You & Me at the End of the World

by Brianna Bourne

  He hasn’t played his guitar since we were out at the creek. Maybe he needs some music to help him cope, like I thought I needed to dance.

  I’ve spent enough time dragging him down. I mean, what kind of person finds out she can have anything she wants and then decides to go hide in her basement and cry? So much for acting like a perfect, poised ballerina.

  I don’t want to be the girl who hides in the basement anymore—I want to be the girl who makes things beautiful and interesting. If I’m stuck with this overactive imagination of mine, I may as well use it to help him out.

  I lever myself up on my elbow, looking down at his face.

  “Close your eyes,” I say. “I want to make you something.”

  He complies, and it takes everything I have not to touch him, to stroke my fingertips over his cheek, his eyelids, the bow shape of his top lip.

  Instead I clench my hand and close my eyes too. I push it all aside, the DEAD note, the memories of my mom, the mourning for the life I used to have. I can be my own genie but with infinite wishes instead of three. I can do magic.

  “Okay, you can open them,” I say when I’m finished building the vision in my head, when I’ve fine-tuned the details so it looks just right.

  The living room is gone. In front of us, carpet gives way to slippery lacquered wood. The same wood that Leo’s acoustic guitar is made from.

  We’re in a long, smoky music hall with a raised stage at one end. The walls are grungy brick, like an old train station, and dozens of neon signs blink on the walls. Crisscrossing beams of light cut through the hazy air, in hot pinks and teals.

  Instead of chairs and people, the audience is made up of two rows of instruments, each on their own stand. The alphorn and the Caribbean steel pan, the naked cherub harp. His viddle—or what I imagined his viddle looks like.

  In the middle of the stage, in the brightest, whitest spotlight, is Galaxe.

  “Oh wow,” Leo says, breathless. He stands and offers me a hand, pulling me to my feet.

  “Do you like it?” I ask. “I don’t know much about rock and roll, but this is where I imagined you playing shows.”

  “I love it. It’s shredtastic.”

  We walk toward the stage, swinging our clasped hands between us. Leo stops at the naked cherub harp, plucking a few strings and chuckling.

  “Will you play something for me?” I ask, nodding at the stage.

  “Sure.” Leo lets go of my hand and leaps up.

  I follow, running cables for him as he repositions amps and pedals and foldback speakers. I like the way he watches me work, still caught off guard that I know what to do with the equipment.

  When he’s done, I drop back down into the audience and lean on the lip of the stage, my chin resting on my folded arms.

  In the corner, one of the neon lights flickers. Something dark slides by, just at the edge of my field of vision. My pulse jumps. It’s okay. Things go a little glitchy when I’m imagining big new places, but I won’t let it get out of control this time.

  I focus on Leo as he tunes Galaxe, the notes thrumming through every bone in my body.

  “What do you wear when you’re playing a gig?” I call up to him.

  “Remember we mostly do eighties covers, so … really tight pants and stupid hair. Why?”

  “Can I see?”

  He stops in his tracks and raises an eyebrow. “You sure you’re ready for it?”

  I nod.

  “Okay, but I have to warn you, I will look freakin’ ridiculous. Smokin’ hot, of course, but ridiculous. Gotta keep the eighties luxe alive.”

  In the snap of a second, everything about him changes, like a magician disappearing behind a puff of smoke—except there was no smoke. I didn’t even blink.

  And the Leo standing on the stage now?

  Wow. Just—wow.

  He’s wearing black eyeliner, and his rich mahogany hair is teased into a wild mane. His black short-sleeve button-down looks like silk, and the top three buttons are undone, revealing an enticing slice of the smooth skin over his sternum. His leather pants are even tighter than his jeans.

  He’s dripping with metal, bracelets and rings and three different studded belts hanging low on his hips. There’s enough curve to him to keep the belts from falling to the floor. I imagine the strength in those thighs, those hips, and—

  “Hannah? You there? What do you think?”

  “Um.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “No … it’s just … I can’t tell you. It’s not appropriate,” I say, flushing.

