The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  “What now?” Lynn asked. “Do we try to find Jason?”

  It was after noon, the heat barreling down. Traffic to the beach would be terrible by now—and on top of that, my mind was spinning. The conversation with Kurt had left me feeling unmoored, obscured by a thick veil of conflicting thoughts. I needed time to process everything.

  “Not today,” I said.

  Armed with our coffees, we merged back onto the freeway. We’d only been on the road for ten minutes when I saw a sign for York Boulevard, a street that cut down across the bottom of Eagle Rock, below Occidental College. “Exit here,” I said to Lynn.

  “What?”

  “Now, get over now!”

  Without signaling, Lynn swerved across two lanes of traffic toward the exit. Cars honked and braked behind us but we made the off-ramp.

  “Jesus,” Lynn said, clutching her coffee. She slowed as we curved down toward the stoplight. “What’s the deal?”

  “We need to make a detour,” I told her.

  “Can you please be more cryptic?”

  “My house,” I said, though the thought had already started to feel foreign. “We need to stop at my house.”

  I directed Lynn in a circle, down York to Eagle Rock and then up around Colorado, passing the strip mall that lodged the Last Bean. I wondered if Lou was working. I wondered if my handwriting was still displayed on the chalkboard menus hanging behind the register. From the street, I couldn’t tell.

  I continued giving arbitrary directions, and I wasn’t even sure where I was leading her until we approached the street that led to Nick’s and Cara’s houses.

  A heaviness rooted in my stomach as the intersection grew near, and I realized that I hadn’t talked to Cara since that day she showed up at my house with a carefully assembled binder of missed homework assignments, months ago. At the time, I’d told myself we were already drifting apart. And yet it occurred to me now that maybe I was the only one drifting. The heaviness bloomed into guilt. So much had changed; I wouldn’t have even known what to say if I saw her. But Nick . . .

  There were a thousand things I wanted to say to Nick.

  Had I been alone, I would have called him, or maybe just shown up at his door. I was certain the sight of him would ease everything contending inside me—but I wasn’t alone. And more than anything else, I wanted to keep Nick as he was: constant, reliable, separate from Lynn and my new life. Something good that was only mine.

  So we kept driving.

  A few minutes later we coasted up Catalina, my old street. Even from half a block away it was obvious that no one currently lived in the house. Still, the driveway felt too personal, too familiar. I told Lynn to park at the curb.

  Somehow the place looked exactly the same, and yet completely different. The blinds were drawn, making it the only house on the block that was not infiltrated by sunlight, and the grass, while never particularly verdant, had turned haystack brown. I looked at the garage. The windows were still covered with cardboard.

  Turning toward the house, I found our spare key right where we’d left it: under a loose brick lining the flower bed where my mother and I had planted poppies and sweet alyssum in the days following my father’s death. Now, all those flowers were dead too.

  “I’m going to stay out here and have a cigarette,” Lynn said.

  I nodded, and went in alone.

  Inside, I floated from my bedroom to the bathroom, through my parents’ room and back to the kitchen. I’m not sure what I’d expected to find, really, but in the end, I didn’t wander those rooms for long; a few minutes were enough to preserve the empty spaces in my mind. It was no longer home. It was just a structure, some walls and a roof. Everything that mattered was already gone.

  Outside, Lynn leaned against the avocado tree, typing into her phone. The hint of a smile played on her lips.

  “I’ll be done in a minute,” I said, locking the front door and returning the key to its space beneath the loose brick.

  “Take your time.” She tapped a flutter of ash to the ground. The flakes camouflaged with the lawn.

  “Can I bum one?” I asked.

  Lynn handed me her pack. “You’re not getting addicted, are you? I’d hate to think that it was my fault.”

  I slid out a cigarette. Lynn handed me her lighter, but I shook my head. “I’m not addicted. I just need to feel something else.” From my pocket, I withdrew my father’s book of matches and struck one. When I inhaled, it tasted like Cameron, like Cody, like the smoke of a hundred tiny fires dancing on my tongue.

