Scratch Track

by Eli Lang

  “Twenty-four.”

  His thumb brushed over the inside of my wrist. “He was a musician? That’s why you asked about . . . music being like immortality?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed and took a deep breath. I couldn’t look at him while I talked about Eric. “He . . . It was like he lived in the music, you know? One of those people who almost exists somewhere outside of everything real? He was good.” I dropped my gaze to our hands, lying in the grass. “He was really good.”

  Nick was quiet for a long time. I wondered if maybe we’d get up in a minute, and that would be it. We’d let the whole thing go. I started to hope for it. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would be the easiest thing—I’d found that out, over the last year. If I wanted to keep living, keep moving—and I did—I had to make a conscious effort not to think about Eric until I was prepared for it. Maybe someday it would get easier, and I’d be able to think about him without this terrible mess of sadness and guilt, but I couldn’t yet.

  Most days, my strategy worked just fine. I wasn’t getting over my brother’s death. I was learning to live with it, though.

  Nick untangled our hands and dropped his in his lap.

  “I have a son,” he said. “He’s two.”

  I blinked. Of all the things I might have guessed he’d say in this particular moment, that wasn’t anywhere on the list. It was so out of left field it was baffling.

  “What?” It definitely wasn’t the best thing to say, but I honestly didn’t think I could come up with anything else.

  He glanced up at me, then away. “I didn’t tell you before because . . . It’s not like I don’t want to talk about him.” He gave me an embarrassed smile. “It’s just that I’m . . . protective? And I didn’t know where we stood, me and you. I would have . . . I would have told you, if we got together again. I would have wanted to.”

  I nodded, trying to absorb that. I wasn’t angry he hadn’t told me. It made sense. But I was trying to sort what I thought I knew about Nick, and what I obviously didn’t, together.

  “How did . . .” I waved my hand, trying to voice my question without actually saying it. “You and his mother . . . are you . . .?” I wasn’t sure why I was asking. Just that I wanted to know.

  He shook his head. “His mother and I had hooked up for . . . god, maybe a few days? Got careless. We never got back together or anything. It’s better this way. We can . . . work as a team with him, in a way.”

  I didn’t have the first idea how to process that, how to answer it. What to say. Kids were a completely foreign concept to me. I hadn’t ever considered them myself, except in the most abstract ways. It always made me feel so old when one of my friends had one. Made me realize how much we’d grown. Made me feel like my reality and their reality were completely out of skew.

  Nicky had plucked up a blade of grass, and he was twisting it around and around his finger.

  “Do you get to see him?” I asked, finally.

  He looked up at me and nodded, and relaxed slightly. “Yeah. Every weekend, for now. And holidays and stuff. I was going to switch my weekend for a weekday instead, while we’re recording, but I wanted to show him the studio. Ben said it’s fine.”

  “Oh.”

  “You could meet him, when he’s here. If you want. I’d like that.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He raised his hands, and the grass fluttered to the ground. He turned them palm up, as if in supplication. But then he just stared down at them. He had such long fingers. I’d heard that was something that benefited guitar players and keyboardists. I remembered Eric staring at his hands and trying to figure out how to get them to make the complicated shapes he needed for the chords. I wasn’t sure if it was useful at all for a drummer. I didn’t really know anything about any of that. I could tune a guitar with one of those little pedals that lit up when you hit the right spot. But that was about as musical as I got.

  “What’s his name?” I asked. I was only curious, but Nicky turned to me and grinned, and I knew it had been the right thing to say.

  “Josh. Joshua.” He’d dropped his hands, and he seemed a little adrift without anything to focus on. I wished he hadn’t let go of my hand. It had been easier, somehow, to talk to him when we were connected. “It’s so weird. All that time. I never thought about having kids. But now it’s like I can’t imagine my life without him in it, you know?”

  I nodded. I understood that backward and forward—maybe more backward, because it was more, for me, about figuring out how my life worked with this giant hole where Eric had been. But I did understand it, on so many levels, and it was still a mystery how it worked. I didn’t know how to say any of that to Nicky, though.