  His eyes lock on mine. For a moment, he looks desperately hungry. But then he lets out a ragged laugh, and the spell breaks.

  “For a second there, you were looking at me like a Skilletina,” he says.

  “What’s a Skilletina?”

  “Die-hard Rat Skillet fan. They come to every show and stand right at the front. They run blogs about the band and giggle up to me in the parking lot after shows for selfies. ‘Hashtag so fine.’ ‘Hashtag that ass.’ ”

  “Well … if the shoe fits. Or rather, if the tight pants fit,” I say, smirking.

  He winks at me. I feel like I might float away.

  “Right, let’s do this.” He slings Galaxe into position and taps the mic. It crackles in response and he murmurs, “Test, test,” into it as he strums out some chords.

  But when he looks out over the audience, he goes unnaturally still.

  Panic squeezes at my lungs and I whip around, but there’s nothing there. Just the empty music hall.

  “Leo? Are you all right?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I just tried to imagine some people. It’s not really performing if there’s not a crowd. But it didn’t work.”

  The thought of imagining other people had crossed my mind, but I didn’t really want to get into that yet. We’re still too new at this.

  “Maybe people are too complicated,” I say. They’re always moving and have so many forces at play. “But it doesn’t matter, right? Just play for me, okay?”

  “Okay. Yes. Good plan.”

  But he looks less sure of himself than I’ve ever seen him.

  His fingers start to press and glide, finding an easy, repetitive pattern of chords. Drums join in, coming from nowhere. Well, from his imagination, I guess. He steps up to the mic and wraps his hand around it like they’ve been partners for years. “What’s up, Houston? We’re Rat Skillet.”

  He tosses me a sheepish look. “That’s usually when the audience goes wild. This is kind of weird.”

  He looks down at the guitar, but he’s not loose and easy like he’s been every other time he’s played. He’s struggling to get into the music.

  When his eyes shift up from the frets to look out over the “crowd,” his face goes blank. Something inside him shatters, and I can feel the crack mirrored in my own heart.

  I bolt up onto the stage. I knew something was wrong.

  The room tilts around me in a swirl of smoke and neon. My fingers are frozen. I can’t play. I can’t even breathe.

  Looking up and seeing an empty room where a thrumming, sweating, jumping audience should be … it’s finally sinking in. Talk about a fucking delayed reaction.

  We’re dead.

  DEAD.

  My lungs start to throb.

  Chill the fuck out, Leo. Being dead isn’t so bad. Think about the good things.

  I scrape together the positives. The silver linings. We’re together. Leo and Hannah, Hannah and Leo. We can still see and hear and feel and touch. We can have whatever we want. Guitars, food, clothes. I could stare down at my hand and conjure up a fully loaded taco like the one from the food truck at the edge of our school parking lot. And I won’t have to wait in line behind fifty other seniors to get it, complaining about the Houston heat, surreptitiously maneuvering myself into Asher’s mammoth shadow.

  But … so what if I have a taco? Those minutes waiting in line with my best friend—they were what made my lunchtimes awesome, not th
e tacos.

  And so what if Hannah and I can go to theme parks, to movies, to malls? They’ll all be echoing and empty. There’s no mosh-pit noise of a big city, no life thrumming around us.

  I’ll never cram myself into a sweaty rented van with Asher and Ro and Gage and Oz. I’ll never have to argue with an in-house tech over how to mix our sound, I’ll never test a mic, check-one-two-check-check, I’ll never feel that flip-flopping rush of adrenaline when I step out onto the stage and see a bunch of Skilletinas screaming my name. I’ll never again be in a room full of bodies that jump in time with one another like they’re being tossed in a frying pan.

  No one will get to hear all the music I wanted to write.

  Somewhere inside me, a seal breaks. Every horrible, hopeless, pants-shitting thought I’ve ignored over the past seven days gathers into a swarm in my stomach. The thoughts buzz like the rumbliest, growliest bass guitar.

  And then they start to rise.

