by Ash Parsons
Even though she’s probably right there with him.
She screens her calls, so she doesn’t pick up. I don’t leave a message, instead hanging up and calling the number again.
I hang up and call for an hour straight. Then I get an idea. I go out to Grandma’s chair and get her cell phone and dial Artie’s number. When the answering message comes on, I play Ty’s version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric.” While that records, I call on my phone, tying up her line completely.
I alternate with the two phones until I no longer get the voicemail cue please-leave-a-message. I’ve filled it up.
Then I keep calling.
“Damn it, Roxanne,” Artie answers, finally.
“Did you pay my tuition to Bayard University?”
“What? No.” She sounds sincere, but it’s Artie. She learned to fake sincerity in the crib. “What the hell is going on?”
“Someone applied for me and paid my entire way.”
“Bully for you.”
“It wasn’t you?”
“No.”
A silent I dare you to talk empty line hiss.
I break it. “Was there an addendum to his will? Is that what this is?”
“No. It’s all settled. Nothing more.”
It doesn’t make sense. It had to be one of them. There is no other answer. I didn’t apply, and even with my trust money from Joshua, I don’t have this kind of cash lying around. Most of it’s invested, and if I want to get it I can, but I have to jump through several hoops first.
“Is that all, Roxanne?” Artie’s voice is clipped.
I sigh. “Sure. Thanks, Artie. I guess.”
Artie sighs too. “We’re all doing the best we can, Roxanne. Maybe try cutting yourself a break. Maybe just take it as a gift. Something you deserve. Have you asked your grandmother? Maybe she found the money somewhere.”
It doesn’t seem possible, but nothing else could make sense at this point.
I hang up and take the letter to my grandma.
“Did you do this?” I hand her the letter.
“Oh, sugar, congratulations!” Her face is transformed by a smile.
“Where did the money come from? Did you mortgage the house? You didn’t have to—”
“What? No!” Grandma smiles down at the letter. “They gave you a scholarship, I bet!”
Something my grades would never allow, but I don’t argue. Instead I kiss her good night, leave her in bed reading mystery novels.
Back on my bed, I pull the covers up around my shoulders, curled on the mattress like a sea snail, feeling soft and vulnerable, a thin shell of blanket no real protection at all.
On my desk next to the laptop, the envelope from Bayard University gleams expensive eggshell white. The color of rich, protected dreams.
I can’t think of what to do. I can’t imagine who would do such a thing for me.
There is only one person apart from Grandma who has loved me that much.
Thinking about Joshua and the loss of how he felt about me, how he saw me, is like riding a hateful roller coaster in the dark. The sudden plunge you don’t see but still expect, a wrenching side to side as you race into the grief and the guilt.
Joshua’s eyes when I got doxed—was that when he thought I’d be better off without him? He’d always seen me as strong, as someone who could protect herself, set her elbows out, plant her feet wide and stand against them.
When did that change?
When did everything change? Even Joshua? What did I miss?
I want to scream at everyone. I want to scream the questions we should have asked, scream urgency that we pursue the answers. Was he okay? Why did he buy all that real estate to hand out like party favors? Why did he give up writing the kind of music he actually liked? Why did he give every bit of himself away?
Why did we let him?
Is that what this college thing is all about? Just one more gift he arranged for when the time was right? When does it all end?
At the time we couldn’t do anything else but accept what Joshua told us. It was his ride, but he wasn’t the one driving. First there was the album, the debut one, then the tour. Then a new album and rehearsing for a new tour. In between the two, he turned seventeen.
He was emancipated. He set up accounts for his mother and Ty. He bought houses and all those many other, glittering things.
We thought he was enjoying the hard-won fruits of his success. We thought he was looking to the future. Did he even want a future?
He wasn’t strong enough for this. And it would never have been over, even if he’d stopped recording and touring. It was too late to go back, too late to become anonymous, too late to say that what you really wanted was something else.
Not this. Not this life, this fame. This “dream” that anyone would kill for.
It wore on him, caused a small rip to tear completely apart, pulling him into separate pieces.
Those houses he bought for everyone—they were bits of permanence, refuges from and for the people closest to him. With the exception of the LA mansion, the houses were away from the spotlight. Actual homes. Walls to protect us.
When he was the one who needed protection.
What did we do instead? Paraded him around like a circus act, microphone to microphone, spotlight to spotlight. We took away his music and replaced it—replaced him—with Joshua Blackbird.
And I told him the story of an aerialist who would fall, but who first dared the world to watch as she dislocated her shoulder again and again, pretending to be something that could fly.
At what point did he realize that he hated what he’d become?
At what point did I merely join the line of people forcing the transformation rather than someone fighting to help him?
It makes nausea churn in my stomach, a self-loathing sludge. I roll over and pick up my phone. I touch the screen, then close my eyes against my room. Against the sight of the envelope and everything else.
