I shove the stenciled glass door. Nancy’s Needles. HOMETOWN INSURANCE. Underground Music Studio. The names flash and swing in front of me. I yank open the metal door, thunder down the steps, and charge across the central room. A kid with a stack of piano books in his lap looks up from the corduroy couch as I fly past.
I pound on Flynn’s door. Loud enough that I’m sure he can hear, no matter what noise is trapped on the other side.
A second later the door opens. Flynn blinks out at me. His eyebrows rise.
“Hey, Anders,” he says. “You okay?”
“Not really. Can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” Flynn pauses. Over his shoulder I can see a girl about ten years old perched on the folding chair, miniature acoustic guitar across her lap. Her feet swing a few inches from the floor. “We were almost done here.” Flynn turns toward the girl. “What do you think, Jamie? You want to do that Little Mermaid piece one more time? Anders could listen to you. Give you some feedback. He’s pretty good.”
Jamie glances at me. I’m clenching the door frame with one hand. One of my legs is vibrating with impatience.
Jamie shakes her head.
“Want to just be done for today?” Flynn asks.
Jamie nods.
She darts past me with her guitar, sneaking one more glance at me out of the corner of her eye.
Flynn beckons me in.
I step through the door, and he shuts it quickly behind me.
Suddenly I feel wrong, like I’m missing part of my body. I realize a second later that what I’m missing is my guitar. I’m never in this room without it. I left Yvonne outside, locked in the car. My hands feel huge and empty.
“What’s up?” asks Flynn.
“The band. The other guys.” I want to pace, or punch a wall, or do something to let out the energy searing through me, but this is Flynn’s studio, not my own bedroom. I try to stand still. “They’re pissed at me. And they should be. I did something stupid. But there was nothing else I could do.”
“Okay.” Flynn lowers himself onto his usual chair. He folds his ropy arms and leans back, listening. “Did you guys break up? Is the band over?”
“What? No. No.” Just the idea throws me. I swear, the cement floor starts to rock. “I don’t think so. Jesus. I hope not.”
Flynn nods. “Okay. Then you’ll move on. You fight, and you move on.” He gives me a dry smile. “That’s what bands do. They fight. With occasional breaks to play music.”
Flynn is so . . . Flynn. He’s so mellow and cool and ready to laugh at whatever deserves it, I can feel the tension inside me lessen a little bit. But it’s not quite enough.
“This was more than that.” I try to string words together. “I don’t know if—I don’t—I don’t know . . .”
“Okay,” says Flynn again. “Just take a breath.” He nods to the other chair, inviting me to sit. I throw myself down. Flynn uncrosses his ankles and leans forward, elbows on knees. “So, this isn’t really about the other guys, right?”
I writhe in the chair. I can’t seem to remember how sitting works.
“Right,” I say. “It’s my fault.”
Flynn keeps his voice light. “What’s your fault?”
The water I’m wading into is cold and deep. I take a breath, like Flynn said, and slowly let it out again. “Someone from S&A Artist Management called me a couple weeks ago.”
Flynn’s eyebrows twitch. Flynn stays pretty chill about almost everything, but now and then his eyebrows give him away. “S&A, huh? Decent people.”
“Yeah. And I told them I wasn’t interested.”
“Without talking to Jezz and Patrick,” Flynn supplies.
“Yes.”
Flynn nods slowly. “Kind of a dick move.”
“I know. I know. We all said we wouldn’t sign anything until we were done with school, but I still should have told them. It was just—they were just asking me. Like I was in charge. Or maybe like they just wanted me. Not us. I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Flynn turns his hands up in a tiny shrug. “So maybe it just wasn’t the right thing.”
“But that’s not really it.” This is colder, deeper water than we’ve been in before. I can’t see the bottom here. “I guess . . . I’m worried about what will happen when I do say yes.”
“Ah.” I can hear Flynn take a deep breath of his own. “I get it.”
