Lily of the Valley (22 page)

They’d already had the infamous pancakes by the time I got there and now we’re out looking for a tree. I have no memory of ever buying a tree. Does one just go out into the woods with an axe? I know that’s not the case because I’ve seen parking lots full of sad trees leaning on poles, but who gets these trees? Are they carried in a big fucking tree truck? I imagine it’s not worth it to ask, so I stay silent as Owen drives the four of us around town looking for “the right lot.” It’s grown dark by the time we find it.

The right one is on the edge of town and it looks like no one comes here. A guy dressed in a Metallica t-shirt and jeans is the only person around and he glances at us once while we make our way through the trees. However, as soon as I walk into the aisles between the rows of trees, I get it. I’m overwhelmed by the smell of pine, the crisp coolness in the air, and the undeniable sensation that this is both normal and important. People do this. People are happy here. The trees are just trees, but because they’re
here
, they change everything.

I keep to myself while the three of them pick out their tree. Although I was invited, I’m still an outsider. Instead, I walk the rows and I think of Lily. Is she buying a tree tonight? Is Derek with her? Do her parents bring him with them when they have holidays? I picture being here with her. Just us, me holding her hand, and smelling strawberries mixing with pine as she gushes about ornaments and presents and Christmas and things that remain alien to me.

My heart is so fucking full of her and this fantasy, until I realize she will never be here with me. I’ll never be a part of that with her. I look up between the tilting treetops and, even with the clip-on lights in my eyes, I can see a smattering of stars. How can a person be so crushed by misery and yet be able to dream of something so beautiful?

Alana comes to find me where I’m still standing and breathing in starlight.

“We’re heading home now,” she says.

I breathe deep one more time and follow her. As soon as I make it back out of the trees, the ghost of Lily fades and it hurts all over again. It’s been a month. How fucking long is it going to take?

Chapter 23

I spend the night on Alana’s couch after we decorate her tree. I suppose decorate is not the right word, since her mom owns three things that can pass as ornaments. Right now, there are a couple of lights and some tinsel Owen brought, the three ornaments, and one of Alana’s old teddy bears as a tree topper. It’s the most pathetic Christmas tree on Earth, but when we turned down the lights and sat by the colorful, albeit dim, illumination of the tree and ate Oreos her mom bought, it felt far more like a fucking family than anything else I’ve ever known.

Now, everyone’s sleeping, but I have to work, so I leave a note and head home to shower and change before leaving for the café. My grandmother’s asleep as well, but I trip over a plastic bag from Wal-Mart as I try to get into my room. There’s a Post-It on the bag.

Bought you a few things for school during the big sales on my way home. Missed you, Jack. So did your dad.

I crumple the Post-It. I feel simultaneously guilty for spending no time with my grandmother and angry at her for mentioning my father. He’s never going to cease to come between us.

I dump the contents of the bag on my bed. She bought me another set of sheets, which I shove in my closet behind a bunch of junk, where there are already four sheet sets. She seems to think I go through a fuckload of sheets, because she buys me sheets at least once every couple of months. I don’t tell her, which I suppose I should since she spends the money for nothing, but it would crush her. The thing is, though, the washing machine on my floor isn’t complicated. So I keep the sheets and every so often, I bring a set back to school, when the one set I have is starting to look old. I just can’t keep up because, well, no one needs this many sheets.

There’s also a small saucepan in the bag, which I toss onto my pile of stuff for school. I’ll bring the pan back. My grandmother buys me four things: alcohol when I’m close to losing it, sheets for some imaginary bed that’s always eating them, shoes because she doesn’t know how to buy clothes for me, and pans. I have no fucking clue why she buys me the pans. I live in a dorm. I usually leave the pans in the shared kitchen on my floor, but no one really cooks in there. Because there’s the cafeteria and we’re all required to carry a mean plan. Maybe she thinks I love cooking since I drive so far to work at the café. I could never explain to her that it isn’t because I have a passion for cooking, but because I have a passion for running away.

