lilbirdyblog.files.wordpress.com  · Web viewIf you were to look out at the early-rising city of Boston, Massachusetts from the rooftop of the Michael & Madison Publishing Co. building

Internecine

By Liberty Renee

I

If you were to look out at the early-rising city of Boston, Massachusetts from the rooftop of the Michael & Madison Publishing Co. building that stands at Broad and Central at about five twenty-three in the morning, you’d swear the sun had been replaced by a grapefruit overnight. Around the growing pink sphere, the clouds waft in and out of the warmly washed air and trickle down in streams until they threaten to overpower the tiny splotches of tangerine sky like background noise growing louder with each proceeding second. Ten minutes later, every stitch of subtle color has been ripped out of sight and tossed into the sea, leaving nothing but a quivering skin of burnt orange holding onto its atmosphere, glaring down at you for as long as it possibly can before it’s shoved out of the frame by the bright golden rays of the rightful king of the morning— finally awake to claim his throne, every trace of grapefruit gone.

It shouldn’t have been easy for me to reach the roof. In fact, it should’ve actually been relatively difficult given the access code to the upper floors and the security guards and not to mention the ID card required to get past the lobby. But it was always easy. I did absolutely nothing interesting at all in order to watch my sunrises. I would simply flash a tiny golden circular pin that read, “Rehnayah Faramount”, a trivial identification that could just as well have been stuck through my bloody finger for all anybody cared. No tactics, no schemes. Just a name that wasn’t even mine.

It was disgustingly easy.

I don’t mean to start off bitter. When I was younger I’d loved knowing how important my mother was. I always got little single serving chocolates from her secretaries and even the executives sent me cards on my birthday. We went to all the museums and libraries in the city when my she had free time. We ordered pizza and watched ridiculous romantic comedies when she didn’t have to work late. It wasn’t until I grew a bit older that I got sick of it— that the facade of the whole glittering game faded away. It was like living your life in a theatre only to find out halfway through that everyone was playing a part. Don’t get me wrong, she was brilliant the way she’d blinded me with fancy breakfast foods and boat rides to Cambridge and kept me busy with sightseeing trips and park outings with her publicist. It was genius really, the way she always found a way to pack my childhood full of adventures in hopes that I’d be so busy I’d forget to ask the important questions.

But she’d raised me to be intelligent.

That was her mistake.

It was the one flaw that would forever derail her plans. She had to have known that I wouldn’t be fazed by her superficial attempts to avert my attention forever. I was curious and stubborn and deeply attentive. But who knows really, maybe she really was naïve enough to think that the trips to Long and Castle Island would distract me forever.

She didn’t get that lucky.

Rehnayah Faramount had already released two novels and worked for Michael & Madison for three years by the time she was twenty-three years old. She’d barely begun her career when she reached a level of acclaim in which she could negotiate her way into a deal that allowed her to work from either her San Francisco office or from home most of the year—this would be the time when any and all of her own works could be completed—and a position at the Boston office from May through August where she would deal heavily with publishing and individual client management. One of her novels was a sort of romantic thriller and was in the process of heading to the screen at the time. With my father doing some traveling of his own for his international law firm, it was decided that I would accompany my mother to Boston for at least a couple of months, either the first or latter half.

The terms were never disputed by either of them. In fact, the prolonged separation undoubtedly held their marriage together. That is, if you could even call it that. There was no doubt in my mind that she relished her four months of freedom, even more so during the two in which I couldn’t manage to become a collateral witness of her actions. It’s hard to map it all out and say for sure though if I’m being honest. In retrospect, it’s become clear to me that some of the most important puzzle pieces of my life were taken out of the box before I was even born. The picture always turned out fuzzy no matter what I tried.

The later Boston summers of my life are all one huge, scorching, rainy blur. Humid afternoons spent locked away in my bedroom watching the June thunderstorms boxing with the clouds outside the rain streaked windows. An empty white apartment, empty stained steel fridge. Ice cubes melting on my stomach, creating endless pools of water that eventually emptied out into jagged rivers along my sides, soaking into the sheets. It was the perfect production. Boston provided plenty of stressful meetings for my mother, quiet rooftops for me, the princess locked away in her many towers, and tension-filled brunches between the both of us. That was the extent of our summer relationship.

But the last summer stands alone, claiming its own horrifying haze.

The unease settled in at the very beginning. My mother was a marionette, constantly jerking about, seemingly without control of her own actions. If she wasn’t on her way to a meeting she was on a lunch date with a young novelist or she was writing her “next big thing”. I was unnecessary to the most infinite degree. She operated on hyper-drive, hardly ever sleeping. And yet somehow, I was always to blame. There was no tiptoeing around the eggshells that cracked in her wake.

