Last night I dreamed I had a hole in my head /

thirteen angels and demons dancing on the bed /

I was six times alive / and I was seven times dead

 

I wake from bad, sweaty dreams, squinting in the brightness of the room. Sunlight is blooming through the translucent fabric of the shades. There are birds chirping outside. It takes me a moment to figure out why I’m in Shane’s kitchen and why the perspective is so weird and why I’m so stiff and achy.

After Josephine and Todd left last night, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go upstairs to talk with Amy, couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to the granny apartment and sleep in the bed without Josephine, so I just sat at the kitchen table and put my head down and cried and must have fallen asleep like that.

Ding dong.

The front doorbell. Someone is ringing the front bell. That’s what woke me up.

Maybe it’s Josephine, I think, and raise my head, then realize that doesn’t make any sense and lay my head down again.

The bell rings again, then again, then it just becomes an insistent string of ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong.

I should get up and get it, but I just sit there.

Thump thump thump as someone comes downstairs. I hear the door open and Amy say, “What on earth is​—”

“Where is he?!”

Oh. God.

I’m instantly up out of the chair and out of the kitchen and into the living room, right into an ongoing firefight.

“Who the hell are you, girly?” says the new arrival.

“Who am I? What are you talking about! You’re the one just walked in here!”

“Mom,” I say, “what are you doing here?!”

“Well, well, well,” says my mom. “Of course you’re here. Of course. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Mom!”

“What’s going on?” says Amy, still half asleep. She’s wearing pajama bottoms and one of Shane’s T-shirts.

“You the latest girlfriend?” says my mom.

“Mom​—”

“’Cuz if you’re the latest girlfriend, honey, I wish you the best of luck.”

“Amy, this is my mom.”

“Uh . . . hi?” says Amy.

“Hi yourself. What are you, eighteen?”

“Mom . . .”

“You know,” says Amy, “I don’t mean to be rude, but since you are . . .”

“Oh, shut it. Where is he? And don’t say ‘who.’”

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

“You’re asking me what I’m doing here? I thought you were playing runaway at Devon’s. Where is Shane?!”

“Shane’s upstairs sleeping,” says Amy.

“Upstairs drunk, you mean. Get him.”

“Austin, what is going on?” says Amy. “I’m up there dead asleep​—”

“Amy, I’m so sorry about this,” I say. “Mom​—”

“I’m not talking to you right now,” she says. “I will deal with you later.” She jabs a finger at Amy. “Now you go get Shane, or I swear to the Lord I will take his granddaddy’s horseshoe off that front door and go upstairs and beat him to death with it.”

“Okay, first, you don’t walk in here and order me around. Second, I don’t imagine he particularly wants to see you,” says Amy.

“Oh, really? Is that why he keeps calling me and dropping by the house and showing up at my place of work like some goddamn clown and nearly getting me fired?”

“You’re lying,” says Amy.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, little girl. Wake up. I was lying, I wouldn’t friggin’ be here. How you think I knew where to find him? He texted me the friggin’ address five times and invited me over!”

“Okay, and now it’s time for you to go.”

Instead my mom turns to me. “How was all y’all’s little show last night?” she says, holding up her hand, and I realize she’s clutching a rumpled sheet of paper. “Y’all have fun?” She crumples the paper into a ball and backhands it at me. It rebounds off my chest and I reach for it reflexively, bobbling it around before catching it.

“Listen, lady,” Amy says.

“Don’t you ‘listen’ me!”

“Don’t you tell me what to​—”

As they tell each other what not to do I uncrumple the paper. A flyer, printed in old-timey medicine show letters. YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A BIRTHDAY PERFORMANCE FOR YOU BY SHANE TYLER AND THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE, FEATURING THE VERY TALENTED AUSTIN METHUNE

“Would you please leave already?” Amy is saying.

“Shane!” shouts my mother, directing her voice upstairs, her southern coming out full. “Shane Tyler, I know you’re up there!”

“Lady​—”

“Shut yer yap. Shane! Shane Tyler! You get your ass down here right now!”

Amy has her hands clapped to the sides of her head. “I cannot believe this is happening,” she says.

“Oh, it’s happening. Shane!” bellows my mom. “Shane Tyler! Shane Tyler, you get out of bed and come down here right now, or . . .”

Shane has appeared at the top of the stairs.

We all watch as he descends, slowly, grimacing, holding the banister like an old man, like his whole body pains him. At the bottom of the stairs he passes Amy, resting a hand on her shoulder, and then he walks stiffly toward my mom and comes to a halt a short pace in front of her, and the two of them just stand there looking at each other, arms at their sides, not saying a word.

I haven’t breathed since he first appeared.

