by E. V. White
It was noon already and Alex had not moved from where he stood since dawn. He had looked after Emily as best as he could, covering her when she was cold and uncovering her when she was hot, stroking her head when she complained and wiping her sweat. He had his head on the mattress and was lost in his thoughts when a spasm in the girlʼs legs made him pop like a spring. Emily had buried her face in the pillow and was screaming. The cramps were killing her; Alex was able to understand this by the way her legs were bent and rigid in a position that was unnatural. He tried to massage them to relieve the pain but she turned to him and grabbed his arm.
“Please, I want to die,” she breathed with her face contorted by pain.
Alex could not interpret how much of what she was saying was real or was the result of hallucinations.
“I want to die,” she kept repeating, mumbling with her face smothered in the pillow.
Pleas Alex did not want to hear. A couple of words echoed in his head and soon came to mind: “don’t die”. They were the only words he had managed to say to his sister, holding her in his arms when he found her on the bathroom floor with an empty bottle of pills in one hand and a suicide note in the other. He was not able to say or do anything else. He was only able to hold her tightly for hours until Edward found them – Alex crying about another person who left him only a year after his grandfather and about Audreyʼs broken life at only fifteen. He had not cried since then, at least until he met Emily.
Without even realising it, Alex was running down the corridor and down the stairs. Tears began to blur his sight and he collided with more than one person as he ran out of the clinic. He took the stairs two by two and when he put his feet on the snowy grass of the garden, he slid forward, hitting his face on the ground. He did not mind the pain on his face, the cold or the fact that he would get wet. He turned on his back, covered his face with his palms and cried until he had no more tears left. Icy drops were streaming down the back of his hands. It had started to snow again.
Alex went back to his flat with his clothes still wet and muddy. The door still could not be closed properly. He picked up the phone and called someone who could come to fix it. He went to the kitchen counter and found the floor as filthy as he had left it days before. Sheets of paper with some jumbled verses of the song were scattered here and there. Alex began to reread them. His fight with Matt, their shows, Christopher who wanted them in the studio, it all seemed very distant. They seemed to be part of another life.
He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a packet of cheese pasta Matt had bought. He did not even check the expiration date; he simply put the food in the microwave and turned it on. He was so hungry that he did not care. He could not even remember the last time he had had a decent meal, or rather, a meal in general.
He ate his meal chewing slowly. Every bite that reached his stomach made him feel sicker and sicker, yet he did not stop since he acknowledged that he physically needed to eat. He needed to regain his strength that, in that period, he had lost. He finished his meal without thinking about anything. His mind was a confused tangle of thoughts and emotions, something he was not used to feeling for a very long time and had no idea how to handle. He thought about Emily, but his memories increasingly got confused with those of Audrey.
He looked at his dirty clothes and headed to the bathroom. He got undressed, dropped his clothes on the floor, turned on the hot water in the shower and slipped inside. He let the water flow nonstop. He washed away the smell of alcohol and the fear he had felt during those past few days. The doctor was right: he was not able to resist not even a day inside the clinic by Emilyʼs side. He felt guilty and inadequate, more than he had felt when he was in there with her. The fact that she had begged to die broke him down. He had never imagined such a thing from her.
The memory of Audrey was once again so powerful that he realised the only thing he could remember about his sister was her face, pale and wet with tears that he himself poured on her. He struggled to remember her smile, her voice but he was not able to. They had drifted apart well before she died. A year earlier, when their grandfather died, they too had begun to fall apart, keeping more and more distance between them. Their grandfather had been the one who kept them together, the one who protected them from their mother and filled the emptiness left by their father. Without him, everything had become meaningless. While Alex found a little comfort in Mattʼs family, Audrey was left alone to face her demons. She was too delicate and fragile to have been able to cope with an age that was already too problematic even with a family on your side, let alone on your own.
Alex thought back to those times, on how Matt and his family had accepted him. He recalled how it had been hard for both of them when his friendʼs mother was ill with cancer. He remembered the day of her funeral when his friend was crying and, in his heart, he promised to be his brother, to stay by his side no matter what. He recalled the vow he had made to himself and how he had betrayed it at present. He had lost sight of his family and felt torn between finding the strength to help Emily and the presence of mind to help Matt.
He got out of the shower, put on something clean and came across a man fixing his front door. When he was done, Alex paid him and sat down on the kitchen counter. He looked at the song again, he thought back to the irony of those lines and, in an hour or a bit more, managed to find the missing words that expressed everything he had inside him. Without alcohol numbing him, he managed to find some emotions to describe.
He grabbed his coat, the sheet of paper and went to bring it to Matt.
His friend did not answer the mobile but Jaden replied to his text saying that the three of them were all at the Underbelly. Alex opened the door of the room and some people turned around, surprised perhaps, to see him there and sober. Several days had passed since he had not been seen around. Matt was the most incredulous of all, and Alex was not able to decipher the expression on his face.