By the time the particular climactic morning in question rolled around, she’d been on edge for days. More than usual. She hardly ate, she lost her keys twice a day, she forgot to wash her face. At first, I thought it was a high-maintenance situation at work. Then I thought she was sick. I even contemplated a severe psychological breakdown— figuring she was overdue. But then finally, I overheard a phone conversation.

“He’s here Jen.”

She was delirious, fumbling around in kitchen drawers, picking things up and shoving them back in. I wasn’t even in the same room and I knew that her hands were shaking. She was in a black tank top and I could see little clusters of anxious hives blooming all over her back. I’d woken up early to watch the sunrise without her knowledge. I’d been twelve when I first started sneaking out to Michael & Madison. Everyone underestimated my distaste for rules and overestimated my mother’s parenting skills. This worked to my advantage more often than not when going up to the roof at the crack of dawn. They assumed Rehnayah Faramount always knew where her child was. Two years later, I’d gotten up and gotten dressed right under her nose with ease. I hadn’t expected her to be awake just yet, much less drinking coffee in the kitchen while entertaining a suspicious sounding phone call. I decided to stay put in the hall a little longer, my head snaking around the corner of the wall. Jennifer Bentley was her publicist who’d practically doubled as my nanny growing up, but I hadn’t been aware of the close friendship they clearly seemed to share.

“He didn’t give me any warning at all, and I know he’s angry… I pushed him too far this time…”

I pulled myself back into the shadows and sucked in a short breath. I understood now. Her anxiousness and sleep deprivation. I’d understood for a long time.

I never suspected it to be more than one man.

She was too emotionally unhinged to juggle multiple affairs. I was moderately certain that he lived on the west coast, most likely nearby. What confused me was everything else. She’d dragged me along on so many of her escapes to little beach towns up and down the coast—sometimes up to six hours away—that I couldn’t get a handle on his own personal life. Was he married too? Did he travel as well? Why did I always get the feeling that he was lurking behind every building in Boston? I had a sort of pauper-esque theory that when she’d first met him, he couldn’t support her, and perhaps now that he was doing better off, it was too late for my mother to leave the security she’d come to know. I may not have had all the facts, but I understood that she had less love for my father than she did a stray cat. By the time the last summer came, her resentment had gotten so bad that she’d started cringing when his name came up in a conversation. There were days that I sometimes forgot they weren’t divorced. It makes me wonder at times, how differently things might have turned out for them if they’d just signed the dotted lines.

I decided the man in question had to be her black knight lover— sick of hotel rooms and lies. I pictured him flying out on a whim to prove his allegiance, some grand gesture of his undying love in an attempt to sway her permanently. Perhaps she hadn’t reacted well, and he felt ridiculous and betrayed. I smirked at the thought. My mother wasn’t one to be swooned. She was superficial— cold even. The holidays sometimes felt like business transactions with her. Everything was a note on an agenda to be marked through. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she suddenly decided she didn’t care about him anymore than her actual husband.

“I have to get Artemis out of here within the next couple of days, put her on a plane or something soon. It’s not safe for her…

I slipped out the door and shoved my hands in my pockets, squeezing my fists so tight that my nails left indentions in my palms. I was not some suitcase that she could ship off whenever her promiscuity got too out of hand or when it was no longer convenient for her to lie to my face.

Not safe for me.

I laughed out loud. I’d never felt safe. She’d constantly entangled me in her web of secrecy, and yet I’d always made it out. It wasn’t safe for her she meant.

I continued my bitter inner dialogue through a long web of streets. By the time I reached Michael & Madison I was so strung out I almost missed it. By the time I reached the roof, I was almost vengeful. The sort of angry that makes you feel like your skin’s burning. It was a warm morning and I’d arrived a lot sooner than I’d planned. I remember it so vividly… Pressing open the giant black door, the metal giving way to the wide-open cityscape. I always felt like Alice, stepping through the looking glass to a more peaceful place. I walked to the ledge and gazed over the cinderblock at the sprawling streets below that were barely beginning to come to life, and out beyond— the Boston Channel just visible in the distance.

I breathed deep and closed my eyes. I still had about twenty minutes before sunrise. I thought about what it had been like the first time my mother had taken me to the roof. I was young— elementary school. But even so, I had no tolerance for fear. I would have plummeted to my death the way I longed to peer over the edge. My memory colored her softer than I’m sure she actually had been— warmer. There was a knife that turned in me when I thought about those days. They were the dog-eared and gold leafed pages of story I’d gotten bored of. When did she begin her spiral? When had the second leading man been introduced? Why hadn’t the first been enough? Where did she meet him? In college? Before? After?

