by Angela L.
Jacob and I had both agreed to sort some things out first, say some goodbyes, and get one last glimpse of this town before we left. Donna and Benji weren’t going to come with us, so they promised they would explain everything to Raya and Jacob’s dad when the time came.
My bag was packed with clothes, a notebook, and a picture that I managed to glue together on a single sheet of paper of Raya, the baby, my dad, and Noelle. I took all the money I could find, which wasn’t much, but there was nothing that I could do about it. Something was always better than nothing.
Jacob was waiting outside my house behind the bushes of the front lawn. I could see his bag was fully packed because it was bulging out of the bushes.
“You ready?” he whispered as I crouched behind the bush with him.
The streetlamps, like always, were so dim compared to the moonlight. I could see the Big Dipper and for a moment I wondered how many more nights I was going to spend here looking at that sky if I didn’t leave this town now.
I nodded. I was nervous, and I could feel my heart almost beating out of my chest, but I knew that if we didn’t take this opportunity, this chance, then we would never know what could have happened.
Like Alaric had said, I was letting go of my rock. And I was going to let go of it tonight.
There was something both wild and chaotic in both Jacob and me that night. I could feel it, and I could see it in Jacob’s eyes.
I felt it in the air as well. It was all around us and it gave me shivers.
It was the same look that Alaric had that night and just like before, that look pumped excitement through my veins.
That look.
It was a shot of life.
So we ran.
We left.
And we never looked back.
Part 2
Chapter One
(Six Years Later: July 23, 1999, in Los Angeles)
My coffee cooled down rapidly on the table in front of me as I waited for Liam to arrive at my condo. The bitterness of the dark coffee felt icy on my tongue, but I was too lazy to go make a new batch.
I shifted around on my couch and looked up at the ceiling. Whenever I was bored or was caught up in a thought, I would stare at my chandelier, wondering how that tiny piece of string was holding the entire thing up. Every time, I waited for it to collapse onto the ground into a million crystal pieces, but it never did.
I suddenly heard my front door open with keys jangling in the background.
“Demi! Sorry, there was so much traffic.” Liam’s voice rang through the hallway. I’d always wondered if I should take his spare keys back. I thought one time he came over secretly and borrowed a few salad bowls or something.
His heavy footsteps echoed through the place like they always did, with him walking like the next Bigfoot, until he reached the living room where the white carpet cushioned his feet.
“It’s Los Angeles, Liam. There’s always traffic.” I pointed out. Liam had been my agent for about two years now. He was a pain sometimes, but I wouldn’t be doing what I do now without him.
When Jacob and I left town with almost everything we owned, the first place we hit was New York. The “Big Apple.” The place for new beginnings, and the place for building a new life.
We hitchhiked for days until we actually reached New York. Sometimes we would wait for hours until a driver was willing to carry us any farther. Half the time we were scared to death that we were going to be murdered or something, but it wasn’t like we had anything to lose. By then, we were in dirty rags and our money was low. We came across this sketchy place with a cheap restaurant called Miranda’s. We saw a sign on their window looking for people to work there so we applied. We asked if I could be the restaurant’s entertainer and if we could live there for free in exchange for a very low minimum wage. After two years of getting our life together, an agent walked in, watched me perform, and asked me some questions about my music. At first he didn’t like my style, but within a year, the agent introduced me to his friend, Liam, who agreed to work with me. That was when life actually started to fall into place.
Liam sat down on the couch in front of me. “So, how’s the new song coming up?” he said and drank his cup of coffee. “It’s so cold.” He made a disgusted face and set it down.
“I’ve got the lyrics pretty much done, but I still need to get the melody going,” I said. This time, I was writing a song for a country singer.
“She wants it done by the middle of next week,” Liam said.
“Well, you can tell her that if she wants a hit song, she should be patient,” I said. I’d literally been working on it for only two days.
“Let’s not forget you work for her,” he said.
“I work with her,” I reminded him.
“So, um, how’s your health?” He looked uncomfortable asking me that question, as if he wanted to show that he cared but at the same time wasn’t ready to go full in on details of some rotten cancer.
“Same thing,” I said. When I got the news I had cancer, I wanted to keep it quiet. The media had been swarming around me these days, trying to get the latest scoop of the next song I was going to write for the famous country singer.
“Look, you don’t have to be on the waiting list for this long. I can ask around for donors,” he suggested.
“You actually believe a random guy is just going to give me his kidney?”
“Hey, it raises the chances of you actually getting one,” he said.
“My time will come,” I said calmly.
“If you keep waiting for your time to come, you’re not going to have any time left.”
I sighed. “I’m good. Look, can we just talk about the song?”
“Fine. Let me see what you have so far,” he said and took another sip of his cold coffee. I think he’d gotten used to the disgusting taste.
