The Bad Decisions Playlist (28 page)

“Josephine!” I say, breaking into a half trot. “Hold up! Wait!”

Josephine is still stalking away, and then she abruptly stops and turns just as I'm about to reach her, and I nearly run into her and skewer my right eyeball on the index finger that she's jabbing at me.

“Get out of here!” she says.

“Josephine, please, I​—”

“I don't want to hear it!”

“Please, please just listen to me.”

Instead she pushes past me to march back in the direction we came from.

“Josephine!” I grab her by the elbow and she spins again, yanking her arm out of my grasp, and then she gives me a jarring two-handed push in the chest.

“You proud of yourself?” she says. “I trusted you and I thought I loved you and you screwed that girl Alison. How could you do that? How could you!”

We're right next to one of those pushcart kiosks that sells makeup and perfume, and the girl is watching us with absolute undisguised fascination, chewing her gum in slow motion.

Josephine's father is conferring with a mall guard, Jacqueline gesturing emphatically at us. The mall guard is nodding, adjusting his utility belt, starting to amble in my direction.

“Josephine, could we please just talk about this?”

“That's what we're doing. We're talking about it. You know how that girl Alison treats people like me? The things she's said to me in the hall? Do you know? And you screwed her. She told
everyone.
You chose her over me. You chose
her!
I told you I was true. I told you I was
true,
and you said you'd wait for me, and you just . . .”

She starts sobbing before she can finish the sentence.

“I'm so sorry, Josephine. I'm so, so sorry.” Holding my arms out to her to comfort her. “I love you. I've never loved anyone like you. I haven't slept all night. I feel like my soul is burning, Josephine, like all the lights in the universe have gone dark, like​—”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. Save it, Austin. Song's over. This is real life.”

“Josephine​—”

“I never want to speak to you again. Ever.
Ever.
”

She pushes past me. I turn to follow and run right into the security guard, arms wide like he's guarding the path to a basketball net.

“Whoa, youngster,” he says. “Hold on now.”

“Josephine!” I shout after her. “Josephine!
Josephine!
”

But she's moving away, her fast walk becoming a run, and she sprints past her sister and her father and keeps going and disappears around a corner.

“C'mon, buddy, let's go,” the security guard says. “Get up, let's go,” because I'm squatting down, hands over my head, crying. He pulls me to my feet and I don't resist, the perfume girl shaking her head at me in disgust.

“You
suck,
” she says.

∗  ∗  ∗

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The rail is vibrating so hard it hurts the back of my head, distorts my vision of the clouds into a jaggedy, jumpy blur. The train blasts its horn again. I'm happy for the noise and the shaking because they're drowning out any music that might dare intrude. And I'm so tired of everything.

The train whistles again. I don't even bother turning my head to look at it. This time there's no Devon and Alex to pull me off. They're gone. Josephine's gone. My mother is there, but she's gone. Shane is gone.

I told you I was true.

I won't ever leave you again.

And he did. He left me again. There will be a stage empty in New York tomorrow night, because he won't go there. I know it in my bones, know it like I knew when I saw that note that he was gone forever.

HOOOOOOOWOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

In a few moments I'll be gone forever too. Because I can't think of a single reason to get up.

I close my eyes. Josephine, lying in my arms. Shane, smiling at me as I joined him onstage. Josephine when we sang together, our eyes meeting. An empty stage, Shane running away, running for eternity, running in some cloudy half existence.

An empty stage, no one there to fill it.

An empty stage.

Actually, you know what?

∗  ∗  ∗

Farms. Communities. Woods. Farms. Slow traffic. Smooth traffic. Families in SUVs. People who look like they're driving to business meetings. People picking noses and singing to music and talking into cell phones.

The GPS in Rick's Audi telling me I have fourteen hours of driving left to New York, just enough time to make it to a venue where an empty stage awaits.

The extra key to Rick's Audi was in the kitchen drawer where he always leaves it. I doubt my mother will check the garage and notice the car is gone.

