It’s a beautiful night. The moon shines bright outside, so bright that I wonder if it’s trying to prove a point to the sun. Most beautiful nights are cold, but this one’s warm. A sitting-by-the-campfire-with-your-friends-and-family kind of warmth. Perfect for telling stories and making love under the stars with little giggles here and there. It’s a night for sharing. The very kind of night where I feel the most out of place.

​

I’m trying to practice my playing, a little pro bono regimen before the show tonight, but the sounds of the ultimate party rager makes it hard to hear even the faintest drop of a note through an unplugged bass. Fire spitting licks and sparks next to me, and a wet stain on my shirt from when a guy bumped into my back and spilled his can of Bud all over me. Somehow, that’s the second most embarrassing scent to ever be stuck to me. The first involves vomit, whiskey, and an argument with a parental figure I’m supposed to call Dad.

​

I’m not one for being out of my element, but right here and now, I’m not just out, I’m on a full-scale odyssey to uncomfortability. I know my place. I know where I should be and where I shouldn’t be. Let me tell you, I should not be at a bonfire party. Surrounded by a bunch of touchy teens itching a little too hard for a good time who sit around fire pits, dance wildly in little circles, and drink cheap cans of beer they finessed off some gas station dude who doesn’t get paid enough to care to check IDs.

​

I’m not a stick in the mud, I promise. I’m more like a pebble just barely poking out of the ground. A slightly nervous wreck of a pebble who’s complaining about the one night of his senior year where he’s supposed to forget about his troubles. Have fun, kick back, cut loose, whatever the hell we “kids” are expected to do out deep in the woods. It’s Burning Grad, after all. The most eccentric idea for a graduation party since Peter Barchester hosted a birthday bash in a dilapidated murder warehouse (I mean, like, a serious murder warehouse with rusty and maybe bloody gunk all over the walls).

​

I’m fidgeting with my hands while I sit around one of the fire pits. They’re sweaty. A little too sweaty, and I don’t know if it’s because of the objectively hot and smoking sputter of flames, or the nervous strike trying to overcome me. There’s at least a few hundred people here. Our graduating class isn’t the biggest, but it’s certainly not the smallest either. There are enough drunk people here to get anyone still sober a little self-conscious. So many eyes. I’m not the type who enjoys the idea of someone looking at me. Just something about the eyes, and the thinking that goes on behind them.

​

So many different things are going on. Off in the back at another fire pit near an old log cabin, there’s a couple making out with hands digging in each other’s pants like they’re looking for lost treasure. At least, I think they’re a couple. Two dudes, one is a lot taller than the other. They’re all tied up in each other’s arms. A guy pulls up behind the two of them with what looks like a bucket, and dumps water on top of their heads. Screams. Laughs. A push and a shove, and a fun memory for the three of them. At least, I think it might be fun.

​

My eyes drift to some others, a group of around twelve sitting on a patch of grass in a little circle. I even think I recognize a few of them. By virtue of only knowing names and the classes I share with them, I spy a Kale from Pre-Cal and a maybe Thomas from English 12. I can’t tell exactly what they’re doing, but it looks like a round of spin the bottle. Spin the something, I’ll call it. Two leave the group and walk into another cabin. I can hear the oohs and ahs of the other players, even from this far.

​

Splashes of water from people jumping into the lake in the distance, the distinct sound of a frisbee slicing through the air. Balls bouncing. Cell phones ringing. Pretty life, fun times. Seeing it all makes me feel strange. Like there’s some massive inside joke that I’m not in on. I do have a reason for looking at all these people though, the reason being that I’m trying to not look at someone. Someone who’s currently off at yet another fire pit, strumming her fingers on the fretboard of an acoustic guitar. Practicing. Isabella Moreno. She prefers to go by Sabe. Thinks it makes her sound cooler. Her words, not mine.