I stepped backward, dizzy.

When I opened my eyes and looked up I felt something like death gripping at the air around me.

It was 5:02.

And the sky was prematurely on fire.

II

The sight of a building going up in flames is the sort of thing that scares normal people. Fires scare normal people because normal people are afraid of all the right things. Normal people are the lucky ones. Survival of the fittest and all that.

I should have ran.

I should have ran all the way back down to the lobby as fast as I could and then I should have ran even faster once I got down to the sidewalks. I should have been so scared that my fourteen-year-old legs carried me back to the apartment in minutes. I should have been crying and screaming for my mom and random older ladies should have grabbed my hand and gave me hard candy to calm me down.

But I didn’t run.

I didn’t move or blink or breathe because for just a few minutes I wasn’t thinking about who was inside or who would be risking their lives to help the people in danger. I was just standing on the roof of Michael & Madison not moving a single muscle in my body and the only coherent thought that would move through my brain was that I was jealous.

I was jealous of the fire.

It was relentless and untamable and in control of a thousand different destinies including its own. The power it wielded was so inconceivable, unmatched. And for just a minute it was the most beautiful and intoxicating scene I’d ever witnessed.

Normal people are not jealous of elements.

Especially not when human lives are hanging in the balance. I guess I could blame it on my name. Normally named people get the luxury of creating a first impression, or if nothing else, deferring at least to the default of relying on their looks as a basis for judgement. They have the type of names that allow for sweet little nicknames like Em, or Maddy and they can always find it on a keychain. No one ever asked me if I liked being perceived as some ancient heroic huntress, devoid of all human sensitivity, or a winged goddess who ate lions for breakfast and refused to fall in love, but that was always the first veil that fell over me during introductions. With a name like Artemis, you’re automatically expected to be a badass. It could be worse sure, I could have been Hera the scorned wife, or Aphrodite— vain and doe-eyed. I suppose that to some extent, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you do, you become, and all that. If I’d pushed back early on and decided that I was going to stand my ground and pick flowers during recess and cry like I wanted to when I scraped myself up, then I’m sure everyone’s lens would have changed over eventually. But what exactly would I be trying to prove? That I could be sensitive too? And so, I went on perpetuating—ironically—the myth. I was tough and strong and brave and bold. And at some point, the lie became true. The thing I hated most about myself made up everything that I’d become.

Maybe this is why I didn’t shed a single tear during the day of the bomb explosion. Maybe my whole life I’d been training myself to endure the unthinkable. The abnormal.

Two hours went by before my mother spoke.

Two hours of her staring blankly at the television. She didn’t ask me where I’d been when I walked through the door. She didn’t wonder how close to the fire I’d been that morning. She didn’t know that the flames had climbed even higher than the roof where I stood, a volcanic eruption, spilling out over itself. A small bar of all places. And yet, a whole block.

Gone.

It was pissing me off more than it was scaring me, the way she was looking at the news coverage like she was looking into the eyes of a ghost.

Terrorism.

That’s what they had labeled it. An attack on the country. A point to be proven. She kept shaking her head. Her lips trembled as she picked at her nail polish ravenously. She refused to speak or even look at me.

“Mom, I know it was close by, but at least we’re okay.” My voice somehow came out even. I wasn’t new to assuming the role of parent while she played child. I was hoping that she would snap out of it. I was trying to be calm, but the bomb had rattled me. So many lives had been wiped from existence in a matter of milliseconds and a part of me felt guilty for having seen it as anything but that. I clicked off the power button in an attempt to draw her away from the screen. Instead she stared into the blackness. I threw down the remote and went into the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast. She managed to say the entire sentence after I put the toast on my plate but before I had spread the jam.

“Your father was in the library.”

Blood red strawberry clumps slipping through my fingers and falling to the floor below. The knife followed. Real blood joining the oozing mess, trickling from my hand where the blade had sliced it. My mouth was filled with the taste of cough syrup. Everything around me felt too clean. Like a morgue closing in upon us. The astringency too potent.

Two. Hours.

“How do you know?”

My voice didn’t sound like my own this time. It was older, composed of nothing. I wondered for a moment if the words had even left my mouth at all.

“He called me, this morning.” Her eyes had glazed over, the voice coming out of her was barely audible.

“He was doing research.”