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “You were telling me about your brother and I went and said something about myself.”

  He blinked at me. His face was always so open. I’d met a lot of musicians, and most of them had this . . . hardness to them. Like they’d been knocked around by life. Like the path to the stage had been incredibly difficult and it had scarred them in some way. And I figured Nicky had felt that. I knew he wasn’t naïve to it. But he didn’t have that haunted look in the back of his eyes. He didn’t secret pieces of himself away, to keep when the world got to be a little too much. He was all right there, right up front.

  “I . . . wanted to give you something in return,” he said, softer. “Something about myself.”

  I brushed my fingers over his knee. He was wearing comfortable shorts, to drum in, so I grazed fabric, then bare skin, the hair of his leg. It was the slightest touch, but it seemed intimate, weighty. I shouldn’t have done it, probably. I just couldn’t stop myself.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. I wondered if he’d felt that electric zing when I touched him too. Wondered if it had run through him like a current, the same way it had for me. Wondered if he was maybe better than me at pretending it hadn’t happened. “You’d have known, anyway, when I have him this weekend.”

  I nodded. That was true. It didn’t feel like that, though. It felt like he’d given me something special, by telling me here and now. Like I’d opened something up for him and he’d done his best to return the favor. “Thank you.”

  Nick nodded once, and stood up. He brushed his hands briskly over his backside, dislodging any stray pieces of grass. Then he held out his hand to me, and I let him pull me up beside him.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” he said as we started walking down the sidewalk again. He glanced at me, and our eyes met for a second before we both looked away. “And that’s fine. But if you ever do, I’m good for that. Just . . . so you know.”

  “Thanks.” I meant it. It made me uncomfortable. Horribly uncomfortable. It made me want to roll my shoulders in, hunch over myself, make my large frame as small as I could. But it made me warm inside, too, to know he would allow me that, either way.

  He didn’t push it, didn’t make me agree to talk, or to acknowledge it much at all, and I was grateful. We carried on with our lunch plans, like we hadn’t made that detour for awkward conversations. He took me to a burger place a few streets over. We sat inside, in the cool air-conditioning, and drank milk shakes and ate French fries that we dipped into a puddle of ketchup on a wrapper between us on the table. We talked about music, and the places we’d been since the last time we’d seen each other, and Nicky showed me pictures of his son. And it was easy.

  When we got back to the studio, I was exhausted from all of it. From telling Nick about Eric, from simply . . . being with him and having all those emotions, untouched, in the air between us. But I was content in a strange way too. I went up to my room instead of going back down to see what Escaping Indigo was up to. I pulled out my laptop and played a game, to get some space to myself for a while. And for the first time since we’d gotten here, I felt more or less balanced, and safe, and okay.

  The next couple of days followed the same routine, more or less. I watched the ba
nd write and record, watched Ben doing all kinds of stuff with the board and its hundreds of switches, eavesdropped on conversations with Rest in Peach’s producer. I explored the studio and all its back rooms. I looked at the pictures on the walls and tried to figure out how many had people in them I’d heard of, listened to. Admired. It was a lot of them. And in the evenings, we got together with Rest in Peach and went for dinner, or ordered in and ate standing around Ben’s kitchen or scattered over his couches. Ty and Bellamy and Nick talked about past tours. Ava and Danni and Tuck and Elliot talked about what it had been like making music before they had access to real stages or recording studios like this, or a record label to back them. Micah and Ben and I hung out and listened, and joined in wherever, and I never felt for a second like we were left out or less than because we weren’t actually members of either band. It was the opposite, for me at least—I was included, and I felt like even here, in this world that had always belonged more to my brother and my friends, I was at home.

  It was fun, the perfect way to relax and take it easy after what was, for the bands, an enjoyable but also very fraught and tension-filled experience.

