An absolutely screaming baby is wheeling by us, the mom shushing it. I want to get us to a more private spot but I don’t want to lose this moment. And also Caleb is taking my other hand. Now we are two people holding each other’s hands facing each other, which makes people notice us and give us a wide berth, and I am determined to finish what I was going to say.

“If you don’t want to burn out, then you need to stop deleting Twitter accounts and alienating everyone in PopArts, and playing guitar alone.”

Caleb looks away and shrugs, a touch sulkily. “I guess.”

From a business point of view, what I can feel myself about to say may not be a good idea. The grizzled, veteran me knows better. Throwing in with the mercurial head-case singer type? Never good. But maybe Caleb is just a singer of the average head-case variety who happens to be going through a really rough patch. I heard that song behind the school. Nobody at the Kickoff Concert had anything like it. I feel as certain as I can that I’ve found my next project.

“I can help you,” I say. “You can put together a band, and I’ll manage. I know what to do. Your job is to get”—before I can consider stopping myself, I reach out and touch his chest with my index finger—“this out into the world. Then everything you’re talking about can happen.”

Caleb shrugs, but then he takes my hand. “Maybe this is why I asked you out. How do you make everything sound so possible?”

I want to ask Caleb if this is a line he’s used before. But no, I don’t really want to know. I don’t care to know. Maybe he’s another band boy but so what so what so what? Sometimes things happen and we feel things because we are who we are and we can’t control it.

“Because it is possible,” I hear myself saying, and I’m leaning forward, my body seeming to have already made up its mind about what happens next, and suddenly I’m terrified: am I really thinking about him as my next project or am I thinking about him as this cute, wounded beautiful soul, so honest on the surface, no games, no quoting his own lyrics at me, and getting hotter by the second? Slow down! It’s too soon! Remember last time— And I know, oh I know, this is so . . . Not. A good. Idea. Where’s one of those fortune-tellers made out of folded paper, a silly Seventeen magazine quiz, a flower to pluck petals, anything that would give me a sign that could make me feel certain about what to do next—

But I tip up on my toes and kiss him anyway.

I think it surprises him, but then he responds and, has it really been three months since I felt this feeling because, oh, kissing, hello! And this is exceptionally good and it makes me wonder if we’re made to think each new kiss is the best one we’ve ever had, or if it’s possible that there are just frequencies between people, wave vibrations that align in a perfect hum. Maybe it’s our relation to the magnetism of the planet, or the specific arrangement of our molecules, or maybe we both just so happen to have slightly elevated levels of some mineral, let’s say manganese, in our blood. Who knows? But there is something, something more than just the simple physics of lips and tongues at work here, and it’s vibrating me like a kite string and it’s almost like I don’t need to know any more. We’ve only talked for half an hour and yet I don’t need to know what cereal he likes or what his politics are or which Kurt Vonnegut novel he read first. None of it matters because of this frequency that is making me long to slide my cheek slowly down his neck to his shoulder and feel his arms at my waist pulling me close so that my lungs can’t fully expand.

Except I pull back. Take. A. Deep. Breath. “Okay,” I manage to say. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Caleb breathes. “Um, thanks.”

“We should probably get back to school,” I say. “Either that, or . . . never mind.”

“What?” He takes me gently by the shoulders. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing. It was silly—”

He kisses me back. “Tell me.”

Woozy. “I was just going to say that we either go back to school or instead we head to Long Beach and stow away on a cargo boat headed to Palau.”

“Two solid choices.” Caleb hugs me. “Probably school. For now.”

“We’ll need degrees in Palau. To start a music school.”

“And we should learn Palauean first.”

“Palau-ese?”

“Wait . . . we should get this right.”

I check my phone. “Palauan.”

“We’ll learn Palauan.”

“Yes.”

We walk, drifting along. He takes my hand. “That was definitely not in my plan,” says Caleb as we go. “I mean, I thought about it.”

“You thought about what?”

“Well, I mean I’m a guy . . .”

“Right.” I don’t bother telling him that girls have those thoughts, too. We’re just better at poker.

The end of our walk is as silent as the start, and yet, this silence is a whole other world, nearly bursting with possibility. I expect the school to be empty. But when I look at my watch I see that barely forty-five minutes have passed. Last period will be starting soon.

We stop in the same hall outside PopArts, the circle complete. The last moment before returning to the real timeline, and I’m almost sad. “So,” I say.

“So,” he replies.

This makes me want to kiss him again, but the halls feel like they have eyes. “So . . . that.”

“That.”

Before we can say any more, the bell rings, and the hall begins to fill.

Caleb takes a step back. He motions like he’s going to head to class. So I take a step back, too. We both smile. We both turn away. But he is the only thing on my mind for the rest of the afternoon.


VINYL CUFFLINKS


Where We Are Music Infinite

—posted by ghostofEliWhite on September 17

More from the anniversary of Into the Ever & After. Here’s something interesting: I was reading through the interview archives in On The Tip of Your Tongue, the anthology of interviews, letters, and journal entries from the band, and I noticed a quote, the significance of which I’d totally missed before. When asked by KNBC’s Hollywood beat reporter Sherrie Pine how the new record was coming along, Eli said:

“Slow slow slow, but the end is in sight. I think we’ve got seven tunes tracked. Kellen’s are all done, as usual. I’ve gotten a few of mine down, but it’s these last few that I’m most excited about. I think they’re my best work, and I can’t wait to lay them down.”