An icy ripple cut itself into my spine. So cold that it was scorching. I turned the TV back on immediately. A bar, a clothing store, an apartment building, and a smaller law library.

Research.

Research that he easily could have been doing a million miles away from here. But he wasn’t. Questions formed but just as quickly fizzled out. I didn’t have the energy to ask them. Both of us could have been put on display in a museum we were so still. I believed I would never move again. My skin would rot and I would crumble into oblivion staring at the stupid video footage of smoke rising like an angry monster from ground zero. I couldn’t breathe or blink. Someone had poked holes in me and I could feel the very essence of myself seeping out of them. The date on the screen seared itself into my skull.

June 14th, 2015.

The days that followed have hours scratched out of them, clawed from my brain. It was like watching a movie and falling asleep halfway through only to wake up at the end confused at how the hero saved the day and got the girl when he seemed to be such a mess at the beginning. I don’t even remember packing a bag. I didn’t even remember I had one until it was being shoved into my hands. She didn’t utter a single word in the taxi. It had been two days. Two days that felt like two years that I had no memory of. They’d shut down airfare for forty-eight hours as a safety precaution. Being around her felt suffocating. He had linked us together and now we were two strangers grasping at ashes.

“I’ll fly in this weekend. The neighbors will pick you up and Bradley is going to stay at the house with you.”

Everything she said sounded like I was hearing it in slow motion. Everything about her was distorted.

A bar, a clothing store, an apartment building, a library.

“Artemis are you listening to me?”

Bradley was my father’s only sibling. He’d been MIA for most of my life, I’d only met him a handful of times. I doubted he’d be very present.

“Artemis.”

I yanked my eyes up from the airport tile spreading out like a sea beneath my black boots. I wished it would swallow me. I grabbed my luggage handles and walked through security without answering her. The phone conversation from that morning played on a loop with the list of blown away establishments. A broken record. A constant re-wind and fast-forward.

“I know he’s angry…I pushed him too far this time…It’s not safe…”

My brain spray painted nothing but her words on every surface of the inside of my head. The entire plane ride, I thought of nothing else.

A bar, a clothing store, an apartment building, a library.

People had been drinking. Drinking to celebrate. Drinking to go numb. Drinking to get through a nine to five. They’d been shopping. For a first date and school pictures and the Fourth of July. People had been making coffee and reading the newspaper and checking their messages and making dinner plans.

He’d been researching.

And they all could have been a thousand different places but they weren’t. I was consumed with it. I gave them faces and backstories and names. I thought about every single person who’d died except for him.

I saw the next few weeks through a broken camera lens. I believed nothing. I was the most skeptical and pessimistic human being to ever walk the planet. I spoke and nails came out of me like arrows. The first thing my aunt told me when she flew in a week later was that she would make me some tea, but I didn’t count on it until the mug was sitting in front of me, the steam coating my face. I didn’t expect to take a single step until I’d made it.

You’re supposed to have two parents and they’re supposed to be in love and they’re supposed to love you and then you’re supposed to have a family of your own and you’re all supposed to have big family Christmases and then your parents are supposed to get a disease in their late eighties while you’re going through a midlife crisis and saving for your firstborn’s college tuition and then your parents are supposed to die once they see their grandchildren get married and you’re supposed to be sad but then you’re supposed to be okay because you had a whole lifetime with them. And then thirty or forty years later, you die and that’s the end. And so it goes.

Except for when it doesn’t.

Except for when you’re fourteen and your dad’s dead and your mom’s agony radiates off her body whenever she moves. When you can see the million shades of grey bags under her eyes grow lower and darker, as if tattooed into her skin. Life’s a beach if you don’t have to worry about the “doesn’ts” and halfway-mothers.

It was like living with a ghost. Her guilt devoured her more and more with each passing day. Her sins became her broken, brittle center. She could sense the words on the tip of my tongue. They constantly tiptoed behind my lips. She’d had the time. And she’d wasted it on someone else. I tried to care, tried to empathize. And I could to a certain degree. One day you’re wishing your parents would stop fighting because you can feel deception in the sound of their footsteps on the floorboards above your ceiling and the next you’re at a funeral wishing you wouldn’t have complained about the yelling because at least everyone could always sit down at the dinner table without there being an empty seat.

But that wasn’t quite it. She knew a piece of information that she wasn’t giving up. My father had found out about something. Something bad enough that he’d flown all the way across the country only to wind up in a library. Bad enough that she’d intended on sending me back home. She’d played a part in his fate. She knew it. I knew it. I just didn’t know how. So I did what was easiest. Every day I moved further and further away from her until she was just another shadow moving nearby. She melted into the walls and the furniture. It unnerved me.

