We Own the Sky (The Muse Chronicles Book 1)

by Sara Crawford

  And with one last look at Urania, Melpomene vanished.

  And then Urania was trapped, tied to a chair in a room with five Original Muses who were fast asleep.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  She’s Leaving Home

  Travis is driving me home after practice. Vincent is sitting in the back seat behind me, and I can feel him playing with my hair as we drive. All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up when he does that.

  Moonlight Bride is playing. “Love in the Dark.”

  “I’m sorry about your fight with Bianca,” I say. “I think she really does like you.”

  “I don’t know what the hell she wants,” he mutters.

  “You can talk to me about it if you want to,” I say. “I mean, if you need someone to listen.”

  “Thanks,” he says.

  You’re being quiet, I think in Vincent’s direction.

  “Let’s just wait until we get back to your house,” he whispers. And there’s something in his tone that sounds serious.

  We are silent as we ride through Marietta, I feel anxiety closing in on me. What did he mean by that?

  Travis pulls into my driveway.

  “Good practice tonight,” I say. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Travis nods his head, not even saying anything. I get out of the car and Vincent is beside me.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” I ask Vincent.

  “I think so,” he says. “It’s only his ego that’s been wounded.”

  We walk inside my house.

  My dad is sitting on the couch in the same place he was this morning. He’s clearly drunk, passed out.

  “Dad!” I yell, trying to wake him up. I sit down next to him, immediately worrying. I suddenly think about Jenny Treb. No one even knew she had a drug problem. I check his pulse, which is beating strongly. He’s still breathing.

  “Dad, wake up!” I shake him. His eyelids flutter.

  “What is it…Lydia?” he’s mumbling. He thinks I’m my mother. Great.

  “Dad, it’s me. It’s Sylvia.”

  I go into the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet.

  “Why is he drinking again?” I ask Vincent aloud, not even caring if my father hears. He’s in no condition to realize I’m talking to an imaginary person anyway. “Where are Leo and Jake? They were supposed to have practice!”

  “There’s an explanation…” Vincent is staring at the ground.

  I fill the glass with ice and tap water.

  “What is the explanation?” I snap at Vincent, carrying the glass of water over to Dad.

  “Here, Dad, drink this.” He’s able to focus and hold the glass. “How much did you have to drink? Did you take anything else?”

  Dad shakes his head. He looks as helpless as a child.

  “How much did you drink?” I’m trying really hard to soften my tone.

  He points at a vodka bottle that only has a little bit of vodka at the bottom.

  “Damnit, Dylan!” I never call my dad by his first name, but I’m pissed off. How could he drink that much vodka? I try to slow my breathing.

  “Sylvia, it’s all my fault…” a new voice. A woman. She’s talking from behind me. Vincent looks at her with contempt.

  I turn around to see my mother standing in our living room, looking not much older than I am, but I can tell that it’s her. She looks too much like my vague memories of her. She looks too much like me. And even though she’s supposed to be gone—maybe even dead—I know it’s her. She wears a skirt very similar to the one I found in my closet, fishnet tights, and a black tank top. She’s looking at me with those eyes—the same green in mine. If I unfocus my eyes, she starts to flicker. I can see all too clearly that she’s a Muse.

  And then it all makes sense. This is what Vincent has been acting weird about all day. She must have shown up here, and that’s why Dylan is drinking again. Because he saw his ex-wife who he thought was dead, and she doesn’t look a day older than she did seventeen years ago.

  When they were dating—before I was born—she would play music with him in the garage, but she would never play any shows with him. She never wanted anyone to meet her. She said she was homeschooled. The only person she would talk to was Dylan. She isolated him from his friends and family so they wouldn’t know.

  I’ve always been able to see them. The Muses, the flickering people. I always knew I was different.

  She’s a Muse. She’s always been a Muse, ever since she met Dylan.

  And in a way, so have I.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Blackout

  About five years ago, my dad was writing songs for the second Midnight Walk album. One day, he was playing Butch (his acoustic guitar) and singing when I snuck into his studio. He had headphones on and he was recording so he didn’t hear me. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything except listen to my dad sing this new song.

  The red-haired lady was there, standing just behind him. I know now that she was his Muse after Lydia left. Lydia must have been his Muse first. Only, he didn’t know that’s what she was. He just thought they were playing music together.

  The song had more sadness in it than I thought even possible—more sadness than I’ve ever felt. That was the first time I heard him sing “Pine Needle.” I didn’t even have to hear the lyrics to know who the song was about. Lydia.

  That song makes me cry every time I hear it. I’ve only listened to it a handful of times, usually live. Shortly after their second album came out, I listened to it one day and had a debilitating emotional breakdown after I heard that song. From then on, I always skipped it when listening to the album.

  After my mom left, there were a lot of nights of collapsing and screaming. There were a lot of nights of binge drinking when I was too young to understand. I remember thinking his guts had been ripped out of him. I remember my grandmother coming to get me in the middle of the night because he was having his stomach pumped in the hospital.