You do the math, friends. If they’d recorded seven, then doesn’t that mean that Eli is talking about the LOST SONGS? Is it possible that he had those songs sketched out, at least in his mind?

It just makes his passing all that much worse, knowing that his best work went with him into the ever & after.

5

MoonflowerAM @catherinefornevr 1h


Now hear this: Introducing Dangerheart! Mount Hope’s astonishing new band feat Caleb, Jon & Matt. Say you knew them 1st. #youllthankmelater

It takes two weeks to get things rolling. Two weeks to make flyers and BandSpace ads, to find a drummer (Matt, a freshman) and a guitarist (Jon, a junior transfer), neither of whom knows or cares about Caleb’s baggage. Two weeks to try out six bassists, all of whom are worse than me, and I’ve never played bass.

All the school rehearsal spaces are taken, so Caleb, Jon, and Matt pool money, with help from Caleb’s uncle Randy, to get a tiny spot over at the Hive, a warehouse that’s been converted to practice spaces.

Caleb comes up with a list of names, and on a Sunday we meet for coffee and commence the Sad Googling, which reveals that after sixty years of rock bands, ALL OF THE GOOD NAMES HAVE BEEN TAKEN. The only two names left from Caleb’s list of twenty are the Lonely Clones and Dangerheart. Nobody really likes either, but they dislike the Lonely Clones more. Dangerheart it is.

We also do a search for my list of new management names. That’s a little easier, and I am officially reborn, from Orchid Productions to Moonflower Artist Management.

During the coffee-and-naming session, Caleb and I sit close, hips and shoulders touching as we lean over his tablet. There was no kissing for the first week after our date at the center of the solar system, and it was just starting to feel difficult, like something exceedingly special would need to happen for us to kiss again, and besides, shouldn’t Caleb be the one who initiates this time? Of course, at the same time, I didn’t mind that no one had witnessed us kissing. I felt almost paranoid after our sun date, the excitement of our connection dampened by my concern with how the world might cheapen it.

Except then right in the middle of a search, while page results were loading, he just reached over, turned my chin with his finger, and our lips met again. This one was quick. Familiar, the kind that is meant to be just one of many. Like a habit. A good habit. And at least for that moment, I could care less what anyone might think.

“What was that for?”

“Um, for search engines? Does it matter?”

“It really doesn’t.”

“Good,” he says. “’Cause I think I’m going to have more kisses than reasons.”

And I melt. And we kiss more.

With the terrible task of naming settled, what the band really needs next is a goal.

A gig.

And so on Tuesday morning Caleb and I meet up at the front doors of school and prepare to split up, Special Forces-style.

“Remember,” I say to him, “Operation Swordfall is going to be bloody. But it’s vital.”

Caleb takes a deep, queasy breath. He’s been more quiet than usual this morning, ever since I met him in the parking lot by his car. His face gets blank when he’s nervous. I call it Fret Face. I know he’s not looking forward to this operation, but when I asked him if anything else was wrong, he said he was fine.

“I know,” he mumbles. “Do I really have to?”

Caleb’s mission is to make amends with the members of Android Necktie. “We’re going to be playing the same gigs as them,” I remind him, “moving in the same circles. We won’t have them on our side, but if we can at least keep them from actively rooting for our failure and telling everyone that Dangerheart sucks, that would be good.”

Caleb sighs, but he nods in agreement. “Your mission almost sounds worse.”

“Operation Tater Tot? Yeah, it’s going to be ugly. But it’s equally vital.” I punch him in the shoulder. “Godspeed, man.”

Caleb almost grins, but Fret Face is strong.

I bound back down the steps and head around the side of school. As I go, I can’t help glancing anxiously at my binder, where I have etched twenty capital T’s across the top. This is the number of “tardies” you can get in a class without losing credit. They’re like player lives for Catherine. I’ve already pre-crossed out Number Three for this morning. At this rate, she may need to find the hidden cache of medical supplies if she’s going to survive this level of the High School game. Summer, meanwhile, is doing great.

I round the corner and arrive at the Armpit, an awkward triangular cement area in the crux where the south wing of school meets the auditorium. A high hedge shields it from the office. There are windows up on the second floor, but if you’re close to the wall, this is one of the very few spots on school grounds where you can be nearly invisible. Thus the concrete is littered with cigarette butts and dip cups and wrappers. It’s too early in the year for a single gang to have claimed it, but there are a few clumps of boys standing around in clouds of smoke and testosterone, sizing each other up.

The person I’m looking for is sitting on the short wall beneath the hedge.

“Ari.” Ari Fletcher doesn’t hear me through his donutsized red headphones. He’s bopping his head and slapping drumsticks against his thighs. His two friends are hunched over an iPad, arguing about how best to proceed in some video game. It whines with trebly sounds of shrieking females and chainsaws.

“Ari.” Ari is the son of Jerrod Fletcher, who happens to be the head of Candy Shell Records. But more importantly, Ari throws a yearly back-to-school party out at their beach home called the Trial by Fire. Invitation only. For most guests, the Trial involves surviving Ari’s patented punch and making it home with your dignity. For bands, it has a different meaning. Getting an invite is a big deal, and the best bands in school are always there. Jerrod is usually also throwing a party up the dune in their ridiculously lavish house at the same time, so there is the bonus potential of star sightings. Last year, Hatchet from Ninja Harem came careening down to the beach with her action figure of a boyfriend and they tore off their clothes and went skinny-dipping right in front of everyone.