And I was right to fear her house of horrors.

III

May 17th, 2007: South of Market- San Francisco, CA

“The guy in the nice suit came back again yesterday, but he seemed a little mad.”

An eight-year-old boy with long, dark curly hair sits on a chair next to a rotting, wooden kitchen table. Another boy, slightly older, washes dishes at a once white, kitchen sink.

“What did you tell him?”

The younger boy rubs at a bruise forming on his knee. Dry blood is stuck to the edges of a small hole in his pants.

“I told him my dad wasn’t home, that he was out getting groceries.”

“Good.” The older boy sits the last dish in the drying rack and runs the leftover soap through his course hair before sticking his head under the faucet.

“How come you get to wash your hair today?”

“Because, dingus,” The older boy massages the soap into his scalp quickly, “I have to go try and convince Joseph to let me help him out with his distribution route now that I’m thirteen, and I can’t look like shit.”

The younger boy wrinkles his nose and plays with the fraying ends of his flannel sleeves, “Well you still smell awful.”

“You mean I smell like a man?” He grabs a towel and dries his dripping mess of hair before whacking his little brother with the end of it.

A sound stirs from down the hall. The boys grow silent, holding their breaths. After one excruciating minute goes by, the older boy concludes that the coast is clear.

“I’ve gotta go, there’s leftover soup in the fridge, but I might be gone for a while so just remember—

“I know, go to the spot if I hear a noise.”

The older boy sighs, “Yeah, exactly.” He moves to leave, grabbing a brown backpack lying next to the front door.

“Jasper?” The younger boy’s voice is no longer playful.

“Yeah?”

“How long do you think the suit guy will believe that dad is out getting groceries?”

“Don’t worry about that Park, I’ve got a plan.” He ruffles his brother’s hair and shoots him a thumbs-up before heading out the door, closing it quietly behind him. Once on the other side, he contemplates sending up a quick prayer, but a bitterness grips him, causing him to think better of it.

May 17th, 2007: Western Addition- San Francisco, CA

One beige, single level house with a chain-link fence holding back three large barking dogs. Two German shepherds, one Dane. Chipped paint and dead grass. A forgotten landscape project. One rusted red truck in the driveway. Inside is a cyclone of sound— multiple pairs of running feet and pans clanging in the kitchen. The smoke from the oven mixes with the smoke coming from the lips in the living room, covered in a gray mustache.

“Goddamn it, I can’t hear the game!”

The voice rattles the floor. The sounds of feet moves further away. The smoke detector goes off almost immediately following the old man’s demand.

“For Christ’s sake!”

The voice is a train gaining speed. Three ears are pressed against the back-bedroom door. There is a sound of heavy footsteps and a scream. A sizzling. The smoke detector stops beeping. One brave soul mistakenly leaves too early, stepping into the crime scene.

“Maymie, do you need help getting the food ready?”

His eyes widen upon seeing the man still in the kitchen. The two remaining ears hear a thud. Bone on tile. But there is no screaming. Not a single groan. The ears move in preparation for the door to open. A ten-year-old blonde-headed boy stumbles through the opening, steadying himself before sinking to the floor. His face is smudged with blood. It flows down his face from a wound by his left eye. One of his fingers is crooked. He breathes deep, staring at two pairs of dark eyes. Twin boys. Seven.

“No dinner tonight, you can have what’s left of the crackers under my bed,” He croaks out and tries to smile. It quickly turns into a grimace, “But first, grab me the rag.”

One of the twins uncovers a dingy towel from the closet and places it in the boy’s outstretched hand. He puts it in his mouth. He bites down and jerks his finger straight. After a few minutes, he removes the rag and uses it to wipe the blood away from his face. By the time he is finished the twins are already sleeping, an empty box sitting next to the bed. The boy opens the door again slowly, moving quietly down the hall. He waits to hear the sounds of groggy snores before tiptoeing into the kitchen. Maymie is slumped against the fridge, eyes barely open. On her arm is a burn mark stretching from her forearm to her elbow. Her collarbone is a cloud of blue and green, her bottom lip split open— the blood already dry. The boy carefully reaches into the freezer for ice that he puts into a baggie. He gently places the it on the woman’s arm. Her eyes flutter open. She catches herself before she can cry out in pain and mouths a thank you. He nods and searches for something for her lip and his eye. Her finger points to a drawer. Inside there is an assortment of creams and gels and pills. He takes two pills for himself and three for the woman. They swallow them without water, in fear that the sink will make too much noise.