  “Sounds like what you really need is a drink. And this time I don’t mean coffee.”

  “Isn’t it still early?” I asked.

  “For some people,” Lynn said, “it’s just really, really late.”

  I smiled, allowing the cigarette to settle me. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Just a friend,” she said.

  Can you be more cryptic? I thought, but did not have the energy to push. We smoked, thoughts drawn in opposing directions, our papers burning down toward the filter. There was only one thing left for me to do.

  I headed for the studio.

  Thank God the door was unlocked. There was no spare key, not since my father’s truck was salvaged for scraps with his key chain somewhere inside. I flipped the light switch and watched as the overhead bulb flickered with disuse before the room brightened. It was empty, of course, but unlike the house, which my mother had cleaned and treated before leaving, the garage made apparent all that was gone. Patches of tape residue pockmarked the walls, and trails of staples swirled across the ceiling—all the places that had once held up shipping foam, blankets, our makeshift soundproofing. The spots on the floor that had been hidden beneath amps and storage bins were lighter, free from all the dirt that had painted the rest of the cement over the years. Even his scent still clung, faintly, to the shadows. It wouldn’t last much longer, I knew, not with the door open and the smoke from my cigarette. But at least the dissipation was on my terms now.

  I closed my eyes and I could see him there: the gentle curve of his back as he leaned over his Telecaster, his eyes full of possibility. I could still hear the buzz of the amps like an unspoken promise between us.

  “I’ll never know what was going through your head,” I said out loud. My stomach knotted, though I was talking only to air. “I’ll never know all your secrets, or if you regretted the choices you made, but maybe that’s for the best. Because I have to believe you didn’t do it on purpose. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I opened my eyes once again to the desolate room, and for the first time in a long time I thought about Lance and Travis. I wondered if my father had revealed different stories to them. I thought again about his final tape, now lost forever, and whether they had heard it. Even just the possibility made anger simmer inside me, so I beat it down. What did that matter now, anyway? I was never going to see them again. I was never going to see any of this again, and I did not come here for a bitter good-bye.

  “I wish you could’ve heard me,” I said to the emptiness. I wished he could have seen me onstage, listened to the final version of “Don’t Look Back,” wished he’d have stuck around long enough for me to show him my cover of “Love Honey.” I wished I hadn’t spent so long being afraid.

  A flurry of white ash fell from the end of my cigarette and, smearing the powder beneath my shoe, I created a sooty arc on the cement floor. The mark was impermanent, easily erased by a wave of the hose, but it would still serve as a reminder to whoever ultimately bought the house that someone else had been here first. I continued inhaling, flicking the cigarette’s tip until I had enough ash to draw a full circle around me. For a while, I stood in the center of it, wondering if the new residents would think about us, who we were, what we were like. Probably not. We had really shared something special here, my father and I. But no one else would ever know about it.

  Seventeen

  IN THE WAKE of New Year’s and my encounter with K
urt Vaughan, I began playing regularly with the Endless West. Practice happened a few afternoons a week, and gigs were scheduled on most weekends, all around Orange County and Long Beach. With school back in full effect, I found it easy enough to account for my busy schedule by developing a plausible rotation of academic alibis: small reading groups for advanced English, larger review parties for pre-calc and history. I even made flashcards for physics, dutifully filling the sides with key vocabulary and equations so that I could review with my imaginary lab partner. Incidentally, I began doing much better in physics.

  Neither my mother nor Vivian doubted me; as long as I did well in school and obeyed their rules, I was treated (more or less) like a responsible adult—allowed to borrow the car, given a tolerable curfew—and the more I asked to sleep over at Lynn’s house, the less resistant my mother seemed to the idea. I thought perhaps she wanted to give me my space. Every time she agreed, I made sure to thank her. The ice between us slowly began to thaw.

