Encore to an Empty Room (20 page)

I crane up on my toes.

“Cassie!”

I'm already moving toward the side of the stage when I see Val backing away from the crowd, doing her best not to look toward the voice.

Caleb is noticing this and Val nods at him urgently.

“This last song is called . . .” Val races over and gets in his ear. I think they were planning to play Val's song, “The Spinelessness of Water,” but now Caleb returns to the mic and says, “This is called ‘Artificial Limb.'” One that Caleb
sings, which allows Val to stand back near the drums, looking everywhere but toward the edge of the stage.

I head backstage and climb the staircase to the side of the stage. Peering around a heavy red curtain, I can see the faces of the crowd on that far side. . . .

It's him.

Melanie's boyfriend. A giant among the skinny kids. And if he's here . . .

Val spends the song beside the drums, head down and thrashing. She blows a couple notes, never looks up except to lock a death glare on Matt now and then. The second they're done, she unplugs and starts across the stage.

“Val, is that—” I say.

“Gotta go.” She hurries past me, leaps down the stairs, darting toward the greenroom.

I am barely down the stairs when she runs past me in the other direction, slipping on her coat. She must have left her bass behind.

“Val—” I try again, but she's already out the backstage door and bolting into the crowd.

“What's going on?” Caleb is rushing toward me.

“Val's mom is here.”

I hurry to the greenroom for my coat, and then chase after her, pushing through the crowd.

“Summer!” Jason suddenly appears from the crowd. “Really impressive—”

“Shut up!” I snap at him, pushing right past and not
slowing down until I emerge outside. The sidewalk is cluttered with kids taking smoke breaks. No sign of Val.

Caleb appears beside me. He scans the scene and his couple inches of height make the difference. “There.”

We weave through the clusters of people and find Val a half block down, just beyond the club's lights.

She's not alone.

Standing in front of her is a girl of similar height, with straight hair dyed red. Until you are a few feet away, you might think they were sisters.

Her face is deeply lined, her hands jittery with a cigarette. She's wearing a tan faux-fur coat.

Caleb and I instinctively move to either side of Val.

“What are you even doing here?” Val is saying.

When Melanie sees me, she points her cigarette at me. “You the other one that broke into my house?”

The boyfriend stands beside her. He's even bigger than I remember. His face is scraggly and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot.

“Mom, it's not breaking in if it's my own house!”

“It hasn't been your house since you ran off and worried your mother sick for a year,” says the boyfriend, his words heavy and menacing.

Melanie's eyes fall on Caleb. She takes a drag from her cigarette. “You're Eli's son.”

“Yeah,” says Caleb, and his polite instincts kick in. “Nice to meet you.”

Matt appears beside us. “Everybody okay?” he asks breathlessly.

No one replies.

“So, what?” says Melanie, turning her glare back to Val. “Did you run out of money?”

Val laughs incredulously. “No! What are you talking about—”

“My checkbook!” Melanie snaps. “I found it with a check missing. I keep track of the numbers. You probably didn't think your mom had that much of a brain left but she does.”

I don't know what to think. That's what Val went into Melanie's room for? To steal a check?

“You could have just asked for money,” says Melanie. “You could have just called.”

“Yeah, right,” Val says, laughing but with tears in her eyes.

“You don't want me as your mother, but you'll steal my money—”

“I wasn't stealing your money!” Val yanks a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and throws it at Melanie. Tears are pouring now. “I was going to GIVE you money, Mom! For your treatments!”

As the boyfriend snatches the check from the sidewalk, Melanie's eyes go wide.

“Yeah, I know about your illness, and I know you don't have much money and whatever you do have I know
you're just going to waste on drugs and booze and so YES, I wanted your bank account number so I could wire you money! We're about to get a huge record deal and I could pay for your treatments.”

Melanie's eyes are wet now, too, but she waves her cigarette at Val. “I don't want your guilt money,” she spits.

“Mom, you're going to need it—”

“I want you to come home!”

Val sighs to the sky. “I'm not coming home, Mom. Ever.”

“Cassie . . . ,” Melanie sniffs. “I want you there. I'm doing better. Darryl is helping me.” She reaches for Darryl's big hand.

I see Val scowling at this. “I don't want
you
and
Darryl
, Mom. I have a life now at Caleb's house. I'm in a band, finishing high school, and I have a safe place to sleep. . . .”

“It would be safe at home,” says Darryl.

Val sort of chuckles. “I was there today. I saw the
paraphernalia
or whatever right there in the living room! You're still fucked up, Mom—”

“Hey . . . ,” says Darryl menacingly.