“I’m so sorry Callon.” The woman whispers as he applies an oily paste to her busted lip. He puts a finger up to quiet her and shakes his head. He pats her hand and grabs a few pieces of bread from the pantry before heading back to the bedroom. There is a rustling from the bed once the door is closed.

“Cal, how come you never cry when he hits you?” One of the twins— Jack— asks him. He sighs and crawls into the bed with them.

“Because it’s what he wants J, and one day, when I come back and find him, I want him to know that even after everything he took, he never took that.”

He closes his eyes and clenches his teeth together, a dream beginning to form in his head. A vision of himself ten times larger forcing the old man to his knees and waiting for tears. Waiting patiently for his revenge to unfold.

IV

There are only a few moments in your life where you can point at the decisions that changed you forever. The choices we make that set our lives on entirely different paths. I was eating breakfast across the Charles over in Cambridge at Café Luna when I received the call that changed everything. I was finishing up my first year at Berklee College of Music, a conservatory in Boston. I was working part time at Michael & Madison as a sort of back-up plan in case I couldn’t find my footing in the music industry. It was mostly busy work, intern material. Although, Jennifer had been hounding me for months about putting together a portfolio to submit. I’d lied and told her I saved my best writing for songs. She ended up recruiting my mother’s old colleagues from the editing department to bully me as well. I told everyone I had no desire to do what my mother had done her whole life. Which also wasn’t true, but in some ways was. I couldn’t separate her career from who’d she’d been as a person, and I was afraid that if I took on her legacy, I’d take on her as well. I didn’t say any of that out loud but eventually the middle-aged women stopped coming around to pester me. Probably because the topic of my mother made them uncomfortable. She’d been invincible. An icon. Their inspiration. They couldn’t wrap their minds around the truth of her suicide. The truth of her inner struggle. The one they’d failed to see. But I didn’t blame them.

That, I saved for myself.

The decision to study music along with songwriting and management hadn’t been an easy one and it didn’t get any easier after meeting my competition at the conservatory. Prior to the phone call, I had been attempting to write— a pesky melody had been taunting me ever since I’d woken up. And yet, there seemed to be no words in the English language that would satisfy me. I resorted to watching the people of Boston through a dark window as they shuffled around in their rain boots and knee-high socks. A parade of dark clouds had begun to settle in between the peaks of the buildings like an omen. Good or bad— I wasn’t sure. A cluster of long-legged, peacoat-wearing, bottle-blonde dog walkers had just passed by my tiny window of the world when I felt the buzz in my pocket.

I’d half expected it to be Marin, wanting to complain to me about the rain for the billionth time. What’s the saying? You can take the girl out of California but she’ll still wish she was there? But it wasn’t Marin. The person on the other end was one of my high school friends who happened to be a fellow music major back home in San Francisco— audio engineering to be exact. His name was Garrett Trauscan. He was finishing up his junior year of college and wanted to offer me a summer job working with a local band he was in the process of developing. I’d met Garrett on the weekends when I’d spent my senior year playing gigs around the bay. He’d ended up recording a few tracks for me and proved to be an even better friend than he was mentor.

In my relatively short time of being at Berklee, I’d come to discover only one certainty: Breaking into the music industry is nearly impossible. Taking this into account, I’d learned by observation that what often set people apart was their actual experience in the field. So after a moment’s consideration, I accepted Garrett’s offer. No pay, no glory, just a lot of hot summer days and hopefully an EP at the end of it. I had initially thought to decline. The thought of going back there sent chills up and down my spine that stung more than the icy rain outside. When I’d left the year before, a round trip had never been in the cards. I’d convinced myself that there was nothing left to tether me to any part of the west coast. But even I knew that I couldn’t barricade the door forever. And besides, I needed a break from Boston and all the cold and dreariness. I needed a reprieve from the haphazard conversations of tuition and student loans and, “Oh how are you paying for all of this?” and, “Surely your parents took out a second mortgage to send you here.”

I’m accustomed to nodding at whatever explanation they offer because it’s a lot easier to lie than to try and explain to Susie what’s her face from Music Theory II the never-ending shit show saga of my life.