No one moves. Their faces looked carved from stone, facing each other in a silent tableau. I’m steeling myself for the inevitable, when my mom will wind up and smack him or open her mouth and start screaming.

Instead I realize that her eyes are starting to brim with tears. So are Shane’s. They’re both fixed in place, tears starting to overflow. Then he takes a step closer to her and opens his arms and she responds, moving to him and gently embracing him, the both of them swaying and rocking, tears streaming down my mom’s cheeks from her closed eyes. Shane is the same. She wipes at her nose and her eyes with her wrist and leans her head against his shoulder.

“Oh, Shane,” says my mom. “Shane, Shane, Shane. Why do you have to be so dumb?”

“I don’t know,” says Shane.

In the background Amy is watching, hugging herself, shoulders high as if she were sheltering from the cold.

“I still love you,” says Shane. “All these years, I always loved you.”

My mom wipes more tears. “I love you too, Shane. I loved you more than I ever loved anyone, and I always will. But, Shane, I don’t want to see you ever again. Ever.”

“Yeah,” says Shane. “Yeah.”

She stands on her toes to give him a kiss on the forehead, and then a final hug, and then she steps back from him. He’s watching her with helpless longing and sadness, the way you might look when someone you desperately love has died.

My mother turns to me. “Come on,” she says.

I don’t move.

“Austin,” says my mom. Then again: “Austin.”

“It was all a lie.”

My voice sounds flat. Shane doesn’t meet my gaze, stares at the carpet.

“All this,” I say quietly, gesturing with the flyer without raising my arm, because even that would require more energy than I can summon. “It was all for her. The show, all that, you were just using me. I was just bait.” My fingers open. The paper falls. “You never sent that track to Barry, did you.”

Now he looks up. “Kid . . .” he says. Shaking his head in apology, or helplessness.

I nod.

“Let’s go,” says my mom.

I follow her out to her car and we drive away.

∗  ∗  ∗

“Just give me a little more time,” says Josephine.

“You said a week. It’s been a week.”

“Austin, it’s been three days.”

“It feels like a week. It feels like a month.”

“Austin . . .”

Dusk. I’m at a playground, the one where I broke my arm for Martha Meinke’s benefit. One hand holding the phone to my ear, the other anchoring me to the tetherball pole, my body leaning away from it as I circle around and around and around. Trampling five cigarette butts farther into the ring of dirt with each revolution. Thinking of lighting up again.

“There’s some party tonight at Jason Goodman’s house,” I say.

“Austin, don’t you think that’s enough parties for a bit?”

“So come hang out. We can just hang out.”

“I can’t. Not tonight.”

“Fine. Tomorrow. What about tomorrow?”

“No. I promised to help my dad out at the mall, hand out flyers.”

“What?!”

“Look, it’s complicated. I’m trying to play nice. Don’t judge.”

We’re quiet.

“It all feels like a dream,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t want it to end.”

“No.”

“Have you heard from Shane?”

“No.”

“You angry at him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You and your mom talking yet?”

“No.”

“You should try.”

All my mom said when she retrieved me from Shane’s was “I have to go to work.” When she got home that night, she made dinner and took hers upstairs. It’s been that way since, both of us spending our evenings in our rooms, avoiding each other, my mom leaving for work before I’m up. Roommates who don’t speak the same language. Roommates whose countries are at war with each other.

Rick was there the first night, but now he’s in Milwaukee on some important Rick business. Which, thank God. Because if I had to talk to him right now I’d say, Pardon me for a moment, and then I’d go and ingest every single household cleaner in the broom closet.

I was irritable and itchy tonight, restless restless restless, couldn’t write a song, couldn’t watch TV, couldn’t make it past two panels of Calvin and Hobbes. I paced around the house. On my mom’s desk I saw the application to Marymount Academy, a pen resting on it. I left the house and got on my bike and ended up here, calling Josephine for the hundredth time.

“I miss you,” I say, also for the hundredth time.

“I miss you, too,” she says.

“So why not come to the party?”

“Austin, no. And you shouldn’t go either.”

“Josephine, just say it. Just say it. Are you breaking up with me?”

“No! It’s just that I’m scared,” she says. “I’m scared and I need time away to think, so that I can come back.”

“But you’ll come back.”

“Austin, what did I tell you before?”

“What.”

“On the beach. I told you that I’m true. And I meant it. Remember that,” she says. “I’m true. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“So give me some time.”

I stay in the park until the sun sets, smoking that sixth cigarette, and then one more for good measure. I compose another text to Shane that I know I won’t send.

Am I angry at him? I don’t know. The whole concert, this whole magic week, what was it? Shane’s pathetic effort to get my mom to come to the show.

She must have told him no, Josephine said, the morning of the concert.