“And I'm not coming back. I'm not going to feel guilty anymore about how you had to raise me on your own, or that you miss me now, and I'm not going to take the blame when
this
”—she waves her hand at Melanie and Darryl—“falls apart!”

“It's not like that!” Melanie shouts, wiping at tears. “I never wanted you to leave. I've been trying to find you.
Left messages with all your old friends . . . Now that I'm sick—”

“No! No.” Val holds her fists to her temples. “You don't get to do this! You don't get to play the sick card. It's always some kind of pity with you! It's not fair. But you know what? Don't worry, I'm still going to send you money like a good little daughter. Just spare me the manipulative bullshit!”

“Watch your mouth, Cassie,” says Darryl. He looks at Melanie, a wreck now, and grabs Val's wrist. “Enough of this. You're coming home.”

“Let go of me!” She strains the other way.

“Let her go!” I shout.

“You're coming home to your mother like she asked!”

I grab Val's arm and try to pull her away. Caleb puts his arm around her and helps, but Darryl is tugging hard. Val's coat tears as she struggles to get free of him.

And then it's Matt, of all of us, who is suddenly darting in front of me, his arm swinging.

“Let her go!” he nearly screams, and he punches Darryl in the jaw. There's a hollow crack. I don't know if it's jaw or hand or both.

Things happen fast.

Val stumbles and falls back onto her butt.

Darryl spins, doubling over and grabbing at his face.

Matt looks dazed as he turns to check on Val.

“Stop it!” Melanie yells. She grabs at Darryl's arm.

He's already back up and spinning and his fist is flying through the air.

“Matt!” I barely get out.

Matt looks up but he'll never move in time. Darryl's fist slams him in the temple and ear.

I see his eyes unstick from time and space. He falls forward like a piece of wood.

Bystanders are closing in on us now.

Caleb jumps at Darryl, but Darryl's big hands slam him in the shoulder and send him sprawling onto the plow pile.

“Hey, knock it off!” Bouncers from the club reach us and grab Darryl.

I drop to my knees and pull Matt to me. He's holding his nose and blood is pouring out all over his hand.

“Stop it, dammit!” Val yells. “Every day I've been without you has been better, not having to feel sorry for being alive! Look at this!” She throws up her hands. “This is life with you! Now leave me alone!” She turns and takes off through the crowd.

“Cassie . . . ,” says Melanie, her voice slurring and fresh tears running.

“Hey, come back here, Cassie! Don't you talk to your mother that way!” Darryl shouts, fighting at the two guys who are holding him. He's fired up now and looks like he just needs to hit something.

Caleb scrambles back to his feet. “Val!” he calls, scanning the crowd.

“That way,” I say, pointing over my shoulder.

“Dammit, I'll get her.” Caleb takes off.

Melanie grabs Darryl's arm. “Forget it, come on. Forget her, I just want to go home.”

“All right, fine. I'm fine,” Darryl says to the bouncer. He puts his arm around Melanie and they stumble away down the street.

Suddenly Matt is getting up, trying to shake my hands free as he staggers after Darryl.

“Let me go . . . ,” he mumbles.

“Matt, no . . .”

He pulls away from me and breaks into a run but he's weaving sloppily from side to side. I catch up with him by the end of the block and grab him by the shoulders. “Stop!”

“I'll kick his ass,” Matt sputters.

“Matt . . . come on, calm down,” I say into his ear. I notice a stream of blood that's trickling out.

“He doesn't get to—” Matt's eyes roll back and he falls again.

I barely catch him. I lurch toward a nearby stoop and collapse to the cold cement steps, Matt's body limp in my arms. I turn him over so his head is on my lap.

I glance back toward the club. One block seems like a mile. “Hey!” I call, but we're just far enough away that my voice can't compete with the sound from the band inside.

“Shit. Matt, wake up.”

Matt's eyes stir, but stay shut.

“Stay with me, Matty.” I wrench my phone out of my coat pocket.

A message informs me that I'm below 10 percent on the battery. There are texts, too.

I watch the send bar fill agonizingly slowly, and when the text finally registers delivered, I switch to the phone and dial 911.

“Hello?”

“This is 911 dispatch. Please state y—”

“Hello?”

A hiss, and the screen goes blank. I stare at the phone, as if it's going to shrug and apologize. All this power, to speak to any other human on the planet via a quick space walk, to like what they're having for lunch from thousands of miles away, and still . . .

The battery goes dead right when you need it.

“Ugh!” I want to throw the stupid phone I—

“Summer . . . ,” he groans from my lap.

I bite my lip and squeeze back the tears and shove my phone away in my jacket pocket. It's not the phone's fault, not the phone company's conspiracy to build batteries that start sucking after two years. It's not the 911 operator's fault or the fault of the inventor of the steam engine that made
the human dream of long-distance travel even possible in the first place.