But most of all, I was starting to get a sort of itch every time I passed the new strip of buildings down the street from work that just five years ago had been a war zone. It was one that I couldn’t scratch, like the poison crept a little closer every day, refusing to let me quarantine it. I’d reached a point where I wasn’t sure if it comforted or hurt me, being in the city. A place where she’d so often lived and breathed. The place I’d been during that awful day. She’d told me she didn’t know why he’d come. I allowed her to think I believed that. I’d thought that on this side of the country they’d had less secrets. But as time went by, I wasn’t so sure. And what good would it do really? My constant worrying in the backseat of a taxi on the way to another new part of the city, rubbing holes in my sweaters with nervous fingers. Biting my nail beds till they bled when the anxiety tumbled out in waves. Living in a city has that affect. You feel so small and humble and gentle until you feel too small and then suddenly you’re terrified that you’re dissolving into the rain puddles on the sidewalks and blurring into the sea of faces around you.

I counted the windows on the building across the street. When I got to twenty I took a deep breath and interrupted Garrett’s unnecessary rambling.

“When do we start?”

The last time I’d flown had been ten months before when I’d left for college. I was sick the entire week leading up to the departure. It was nerves. Not about the plane, just the decision. I shouldn’t have expected the second trip to be any different. I spent the majority of the plane ride coming up with a long list of reasons why saying yes was an utterly disastrous idea, but luckily, by the time the bird landed, my eerie sense of impending doom had diminished.

Slightly.

Long hours and hard work in a recording booth, despite it’s obvious contrast to an actual vacation, seemed like the type of project I needed to keep my mind centered. Not to mention that the band was already writing and producing some of their own stuff, which makes for a much easier process of putting together an EP. Garrett had sent over the mp3’s ahead of time so that I could get a feel for their sound, which would then give me a narrower idea for the kind of songs and lyrics I would be helping with.

They went by the name Sound Waves, a play on the fact that they’d all grown up surfing in the bay. They had a thick and intense sound. There was a beach-vibe influence but not what normally comes to mind. In fact, it wasn’t really a ‘beachy-ness’ as much as it was a ‘crashing of angry waves into a Cliffside’ or ‘a thousand guitars washing up in a hurricane’ type of sound. Their music either made you want to smoke all day or swear yourself into sobriety. The lead singer’s voice was raw and calloused, with a sticky angst wrapped around pure ease— the balancing act of edgy and smooth that tends to either make or break many up and coming rock bands. In addition to the clear band chemistry, there was also a unique style present. I’d only listened to thirty seconds of the first track on my laptop when I decided that the songwriter had to be a natural genius. Whoever it was immediately skyrocketed to the top of my “Someone I need to collaborate with” list, not for their benefit, but for my own.

After securing my rental car, I got lost inside my head on my way to the practice location. I drove in circles even though I knew exactly where I was. We were miles out from the beach but I swore I could taste salt. I felt pulls from every direction. I was stuck between wanting to follow every single one and wanting to turn off the car altogether. But I kept moving, turning down random streets and stopping far too long at each stop sign. It was as if I subconsciously believed that if I never actually made it to a destination then I wouldn’t have to accept my decision to stay.

Garrett had explained that the ‘studio’ we’d be working in was actually a renovated basement lent to us by one of Garrett’s apparently “highly successful” producer friends who only frequented his place in Nob Hill during the winter. I grew immediately nostalgic as I followed my GPS to the address. Where I’d grown up in South Beach was a mere fifteen-minute drive away. Every corner may as well have had a neon warning sign. My mind concocted vivid images of construction boards flashing: TURN BACK NOW.

I did my best to drive faster.

When I finally reached the checkered flag, I was in front of a multi-million-dollar house with brown and burgundy paint and an array of beat-up cars in the driveway. If you didn’t know any better, it looked like a couple of frat brothers had pooled their trust-funds together and hadn’t had enough money left over for working vehicles. Garrett had not only found a comfortable summer hangout but also a perfect haven for music making. The basement, I would soon learn, was decked out in full man cave glory; a mini fridge stocked with soda and beer, a flat screen, complete with a PlayStation, a pool out back, and most importantly two recording rooms— the smaller one, wood covered for acoustics— as well as an impressive sound booth.

I didn’t have to wait long before the front door flung open and I was faced with a familiar smile. It was a comfort to know the only thing that had changed since I’d last seen him was a dark brown, early-stage beard. His arms were wide open.

“Come here you gorgeous musical nomad.” He laughed a laugh like sunshine. A forgotten feeling coursed through me. It had been a long time since I’d heard a familiar voice outside of my close-knit group of friends from high school and the sound created a lump in my throat almost instantly. Garrett’s huge flannel clad arms enveloped me in a bear hug. He had teased me a couple times about moving all the way across the country just to go to a pretentious music school, but when it came down to it he knew the real reason I’d left didn’t have much to do with the music.