​

We’re friends. Friends in the sense that we grew up together, she living next door, and her dad being our families’ doctor for years. She’s always been my ticket to socialization. Might be better to say that she’s my ticket for people knowing I exist. Ticket to existence. I follow her wherever she goes, do whatever she likes to do, and listen to what she says. Not like a dog. I have free will. I do. It’s just that I trust her. Maybe a bit too much.

​

We started a band together in the first half of our sophomore year. Just a Little Ennui is the name (she got it from some poem she read) and all we’ve ever really done is play in her dad’s garage. We try our best to mimic the hardcore style she’s obsessed with, a style that gets Frankensteined with whatever she’s feeling at the moment. In this case? A little bit of shoegazing. I play bass and she’s on guitar, plus lead vocals. No drummer, but drum machines work wonders. Sometimes on weekends, we’d play at my dad’s bar. One of the only good things he’s ever done.

​

It was a late-night show at the bar where Sabe had one of her wonderfully bright ideas. I'll never forget it. Mainly for the fact that after that show I was in the bathroom throwing up my guts into the toilet. I drank back then. More accurately, I tried to drink back then. My dad said it’d help with my anxiety. Apparently, he meant that it’d have me puking my anxiety into a stained toilet for what felt like nearly an hour straight. For the record, anxiety comes out looking like yellow goop with the remnants of a Pop-Tart and a Hot Pocket. I like quick meals, what can I say? Sabe was outside the door, waiting for me. Comforting me, in her own Sabe-like way.

​

“You alright in there, Lasky?”

​

“Does it sound like I’m alright?”

​

“It sounds like you’re going to come out of that bathroom ten pounds lighter. But you’ll be alright. Want me to come in there and pat you on the back?”

​

“Screw off.”

​

She has a cute laugh. It’s a laugh that’s soft and bubbly but comes in spurts like an engine that’s trying and failing to start. I like hearing it. It almost takes my mind away from the fact that the toilet bowl’s water hasn’t looked like water in a hot minute. I don’t know why she always laughs when I tell her to screw off. I’ve said it so much it must be my catchphrase when it’s just one of the few sayings I have as a default in my canon of quippy retorts.

​

“I’ve been thinking.”

​

“You’re always thinking.”

​

“Yeah, but this time I’ve been thinking really hard. About the future. About us.”

​

For a moment, everything in my guts stopped trying to escape. I wanted to tell her this isn’t the time for a conversation like this right now. That I don’t have time for something like this when I feel like I’m about to have a deep conversation with Jesus Christ himself about why Hot Pockets and Jim Beam do not go together. But a part of me knows I need to hear what she has to say next. A part of me that’s been waiting for something like this forever.

​

“What is it?”

​

“Well. We’ve been playing together for a while now, and I think it’s about time we moved up. Get our name out there more, become known more. Aren’t you sick of playing in your dad’s bar? They don’t even listen half the time.”

​

“I’m not exactly dying to come back and throw up in another toilet.”

​

“See? So, I know the best way to get us out of this situation. Get away from this dump, from your dad, from all this stuff. I can get us to play at Burning Grad. Out of the garage, out of your dad’s lame bar. In front of actual people like us! Isn’t that the dream?”

​

I don’t know what the hell I was expecting from her little speech. Something more along the lines of being about “us” would be cool. Not playing. Not bands. Not the future, I never wanted to think about the future. That terrifying, horrifying, petrifying thing rushing at me as if it’s a 350-pound linebacker. Just us. I wanted to know what we were beyond this band.

​

But the band means everything to her, and she means something to me. Plus, she was right that this bar wasn’t going to get us anywhere. But Burning Grad wasn’t just a party, it was the party. The kind of thing that goes straight into your mom-and-pop lore for all your kids to fantasize about. Every class of past seniors had stories about Burning Grad, enough to fill tomes that spread the word of irresponsible drinking and screwing. Red Keg Greg and his harem of beers as he got stuck in the toilet for an hour straight, giving himself an alcoholic enema—yes, it went up the back end. Collin and Kray’s big stunt of lighting their old car on fire and dancing around it naked. Even Sabe’s older brother Jules went to Burning Grad, where he found and lost the “love of his life”. He still talks about coming back here one of these years, just to try and find her again. With all this, Burning Grad’s the party where you get your last shot at being a teenager. No regrets, probably a bunch of mistakes. Perfect for the band. Not perfect for me.