I get ready for work and leave a note on the board on the side of the fridge for my grandmother, remembering to thank her for the bag of stuff. It looks like it might snow, so I go back inside and add a PS telling her I borrowed the car. I don’t have a long shift today and she’ll probably be asleep for a while. She has my number if there’s any kind of crisis, but I’m sure she’ll just watch TV.

As much as I miss the freedom of my bike, the advantage of the car is that I can listen to music. I pull a CD from my bag, just a collection of songs I burned, and I turn it up as loud as it’ll go. Of course, it isn’t all that loud since it’s my grandmother’s car and she drives the kind of car a grandmother drives. Still, it’s the release I need.

The car is full of the sounds of people as bitter as I am and I sit for a minute. I’m not angry – not really – at the moment, but the music makes me think of Lily. I go back to the last night we were together, running the vibrator along her pussy until she screamed so loud that no music could cover how much she enjoyed it. I wonder if Derek can make her come like that – and now I’m angry. I’m angry at the fact that I have nothing else to offer. I’m angry that he’s probably fucking her right now and she’s not even thinking about me. And I’m so fucking angry at her for walking away from me. I’ve cried, I’ve agonized, and I’ve longed, but I haven’t raged. Now I’m fucking raging.

I grip the steering wheel tight and slam my head against it, which triggers the horn. I scream into the noise in the car and back out of the driveway before my grandmother comes outside to try to figure out why I’m honking the horn. It’s a long enough ride on empty roads that I savor the seething fire in my blood. It’s not healthy but it’s better than numbness and it’s better than wanting to die.

By the time I get to work, the anger has dissipated. I’m left with only the embers of the scorched memory of a girl who could’ve been everything.

****

After the long weekend, it’s back to the chaos of school and projects and practice. I can’t believe I still haven’t seen Lily around campus, but it’s probably better this way. The ache is still there, but I know seeing her will be like ripping a bandage off a seeping wound.

On Wednesday night, at band practice, when Neil breaks out a bottle of Jameson’s, I take a shot, which makes me hate myself a little. But Lily is never coming back – and the whiskey helps to erase the past. I have no intention of getting drunk, but it’s a concession to the person I am.

“You guys think this weekend will be something?” Neil asks.

He loves this band. He loves the music and he loves performing. I, on the other hand, have no long-term plans. Sure, it’d be nice in theory, but I can’t truly imagine the life of a musician. I want to get away and leave no roots, but I don’t know that I want to escape on an endless tour with people I barely know.

Music soothes me, but performing can suck. It can be a rush, but every show requires willpower I pull from a reserve that’s slowly going dry. Once the initial high wears off, the high that comes from the playing itself, not from the performing, I’m left with something else. All those eyes looking at me, all those people judging me. And to get up there and play something I wrote? Sure, Neil is the voice of my pain, but it’s still
my
pain on display. It’s still
my
time in the hospital or watching
my
father kill my mom that Neil’s singing about – and sometimes it’s even worse, because I can’t explain. I can only play my bass and stare at the faces of the people in the crowd, the empty eyes of people who live in a world where people don’t hang themselves. Nothing makes you feel more like a freak than displaying your suffering for the world – and having them miss the fucking point of it all.

It’s hypocritical and I can’t explain it. I both love it and hate it at the same time. With each show, I suffer the anxiety, the fear of judgment, the agony of having a part of myself taken from me, taken by people who can never understand. And then every time they fucking clap, I get a rush from it. I hate them while I think of them, while I imagine sharing my songs with them, but when they like the music? I’m suddenly their best fucking friend.

Devon nods in response to Neil’s question, excited because he still has the innocence of inexperience. He still revels in the applause alone. He doesn’t yet hear the silence between the claps, the echoing condemnation of every note someone thinks you could play better. Devon only hears the immense satisfaction of respect. “It’s gonna be fucking awesome. You realize how big this could be? Fucking headlining?”

Eric, the rational one, shrugs. “It’s big, but it’s a local club. I don’t wanna get carried away. Although I still think it’s pretty amazing for our fan base.”

Neil nods. “It’s like it all paid off for once. Yeah?” He looks at me directly this time. “Right, Jack?”