It's my fault.

A pack of adults stumbles by. A couple of them eye me mid-laughter. Twentysomethings with liquor-glazed eyes. Their cheeks are rosy above their fashionable scarves.

“Are you okay?” one of them says, nearly serious, her eyes starting to clear.

“Girl, you are
not
getting any there,” another says, appraising my situation, and this trips the alcohol-loosened triggers and they all start giggling and leaning into each other and the almost-lucid girl sinks back into the pack and they stumble on.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask quietly after them.

He coughs in my lap, a thick sound. I wonder if there is internal bleeding I don't know about. Probably not. But still . . . His body starts to shiver.

I take off my coat and drape it over him. My own shoulders won't stop trembling. My ears and toes are starting to feel numb. My butt is long gone from sitting on this ice-slicked staircase. I should get up and head back to the club, get someone to help, but I don't want to leave him. Or risk hurting him by trying to drag him inside.

I don't want to move at all.

Hasn't there been enough? Three thousand miles of wild plans, lies, and dreams that soared like magical leaps to the stars and back. . . . Maybe my battery is dead, too. We
tried, though, didn't we? A for effort? But it doesn't matter. This is what I get, deserved or not. Everyone's gone. Everything's ruined. No band, and no future. Just pain, loss, and a dead cell phone.

This time the tears come. I wipe at the snot on my sore, freezing nose and look desperately up and down the street. Williamsburg at one a.m. You would think there'd be no shortage of people. But not on this street, not in this weather.

Something stings on my already frozen cheek.

A snowflake.

They drift down through the yellow streetlight, large and solitary and sentient-seeming, floating to earth like little paratroopers, making tiny whispering sounds as they land on the pavement.

“Nnnn.”

“It's okay,” I whisper to him, but once again, I am a liar.

Nothing is okay.

“Summer!” I look up the street and see Randy hurrying toward us.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, I was looking for you guys backstage—what the hell happened?”

“Val's mom and boyfriend.”

“Where's everybody else? Well, besides Jon. He's onstage with Postcards.”

“Val ran off. Caleb went after her.”

Randy kneels in front of Matt. “It looks like he got punched, hard.”

“Yeah. It's bad.”

“Wow, okay. Um . . . let's get to the corner and get a cab. We'll take him to the ER. Better to be safe.”

I just nod. Push Matt to his feet. We put his arms around our shoulders and slowly make our way back toward the club, through the crowd and to the corner past that.

“Any word from Caleb?” Randy asks me.

“My phone's dead.” I feel like a robot in my responses.

Randy waves his arm and a cab starts to pull over. “Oh, but, crap,” he says, glancing back at the club. “The gear.”

“I can stay with it.”

Randy grimaces, straining as he carefully lowers Matt into the backseat. “Okay. I'll tell Caleb you're here. Oh, and . . . hold on.”

He digs in his coat pocket and holds out a charger. “Please tell me we have the same one.”

“Yeah, that's it. Thanks. Keep me posted.”

“Roger.” Randy jumps in the cab.

I make my way back inside. Back into the loud, unaware club. Up onstage, Postcards are rocking out. Man, it sounds great with Jon. He's jumping around more animated than I've maybe seen him since the first Dangerheart gig. Like he's free of some big sulk that was hanging over him. I feel like saying to him,
You're choosing Ethan over Caleb? Just you wait . . .
but screw Jon if that's the choice he wants to make.
Right now he's the last thing I've got time to worry about.

Also, Postcards are in the midst of one of their most epic songs, “The View from Saturday,” and the song reminds me of long ago in a weirdly direct way that makes a lump form in my throat. Suddenly last summer seems immediate. This is not at all the moment when I want to think about the past, but it's like my immunity to all things tragic is critically low.

So I don't break stride. Just head backstage. The greenroom is full of other band members. There's an animated conversation in progress about the best clubs to play in Philadelphia, which ones have food, good weed, and so forth.

“Do you mind if I sit there?” I ask a fishnet girl with bubblegum hair who was in an earlier band called the Meat Dilemma. I hold out the phone charger and nod to the power strip that's hanging off the couch arm, both to indicate my intentions and to ward off her scowl.

“Scooch,” she says to her neighbor, and they make a sliver of sunken couch for me to slump into.

I plug in the phone and wait. Nobody recognizes me. Their currency is stage time. And that's fine. What could I possibly talk about right now? I'd just be a downer. I lean against the side of the couch and make myself as small as possible, and feel utterly insignificant but at least anonymous.

“Ya, we've played Philly five times. We're selling it out now,” says the Meat girl. “Have you guys ever played DC?”