My head snaps up. “You get it?” He does?
Flynn nods again. “Oh, yeah. It happens to almost everybody, man. You climb up the ladder, you walk down to the end of the diving board, and all of the sudden you see how high up you are, and you think maybe you don’t really want to jump. I get it.”
I twist in my seat. God, I wish I had my guitar. Just so I had something to clench in my hands. “No. It’s . . .” I scrape my fingers through my hair. My scalp is sweaty. “I’m not, like, scared of leaving town or something. I’m not scared of taking a chance. I’m—” I have to stop and swallow. “I feel like I’m about to get everything I’ve always wanted. You know? Everything.”
“And that scares you.” Flynn leans on his elbows. He brings his face close to mine. “We knew this was coming, right? Representation, touring, a record deal. I mean, the things you’ve been writing, the way you can play. People were going to notice.” He cracks a smile. “I don’t promise any of my students fame and fortune in the music business, but if I was going to make a bet on someone . . .” He gives my knee a quick, warm pat. “Listen. Anders. If you’re thinking the life of a touring musician isn’t what you want anymore, that’s one thing. That’s fine. That’s sane.” He grins knowingly. “But if you’re just doubting yourself, that’s another thing entirely.”
I stare hard at Flynn, grabbing every word out of his mouth like it might be the thing that saves me, that makes the shitty situation with my best friends seem not so shitty after all. For a second I think about Flynn’s life. Single. No family that I know of. Scattered friends. No roots but the shallow ones he’s put down here. Maybe music pulls people apart as often as it brings them together. Maybe I’m headed for loss no matter what I do.
Flynn leans back, the graying coils of his hair sweeping over his shoulder. “You know, life isn’t a one-way street. You can play lead guitar in a metal band for a few years, touring the world, doing crazy stuff, and then you can move to some small town where the rent is nice and cheap and teach guitar to schoolkids.” He shrugs, grinning. “But Anders . . .” He pauses. His face gets serious. “You need to at least try. I mean it. Go down that road far enough that you can see where it leads before you turn away.”
There’s another moment of quiet. I can hear the hum of pipes and vents, and the muffled plinking of a piano lesson in another studio seeping in under the door.
In that quiet I want to blurt out everything. I want to tell Flynn the whole truth.
But I can’t.
I can’t tell him about that night in the woods. If I even try, he’ll know one of two things: either I’m a fraud, a pathetic lying tool, or I am batshit insane.
“You know how we talked about talent.” I measure the words. “About gifts.” My heart’s pounding. I’m so close to going too far. “If something’s given to you, then somebody else had to give it, right? And if they give you more and more, won’t they—probably—want something in return?”
I stare straight into Flynn’s eyes. I’m begging him to understand. I’m praying for him to see through the words into what I can’t say.
Flynn’s eyes are greenish brown and steady.
He looks right back at me.
“Giving everything is scary,” he says at last. “Giving your whole self to something—it’s huge. I know. But sometimes that’s what music demands.” Slowly, lazily, he scratches his bicep with his missing-fingered hand. “Sometimes it demands a sacrifice.”
A spear of terror juts through me.
I look away. Fast.
No, I tell myself. No way. This is Flynn. He didn’t mean anything more by it. He couldn’t know his words would stick like a knife in my unzipped chest.
We sit still for another minute, chair to chair.
I finally get my breathing under control.
“Well,” I mumble at last, getting up, “I should go. I don’t mean to screw up your lesson schedule.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Flynn stands up, too. He smiles, squeezing my shoulder with one calloused hand. “Sometimes you’ve just got to go to confession. I get it.”
He follows me toward the door.
His next student, a middle schooler with angry-looking acne blistered across his forehead, is waiting right outside, guitar case in his hands.
“Any time you need to talk, I’m here,” Flynn says.
But then he ushers the kid inside and shuts the insulated metal door. And I’m alone in the empty waiting room, with that knife still sticking in my chest.