Fifteen

THEN THE TIME CAME when I was better enough to play. I mean really play, back in Relly's attic, plugged in and turned up loud.

My dad drove me over to Slime Street. I went to the front door and Tannis was waiting, like the other times.

She let me in and we stood there in the kitchen not talking. Only we were OK now. I knew that without her saying a word. I'd done the right thing. She understood that. And a whole lot more now. She knew me for who I really was. And I was OK.

Then Relly came in and said, "All right! Time to kick out the jams. You ready?"

I nodded.

He'd run an extension cord up the stairs and had an electric heater cranking on high. So even though the snow was falling and the wind was moaning, we were nice and warm in the attic.

Butt gave me a huge welcome-back grin. And Jerod, too, was happy to see me on my feet again. "We missed you," he said. And I think he meant it.

"So what do you wanna play?" Relly asked.

I didn't need my little notepad for the answer. I just formed the words Silence Loud, and Relly got it. We had lyrics for the tune, the poem off her gravestone. Relly handed Jerod the lead sheet.

"Now deep in earth, this bed of sighs," Jerod said, getting the feel of the song.

Then Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true.

I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all worked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this moment. My fingers closed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry.

"OK," I whispered into the pounding noise.

I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone.

"Then will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies."

Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song.

I didn't need a voice. I had the bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me.

Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, they were my words. And all the world would hear them.