​

“Please, Lasky. We gotta do this. I know you’d hate a place like that, but we won’t get another chance like this. Just imagine even a couple of those guys become fans.”

​

The bowl flushes, and I see my reflection caught in the torrent. I forget how little I tend to look at myself. How long have I been here, losing it? Too long. Somehow, it reminds me of my room. There’s a phrase scribbled into the stall wall next to me. The world is a toilet, it says. A smiley face is carved right beside the oversized "T" at the end of the last word. 

​

“I don’t want to do this without you.”

​

It’s not a hard decision. She already knows what I’m going to say. She knows me. I’m not just an open book to her, I’m a book she’s read a thousand times and has scribbled coded footnotes at the bottom of most pages. A book I’m sure she’ll get tired of reading eventually.

​

“I guess we’re going to Burning Grad.”

​

I wonder what she’s thinking now that we’re here. I can tell what song she’s practicing. “Wicker,” the only tune we have that can easily rest in the pit of metal music. Left hand, pick smushed between her fingers and skipping across the bottom three strings. Right hand, close to hugging the nut. She’s in the key of F minor. Each pluck, and I hear the note in my head as if we were in a studio. I don’t even have to think about it, my hands just follow hers as the next note comes to me like it was divined straight into my brain.

​

Minor keys were her favorite, F minor being the holy grail of our latest garage “EP” that’ll likely never reach the ears of anyone beyond this party. They tell a story about her, one that I’m not sure I’ll get to read. The melancholic plummet of her songwriting is one I’ve jumped after without ever knowing where it’ll lead. After all, there’s no good way to tell your friend you love the sound of their pain. All I do is listen and give the occasional idea, though it’s not like she ever needs me to. Each chord and scale come to her as easily as if the strings and frets were another limb of hers. That song, all our songs, stay put right at the tips of her fingers. Seeing her, watching the way she attacks the strings with precision and a fury that only a true musician could use, I can’t help but feel some sort of heartache. She’s in a world I’ll never be able to get tickets to, no matter how badly I wish she’d let me in. On that stage, on any stage, she’s everything. I’m happy just to be able to see that from outside.

​

Look, I know there’s some weird gravitational pull that’s always yanking me toward her. I know that there’s something I’m too afraid to speak about to her. I just don’t think it’s worth pursuing. On my end, that is. Friends are what we are. Friends are what we’ll continue to be, until something comes up.

​

Maybe that’s for the best. If she were gone, it’s not like I’d be completely alone. I talk to people. I mean, I have talked to people. I just mostly stay out of the way. I have friends by association. People I speak to in classes, or around the neighborhood, but never interact with outside of those places. Those technically count as friends. They know my name. They know my face. So, what if they don’t text me out of the blue like Sabe does, or ask me if I’m okay, or spontaneously take me out to go burn an old teddy bear with some matches and a Febreze can? One of them gave me a birthday card. But only Sabe gave me a gift.

​

“So, you aiming for the creep medal of the year by just sitting there or are you going to say something?”

​

I look to my left and see someone sitting next to me. A girl, with a tiny smirk curving on to her face. My cheeks flush a bit. She twirls a white foam cup in her hand, and there’s the distinct slosh of liquid coming from it. Her hair’s short and curly. A bit mop-like, if I didn’t think that a rude comparison. The look in her eyes is how I imagine one might describe a trickster god, or something like that. Knowledge behind the irises. It feels like she knows me.

​

“Maybe. Think I got a shot at it?”

​

“With that look? You’re shooting for platinum, not gold.”