  Nick and I didn’t go for lunch again. The first day after we talked, I went out with Escaping Indigo and Micah, to the same place Nicky had taken me. The next day, Ben took me around the studio, telling me stories about the different rooms, how they’d been built, who’d played there, what songs had been born there. I’d never seen Ben quite so animated before. He pointed at pictures and told stories that no one else would have known, about recording mishaps and how bands acted together, how songs were created. We missed lunch altogether, and ended up poking through the refrigerator afterward.

  The third day, I sat at the kitchen island and ate a sandwich while I talked to my mom on the phone. She missed me, she said, but I was halfway sure she really meant that she missed Micah, and she wanted to know when he was coming home. I worried a little bit about that—not because I was jealous, quite. It was good for her to have Micah to fuss over and baby, because I wasn’t exactly an ideal candidate for that. But I figured Micah would eventually move in with Bellamy, away from my mom. I didn’t let it worry me too much, because at this point, I knew Micah. And I knew he wouldn’t forget about her, no matter where he went.

  The fourth day, I went back to wandering. I’d been, at this point, through every open space in the studio. There wasn’t anything left to explore. But the empty rooms kept drawing me back to them. Each one was so different. As if Ben had been experimenting as he constructed and decorated each one. Going for different sound qualities and atmospheres and comfort levels. And they were quiet. It was so strange to me that they had seen, over the years, such a riot, such a complete interplay, of combined sound. So many instruments and voices, take after take. And now they were silent, lying dormant. Waiting.

  I liked listening to Escaping Indigo and Rest in Peach. I liked the evening part better, when we were all together and hanging out, and it was easy and fun, like being on tour, without the threat of having to drive all night looming over me. I liked the recording part too, though. It was interesting—on a technical level, and more than that, in how the band worked together to create their songs.

  But there was something about what they were doing in those rooms, together, that was solely about them. Bellamy, Tuck, and Ava and no one else, no matter whether Ben was in the room, or Micah, or me. And I wasn’t jealous—it was cool they had this talent, and I respected them for it more than I could say, but it wasn’t actually anything I wanted for myself. But there was something about the way they tuned in to each other, focused on each other, became almost like one mind when they were writing and working on songs, that made me feel . . . lost. On the outside. Like I was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. It made me lonely in an abstract way. It was ridiculous to feel like this, but I couldn’t help it.

  And sometimes, when I was sitting on the back couch, getting lost in the music and the repetition of playing a piece over and over, I’d imagine Eric there. I would almost be able to picture him, standing where Bellamy was standing. His fingers on guitar strings, like Tuck’s were. Him turning around to speak to Micah at the drum set.

  But it wasn’t Micah at the kit, it was Ava. And Eric would never be in this place, doing what Escaping Indigo was doing. It didn’t make me as sad as I’d have imagined. Eric was gone, and I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. Grief couldn’t stay sharp forever. It had to dull, become manageable, because human beings were designed to carry on. Whether I liked it or not, that was what I was doing. Most days, I was glad for it, because I didn’t want to live with guilt and hurt eating at me every second. But when I thought about everything Eric could have had, what it would have been like if it were him and Micah here, now, it made me . . . nostalgic, in a way. It made me miss something that had never existed to begin with.

  It was when that sensation started to overwhelm me that I got up and wandered. I brought my phone along with me, and idly scrolled through Twitter while I walked, peeking into dim rooms. I needed some time apart from the music and the band, apart from what they made me think about and remember.

  Once, I found my way to the back of the studio, where there was one of the lounge-type rooms Ben had told me about. When I flicked the light on, it illuminated two overstuffed couches, worn from everyone who had flopped on them over the years, and a smallish table stereo system with a CD and record player. There were about a thousand albums, too, in both formats, tucked into shelves underneath.

  A few pairs of headphones sat next to the stereo, so I plugged one in and started pulling out albums and putting them on. I skipped through some songs, played snippets of others. Other albums I hadn’t listened to in years, and I wanted to hear the whole thing, dissolve in those sounds. There were things I’d never heard too. B-sides and live recordings, and bands I was only vaguely familiar with.