Liam and I got up and walked toward the piano where my notebook lay out on the stand.
“Here,” I said after I flipped to the page.
I’m all alone with no direction to go
Cars race past but time is passing slow
Midnight comes but the city is still awake
There’s people on the streets even though it’s late
My eyes straight ahead with music in my ears
Seems like I just lived through twenty years
So here we come into the streets of New York
I look up into the sky
Can't tell the difference between the stars and the city lights
I see the beggars with their empty plates
Sitting on the pavements waiting for fate
“You do realize that this song is for a country singer, right?” Liam raised one eyebrow and placed the notebook back on the piano stand.
“Yeah, I know.”
“This sounds like a pop song or something,” he said in disappointment.
“These lyrics just came to me,” I said.
“Play it.” He gave me one more chance to prove that this song could be the next big hit.
I sat down on the chair and laid my fingers on the keys. It was funny—each time I played, I wondered if I looked like Alaric, with my hands (instead of a violin) flying across the piano. It had been years since I’d last seen him. He was probably not even alive, but through these years, he’d always been my inspiration.
I loved him then and I still did.
Even though all we had were those short memories, I kept on replaying them, using them. I transferred each emotion in me to my hands, and out the sound came. My own sound.
Chapter Two
(July 29, 1999, in Los Angeles)
“Breathe in. Now breathe out,” Dr. Brenner said as he listened closely to his stethoscope. The air conditioner was on high, and I felt my body shivering even though I was wearing a sweater.
Why are hospital rooms always so white? I wondered. It was as if all the hospitals got together and had a plan to paint all their rooms white. Something about them just made me want to
splatter paint all over the walls.
Dr. Brenner scribbled something on his notebook, his face the definition of seriousness.
“Everything’s good,” he said. I thought the serious face was what every doctor did to look like they were actually listing down something important. He’d probably just written, “Patient still breathing. Good.”
“When do I have to come in next time?” I asked him, grabbing my bag from one of the desks.
“We have to do another scan to check the cancer sometime within the next two weeks. Just check in with my assistant and he’ll tell you the time,” Dr. Brenner said, taking off his rubber blue gloves and placing his clipboard on his desk. His nametag stood there, high and proud. Wow. Years and years of medical school for that.
“How much time do you think I have left?” I asked him.
“It’s hard to say,” he said.
“Five years? Ten? Two? A month?”
“I really can’t say. You haven’t begun treatment yet so it’s hard to tell,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I understand you’re not a magician.” I laughed and got off the chair.
****
I glided across the streets toward the cupcake shop that was situated between the gym and Jacob’s apartment. I couldn’t wait to go inside, mainly because it was so hot in L.A. and I could feel myself sweating through my tank top.
The doorbell rang as I opened the door and the familiar smell of sweet cupcakes danced around me. The cool air had never felt that refreshing before—as if I had just stepped into a winter wonderland.
Jacob was situated at our usual table near the glass full of mint cupcakes. Even though his back was facing towards me, I could still see that he’d already finished a cupcake smoothie and a huge chocolate cupcake. And yes, this place sold cupcake smoothies. It existed and it was amazing.
“Wow, Jacob, do you want me to get you another one?” I laughed when I noticed that he had managed to cover the entire table with chocolate crumbs and wrinkled napkins with his lip smudges on them.
“To be honest, I do, but as my best friend, you should stop me right now from eating another cupcake because I think I’m going to get diabetes.” He laughed.
“Hey, are we still on for movies next Saturday night at your place?” I asked. After I got my part as a songwriter, Jacob managed to woo one of the gay producers and convinced him to let him be the costume designer’s assistant. Eventually we both made enough money to get our own places (which were still, like, two blocks from each other) but we realized we hardly saw each other anymore, so we developed a new tradition where we hung out every week for at least four hours.
“Yep. So far, nothing’s planned,” he said and wiped his mouth again with a new napkin. “What’s up with you these days?”
“Writing a song for a country singer. Liam says I can’t seem to make the song…‘country.’”
“Wait, you’ve never written a country song?” Jacob asked me.
“Never tried, and now that I have, I realize I suck at it.”
“It’s all right. It’s just one song.”
“Yeah, one song for the ‘number one’ country singer of all time.” I rolled my eyes. In all honesty, almost every musician in today’s industry was overrated. It seemed that the music industry cared more about what the musician was wearing than what the musician was playing.
“Wow,” he said, looking through my wallet. Jacob somehow developed this bad habit of flipping through people’s wallets. Of course, he only dared to do this with people that he really knew like his boyfriend or me. He said it was fun to look at what people put in them besides money. He would always say, "A man’s wallet reveals as much about him as his trash."
“What?”
“You still have this picture?” He pulled out a picture from the wallet of us three, with Noelle and him sticking out their tongues at me.
“Yeah.”