And listen to Joshua’s voice, trapped forever in voice mail. We’d argued, and I was angry and didn’t go to a rehearsal with him. I don’t even know why I was so mad at him.
He’d called me. I had sent the call straight to voice mail.
“Hey, Rox, I’m sorry.” His voice is tired and a little shy, murmured like he’s holding his phone too close to his mouth, or like he’s trying to be quiet. “Answer the phone or call me, okay? I love you. Everything’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Liar,” I breathe. And for a moment, it’s like talking to him.
I hit Repeat.
I lie in my bed and listen to his voice, listen to his voice talking just to me, and for the first time, I’m able to hear him without tears, and it’s like being held. Like a warm secret curling into my ear.
* * *
• • •
I stop playing Joshua’s voice and don’t let myself think about how long I’ve avoided Speed’s calls and texts. I just scroll down till I find his number. Because I need to talk to a friend. We both loved Joshua, and therefore loved each other, at least a little.
“Roxy!” Speed’s voice is filled with California sunshine. In the background, I can hear sounds of a party.
“Hey, Speed, sorry I haven’t been . . . in touch.” The words are paltry, but not so much that I shouldn’t say them.
“It’s okay. I missed you, but I get it.” Speed, always shoring up my weakness, his voice like his presence back then, and even now over the phone, palpable and lifting me up. Like he’s draped my arm over his shoulders and is helping me walk.
I can picture him sitting with a leg bouncing or pacing in the room, moving or shaking or tapping, energy thrumming through him, a constant hum.
He carries the phone into a quiet room. We talk for a little while, just catching up. He asks about my grandma; I ask about his parent
s. We talk about the tribute album, and I compliment his cover, which was so much more fitting than Angel’s. Which brings us to Ty and his version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric,” and where they both are now.
“What’s it like?” I ask. “Playing for Ty?”
Speed lets out a deep sigh, like he knew I would ask the question, and like it’s something he’s thought about endlessly already.
“It’s good,” he says. “But it’s not the same.”
A world of possibilities and missed possibilities in that phrase. Not the same.
“Because he’s not Joshua,” I say.
“He’s smart, and he’s okay as a musician,” Speed says. “I mean he’s plenty good. He’s not Joshua—we all know that. Hell, he knows that. It’s just . . . weird, you know? Like we’re all just trying to replace the person who brought us here.”
I can’t keep it to myself anymore, the real reason I called.
The envelope waits for me, beside my laptop.
I tell him about the university acceptance and the paid tuition.
“That’s great, Roxy,” he says. “Are you gonna go?”
So very Speed, to ignore the glaring question to ask a different one.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just really need to know where the money’s coming from. Who did this? Who applied for me?”
“I wish it was me, sweet girl, but I don’t got that kind of money.”
“I know. Who does? It’s not Ty, it’s not Artie, and it’s not my grandma.”
“Maybe it’s a label exec or something?”
No. No way. They throw money at a problem, sure, but they certainly don’t sit down and fill out an application and write an essay.
Besides, I’m not even there. In LA. Where anyone would even think of me, much less be moved to do something like this.
I can tell from Speed’s voice that he’s humoring me, because—typical, wonderful Speed—he doesn’t really care where the money comes from. He’s got some the universe says mythos he goes for, even if he usually keeps it to himself. Probably thinks the universe arranged this as a karmic debt to me after what happened.
I drop the subject and make a few more vague promises about visiting. Then the rest of the conversation winds down.
“I should go,” I say.
“Thanks for calling, Roxy.”
I smile. “Thanks for picking up, and for forgiving me when I didn’t.”
“I’m always here for you.”
“Thanks. I . . .” I can’t say any more. Like this perverse need for absolute honesty won’t let a fake promise past my lips. The same thing that won’t let me tell Ty I love him, because it’s not the kind of love that he’s hoping for.
“It’s okay,” Speed says. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
I take a deep breath. “Take care of him, okay?”
Take care of Ty. When neither of us could take care of his brother.
Speed’s voice is soothing. “Hey. Yeah. But he’s going to be okay. When you come here, you’ll see that.”
“Yeah, when I come there.” Unspoken: not happening soon. Speed hears that last part.
“Love you, Rox. Be kind to yourself . . . okay?”
My eyes sting with held-back tears. “Love you too.”
I end the call.
I move to my computer, wake it up, and go online, searching the university’s name.
I click through splash pages and promotional materials and see that the application process is entirely online. Which means I should be able to see what got sent in for me.
It would be proof that someone did go through this whole process for me, even if it feels beyond surreal right now.
I click the application link. I see a “log in” option and a “create an account” option.
To log in, I need an email and a password.
I enter my email.
Nothing.
The cursor blinks at me.
I blink back.
In the morning I can call and claim my email got hacked or something, and I’m locked out, and can they let me set up a new account so I can access my new student profile?
