from my grandfather that Aaron mocks at least every third day, begging me to upgrade to something cooler, even though he hasn’t so much as attempted to learn to drive, let alone get his own damn car, and therefore has no grounds for complaining.

  He’s still squinting at me. He throws his hands in the air. “What, are you pissed about the subdivision thing? You know you’re better than this.”

  He gestures to my house, and I open my driver-side car door, and before he can languidly reach for the passenger-side handle, I throw myself across the seat and slam the palm of my hand down hard on the ancient uncool manual lock. Shump.

  He gapes at me through the closed window. “Oh . . . kay?”

  I turn the ignition.

  “Haha!” He raps on the glass. “Real funny, okay, enough, let’s get there. I want to beat Safe & Sound to sound check.”

  I don’t look at him. I check my mirrors and hit the gas. Behind me, I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or if I can really hear Aaron Crenshaw scream, “What the fuck, Jess?! You’re my ride!”

  I begin to laugh. And laugh. Only vaguely hearing it. I drive and I turn on the radio, a sharp chop to the on button, just like the one I gave to the lock to keep him out. It’s the crackling college station, the only one Aaron ever lets us listen to, but I breathe in an electric breath and switch it to his worst nightmare, to Hot 98, and crank the Top 40 up to eleven.

  They’re playing a terrible song. Truly awful. I laugh and listen and try to sing along, but I can’t even find a tune.

  Where in the hell am I even driving besides away?

  I blink and see a strip mall, a line of trees dressing up the parking lot, the place with the crafts store and the Starbucks where my friends and I used to hang out and feel grown up before I leveled up to a boyfriend and weekend plans. I wonder if Lydia’s there right now, drinking a chai latte and playing snap with some new friend.

  Jesus, Jess, probably not, it’s, what? Five? And I’m pretty sure I just ran that red light.

  I blink hard. This is bad driving. At least now I know where I was heading in my fugue state. The school. “The venue,” Aaron called it this morning, like he was on a world tour and this was the next stop. I haven’t delivered him to the venue, but I did drive there anyway, like I’m on autopilot, like I’ve been programmed to arrive at this destination at this exact time, and good Lord, it would explain so many questionable decisions from the past two years if it turned out that I was, in fact, a robot.

  There’s a fair number of cars in the parking lot already. About half have parents sitting in the driver’s seats, scrolling on their phones or, in a few particularly sad cases, napping. I don’t pull in. I speed up, drive past. I make a right. When I get to the corner, by the old playground, I make another right. And then another, and then, hey now, I’m back where I started. And then I do it again.

  On the third circle of the block, I panic. I don’t know what to do. I pull in. I park. I get out of the car and follow a couple of freshmen carrying ukulele cases into the auditorium entrance. The bustle of a whole lot of musicians getting ready buffets me as soon as we enter the dank, dark, velvet-draped space, the site of so many stultifying assemblies and earnest attempts at musical theater glory, and Jesus — these aren’t my thoughts. They’re Aaron’s! He’s infected my brain. The Addams Family was really good last year! He was the one who was too cool to come see it, not me.

  I’m at the stage. I’m climbing up and walking into the wings, only because the people I was walking behind were heading in that direction. They stop and talk to a girl with a clipboard, and only then do I realize that I am not in a band and have no reason to be here and turn to leave.

  “Jess!”

  I turn back, my neck tingling. Aaron’s bandmate April sits perched on a tall crate, her shiny blue bass guitar propped jauntily behind her. She’s wearing jean shorts over bright green fishnets and her usual dirty white Converse sneakers. Her blond bob forms two sharp V’s pointing straight at her bright pink lips. It looks freshly cut. She might have done it herself.

  Her shirt is super slouchy. At this angle, I can see her fuchsia bra strap, her shadowed collarbone, her —

  “Jess?” She smiles. I’m staring. “You okay?”

  “I’m here!” That is not an answer.

  “Yeah. I’m gl
ad.” Her eyebrows are sky-high.

  This is awkward but, to be honest, less awkward than usual. The new usual. This might be the first time we’ve had a one-on-one conversation, just the two of us, since the night things got weird. Pleasantly, unexpectedly, completely weird. Jay’s party.

  Speaking of whom . . .

  “Yo yo yo, where’s A-Man?” Jay appears, hand raised for me to high-five.

  I do it. I high-five. My hands are regaining a little bit of feeling, so that’s something. Then I realize what he’s asked me and say, “Um.”

  “So we missed sound check. I know, I know, I swear they told us the wrong time, it was not my bad. He’s gonna be pissed. Is he in a good mood?” Jay leans in, hands clasped. “Please tell me he’s in a good mood.”

  “I’m going to guess that he is not in a good mood.” I close my eyes.

  Why did I come here? There is no point in me being here without Aaron. I should have just driven him here and then driven away, never to return.

  Wallace lopes slowly over, twirling one of his lucky drumsticks, nearly ramming into three passing musicians, and yay — the band’s all here! Except it isn’t! I’ve just completely screwed them all over and then turned up to . . . what? To stare at them?

  Even Wallace is staring back, his drumstick steady in his hand. “Damn, Jess. You look how I feel.”

  I have turned into Wallace.

  A voice booms over the speakers, drowned instantly by a loud screech of feedback. Mr. Bolivar steps back, muttering to himself, then tries again more cautiously.

  “All right, all right! Are we all ready to rock out?”

  The audience sounds like they’re not sure whether to snicker, groan, or cheer, and I use the momentary distraction to do what I apparently do best: flee the scene.

  The backstage bustle forms a tight tunnel around me as I make my escape, hardly feeling my feet, like I’m standing still on a moving walkway at an airport, heading to my gate, everyone else heading in the other direction. The auditorium is filling up. The lights are dropping in the mezzanine. I go the other way, out the stage door.