​

She laughs at her own line, and I can’t help but laugh alongside her. The light of the fire dashes across her face back and forth. It brightens her freckles. She’s covered in them. Not that that’s a bad thing. I’ve just never seen someone with so many before. Do they cover her from head to toe? Are some darker than others? Have I been looking at her for too long?

​

“My name’s Nasha,” she holds out her hand for me to shake.

​

The way she’s looking at me feels off. Her eyes are like traps. Or hypnosis. Or something. I can feel a jolt and a pull. The fire’s light dips into them. Swirling around in there, deeper and deeper. This is why I hate eye contact. Once you’re locked in, you can’t get yourself out.

​

“Nasha. Cool name.”

​

“Would you believe me if I said my Pop named me after his guitar?”

​

“Are you serious?”

​

“No, but it’d be cool if I was.”

​

She laughs again, and I start to think she might be a bit drunk. She’s definitely weird, but not in a bad way. She’s holding herself properly. No swaying and her eyes aren’t drifting. Talking to her is easy. Maybe it’s the way her voice bounces up and down as she speaks, or maybe it’s the excessive perfume eating away at my brain cells.

​

“I’m Lasky.”

​

“Oh, I know. Bass player for Ennui. I’ve been to one or two of your shows before, at Casey’s.”

​

“Really? I feel like I would’ve remembered you.”

​

“Because of my dashing looks and my daring personality?” She chuckles yet again.

​

“Uh, yeah. Sure. That, and the fact I’ve only ever seen beer gut drinkers.”

​

“You probably just missed me. I came with my dad, and let’s just say he’s the size of a mountain fused with a bear. Long beard. Screams a lot. I tend to hide behind him.”

​

Yeah, I know the guy she’s talking about. I didn’t take him for one with kids. He always looked like the kind of guy who’d hit on a waitress and then complain about it.  

​

“Oh yeah. That guy. Did you like the show?” I ask, because who doesn’t want to hear someone say they like your music? There’s no greater catharsis than to have one's ego stroked, and mine is incredibly neglected. I want to hear her say it’s good, so that maybe the bass doesn’t feel so out of place in my hands. I’m not so sure that I’ve got skin thick enough to hear someone say they don’t like the band, though. I put myself on the spot with just five words. I can feel the heat of the fire. I ought to look away, but I can’t.

​

“It was pretty sick, and you guys weren’t too bad. Had the whole shebang down. Found myself wanting to hear just a little more.”

​

“Well thanks. I’m sure Sabe appreciates it,” I say, thinking about Sabe. Sabe the maestro. Sabe the prodigy. The music is all hers. Her heart, her soul. “She’s the one behind it all.”

​

“Oh really? So does she control you with a remote while you play with her?”

​

“What?”

​

“Little RC remote, with a label that has Lasky written in Sharpie? She must be so talented at multitasking like that. Unless it’s Bluetooth! She’d have to have invented that, though, right? Something like that doesn’t—”

​

“No, no she doesn’t control me. I play myself. I mean, I play the bass. Me.”

​

“Bummer, I was hoping she was some kind of wizard.” Nasha’s got a smile that could reach the moon above. It’s pretty. A special kind of pretty. One that kind of makes me feel good and pisses me off a bit at the same time. The pretty you see in museums, paintings sealed away behind glass that you want to be close to but can’t touch.

​

The crusty sound of a resonator begins to swim around. It seems someone decided to do some band pre-gaming. Nasha stands up once the song begins, and motions for me to stand up with her.

​

“You ever make music you can dance to, Lasky?”

​

It’d be hard for me to call what’s playing right now dance-worthy music, but I decide to play her game of questions. “I’m not really one for the music-making in general, dancing or no dancing.”

​

She grabs my wrist, and I realize she wants me to start to dance alongside her. I think back to Jules’s story and wonder if this is how something like that happens. Getting pulled in with someone who leaves an itch that you can’t scratch unless you chase after them. Nasha twirls me in a circle.