But that would require waiting until morning. Would mean sitting here staring at the thing, wondering who did it. What it all means.
Impatience burns through me like anger, a fire that makes my teeth hurt.
I make myself unclench my jaw.
There’s a forgot your username? link and a forgot your password? link.
If I use one, can I use the other? Are there security protocols in place like that?
I sit, chewing my ragged nails when it hits me.
I have another email account.
Hastily I enter [email protected].
We all got emails and foundation memberships when Ty set it up.
The login accepts.
“Bingo,” I breathe.
Now a password.
I have no clue. I type my usual password—WonderWoman*—and get nothing.
I’m about to hit the “forgot my password” button when it hits me.
The password has to be a combination of numbers, capital and lowercase letters, and must include at least one symbol.
I type LillianLeitzel<3.
It works.
My heart thunders in my chest. My racing pulse rattles my fingers, hovering over the keyboard.
The person who did this knows me. Really knows me. Knows I’d want to stay near my grandma. Knows LA isn’t for me.
They knew about my Blackbird Foundation email account. They knew about my love for Lillian Leitzel.
There’s only one person alive with all those pieces.
Ty lied to me. It had to be him.
But why? There would be no reason to lie once I called him out on it, would there?
I study the links on my new student profile. I can upload a picture, can write a blurb “about me,” can indicate interest in certain university clubs or activities.
There is a university bursar’s office. I click on it and go to my account, where I definitively see that I did not get a scholarship. Or a loan. Or any special waiver of tuition.
Paid in Full.
I click back out and find the application itself, with a pane that says “view.” I click it.
Bayard University has a renowned history department.
I wonder if Ty listed history as my potential major. I scroll down to the bottom of the application, see a short essay portion.
Ty knows his way around a melody, but I doubt essay writing is his thing. At any rate, I have to see what he said.
If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be and why?
A painful laugh cuts my windpipe. Because the answer is so simple, so obvious, but I’d bet money that Ty overthought it. Probably picked Leitzel, while the answer is his brother.
I wouldn’t care about the dinner part. Just one more conversation. One more moment to see him, to touch him. One chance to find out what I could have done. Should have done.
20
THE HUNGER SONG OF THE LAZARUS BIRD
My eyes sting. As a voice echoes in my head and memory as I read the short essay.
If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be and why?
I’d meet myself—the me I’m going to be. The one who will be okay. The one who’s more certain. I’d like to be in a place where I can let myself accept unconditionally—let me be a monument to something fleeting that has passed. And then let me build something new.
I know that it’s impossible to hold back change or to think that we’re ever done changing. The moment we cease changing is the moment we stop growing. Still we hold tight to our injuries, to blame, and let them bind us, the ropes so tight that we lose feeling.
&nb
sp; We need to forgive life, forgive change, and forgive ourselves for becoming something else.
So the place I’d like to get to is that of acceptance, forgiveness for it all. That’s the me I’d like to meet, the one who accepts my mistakes, how everything went wrong, but who’s okay with letting go . . . someone who’s not drowning, but waving.
The voice in my head. The voice reading these words to me. I pull it into my heart like a blanket.
I reread it, this brief essay that says so much. That references the poem Ms. Kearney taught us, the Stevie Smith poem. That hopes for acceptance. For forgiveness.
For everything to be okay.
I feel it before I can consciously think it. The feeling is like a trembling, feathered creature, sitting in my chest. Charged with life. Waiting to take to the air.
Joshua.
Joshua wrote this.
When? How?
Am I really thinking this? Am I really thinking that he’s alive?
It crashes into me. The memorial without a casket. The unbidden mental image of the devastation of a drowned body. One we never could find. Unrecognizable, devoured. Gone, as if it never existed.
The thousands of television commentators, speculating ghoulishly about the remains.
We never found his body.
What if he’s alive?
I hear a small, high laugh. It sounds unhinged. It sounds on the verge of a breakdown. I force myself to take deep breaths and let them out slowly.
I reread the essay.
It’s absolutely Joshua.
It wants so much. Such giant, beautiful, desires for a lifetime. A small, simple, everything word: acceptance.
It echoes “Orpheus’s Last Lyric.”
Without thinking, with the high whine of giddy laughter echoing in my head, I print the application and then go online to the BlueBirdie sites. I dig and unfilter and unblock the hashtags, and eventually I find the subset—the death deniers.
The crazies.
I’m one of them now.
JOSHUA BLACKBIRD IS ALIVE! a banner reads.
At first, it’s layers of old photos and tired hope. Flat denial and no substance underneath. Or very little substance. A user named BlackAndBlueBird deconstructs the myth of Orpheus—how Orpheus returned from the underworld after losing his love forever. How Orpheus wandered in the wilds, grieving, until he was attacked and killed, torn apart by the maenads, wild women. Some versions even imply that Orpheus sought the death.