I grab the bottle of Jameson’s and take a giant swig. How do I answer him without sounding like a dick? I prefer being the opening band. When no one expects anything of you, they don’t judge you as harshly. With every success comes the need to do more, to be better.

“It’ll be fucking sweet,” I say, because in some situations, the easiest solution is to lie.

“It’s insane,” Neil continues. “A year ago, we couldn’t even find a drummer.”

The funny thing about people is the way they perceive things. There are four of us and we each see this show as something totally different. For Neil, it’s recognition of his efforts and he doesn’t care that the club only holds three hundred people. Because a year ago, there weren’t
three
people who knew who we were. I don’t really know how Eric and Devon feel, but I’m simply awed by Neil’s acceptance of the small rewards. I always want it all. Not in this case, but Neil’s the type who would look back at the short time I had with Lily and say it was better to have had it and lost it than never to have known her. I can’t accept that. For me, there is only success or failure. There are no shades of either.

Devon smiles. “Well, you have one now. Speaking of which, let’s get this shit down.”

We pass around the whiskey one more time. I take two shots, because you don’t fall off the wagon in small steps. And then we practice, letting our hopes about this weekend drive us. I don’t know what I’m hoping for, but as I play, I see blue-green eyes under the stage lights and I give myself over to the music.

Hope is stupid, but I cling to it like a fucking life raft.

****

Neil is pacing. The club’s packed. The opener is decent, but it’s clear that everyone is here for us. They’re wrapping up and then we’ll be on after a short break. Neil runs a hand through his hair and continues walking back and forth before I kick my foot out and trip him.

“What the fuck, man?”

“Sit down. You’re making me nervous as fuck,” I say.

He sits, but he taps his foot, which isn’t much better. Eric and Devon went to the bar to grab drinks and I hope like hell they get back here fast. Neil needs a fucking lobotomy, not a beer, but a beer will have to do.

“You realize this is everything? Like my entire life happens tonight,” he says.

Neil’s never come out and said so much, although I read it in him. Music is his way out. He doesn’t talk about his life. He lives off campus, alone, in the shittiest house I’ve ever seen, but hell, he’s twenty something and when he’s on this side of the country, he lives in his own house. That’s still pretty fucking sweet. But every so often, something in Neil’s face tells me that he has plenty of experience with the things we write about. In the band, though, neither of us is our past. We’re just a singer and a bassist with nothing but right now between us.

“Because I wasn’t nervous enough, right?” I ask.

The joke doesn’t cover the fact that I feel the same anxiety that Neil does, although for different reasons. For him, this is his shot. If tonight goes well, the road opens up for him. For me, it’s a bigger crowd with more of my own songs. And there’s that stupid voice that keeps hoping Lily saw a poster around school and will make her way to the show. I know Alana was here earlier, but when I check for Devon and Eric, she’s gone. She wouldn’t leave, so I assume she’s in the bathroom.

“You’re good. I sometimes wonder if you even know that,” Neil says, but any chance of that being a conversation fades immediately as Eric and Devon come back. We each down a shot of tequila and chase it with a beer before it’s time to get onstage. I didn’t stick to my plan to stay sober, but as I walk out on the stage, I’m glad I drank enough to anesthetize the heartbreak that bursts within me.

She’s here.

Lily looks fucking incredible. I don’t know where she found the dress she’s wearing, but she doesn’t even look the same. The sweet girl I fell in love with is there, but this new Lily is somehow wilder and tougher. She’s still beautiful, but now she looks as dangerous as she is. And it’s unnerving, because if I thought I wanted her before, I had no idea what it felt like truly to want.

I look down at her face and her eyes meet mine. My body reacts instinctively and begins to play the notes, but my mind is lost in her. I love her; any doubt is gone. Her eyes look to me with a silent reverence and she opens her lips slightly. I want to lean over right now and kiss her, to feel her body against mine, to smell strawberries as I breathe her in, but I keep playing. I don’t know what the story is with Derek, but I see in her that there’s nothing except us now. I have a million questions, a million things I need to say. But first, we have a show to play, and I focus on that. My eyes don’t leave hers for the entirety of our set.