  No, no, NO, stay down there, do NOT COME UP—

  It’s not just the crowds I miss. It’s Asher, my quiet and steady best friend. It’s my little brother and my badass big sister, it’s my hippie mom, who wakes up every day with a mischievous smirk and the unshakable certainty that she can conquer whatever the day’s going to throw at her. She’s so much like me, and now I’ll never see her again. I’ll never see any of them again.

  Something touches my arm. I flinch, startled to find Hannah suddenly standing right next to me. I didn’t see her climb up onto the stage.

  “Leo, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  I push some words out. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  She’s frowning. She doesn’t believe me.

  The way she’s looking at me, all openness and concern—it’s such a contrast from how everyone looked at me before. Everyone always saw me as the stumbling tornado of a kid I was at thirteen, hell-bent on imitating my rock-and-roll idols. They assumed I was selfish and out of control, unpredictable and unreliable. It became kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I just got more and more wild and unreliable. After a while, that’s not who I wanted to be. But I was too far down the path to do anything about it. I had my whole life mapped out already: a long downhill slide into the bleak future of Dumpsville.

  Hannah has no idea who I really am.

  She wouldn’t be looking at me like this if she knew what I was like before. If she saw what my grades were, and if she knew that I had zero plans for after graduation other than hoping I can gig enough to eat. She wouldn’t be looking at me like this if she knew that when the drug-sniffing dogs came to school after last month’s Battle of the Bands, they headed straight for my locker. The smell of weed was baked into my backpack—if I’d had even a crumb in a baggie, it would have been a disaster.

  And those are just the things that look bad on paper. There’s worse stuff. Relationship stuff, family stuff.

  Somehow, I’m still playing, but I’m caught in a loop. Strumming the same three chords over and over. The buzzing noise inside me is rising again. It’s up to my chest now, banding around my lungs and squeezing the air out of me, getting louder.

  I grit my teeth. STOP THINKING.

  Hannah’s peering at me, her frowny eyebrows even frownier now.

  “Leo, seriously, something’s wrong. What is it?”

  I fumble around for a lie to throw her off. “I just … I feel a little sick. But don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

  Prickly pressure builds up behind my eyes, making my vision go blurry. The buzzing noise flares into ear-piercing feedback.

  Hannah’s deer eyes could coax a confession out of the most hardened criminal. Everything about her is saying, It’s safe, you’re okay, you can tell me.

  “Is it the guitar?” she asks. “The stage? Whatever’s upsetting you, I can change it.”

  Oh my god, I wish she’d stop prying. If I stop to think about all the things I did wrong when I was alive, the stone-in-my-stomach, acid-washed guilt will destroy me.

  I take a sharp step back, ripping myself out of her reach, and then I’m blurting out words I know I’ll regret.

  “Just leave it alone, would you?!”

  My imaginary drums cut out, leaving behind a silence so loud it rings.

  A sad, disappointed look passes over Hannah’s face.

  It sounds like a small thing. A look. A split-second expression. Something that shouldn’t bother me. But I’ve seen that exact look before. A hundred times. On Asher’s face. On my mom’s and Gemini’s and every girl I’ve ever hooked up with.

  It’s so familiar, the way the line of her mouth hardens from compassion into sheer there’s-no-hope-for-him disappointment.

  Because that’s what I was to everyone before, and that’s what I am now. A disappointment. Everyone else in my life gave up on me. And I let them, because it was easier than trying to prove them wrong.

  I know exactly what that look means. Hannah’s giving up on me too.

  She starts to step back. I grab her arm, tripping over cables and nearly going down because my balance sucks. “Wait, Hannah—”

  I jolt and look down. I can’t feel her.

  “Uh—I can’t feel you,” I say.

  She looks up sharply. “What?”

  I watch, disconnected, as my hand moves from her elbow to her wrist. “I can’t feel anything,” I say. I think I’m hyperventilating.

  “That’s weird. I couldn’t feel a doorknob the other night. Maybe it’s just a side effect of being dead? It went away.” She looks at me, soft and kind and understanding. “Leo, I’m sorry I was pressuring you. Whatever was bothering you, we don’t have to talk about it.”