I have a duffle bag full of clothes in the trunk, along with all the cans of soup I could find, a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, some jelly. The guitar​—​Shane's old guitar​—​is across the back seat.

Before I shut off my cell phone, so I can't be contacted or tracked, I send Josephine one single text:

I'm going to New York. I'm sorry. I love you forever.

Her voice says to me now,
What are you doing?

I say,
I have a show to do.

And then?
she says.

I turn up the radio.

∗  ∗  ∗

I stay in the right-hand lane the whole time, driving the speed limit, holding my breath each time I see a highway patrol car. I watch the distance to empty fuel indicator, the number dropping, dropping. I don't stop for gas until it's at fourteen miles and my bladder is about to rupture. When I fill up, I think the couple at the next pump are whispering about me​—​what is that kid doing driving that car? I pay in cash, buy a bunch of energy drinks and candy bars and beef jerky, get out of there as quickly as possible.

I drive until the sun sets, drive until it's dark, stopping two more times to fill up. I drive until it's agony to keep my eyes open, until I start thinking, the road is straight here, I'll just close my lids for a little while . . .

Juddering buzz as the car tires plow onto the safety bumps on the shoulder. Heart-thumping panic as I'm jarred awake, jerking the wheel to get the car back into the proper lane. Still breathing hard as I take the next exit and drive on an anonymous, empty stretch of country road. The GPS map says I'm somewhere in western Pennsylvania. It's after two a.m. I'm so tired it's wretched misery, but I don't know what to do. I can't go to a motel. I'm afraid of parking the car in plain view. I find a gas station that looks like it's been closed for a decade and pull behind the building, near a rusted Dumpster, and close my eyes just for a few minutes to figure things out.

It's way past dawn when I wake up, first a few moments of blurry confusion and then more heart-thumping panic, expecting to be surrounded by a SWAT team. There is no SWAT team. There's a decaying gas station on a pitted asphalt lot that's crumbling into a woods, off a lonely stretch of nowhere road.

I pee behind a tree, do some half-assed stretching, get back in the car and back on the highway, and keep going.

I drive for hours and hours more, stopping once in a roadside diner, again feeling paranoid that people are talking about me. Signs starting to appear indicating that New York City is somewhere ahead. By early evening the traffic is tightening, the surroundings becoming less and less rural and open. More signs for the city. What I'm driving through becomes weird and industrial and gnarled, tangles of rusting girder bridges and highway overpasses marring wetlands, my first transactions with toll booths. Then in the failing light I see it in the distance: Manhattan spiked across the horizon.

∗  ∗  ∗

I drive through the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, overwhelmed, exhilarated, the traffic like a video game generated by someone with a meth issue, a thousand potential accidents gnashing their teeth at me on every block. Over the Williamsburg bridge into Brooklyn, the clock ticking, the gig supposed to start in thirty minutes. The GPS voice leads me to the venue and I drive by it slowly, then circle the blocks for another twenty minutes looking for a parking spot, starting to sweat, swearing.

I finally see someone pull out and do my best to parallel park,
ee rr ee rr
back and forth in the space while people behind me honk and curse.

I'm already late as I sprint back toward the venue, dodging the bearded clones in flannel and tight jeans who crowd the sidewalk, spilling out of all the bars to smoke. My lungs are burning, my arm burning as I try to hold the guitar case away from my body so it's not thumping against me, trying to find the right cadence so it's not swinging wildly with each step.

The doorman bars my way with a massive hand. “I'm playing tonight I'm playing tonight I'm playing!” I gasp.

“Where's your ID?” he says.

“I'm supposed to be”​—​gulp of air​—​“onstage right now!”

I point to the small chalkboard mounted next to the door with the evening's lineup,
SHANE TYLER 9:00 P.M.
scribbled on it.

Beetled brow, frowny face.

“Please,” I say.

He twists and shouts inside: “Ben. Ben!”

Ben appears, the king of the hipsters: epic ZZ Top beard, thick horn-rimmed glasses, flannel.

“What's up?”

“This kid says he's Shane Tyler.”

