Madison Square Garden.
The concert venue to end all concert venues. The cream of the crop. The heaven in music hell. The last place on earth I ever thought I’d be. At the concert of the year—maybe even the decade. The concert that was supposed to be Roman Holiday’s first Madison Square gig, but turned into Jason Dallas’s, too.
By the time LD and I hail a cab to get over there, BLACKHEARTS and Holidayers (Roman Holiday fans) alike are rubbing elbows just to get inside. You can practically feel the ghost of Holly Hudson in the crowd like a heavy blanket. It was no secret that this was her dream venue. I didn’t even know the girl—or like her music—and I still feel bad.
LD and I worm past half-drunk college frat boys with mini-bottles stuffed in their cargo shorts and teens with “BLACKHEARTED” T-shirts on and smeared eyeliner. Two types of people I never thought I’d see together, like Micah and Heather, to be honest. Oil and water. Vinegar and butter. They rub elbows and mix and mingle like seasonings in a stew that bubbles with the tune to Jason Dallas’s “Shotgun Heartache.”
I have such a death grip on my ticket that when we finally get to the hallway that lets out into the floor seats, the usher has to smooth mine out against the wall just to scan it.
“Hate the crowd, Iggy?” LD teases with a crooked smile, slinging her arm around my shoulder as we make our way to our seats. Front-row seats. Middle.
“I feel like an awkward appendage,” I mutter.
She nods sympathetically. “Think of all the men with them. So much foreskin, so little foresight.”
I crack a smile. “You’re terrible.”
“But you still love me.”
“Forever and ever,” I agree.
She throws her head back with a laugh, hugging me tighter.
The usher points to our seats, and we make our way down the row to them. A guy in a backward hat and a “BLACKHEARTED” T-shirt gives us a side eye. “’Sup?” he asks LD.
She inclines an eyebrow. “’Sup, bro?”
Then he turns back to his friends and mutters something about who we had to screw to get these seats. LD pretends not to hear, tucking her purse under her seat. I sit down next to her and marvel at how close we are to the stage. I could spit and probably hit Jason Dallas if I want to.
“Jason Dallas must not hate you that much,” she says to me, trying to ignore the douche bro beside her. “I mean, these seats are killing it.”
“Maybe it’s all one big joke though? Maybe these are the worst seats. Maybe these are the spit seats.”
“Spit seats?”
“Yeah, you know when performers spit when they’re singing or talking? That spit goes somewhere.”
She cringes. “Thanks for that.”
“I still can’t believe I actually interviewed him, and I can’t believe . . .”
“I know, Dark didn’t call.”
“I was going to say I can’t believe Jason’s a fan.” I grin, and she grins, too. “It’s so cool!”
“Isn’t it?” she agrees happily. “And that was a damn good interview—”
Suddenly the lights flicker. She gasps, patting my knee. “Ooh, it’s starting!”
Then she jumps to her feet. She’s the last voice I hear before the screams from the crowd become deafening, the Garden so dark all I can see are the cell phones flashing in the darkness like high-definition lightning bugs. We get to our feet, and she grabs my hand and holds it tightly.
I close my eyes and revel in the noise.
All the noise.
Chaos multiplied. A hundred thousand earthquakes. A song no one knows and no one can write the lyrics to. The melody is every sound in unison, an idiosyncratic symphony of vibrations. It pierces straight through me, like a bullet wound, so loud and raw I can’t hear myself anymore. Not my heartbeat or my thoughts . . . only everyone else, screaming. For a moment, I can fool myself into being everyone else.
I suck in a breath. Hold it. I can’t help it. The stage lights blind us like white lightning. The band comes out. Takes their places. They break into the hit “Shotgun Heartache” and the crowd somersaults into the lyrics, screaming them so loudly they screech through their throats. Everyone knows the words. If you don’t know “Shotgun Heartache,” then you live under a rock.
“Roman Holiday didn’t show up,” LD shouts into my ear. “I don’t see them!”
“Then they’re missing out!” I reply.
Jason comes out from the wings and grabs the microphone on the stand. The blood-red scarf tied to the microphone glitters like confetti. He puts a hand up to his ear. “What, I’m sorry, are you people singing?”
And that just prompts everyone to sing louder. The stanza repeats. The band throws up their fists, howling the words as if their hearts beat to them. “This is our last stand. This is where we part. Follow your fortune first. It’s our time to start.”
The crowd is so loud now, their voices quake my rib cage. Everything and everyone are so full of music that it’s impossible to feel anything less than alive.
“This is my love song for all the lost, time to fire the warning shot!”
The Prince of Punk steps up, straightening, unfurling, and for a breathless moment he is made of nothing but music, and then his voice crackles across the speakers and swirls up into the rafters. The crowd breaks into celebration. They thrust up their fists, singing along, the first stanza carrying into the second, and then the third, the crowd pushing and pulling against each other in the rush of the music.
This is my first concert, and I refuse to do anything less than sing the entire thing. This moment is everything. It’s all the moments I thought it could be. I want to bottle it up and share it, tell the world Look at where I went. Look at what I did. Didn’t see that, did you?
I want to share it with—
The lyrics fall off my tongue, a sturdy realization coming over me.
I want to share this moment with Billie.
And then it hits me—it hits me like a bullet train or the whiff of sunflowers just after they unfurl in spring or the sound of a Cadillac cresting over the hill into town—I want to go home.
Home.
To Steadfast. To my radio show.
I want to climb into that watchtower with a bottle of Diet Coke and a pack of Twizzlers and tell Billie how much I really do like him, and I want to tell him before he leaves forever—and before I leave forever. Because if I learned anything from coming here, it’s that you only have one chance.
I want to be bold, and be brave.
I want to be my own North Star.
“Hey—watch it,” I hear the douche bro snap to another guy in the front row. They’re trying to get as close to the stage as possible, pushing and shoving. Someone elbows LD into me. We stumble into the swanky-looking people beside us. The douche bro says something incredibly nasty to one of the other fans, and then I see a fist—and then someone jumps onto someone else’s back. It turns quickly into chaos.
Jason Dallas’s guitarist—bless him—grabs his microphone and shouts, “Security! Security!” but it’s about two seconds too late.
I don’t even have time to blink before LD shoves me out of the way. The douche bro’s fist slams into her face with a crack, and blood goes everywhere.