He did not say a word when he approached the table; he simply put his scrawled sheet of paper with the song in front of Matt. Alex noticed that everyone at the table was holding his breath, waiting for a reaction from the boy. When he picked up the sheet and read the text without flying into a rage, they all pulled a sigh of relief.
Matt got up and, surprising everyone, asked Alex to follow him downstairs in the room where they usually held concerts.
The two shut themselves up in the empty room, followed by Jaden and Jordan who were somewhat worried.
Matt walked over to one of the acoustic guitars kept in the club for emergencies, removed it from its case and handed it to Alex.
“Here, play it,” he demanded sharply.
Alex picked up the guitar and looked at him with a provocative demeanour. Matt had understood that Alex had not yet jotted down the music to those words and wanted to give him a hard time. Fortunately enough, the melody was already all in his head and he was able to play it whenever he wanted. He picked up the guitar and, after tuning it, started to play the first notes. He closed his eyes and began his journey in the midst of a multitude of emotions that was his heart at that moment.
She felt dead in young bones
the coldness was embracing her alone
her parents were long gone
She was looking for a place to call home.
My raw desire is to have her safe
roof, walls, warmth over her face
I’ll build the place for you and me
where I will protect you for eternity
Can’t separate our hearts tonight
Our bodies cry to be alive
I can’t. I can’t be here now
fuck this fate, fuck it now
I burned too hard, burned to much
I’m dead here, lying on the couch
She drops a tear while her face is close
all is lost, there is no more hope
When he reopened his eyes, Alex saw Jaden and Jordanʼs eyes damp, while Matt held the mobile towards him.
“You
recorded it?” He asked irritated at his friend.
“I need to send something to Christopher,” Matt stated in an increasingly colder manner.
Alex looked at him with fury but did nothing. He was sober enough to understand how angry his friend was. At that moment, he was not certain there would be something left to salvage in their relationship.
“Sounds like fucking shit recorded with a mobile,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Itʼs the song that matters. I donʼt fucking care about the quality,” he countered turning around and going back upstairs.
Jaden and Jordan stopped to observe Alex, almost with pity. He hated seeing that look in their eyes. He did not need to be pitied. He could do it on his own.
“That song’s incredible, mate,” said Jaden almost in a whisper.
Alex smiled glumly and nodded as he watched the two lads scurry and go upstairs. He stood there for a few more minutes, thinking about the melody he had just whipped out and was amazed by the fact that it was actually pretty good.
Matt had managed to snatch an appointment with Christopher for the day after. The moment he left the office, he dashed off to him and was now waiting for the man to return from his lunch break to speak with him. He did not care about re-entering his own office late. The only thing that mattered was the song. Alex had surprised him. He had done an excellent job and Matt had no idea when he managed to do it, since he spent half the time drunk and the other half chasing after a drug addict.
Thinking back to Emily, he felt a bit guilty about that first time he had thrown her out of Alexʼs flat. It was not her fault if Alex had taken the girl’s life to heart. She resembled Audrey beyond belief and Matt could see why Alex felt the visceral need to save her. He wanted to make up for his mistakes but did not understand that he could not do it; it was too late. His friend had never admitted it but he knew that he had always blamed himself for the death of his sister. He had always condemned himself for not having noticed that something about her was no longer right. This was because he did not understand that, when youʼre thirteen, you are not capable of recognising those things. Because at thirteen, you are too young to comprehend them. Audrey had always been fragile and Alex would not have been able to do anything to save her.
He was still absorbed with those thoughts when Christopher came to the door and called him. Matt entered his office with much more confidence than the previous time. At the manʼs signal, he sat on the chair across from his desk and, without saying a word, put the phone on his desk and played the song. The man said nothing; he listened to it in its entirety with an undecipherable expression on his face. Matt did not miss any movement of the manʼs facial muscles but was not able to make out any single thought.
After the song ended, the man continued to stare at the mobile phone, then raised his head and looked at him straight in the eye.
“It’s good, but I want to hear it live,” he said. “I want to see the reaction of the audience during a show,” he continued.
Matt nodded and was glad that the man did not ask for the second song. He was already worried about the fact that they would be at the show with a different singer and did not know how the man would react. For now, he decided he would deal with it when the time came. He only wanted to get out of that office before things would change for the worse. He stood up and saluted the man, then walked back towards his office.
*
For the first time in days, Emily was alert and conscious lying on the bed in the clinic. She stared at the ceiling and acknowledged that the discomfort was bearable even though her senses were not completely dulled by oxycodone. It was a strange feeling that she had not felt in years. On the one hand, it was pleasant; on the other, it gave her the necessary clarity of mind to realise how miserable her life was.