  And as the sharp hint of winter seeped back into spring, Cameron and I continued skirting the razor-edged line that encompassed our relationship, suspended somewhere between friendship and more. After a few awkward practices, I thought I’d finally figured out what was happening: the band was a sacred space, and our professionalism could not be tainted. Occasionally, I caught the boys regarding Cameron and me, their expressions slightly concerned as though we might all of a sudden throw down our instruments and start making out. But nothing happened between us in public—only the brush of a hand, the graze of a shoulder. What transpired with Cody hadn’t changed the way my stomach bottomed when I saw Cameron, and I told no one about what happened on New Year’s Eve—not even Lynn. Cara was the only person who would have understood.

  When Cameron and I were alone, though, the entire infrastructure of our pretending crumbled. Every time I wondered, with a torrent of anticipation, if he would kiss me. And every time, when he did, his smile rising from the left side of his mouth like a crescent moon, I knew that all those other days when we kept ourselves apart were meaningless. It didn’t even bother me that we never went any further than that.

  Of course, I wanted to define what was between us, had decided dozens of times that I would ask. And once, I almost did. But as the words formulated, I sensed that needing to present the question meant I would not like the answer. So instead I asked about his family.

  “There’s not much to say,” Cameron said. We were lying on the plaid sofa, the one on which we’d finished “Don’t Look Back.” That had become our place. “My dad’s an engineer. My mom works at an elementary school. And I’ve got two older siblings, a sister and a brother. She’s finishing up at UCI and my brother lives down in San Diego.”

  “So who gave you the music?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who inspired you to start playing?”

  Cameron rotated onto his back. Facing the ceiling, he thought for a minute. I watched his eyelashes twitch with the memories. “I don’t know. I grew up listening to my brother’s CDs. At the Drive-In, the Pixies, the Strokes—that kind of thing. And my dad used to blast, like, Cream and Santana when he’d work in the garage on the weekends. But no one in my family plays anything.”

  “So you just decided one day to start playing guitar?”

  “I asked for a drum set first, but my mom wasn’t too keen on that idea. Too much noise. Guitar seemed like the next best option.”

  For some reason this nonchalance—the simplicity of his skill—impressed me more than anything else.

  “Your dad plays, right?” he asked.

  I sat up on my elbow. “How’d you know that?”

  “You told me.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Well you may as well have.” He pulled me on top of him, twisted my hair behind my ear. “That day in Lynn’s kitchen, when you told me not to get in the way of a great song. You said your dad told you that.”

  “How do you even remember that? I was spouting nonsense.”

  “Here’s the most profound thing my dad ever told me about music,” Cameron said. “When I was just starting out, unable to even hold down a barre chord, he said, ‘You should really get a stand for that thing. Don’t want it to fall over and break.’”

  I laughed. “Sometimes the most sage advice is simple.”

  “And some of us are luckier than others.” When he bent up to kiss me I could feel his stomach muscles tightening. He said, “I’d like to meet him sometime. Your dad.”

  I traced my fingertips across Cameron’s cheek, down his soft lips, and considered lying, saying that my father would love to meet him, making up excuses every time the date drew near.

  “He died a few months ago,” I said.

  “Shit,” Cameron said, “I’m sorry,” and he held me against his chest. I closed my eyes as his hands waded through my hair, down the curve of my neck.

  “If you could play a show anywhere in the world,” I said, “where would it be?”

  Cameron took a while to answer. “The Filmore East. Or West. I’d take either, as long as it was in 1970.”

  “Time travel, huh? That’s a tall order.”

  He laughed. I felt it rumble through his rib cage. “What about you?”

  “The Troubadour,” I replied instantly.

  He said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Really?” I looked up at him.

  “Sure. I actually know someone whose band is playing there in a few months. I’ll talk to him, see if we can tag along as an opener.”

  I grinned. He kissed me again.

  Outside, the world kept turning, progressing further away from the place where my father once lived. But with Cameron, inside the Endless West’s studio, the world felt still, like my life was finally angled in the right direction again. Like nothing could ever go wrong.