“You are
not
Shane Tyler.”

“No, I'm his son,” I say.

He stares at me.

“What?”

“His son. I'm his son.”

“Well, whoop-dee-doo for you. Where's Shane? He's supposed to playing at”​—​he checks his watch​—​“five minutes ago, and he's not here. And I called his label rep, and
they
don't know where he is, and I called
him,
and
he's
not answering. You're his kid​—​how come you don't know where he is?”

“He's not coming. But
I
can play.”

Ben stares at me. Before he can answer, I hear, “Ben! What's up!”

Ben nods gruffly at someone behind me. “Shefford,” he says, and then he's doing the soul shake and half hug with a tall guy with a shaved head and goofy cheerful grin and T-shirt that says
TRIPPY
on it.

“What's up!” says Shefford to the bouncer, and they knock fists, and Shefford says, “What's up!” to me like I count, and I knock fists automatically.

“Your guys all here?” Ben asks Shefford. He has dismissed me.

“Now?” says Shefford. “I thought we didn't go on until ten. I wanted to see Shane Tyler. He started yet?”

“Jerkoff bailed,” says Ben.

“Aw, that sucks.”

“Yeah, I got a bunch of people here thinking he's about to go on.”

“I could play,” I say.

“How fast could you get everyone here?” Ben says to Shefford.

“I could play,” I say again.

“You think you could get your people here in, like, twenty minutes?” Ben says.

“C'mon, seriously?” says Shefford. “You know how everyone rolls.”

“Now I have to friggin' refund all these people.”

“I could play.”

“So? Get the label to pay you back.”

“Yeah. You go deal with those turds.”

“I could play.”

“I'll just keep the house music on. You guys get going as early as you can,” says Ben.

“I'm telling you, they're not going to be here for an hour.”

“I could​—”

“I
heard
you,” says Ben to me. Now to Shefford: “He says he's Shane Tyler's kid.”

“What?!” says Shefford. “Badass!” He jabs his hand out to me for a handshake. “Your dad is awesome.”

“His dad's an asshole,” says Ben.

“Whoa,” says Shefford.

“No, he's right,” I say. “He's an asshole.”

Shefford laughs. “Why don't you let him play?”

“Why don't you . . .” says Ben, suggesting something physically improbable.

“I just drove here from Minneapolis. I drove straight through.”

“That is so. Rock. And. Roll,” says Shefford. “You hear how rock 'n' roll that is? He drove here from Minneapolis. Let him play.”

Ben glares at me, shakes his head. “Fine. But I'm not paying you,” he says, and goes inside.

∗  ∗  ∗

As soon as he says I can play, I don't want to play.

I don't look at the crowd as I tune up and do a quick sound check, struggling to adjust the height of the mic.

Then I look. It's a pretty big room, crowded, everyone standing. The house music shuts off. It's time. Faces turn toward me, curious, expectant. Prickly sweat. Heart racing. Here it is, what I came all this way to do, what I've always dreamed of doing.

“Um,” I say. “Hi. Shane couldn't make it tonight. I'm his son, Austin.”

If there's a murmur of surprise or any reaction at all, I don't register it, because I immediately start playing the opening chords to “Good Fun,” my eyes closed.

When I start singing the first verse, my voice is timid and shaky, my hands greasy with sweat. I keep my eyes closed as I sing, or keep my sightline fixed above the crowd. About halfway into the song, my voice starts to even out and settle, my confidence growing a bit. I can do this. I can
do
this.

Then I let my gaze drop lower, and it falls upon some guy in the front row, a guy in his thirties in a leather jacket and T-shirt. Catching the precise instant when he turns and looks at his friend, the two of them sharing eye rolls and snarky smiles.
What did we expect?
that look says. And it's like a drop of ink in a pool of clear water, diffusing outward, darkening and polluting everything, and I see others in the crowd trading similar glances, everyone coming to the same conclusion at once, their interest fading, people starting to talk to each other instead of listen. It's not even hostility. It's worse. It's boredom and indifference.