She had run away from home, leaving behind the only family she had. While it was true that her stepfather was the worst person on earth, it was also true that she had left her little sister in the hands of the man who probably made her suffer the same fate she did.
She turned to one side and looked out the window; it had snowed. Luckily, Alex was able to get her admitted into that clinic; otherwise, she might have died of cold out there. For a moment, she thought of the boy. She remembered that he had been with her during the detoxification but could not remember for how long. She had not seen him for days and, by now, was quite certain he would not come back. A tear ran down her face. She was absolutely convinced that he had cared about her. Otherwise, why had he been so concerned of doing it all? She could not explain it herself. Nevertheless, she was certain that she would never see him again and that thought terrified her. She did not really know where to go, nor what she could even do to live.
She decided to close her eyes and to wait to think about it when she was discharged. Maybe she could ask the psychologist who was following her in group therapy for advice. Perhaps there was someone who could help her rebuild her life. Now that drug no longer clouded her mind, she felt the desire to live, something that had abandoned her in recent years, coming back at her. It was an unfamiliar feeling for her, which was pleasant and terrifying at the same time.
Alex had been bumming about Hoxton Square for the last few days. He did not return to the clinic to visit Emily because he no longer had the courage after he ran away that first day. He was afraid of what she would have said but mostly, he was terrified to confront himself. He did not know how he would react if he found Emily in the same condition in which he had left her. He knew that his presence there was not crucial to her recovery, that they would help her get better without him regardless. However, what if it was not really so, how would he react? What if his absence had actually compromised her recovery? Every day he returned to that square, terrified by the idea of finding her lying on a bench and tempted to enter some pub to get drunk and forget everything. It was easier when he drowned all his problems with alcohol – he was not forced to face with feelings of guilt and failure but, at the same time, he would not have been able to try to make up for saving Emily, for which he could never forgive himself. He tried to silence his conscience, telling himself that he had paid fifteen thousand pounds to help her come out of her addiction, and that was enough to give her a second chance. Unfortunately, his inner voice also reminded him that money was not what the girl needed.
Alex was in the midst of his internal struggle when he noticed Jaden, Jordan and Matt enter the Underbelly while carrying their instruments. It was true that the past few days had been hectic but he did not remember they had planned a gig that day. He was sure they had not scheduled any other shows after the one he had missed. He headed toward the club and lingered outside the door for a few moments, undecided whether he should enter or not. He did not know how they would have reacted seeing him there but the curiosity to know what they were doing there with their instruments was devouring him. Was it possible they were playing without him? He was the one who had put the band together, had written songs, had chosen the name. It seemed impossible that they would decide to replace him without even telling him. Jaden had taken over for him once as a singer when he had lost his voice but it was a decision they had taken together, not behind his back.
He then decided to wait on the bench in the park and enter only once the concert had already begun. He did not have the desire to have to face a conversation with the three of them. It would have been embarrassing and would definitely worsen the climate that had erupted between them – that heavy air he himself had helped bring in their group and did not have the faintest idea how to lighten up again. He realised that, perhaps, nothing would get back to normal, even though he had worked hard on himself to improve his ability to relate to others.
Matt was positioning the last items on stage before they started to let people in for the evening. He had rehearsed exhaustively with the new singer Nicolas who did not even come close to Alex. Every word that came out of the mouth of his friend had a weight that was so powerful it made everyone
believe that those lyrics were addressed to him or her; that they had been written for him or her. Nicolas was technically good but he did not have Alexʼs affinity. Matt hoped that Christopher, who would be in the audience that night, would not notice the huge difference, which was quite unlikely since it was his job to make out these subtleties in order to create the best groups; still, it was the only thing he had left: hope, because Alex was not coming back.
Jaden approached him full of melancholy, as he often did when he did not know what to say. Matt saw him out of the corner of his eye and sighed; he knew exactly what his friend wanted to say to him.
“I know, I saw him myself at the park earlier,” he anticipated, knowing that Jaden and Jordan had also noticed Alex roaming around Hoxton Square.
“What are you going to do?” The boy asked.
Matt looked up and, for the first time, met his friendʼs eyes, which were full of guilt.
“I donʼt know,” he replied honestly. “If he comes in and wants to talk, Iʼll talk; but Iʼm not going to go to him,” he added with plenty of sadness in his voice. “I tried several times to help him, now Iʼm tired,” he concluded frankly.
Jaden studied him, perhaps trying to figure out if his friend was sincere with his words. Matt sighed knowing that unfortunately it was the sad reality. He had no more strength left to try to save him. He had spent his life fixing the damages caused by his friend’s excesses and indifference; now that he had also started hanging out with addicts he had no desire to keep rushing to his rescue.
“Do you think heʼs living on that bench with that girl?” Jaden ventured in a whisper, as if he were ashamed of what he had just said.