Which makes sense, with everything that happened that day. What was it he said before the flameout? Just stopping in to say a quick hello to KD. And goodbye.

I should be angry. He lied to me, used me. But I guess I sort of used him, too. And there’s something else. The way he would look at me, like he cared. Like he was proud of me.

So instead of being angry I’m . . . what? Empty. Empty and confused.

Which is how I end up on my bike again, heading to his house. Going there to ask Shane the question Josephine put to me: Who are you?

I park my bike at the curb. If he’s not home, I’ll wait until he is. Who are you, Shane Tyler? I follow the walkway toward his front door. Then halfway there slow nearly to a stop.

“No.”

Then pick up the pace again and reach the front door and stand there staring at it, like staring at it hard enough will make what’s missing reappear.

The horseshoe. The horseshoe is gone.

“No!”

In its place, thumbtacked to the door, is an envelope. Austin, it says in Shane’s handwriting.

I don’t need to peer through the window or go around back to see if the Rover is there to know. He’s gone. Gone for good.

That’s who he is.

Then I do feel angry.

Blowtorch fury, rage, ambushing me like it did in the booth at the bar, and now the music in my head joins the fray, all discord and noise and jagged edges, and I stagger back and close my eyes and clutch at my head like I’m trying to hold my skull together.

∗  ∗  ∗

Drinking hard, drinking with a destination in mind, one beer, two, pushing to the keg for my third, people saying, Austin! Good to see you! Yo, you okay? You look kinda intense . . .

Too-loud music, shouted conversations, everything smelling beer-sour, weed-sweet, cigarette-foul. Kids making out in the corners, lines at the bathrooms, kegs out back, rumors of the act of intercourse taking place between so-and-so in the basement bathroom or in the parents’ room on the parents’ bed!

On Shane’s doorstep when my hearing returned and I could focus my eyes, I tore that note off the door and crumpled it and threw it down and stomped on it, screaming and swearing at it, like I was killing it. Not needing to read it, already knowing the goodbye BS that would be written there: Dear Austin, I’m so sorry but hope you’ll understand that it’s better this way . . .

Then I texted Josephine, you have to call me, then called her and left a babbled, crazy message as I paced on Shane’s front lawn​—​“He left! He said he wouldn’t leave​—​he promised . . .”​—​then texted her again to callmecallmecallme, and then just wrote, I’m going to the party. Stomped to my bike, turned around, stomped back, snatched up the flattened envelope and jammed it in my pocket. Then red-lined it to the party, blowing lights and stop signs.

I won’t ever leave you again.

The final lie. Who Shane is.

Well, here’s to Shane! I say, on the first round of shots. To Shane! on the second. Bottomsh up for Shane! on the third. The alcohol finally delivering me to where I want to be, everything a pleasant blurry glow, silly conversations, dancing, sweaty hugs, Hey, dude! Whassup! High five! Getting my party on.

Then, “Austin!”

My goodness, does Alison look nice.

∗  ∗  ∗

Alison and I are kissing.

It started when she came over and said, “Austin! It’s so good to see you!”

Huge hug.

“Aw, this is so good,” I said, “No, don’t let go. Never let me go.” She giggled and squeezed me back, and whispered in my ear, “I’m so glad you’re here.” Then, “Are you here with someone . . . ?”

“Nope.” That someone didn’t even care enough to answer my texts. So forget that someone.

And she smiled and said, “Good.”

I said, “Wait​—​are you still broken up with Todd?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Very sure.”

“Like, completely, totally​—”

“How can I get you to shut up?”

“Well,” I said, “you could try kissing me.”

So she did. She tried that, and it worked really, really well.

Part of me is saying, Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, but the rest of my brain is a thousand pinball machines hitting tilt at the same time, against a backdrop of fireworks, with a side of supernova.

When we resurface, I goggle at her and say, “Why?”

She smiles her naughty smile again and says, “You’re not the only one with a playlist, you know.”

Alison and I are kissing, hands everywhere, nothing stopping us anymore. Now she’s pulling away, pulling me by my wrist, and we’re heading upstairs, squeezing past people, Alison leading me down the hallway and through an open door which she shuts and locks, and we are the people in the parents’ room, clawing at each other, clothes coming off, leaping onto the bed, Alison whispering, “I have a condom . . .”

And so I go and do something that I wanted to be special with someone who is special, but instead I do it with Alison. And when we stumble out afterward, flushed and sweaty and straightening our clothes, there’s Josephine at the top of the stairs. Freezing in place when she spots us, one foot still on the next-to-top step, hand on the banister. Incomprehension turning to shock turning to devastation, and before I can say, “No, Jo​—” she’s spinning and pushing her way back down the crowded stairs, knocking drinks aside, people pressing themselves against the walls and the banister, watching her go.