​

“Don’t bullshit me, you make music. Any ballads? Slow burners? Maybe a love song to serenade the heart?”

​

Somehow, I actually think about it. I start to really listen to that damn resonator guitar, and it feels like a string begins to tie around my heart. I do like to write songs. I’ve written so many and yet haven’t once told Sabe about any of them. Is one among them a love song? The guitar is fast, the person playing a measure of rhythm and speed. It gives me the feeling of being a drifter with nothing but a bag of clothes, a few dollars to my name, chasing down a girl. A lot of things in my head boil down to chasing after a girl. Through it all, I still can’t picture someone dancing to this. And yet, here I am.

​

“I don’t think I’ve ever made anything dance-worthy.”

​

That’s when Nasha steps away, backing off only by a few feet. The shadows cast from the fires seem to follow her wherever she goes as she dances around by herself. She’s not even following the tempo anymore. There are quite a few people dancing now. To the music, or to something else in their own head, who knows?

​

“You should try to, next time. Come up with a little groove number,” Nasha says as she finally stops moving.

​

“If I did, would you dance to it?”

​

She smiles. “I might. Depends on if you come say hello after the show.” She sinks deeper into the party, to the point where even the curls of hair become invisible to me. The itch asks me why I don’t just follow her. It asks why I am still here, standing around and letting the tiny world I find myself in pass me by each time. I tell the itch that I don’t know and go back to sitting down. Maybe I’ll find out. Maybe it’ll just come to me.

​

​

The moon’s high in the sky now, leering down at us. There’s nothing quite like seeing a bunch of teenaged hooligans bathing in the moonlight as they wait to hear some music. It’s finally time, and I think my fingers have stopped sweating now that I left the fire pit. There’s an oddness to the whole scene playing out in front of me. All the people I went to school with now setting fire to the effigy of a mock-up guy with his own little graduation cap. It’s almost cultish. Screaming and cheering as the flames rise up from the bottom, chewing and gnawing away at the sticks. We’re all here to burn away what’s left of our youth. Look at me, look at all of me. I survived it. I’m ready for anything.

​

Ready for anything, huh? It’s inspiring. I’ve never seen so many people happy at once. Just happy to be here in this moment, at this place in time, waiting to listen to some music they’ll forget in the morning played by people whose names they never knew to begin with. I think I’m smiling. I can feel the moon on my face. We’re all glowing a little differently tonight. Most of us, glowing under the heat of orange and red.

Sabe’s quiet. She lets the guitar do her talking. A whine that slowly builds up to a wail, to a scream, to a screech. She strums up, up, down, up, and I try to follow her pattern with my fingers. I’m dragging a bit, but not enough for anyone in the crowd to notice. They’re dancing now, getting into pairs or groups. Arms linked, love shared between all. I watch them as we play, and for the second time of the night, I feel here. Really here. I look up and see the moon watching me and me alone.

​

Her vocals are low and drawn out like they’re being pulled and stretched. Words of taffy. They sound just as sweet. I love how her guitar sounds, and how she sounds. I always have. Sabe has an energy that only comes out on stage, a life of stardom made to be witnessed and admired. This is all hers. If only I could keep up.

​

The song we’re playing is “Ferryman.” A song about a lost soul going further down the river toward the end. Unsure of what’s there. Afraid to look back toward where they came from. Floating endlessly on a boat. Alone.

​

Ferryman’s come to carry me on down.

​

Empty heart still with a little charity.

​

For a poor soul who don’t wanna drown.

​

For at least this moment, no one in this crowd is a lost soul. The way they huddle together, the way they start to touch each other. Make out, dance, jump, faint. They are the river. It’s here that they’re found. I expect no one to be all by their lonesome anymore.