I returned his hug and smiled up at him, “It’s crazy that it’s already been a year since I’ve seen you,” I said, remembering the going away party he’d attended before I’d virtually fallen off the grid, “I didn’t expect to miss so much about this place until the plane landed.” I forced my best truthfulness into the statement.

He shook his head and kissed the top of my golden roots, “You’re a good liar but even you can’t fool me into thinking you actually wanted to come back here.”

I opened my mouth to argue but Garrett clapped his hands together and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “Alright enough sappiness, let’s get you downstairs so you can meet the guys.” I sighed and followed him inside, then down a winding staircase. I paused to look at the different awards scattered over the walls. So many it made my head throb. I took a deep breath as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

Garrett had never been very formal in high school so I wasn’t expecting much of an introduction, and I was right not to. He reached into the fridge for a soda as he spoke.

“Guys, this is Artemis, make her feel at home.”

And that was that.

I waved awkwardly to the group of musicians strewn about and received a chorus of hellos from everyone but a dark-haired guy who looked like he had better things to be doing. He wore nothing but ripped black jeans. He was on the ground, leaned up against a wall, writing something in a small notebook. He had a hard jaw with a splash of facial stubble and blue eyes so dark they looked black. I practically jumped when he finally looked up at me. His expression looked almost menacing— defensive, but after a brief couple of seconds he went back to scribbling feverishly.

Okay, guess he’s the brooding type.

I looked around till I found the bassist, Adam. I’d face-timed with him and Garrett a couple times to figure out the summer game plan. He gave me a head nod while picking out a series of notes. He had a mess of dark hair, dark eyes, and was wearing a concert t-shirt from a band I didn’t recognize. The drummer walked up to me, stuck out his hand, and told me his name was Joel. He looked young, maybe just out of high school and seemed considerably less grunge than the others with his glasses, white short sleeved button up and clean-shaven face. And then there was Hayes, a tall sophomore in college who sported a curly brown man bun and was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. He looked up from the keyboard for a moment to throw me a small smile. There were two more guys playing video games on the flat screen, but I chalked them up to being Garrett’s tech help.

I couldn’t tell if my presence was a damper on the whole “boy-pack” vibe or if I was just being paranoid. I had to keep telling myself not to look uncomfortable. I’d all but chewed off my lower lip and it had only been five minutes. I was thinking about asking Garrett where the bathroom was when Mr. Broody stepped in between us, handing him a sheet of notebook paper covered in blue and black ink that I assumed was lyrics.

“It’s ready.” He said, completely ignoring me and walking into the recording room. “Unless Athena or whatever has a problem with them.” The door slammed.

I stared at Garrett, shocked. He raised an eyebrow in response, daring me. I grabbed the lyrics from him and walked into the booth. I took a guess and pushed what I thought might be the intercom button.

“It’s Artemis, smart-ass.”

I heard Hayes whistle from across the room. He walked into the booth and pressed down on the same button, “I think you can go ahead and put on a shirt man, you’re hardly doing it for her.”

Broody flipped him off through the glass.

Great, I get to work with the poster child for an angst-filled high school druggie turned musician. I digested his tone from when he’d purposefully said my name wrong, trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar. It was a voice like cigarettes. Initially unpleasant, but the kind you wanted to keep hearing. I stiffened, immediately wanting to smack myself for even having the thought.

“Is he always like that?” I asked Garrett under my breath. He glanced at me, rubbing his temples and in between his eyebrows, closing his eyes and lifting his glasses up, as if he’d known in advance this would happen.

“Parker? Yeah,” He sighed, “But be careful with that one. He acts like a hard-ass I know, but he’s had it rough. Probably one of the best people I know considering.” I wondered what “rough” and “considering” meant, but I didn’t ask.

A lot of people have it rough, I thought, and yet plenty of us manage not to go out of our way to piss people off.

I waited for Garrett to say more but it seemed that his vague explanation was over. He crossed his arms and we both felt the monitors come to life.

He was the singer.

It was starting to make more sense why I recognized his voice. He started off soft, almost mumble-singing the words, like if your first sip of coffee in the morning had a sound. But when the guitar started in on the hook, everything changed. The quiet was gone, replaced with a forcefulness that shook the room. I subconsciously placed one hand on the window that separated the rooms, as if willing myself closer to the music. Even after the song ended, I felt hypnotized. I’d never heard anything like that before. What I’d listened to in the mp3’s didn’t have the capacity to capture the bottled-up abyss of monstrous intensity that I’d just witnessed.

I found myself exhaling a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.