  I didn’t really understand what was wrong with him until I got older. Until I realized she was never coming back.

  All his impossible grief was there in that song. It was the most personal song I had ever heard him sing. I couldn’t believe my own father was capable of creating the kind of song that made me feel so much—like Radiohead or The Beatles or Sigur Ros.

  I remember I was frozen in place, absorbed in his song. I remember flashes of Dad on his knees sobbing hysterically over a bottle and thinking that song is the only thing that makes it okay.

  There are times when I get angry with my mother for leaving. She just vanished one day. No letter, no phone number, no address. Nothing. My Dad gave up trying to find her about two years later. Some people said she overdosed and died. There are times when I get angry with her for hurting my dad, for leaving me, but every time I start to get angry, I think about “Pine Needles.” He never would have written that song if she hadn’t left us.

  I am trying to play that song in my head now, but it isn’t helping.

  None of us has spoken in at least ten minutes.

  Lydia, standing in front of me in the living room. Vincent, in the corner, head lowered in his hands. Dylan, my father, completely passed out on the couch.

  “Sylvia, let me explain,” Lydia finally says.

  “Do you realize how difficult you’ve made life for her?” It’s Vincent who explodes this time, sitting up straight. Both Lydia and I turn to look at him in the corner. I am surprised by the anger in his eyes, something I’ve never seen there.

  “I don’t see how this is any of your business,” Lydia snaps at him.

  “I am Sylvia’s Muse!” Vincent almost shouts. I’m surprised it doesn’t wake Dad. Then again, I guess he can’t hear Vincent.

  “Well, I’m her mother!” Lydia yells back at him.

  “You haven’t been her mother for over a decade!”

  “You know, I heard about you and Amber Morris. If you think I am going to just sit
by and watch you do that to my daughter, you are—”

  They keep yelling at each other, but I’m not paying attention. I simply get up calmly, walk downstairs, and grab Absolution by Muse on vinyl from my dad’s record collection. I put it on the record player, starting it around where I think “Blackout” is. I catch the tail end of “Hysteria” but it’s okay.

  I lie down on the floor, close my eyes, letting the song sink into my bones. There is no way Matt Bellamy can sing this song if he doesn’t understand everything I feel.

  “Sylvia?” I hear his voice, and it’s the only thing that could make me open my eyes in this moment. Vincent. Alone. He reaches out a hand. I hesitate, but then I take his hand, and he helps me up.

  “Are you alright?” he asks me.

  “I’m…” I can’t quite find the words.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Sylvia? Are you upset?” Lydia suddenly appears behind me. She tries to touch my shoulder. I flinch away. Vincent looks defensive.

  “Listen to me,” she continues. “You don’t know him. He’s dangerous. He has a whole dark side that you don’t even know about. He tried to kill his last artist… And I don’t think you should—”

  “Okay,” I find my voice. “You have to understand where my head is right now, Lydia. You just show up here. And I figure out that actually, I’m a half-Muse-half-human or something and I don’t even really understand what that means. And you don’t look a day older than seventeen. Everyone thought you were dead…Dad must think you’re a ghost or something. And now he’s off the wagon, and I’m going to have to clean up his mess again. Like I have been doing for the past decade because you left.” I can hear my voice get squeaky. “And now, after all of that, you are trying to act like my ‘mother’ and take away the one person—being, whatever—who makes everything okay in my messed up circus of a life?” I am breathing heavily now, and I can feel my face getting red.

  “I’m sorry…” she mumbles. “I know I left and that was unfair. But what else could I do? I didn’t know you would be able to see us. I thought you would just be…normal. Like Dylan. So, I had to leave. What choice did I have? Sooner or later, Dylan would have wondered why I never aged. And all his friends and family would wonder why I would refuse to meet them. His parents were already suspicious of me. They were so mad that I didn’t want to have you in a hospital and I wouldn’t let anyone be there when you were born, except for Dylan. I had to disappear. And I was just going to come back to make sure you and Dylan were okay—to make things right, but then I saw him.” She looks at Vincent with disgust. “The Muse with the horrible reputation, sleeping with you in your bed—my daughter. And when I heard that you knew all about us—our world—I couldn’t help it. I had to try to explain, to try to make you understand.”

  I realize there are tears filling my eyes. I’m not ready to hear any of this. She should have told my father from the beginning that she was a Muse, that no one else could see her. She should have told him how it worked. But instead, she just encouraged him to do drugs with her. And I know now the drugs actually never could have hurt her because she’s immortal. But they could have hurt my human father. They did hurt him.

  And then she just left. Without a word. She didn’t tell my father why. From the day she left until I was twelve years old when Dad got clean, life was absolute hell.

  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to call the ambulance or stay up late with him to make sure he was still breathing or…I stop the memories in their tracks, anger flooding me.

  “Just leave,” I whisper. “I can’t listen to any of this right now.”

  “Sylvia…” she tries again.

  “Get out!” I’m yelling now. “Leave me and my father alone!”

  And with the most dejected expression on her face, she gives me one last look with those green eyes that could be mine and vanishes.