  Bellamy found me there a couple of hours later. I’d completely lost track of time, and he must have been sent to find me.

  “What’s all this?”

  I turned to stare at him over my shoulder. “Treasure.”

  He laughed and sat next to me. “Definitely.” He started pulling out albums and handing them to me, and plugged another pair of headphones in so he could listen too.

  It was silly—either of us could have brought up any of those songs on our phones in a second. But there was some sense of discovery, adventure, in pouring through the cases and sleeves, looking over artwork and liner notes. It was almost like when a song you loved came on the radio, and it was as if you’d had a flash of luck. Bellamy’s excitement was infectious, and we spent the entire evening down there, until Tuck and Ty formed a second rescue party and came to get us for dinner.

  I went back the next day, and when I heard the soft shuffle of footsteps on the carpet, I figured it was Bellamy again, or maybe Micah, come to find me because I’d been gone too long. But when I turned around, Nicky was standing in the doorway, his shoulder bumped up against the jamb. Watching me, his eyelids heavy.

  I pulled my headphones off and turned fully to look at him. He didn’t move, and he didn’t look guilty at being caught staring, either.

  I was sitting on the floor, and felt oddly vulnerable down here, with him standing above me. It wasn’t a sensation I was used to. I wasn’t tall, particularly, but I was big. Carrying amps and drums around for years will put some muscle on you, and my body had been built for that. People didn’t intimidate me. And Nicky himself, while taller than me, was a beanpole, a wiry length of fine bone and tendons. I could have picked him up and thrown him over my shoulder, no problem, if that was a thing he was into. But from here, it was like he had power over me. Maybe it wasn’t even that he was standing above me. Maybe it was the way he was watching me. The way I got caught up in his gaze.

  He gestured toward the albums. “I see you found Ben’s stash.”

  I nodded. I was careful about what I pulled out—they were all alphabet
ized, and I didn’t want to mess them up too much. But there were still CD cases and pages of artwork and liner notes spread out around me. “It’s . . . impressive.”

  He let go of the doorframe and crossed the room to plop down beside me. His fingers sifted through the albums I had out. He picked up one record with bright colors splashed across the front, and the name of the band written in a narrow font at the bottom.

  “I remember this.” He flipped it over to see the track listing on the back. “God, I haven’t heard this in years.”

  “Put it on,” I said, impulsively. I turned the volume down on the speakers and pulled my headphones out.

  “Did you already listen, though? We can hear something different.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a good album. I don’t know why I haven’t listened to it for so long.”

  He hesitated, watching me, then slipped the record out of its cover, and carefully opened the lid of the record player to set it on the turntable. I didn’t know why Ben had this one in vinyl when it was a newer album, but I liked that he did. Not that I actually believed vinyl sounded better—maybe I was a heathen but I was pretty sure having added pops and scratches in a song did not enhance the music—but there was something about the ritual of it, the careful, gentle way you had to treat a record, that was soothing. Watching Nicky do it was beautiful, those long-fingered hands of his grazing the sides of the record, careful not to press down. The precise way he brushed dust from the record surface with the little pad for that purpose, the way he set the needle down. It was all so simple, but he made it a thing of grace.

  The first notes of the album rose up between us. I leaned forward and adjusted the sound, loud enough that we could hear, but not so loud that it would bleed out of the room, or that we couldn’t talk if we wanted to.

  But Nick didn’t seem particularly inclined to talk over it, and that was fine with me. It was a strange thing, music. It was always moving forward. Some people get stuck in a certain time period, only ever listen to music from the seventies, or the nineties. It was impossible to do that while hanging out with Escaping Indigo, though. They were constantly listening to new stuff, evolving with every new sound and innovation that came along, and adding their own, and I got caught up in that in the best ways. I was sure it was the same with Nick and Rest in Peach.