  Then one Friday I came home to find Roger Tipton reclining on our living room sofa.

  “Susannah,” Vivian said when she saw me. “Where have you been?”

  I’d just returned from the studio where the boys and I planned on practicing our set for an upcoming gig at the Prospector, but Lynn and Josie were there too, and pretty soon we were all just drinking or smoking, the halfhearted refrains of “we should probably start playing now” getting quieter and less insistent until they ceased altogether. Though I planned on rushing off to shower before encountering anyone, afraid of the scents that might cling to me, the sight of Roger in our house left me frozen.

  “Study group,” I said, but in my head I thought, Shit. Busted. “What’s going on?”

  “We have a guest over,” Vivian said. “Don’t be rude. Say hello.”

  My heart beat jagged melodies against my chest. “Hi, Mr. Tipton.”

  “Hello, Susannah,” Roger said through an uncertain smile. “Long time, no see, huh?”

  I stared at him. Silence congealed between us until my mother entered the room through the side hall, holding a tray of wineglasses. “I have red for Roger, and white for Mom,” she said, handing out drinks. She took the third glass for herself and rested the tray on the table before she even noticed me standing there.

  That’s when it struck me: New Year’s. This all had to be connected to their New Year’s Eve dinner, which I had never asked about, because frankly, I didn’t want to know if it had gone well.

  “Susannah!” my mother cooed. “When did you get home?”

  “Just now,” I said.

  She smiled at me. “Why don’t you get cleaned up and come join us? Dinner will be in ten.”

  I headed to the shower without another word.

  For dinner, we sat around the small square table where we always ate, but the room had transformed. Tall white candlesticks towered out of polished silver holders, and the usual place mats of woven fern had been swapped for embroidered textiles that matched the ivory napkins. Even my mother was dressed up in an elegant blue dress that swished at her kneecaps. A pearl bracelet— Vivian’s, I guesse
d—shimmered when her wrist turned. I sat across from her, hunched in my father’s faded Flying Burrito Brothers T-shirt, my wet hair corralled into a messy bun. The ends wept cold streams down my back.

  “Why don’t you tell us about your day, Susannah?” my mother asked after a while, when I still hadn’t said a word.

  “There’s not much to tell,” I said, and squeezed the chicken breast with my fork until the feta stuffing oozed out. Any other day, I would have devoured my meal in a matter of seconds, but as I watched the casual way Roger cut into his meat, listening to his effortless banter and the laughter that lingered in that high-ceilinged room, my appetite waned. “I went to school, then to Lynn’s to work on an Economics project. Now I’m home.”

  I stared at Roger, daring him to challenge me. He just kept eating.

  My mother said, “I’m glad you’ve found a nice pattern here. And friends. It’s so important to have friends.”

  “Yup.” I attempted to stab a pomegranate seed from my salad with the loud clang of metal against china. “Patterns and friends.”

  For a moment, I felt the weight of all their eyes on me. Then Roger cleared his throat.

  “This chicken is incredible, Vivian. You’ll have to give me the recipe.”

  “Are you much of a chef these days?” she asked, once again refilling the wine.

  My mother picked up her glass and swirled it around before drinking. “Actually, Roger’s always had a flair for cooking. He used to make a mean mac ’n’ cheese. He’d even throw in little hot dog slices, if he was feeling fancy.” She flashed a grin across the table.

  Roger laughed. “Well, I guess not much has changed, then. I still tend to eat simply. I make a lot of pork chops, a lot of spaghetti. Burritos.” He threw me a knowing smile. I glared back. “But this might be the best meal I’ve ever had.”

  “It’s a lot easier than it looks,” Vivian said. “I don’t have the patience to bother much with recipes these days. All you really need are fresh ingredients and common sense. Even a man of mac and cheese could make this.”

  “I think you’re letting yourself off easy. This is truly delicious.”