  ***

  Vincent hasn’t spoken. He just wraps his arms around me, saying nothing, and lets me listen to Absolution on vinyl. Twice. He even gets up to turn the record over.

  I’ve just been sitting here, listening to Muse, the band. Trying not to think about my Muse mother or my Muse lover or the fact that I’m half-Muse myself.

  The last track ends.

  One thing I love about Vincent is that the two of us can just be silent together, and neither one of us needs to say anything. We give each other the space to feel, to think, to love.

  “Do you want to go upstairs?” he eventually whispers.

  You don’t want me to practice my songs? I ask in my head, feeling my voice will fail if I try to speak.

  “Not tonight,” he says.

  I nod, and he helps me up again. When we get to the living room, my dad is still passed out on the couch.

  “Dad, come on,” I whisper. I put one of his arms around my shoulder, trying to get him to come upstairs.

  “Here, let me help,” Vincent says.

  “But he can’t see you,” I protest.

  “I may have to change that, anyway,” Vincent murmurs. “But it doesn’t matter. He won’t remember this.”

  Vincent helps me get Dylan upstairs to his room. I take my father’s shoes off and put him in his bed, tucking him in. He seems alright now. He just needs to sleep it off.

  I notice it’s only 7:00, but I feel exhausted. I walk into my room, shutting the door. I collapse on my bed.

  And before I know it, Vincent is beside me as always. Scooping me into his arms.

  “Are you alright?” he asks. “I know it couldn’t have been easy. Seeing your mother.”

  “I’m okay,” I say. “But what does it mean? That I’m a half-Muse? Am I even a person?”

  “Of course you are,” he replies, running his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp as he speaks. “I’ll admit I don’t know much about the half-Muses. I’ve never met one. In fact, I didn’t even know that it was possible until very recently.”

  “What does it mean though?” I ask.

  “I think it means that you feel things in a way that most people don’t. Most half-Muses…” he is hesitant.

  “What is it?”

  “Urania—the Orginal Muse—told me once that most half-Muses take their own lives.”

  I am quiet.

  “I tried to once. Actually, it was fairly recently. In the garage.”

  “Yes, I know,” he says. “I was there.”

  “You were there?” I’m suddenly more awake, sitting up.

  “Yes…” he admits.

  “Why didn’t I see you?”

  “You said yourself that sometimes when you were in a lot of emotional distress, you don’t see us. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I just thought you were like any other human who couldn’t see us unless we want you to.” I am quiet again, taking this in. “I’m the reason that song came on. The one that made you stop.”

  “That Morrissey song?”

  And then he sings it. Those exact lyrics pleading with the listener not to take her life, pleading with me. He has the most beautiful singing voice, actually not unlike Morrissey now that I think about it. It hits me harder than any piece of music has ever hit me. And before I can stop myself, I throw myself into him, my lips crashing into his, his mouth answering me back. And there’s a new kind of passion in our kisses tonight. We are finally on equal footing. I am not entirely human. And I never have been.

  I was right all along. I am different.

  And now I’m half of whatever he is. I always was, but now I know it. And that makes me want to melt into him completely. My hands press against his chest, feeling the muscles there underneath his black shirt. Before I can stop myself, I find my hands wandering all over his body, erupting with a longing so intense that I have no control over what I’m doing.

  “Sylvia…” he whispers. And there is hesitation in his voice as he pulls my hands up to his face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Shhhh,” is all he will say. And then he p
ulls his body away from mine just slightly. “Don’t you want to put your pajamas on? To sleep?”

  I back off, a little confused, a little hurt.

  “Do you not want me in that way?” I make myself say.

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Then, what it is?” I lean in towards him.

  He is hesitant again.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Sylvia,” why does he have to say my name like that? “Let’s just go to sleep.”

  “Oh,” I manage. “Okay.” My face turns red, and I feel so embarrassed. I grab my pajamas from my drawer and run to the bathroom.

  Maybe now is not the best time to lose my virginity anyway.

  I take a deep breath, wash my face off, brush my teeth, pull my hair into a pony tail, and open the door to crawl back into bed next to him.

  I realize I’ve forgotten to put my sleep playlist on. He senses this, and the next thing I know “We Own the Sky” by M83 is playing in my head. I smile up at him.

  I never told Vincent how I felt about M83, how I think they sound like the Muses. How this song in particular makes me think of how the flickering people have always been such an important part of my life, even if I didn’t understand them. The Muses have been with me all along. Vincent understands that, I think.

  I rest my head back on his chest, closing my eyes, feeling his fingers in my hair again.

  “Vincent?”

  “Yes?”

  “If I’m a half-Muse, can I do anything cool like you can?”

  I can feel him smile though my eyes are closed.

  “I’m sure you can,” he says.

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “We can find out tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Not tonight?” I ask, though I can feel a much-needed sleep settling over me.

  “Not tonight,” he whispers. And I’m so exhausted that I just let the sounds of M83 and the feeling of Vincent’s fingers in my hair carry me off into sleep.