  She takes my hands and squeezes them between hers. I nearly melt in relief. The pressure is lighter than it should be, but I can feel it.

  I’m not used to having people do small, kind things for me the way Hannah does. If I tell her what I was like before, how many times I let people down, she’ll stop doing stuff like this, and I don’t want her to stop. She can’t know what I used to be like.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m just feeling bad about some crappy stuff I did before, but you don’t need to know the details. Just know that I was kind of a selfish jerk.”

  Her hand fades back into numbness. I suck in a ragged breath. Okay, maybe she does need to know the details. For this to work—for me to feel her again—apparently she does.

  “Look—that wasn’t the first time I’ve said I was sick to avoid hard shit. I used to do that kind of thing all the time. Whenever Gem was going through something rough, I’d get up and leave the room. I saw Joe start spiraling last year, getting so lost and angry, and I could have just knocked on his door and talked to him, or asked him if he was okay or something, and I just … didn’t. When Asher was upset about his dad getting hurt at work, I dragged him to some party instead of just listening.” I squeeze at my temples until it hurts. “Every girl I’ve ever been with has had a moment where they needed me to just be there, and that’s always when I ran.”

  Except for you, I almost add.

  The noise building inside me turns into a roar. This big auto-tuned wall of oh fuck is going to shatter me.

  “There’s so much I should have done differently,” I say, my voice breaking.

  But then Hannah’s arms wrap tight around me, solid and warm. She’s here. My legs crumple. She peels Galaxe’s strap off over me and guides me to the floor like a helpless child. We end up slumped in an awkward puddle, my face pressed against her stomach, my arms flung around her waist.

  “I don’t want to be dead, Hannah.”

  Memories of my mistakes come thick and fast, each one ripping something else out of me.

  “I want another try,” I mumble into her shirt. “And I just want to stand in a really freaking long line with Asher to buy a freaking taco.”

  She holds me as I shake, as my tears spread in a damp patch on her shirt.

  She holds me through it all.

 
* * *

  In the end, I’m wrung out like a wet washcloth. My sniffles die down, and I loosen my hold on Hannah’s waist, sagging down until my head is in her lap. She slides my bandanna off, smoothing my hair in a lulling rhythm.

  When I open my eyes, I’m surprised to find we’re still on the stage.

  “It didn’t go away,” I say.

  Hannah hums. “I stopped thinking about it, but it just stayed. Maybe if you imagine something and leave it alone, it stays.”

  I draw in a congested breath and let out a smooth, calm one. The feedback ringing in my head is gone.

  “Feel better?” Hannah asks.

  “Much. It felt good to get all that out. You know, it’s weird. My whole life I tried so hard not to cry, or even let myself get sad. Not because I’m a boy and I was trying to be tough or some shit like that. I just genuinely thought Leo’s LifeHack worked.”

  I thought all the big, bad thoughts I smothered with music and whiskey and marshmallow creme were gone, but they were really just incubating, growing bigger and bigger, waiting for their chance to pounce.

  Hannah smooths my hair away from my face. “I have been kind of skeptical about your methods,” she says. “But who am I to talk? I turned into a basement hermit.”

  “We all have our coping mechanisms, I guess.”

  “Where did the LifeHack come from?” she asks.

  I lever myself up out of her lap so I can look at her while we talk. “It was my mom’s to begin with. She always told me I can make hard things go away with FeelGood things. But it turns out she was wrong. They don’t just go away.”

  One last memory surfaces. A few days before Christmas last year, I heard terrifying wails coming from downstairs. I thought there was a horror movie on TV, or one of those live childbirth shows, that’s how intense the sobbing was. I went downstairs to turn it off, but it wasn’t the TV. The wails were coming from the kitchen. I peeked around the corner. My mom was doing the dishes for the first time in months, banging bowls and cups around and bawling her eyes out.

  It shook me. She always seemed like she didn’t give a shit about anything, floating around high as a kite, all merry and blithe. She seemed impervious to the stress that other people felt, to life’s struggles, and I wanted to be like that too.