​

Then I see, among the crowd, a familiar set of eyes in the dancing river in front of the stage. Eyes like a trap, eyes of an anchor. She seems ever so far away, aimlessly drifting. But she’s right there at the front. An invasion of freckles and moppy curls. It hurts to say, but her name slips my mind. So many things are slipping my mind, just like how my fingers keep slipping across these damn strings. Nothing stays still. I just need something to stay still for only a moment.

​

She gives me a thumbs up, and I see the freckles that travel up and cover her arms. Her mouth moves, but I can’t hear the words. Instead, I feel them deep in my chest, like phantom constrictions. It all comes from that smile, a shining glow within the river.

​

I breathe. I close my eyes. I listen. The thunder of feet digging up earth as they move. The bellowing of drunken stupor. The collision of bodies. The crowd, they make a song both on their own and in response to ours. One with lyrics that reverberate through my bones and blood, from my feet to my chest to my hands to my fingers. I can keep up. I know how to keep up. My fingers slip but find themselves. They act on their own, possessed by a wicked force that can’t be mine. I smell the wood that’s set ablaze, and it takes me back. Back to a freshly lit fireplace, where I hear a song my dad would play to me when I was first learning bass. Yellow walls around me, small pictures on the coffee table, and an old man I only ever got to see on late nights and early morning weekends. There’s a devil in my strings, he’d sing while his fingers waltz across the fretboard. I was watching black magic at work in front of me. Someone playing greatness, all by himself. I’d never be able to do that, I’d tell myself. Never. But there’s a devil in my strings right now, and I’m praying to whatever god may be above that he never leaves.

​

           

It’s been nearly an hour since we finished playing the show. The party’s finally winding down, most people either having headed home or finding some place to crash for the night. Why am I still here then? My excuse is that Sabe’s my ride, and she’s currently nursing a sore throat with some hopefully non-alcoholic drinks. For those who don’t need an excuse, I wanted to see Nasha again. To go and say hello. She wasn’t hard to find at all, standing off to the side of the stage waiting for me. At first, I wasn’t going to say anything to her. Not then. Even at that moment, I looked back at Sabe. Waiting for her to say something. To give permission.

 

“I can break down and clear the set, it’s fine. Go on, it looks like someone’s waiting for you.” Sabe says this and waves me off.

​

And now, I’m here. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m here. Sitting by the lake with Nasha watching the reflection of the moon waver across the surface ever-so-slightly. The moon’s gotten pretty low, running out of steam from burning so bright in the sky. It really is a beautiful night. She’s awfully close to me, closer than anyone I’ve known has ever been. Our shoulders are almost touching, and I instinctively want to jerk away a bit. But I don’t. We just look at each other, waiting for someone to say something.

​

“How do you feel after it all? Playing up there. It’s gotta be some straight nerve destruction, right? I feel like I’d die if I was playing something in front of someone.”

​

“Maybe I did die. Maybe you’re talking to the world’s first zombie bass player.”

​

“Yeah, sure. There’s no way you’re the world’s first in that category. Maybe fourth or fifth place. The best I’d go with is fourth.”

​

“I appreciate you still giving me a spot in the top five. I guess it felt different, playing tonight. Like I had everything to lose, but nothing I wanted to keep. I don’t know, maybe I’m just talking nonsense.”

​

Her hand glides over mine, and I freeze. I think everything freezes. My breathing hitches, the sound of critters jittering about silences, and I find myself trapped again by those eyes of hers. I never really caught the true color of them, what with the fire earlier having a rave inside of them. But now, I can see the golden-brown messy mixture. And beyond that, I can see the reflection of myself, distorted like I was run through an overdrive pedal. It’s only in moments like these that you can see how someone else sees you. Get in their head just a bit and find the answer to the question you never know you’re thinking. What do they see in me?

​

“You know what I’m about to ask you, right?” The words seem to lag on her lips. She asks so slowly, without that impenetrable confidence I’ve come to associate with her. Quiet. Reserved. Unsure. For the first time to night, we become the exact same.

​

Of course I say, “Yeah.”

​

“Play me something I can dance to?”

​

“I can try.”