“Oh, totally,” says a stringy boy in a Neutral Milk Hotel
T-shirt. I think his band was called Yesterday's Kill. “DC? You wouldn't think it would be cool? But then it is?”

I listen to them and the failure that is our own band starts to really sink in. Jon is probably gone. Especially given that soundcheck fight and how happy he looked up there just now. What will Val do now that she's been found? Will she run again? Oh, and Matt's in an ER. That's not exactly going to warm his parents on the idea of touring. And the tapes . . .

We were so close.

Twenty minutes pass before my stubborn battery agrees to even turn the phone on. There's a buzz and I see it starting to power up. I have been staring blankly at the ceiling, half listening to the vibrations of Postcards through the wall.

A minute later my phone starts to chirp with alerts.

My gut freezes at the sight of this last one. It's one in the morning. Only ten back in LA, but still . . . why are my parents calling? There is no scenario where this is good.

I tap the alert, and the voice mail starts to play.

“Summer, this is your dad. We just got home from dinner and a movie. There's a message from an Andre Carleton. He said he'd had a change in his schedule and as it turns out he could fit you in for a Stanford interview on Saturday if you could get back early. He says the deadline is Sunday. We . . . well . . .”

I nearly die in the pause.

“I've gone ahead and bought you a plane ticket home,” Dad says. “You leave out of JFK at seven a.m. tomorrow.”

I start to cry. There's no stopping it now.

“When you get back,” Dad continues, “we can talk about your choices . . . prior to this. But for now we . . .”

Another brutal pause.

“Just, that plane tomorrow morning. You'd better be on it. The confirmation should be in your email. We let Andre know you could make a one o'clock interview. Okay, please let us know when you get this. We'll be in bed but send a text. Love you . . . Bye.”

And there it is.

Failure complete.

I turn my body away from the chatting crowd, stuff my face into my shoulder as the tears increase.

When I was lying to them, when I was dodging the interview, I never imagined I'd feel like this. Well, I never imagined them finding out. But I also felt like I knew what I was doing, what was important for me. I felt like a character in a story, a big person doing a big thing. But no, I am just
a girl who told a lie and got caught. The universe, the fates, they don't give a fuck how important you think you are. Andre will still call on a Friday night—a very nice thing of him to do, by the way, so nice I never even remotely planned for it—and everything will finally fall apart.

Oh man, I am so done for. I ball my fist but I can't punch anything in this greenroom. I'm not going to be the drama queen having a big freak-out in front of everyone. But what else am I going to do?

I'm going to take that flight.

That's the only option, now.

And suddenly I get it. Why not getting Eli's final tape has been bumming me out more than almost anything else. More even than it seemed like it was upsetting Caleb. Because the tapes felt like a sign. Like fate. We would find them and
that
would be the future, done and done. Like, in effect, I wouldn't have to make a choice about next year because the choice would be made for me. No one could deny such a crazy, magical thing as those lost tapes. They'd far outshine my other options, and everyone would see that I'd
have
to follow them, to be Summer with her band.

God, listen to me. I sound so selfish.

But there are no tapes. There is no magic key to the future. There is only a plane ride home and the disappointment on my parents' faces. There is only our broken band scattered across a vast, freezing city.

I don't know how I could be so confident in my own
abilities and yet so afraid of dealing honestly with the choices they create. Having a future like mine is a gift. I'm so lucky. And yet I've been treating it like such a burden. Running scared when I should be standing tall.

I feel gross.

Distantly through the walls, there is huge applause out in the club.

And I realize that the absolute last person in this universe or the multiverse beyond that I want to see right now is Ethan.

My phone buzzes again.

Okay, that's the same caller from earlier tonight. I wonder if I should reply and tell them they got the wrong number.

Wait. How does this person seem to know that up until very recently I've been searching for something? I look at the time. 1:25. In six hours I'll already be in the sky . . .

I write back.

Under the—

He just quoted Eli's letter. The clue we found . . .

I open my browser and search.

Ten Below Zero has a show tonight. A series of performers, and then an open mic that lasts until two.

Holy shit.

I map Ten Below Zero. It's in the East Village. Not too far a cab ride from here if I can get one. . . .

But wait.

My heart is racing. I jump to my feet, jostling band kids who leer at me. I unplug the phone charger with one hand, texting Caleb with the other. The phone is only 60 percent charged, but hey, I'll be on a plane home soon anyway.

He won't get that until he's out of the subway. It will probably be too late.

Postcards have launched into an encore. I rush up to the side of the stage, find the sound man who's running monitors, and ask if it's cool to leave Matt's drums until the next morning. He says he'll move them to the corner and make sure they stick around at night's end.

I grab Caleb's guitar and Val's bass and hurry out.