“This seems like it was taken yesterday,” Jacob murmured as he stared at it. “Oh, by the way, I almost forgot,” he said. He took out a thick folded envelope from his pocket. “This came in the mail today.” He handed it to me. “It’s from Benji and Donna.”
I hastily scanned the letter. Benji was still the same. He graduated from the local college and married a girl that we went to high school with. Donna never got into a college, but fortunately she had the opportunity to take over the grill when the original owner decided to retire. The police had found Noelle’s body a few years ago, lying under bundles of leaves on the ground half a mile from the tree house. There were scratch marks over her from head to toe. The police announced that she starved to death out there but no one actually knew what happened.
As for Raya and the baby? Well, apparently they were doing pretty good. Hope was in elementary school and it turned out she was a math whiz.
“You ever think of going back?” Jacob asked as he stared into open space.
“Back to Missouri?” I sighed, looking at the letter. “I don’t know. We left that life behind.”
“I miss them,” Jacob murmured.
“I know. Me too,” I said. “But…I don’t regret leaving. I know it’s selfish, but look at where we are now. We’re free.”
“Agreed.”
Chapter Three
(August 2, 1999, in Los Angeles)
Even though it was almost midnight, I wasn’t sleepy, so I started walking around in my living room, from the piano, to the couches, to the tables, to the foosball table, to the aquarium, then back around again in full circles.
I didn’t know why I’d decided to get a massive aquarium with tropical fish that I couldn’t even keep alive. I stared in the tank and watched the fish swim side to side without having a care in the world. They had food, they had a place to swim, and they had other fish to accompany them. All they had to do was live. I’d never thought I would be jealous of my fish.
My living room was always glowing even when all the lights were closed because my aquarium was like one big, blue glow stick, making the rest of my furniture blue as well.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed, making the entire counter subtly vibrate with Billy Joel as my ringtone. “Hey, Liam,” I said after I picked up.
“Guess what?”
“What?” I asked. I still didn’t get why people asked, “Guess what?” It was so useless. The subject of what I was guessing at could be anything, literally.
“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?”
“Ugh, go—”
“No, wait. Let me just tell you everything.” He began anyway. “Okay, so what if I told you I found you a donor?”
“Wait, what are you saying?”
“I found you a donor!”
“You actually found me a donor?”
“Yep! Perfect match!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“You’re getting a kidney, Demi!” he yelled through the phone.
“I’m actually getting a kidney?” I realized I was screaming.
“You’re getting a kidney!”
“Wow, I’m getting a kidney!” I yelled ecstatically. “Wait, then what’s the bad news?”
“So, yeah, about that kidney. There’s a slight problem. You see, I asked my friend if he could donate his kidney and obviously he said no, but he did tell me about a guy that he knows in Europe who is willing to donate his. Something about ‘doing good to the world.’”
“So, what, I have to go to Europe?”
“Yeah. I proposed that we fly him here with all expenses paid, but he said he doesn’t want to come to America. He doesn’t feel comfortable traveling,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“No idea. All I know is that he’s never been out of Europe before and he’s uncomfortable with flying.”
“Well, fine. This guy is giving me his kidney so the least I can do is fly over there instead of rushing him over here,” I pointed out.
“Perfect. I’ll order the plan
e tickets ASAP.”
“Wait, hold on.”
“Yeah?”
“Where exactly in Europe?”
“Austria.”
****
After Liam and I arrived at Vienna, we went straight to the hotel where we would be meeting with the guy who was giving me his kidney.
I didn’t know how it was possible, but Vienna looked even more enchanting than before. I’d been avoiding this place since forever. The city was magnificent, but it also hurt because it was missing the only person that I needed and wanted to see.
A few months ago, this German singer had wanted me to write for him and proposed that I come with him for his tour. I did. I went to every city he performed in. Every city except Vienna.
From the airport to the hotel, I noticed the same street that I had passed when I was on my way to Marcel’s place the last time I was here in Vienna.
We kept on driving, past a turn that would have led us to the Staatsoper Opera House.
When we arrived, Liam and I went our separate ways to our hotel rooms before meeting at the hotel coffee shop.
After I settled all of my belongings, I went down the hotel elevator and saw Liam already in the coffee shop, texting on his phone.
Apparently my donor’s name was Patric and he worked at an art museum. He was thirty-one, married. That was all the information about him besides his blood type and health insurance and other medical stuff.
His face on the picture looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen him before.
“You ready?” Liam asked me as we continued to wait by the couches at the hotel’s coffee shop.
“I think I’m still stunned that somebody is willing to give me their kidney,” I said.
“Just relax. The guy’s my friend’s friend, so he’s not going to end up being a murderer. We’re just going to talk, get to know each other, and if everything’s good, we’ll be able to sign the contract for the whole procedure,” he said.