“Oh, yeah.” There’s at least a spark of interest in his eyes now.

I know that Matt thinks the Bulbs drummer is great. “Well, that song is sorta like this one, style-wise. He’s doing some pretty cool stuff. It seems kinda laid-back. I don’t know . . . might be worth checking it out.” I actually know exactly which part of that tune I’m hoping he picks up on, but I figure that’s about all that Matt can take for the moment.

“Sure, okay.” He’s still looking down at the floor, but he’s nodding. “I’ll check it out.” This probably means he will.

“It’s a cool beat you’re doing, though,” Caleb adds.

“Thanks,” Matt says quietly.

I sit back and my heartbeat calms. It’s always a little nerve-wracking to try to give feedback, and I’m always glad when it’s over. I listen to the rest of the set, doodling, catching nuances, writing down a note or two for next time but definitely not speaking it, and trying not to watch Caleb too much.

I do have one thing on my list for him, but I’ll wait until after practice to bring it up.

“Why haven’t you showed them ‘On My Sleeve’?” I ask as we walk from his car to Tina’s, each with an arm around the other. We just finished a kiss that caused us to nearly walk into a fire hydrant.

Caleb has been smiling, and as loose as I’ve seen him all day, but mentioning the song suddenly makes him stiffen. “Ah,” he says, “I don’t know if it’s right.”

“Why?” I say. “Because it’s too perfect?” I reach around and squeeze his ribs, but he just flinches a little. He’s got a bag for some reason, this old leather thing that he used for his pedals and cables tonight. I haven’t seen it before.

“It’s not perfect,” he says. He smiles at me, but it’s a lame one, Fret Face in firm control. “I just feel like it’s too personal. I mean, too honest. What fun is that?”

“Um, how about the fact that people are going to totally connect to it? Feel inspired by it?”

“Or laugh at how”—he makes air quotes—“sensitive it is.”

“Oh, please.”

He shakes his head. “It definitely does not seem like a Trial by Fire song.”

“Well, I disagree, and I’m going to keep disagreeing until you change your mind.” I let it go for now though.

I wait until we have bowls of frozen yogurt piled with toppings (peanut-butter cups, gummy bears, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream for me; Caleb is chocolate sprinkles only), and are seated at a table outside to ask: “So, now do I get the dish?”

But Caleb is a long way from his last smile. He’s been tightening up by the second. Does he even remember the joke? Instead, he puts that old gig bag up on the table between us.

And as he opens it, he says, “I got a letter from my dad.”

7

MoonflowerAM @catherinefornevr 10m


Seriously reconsidering whether I believe in ghosts.

“You what?”

“My mom gave this to me on my birthday,” says Caleb, pointing to the bag “It was Eli’s old gig bag. He left it in Randy’s car the day he died.”

“Your uncle Randy knew Eli?”

“Yeah. Randy and my d—Eli were in a band together earlier in high school. That’s how my mom met Eli. Randy wasn’t part of Allegiance, but they still hung out. My mom said that after I was born, Randy was key in getting Eli to pitch in.”

None of this sounds like it makes Caleb very happy.

He continues: “They’d been hanging out in the afternoon, and Eli forgot the bag in the car. Randy wanted me to have it.”

“It’s pretty cool,” I say, running a finger over the cracked seams. “Looks like it’s seen some real action.” There are shreds of a sticker on the side, it maybe says Below Zero, but chunks are missing.

Caleb opens the bag. “It had his old pedals and cables in it. One really cool phaser pedal that I might use. But there’s also a pocket in the lining on the side. I don’t think Randy ever even noticed it.” Caleb zips it open.

And pulls out a piece of paper with a ragged edge.

He places the page between us, turning it around so I can read the scratchy handwriting. “This was written by Eli,” says Caleb. He points to the torn edge. “Looks like he ripped it out of a journal. Do you know about that book called On the Tip of Your Tongue? It’s the collected journals of Allegiance to North. Mom has it at home. I checked this against Eli’s handwriting. It looks exactly the same. But then the last entry in the book from Eli is dated July eleventh, 1998.”

I look at the page. Top corner, a scrawled date: “July fourteenth.”

“That was the night of the Hollywood Bowl show. On that last tour. The last show they ever played in LA.” Caleb’s face is white. “Read it.”

I hunch over it. I’m wary of reading. My insides are spinning. I don’t like this proximity to the words of a dead man.

To you who don’t know me:

I guess it’s fitting that now I wish I could talk to you, wish I could hold you, but of course I can’t. And while I’m off making a mess of everything, you’re somewhere learning your first words, your first steps.

I’d come see you, if I could. Duck out this greenroom door and grab a bus, use a fake name, never come back, but I can’t. I should . . . but I just filled my vein and I don’t want you to see your daddy like this.

Gotta do something though . . .

They’re after me.

I’m not supposed to know but I do. Art becomes business becomes lies. The soul dies. We don’t know it’s dead until it’s long since slipped from us, and we look back and see it waving sadly, as we move on, hollow inside.

I’ve become my faults, can’t stay clean, destroy all the love that comes my way. I know these things. How did I get here? How now brown cow? Life is all just nursery rhymes. You already know everything you need. I’d love to say them with you.

I look up. “I’m not sure he was sober when he wrote this.”

“I know.” Caleb nods at the page and I keep reading.

I can’t go on with the charades anymore. My costume is threadbare. And anything else my heart conceives is just going to be taken from me. They’re going to take it all. Like any of it even matters.

And that’s the cruelest joke: I know what’s important, now, finally, and I can’t have it.

But do you know what? The universe works in mysterious ways. Two years staring at the blank page and I finally had a break through. I can finish the album. I have the final pieces and they’re my best yet.

Exile. Anthem. Encore.

I finally know what to write about, thanks to you.

But first I have to get the house in order. These songs, these gifts are too precious to let the bastards steal.

I’m going to hide the tapes. And then I may have to do something drastic to clean up this mess. Or maybe I’ll just mess it up more, so much mess that we just drown beneath it.

“Whoa. Drown?”

“I know,” Caleb answers quietly.

It feels good to write to you. I can’t trust anyone else.

Maybe with some luck, years from now, we’ll go together to see Vic, and get a Reuben with pickles. Then get a kiss from Daisy and search for a hidden yesterday.

For now, though, while I die in the spotlights tonight, at least I’ll know that you’re sleeping peacefully, unaware of me.

We are far comets, on impossible journeys. Maybe some day our paths will cross, and we’ll find each other in all that dark.

—E

I sit back, heart racing. “Wow. Not all of that made sense to me, but . . .” I glance at Caleb, and can’t resist looking around to see if anyone is close enough to hear. “This is obviously written to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think this is a suicide note? That he—”

“Meant to drown?” Caleb shakes his head. “That didn’t happen for another four months. But he thought something bad was going to happen to him.”

“He says, they’re after me. Who do you think he meant?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was no accident that this bag ended up in Randy’s car. Do you think Eli hoped someday this would get to you?”

Caleb just nods, eyes on his yogurt.

“And then . . .” I look back at the letter. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying? About hidden things?”

“Have you ever seen the old tracklist,” asks Caleb, “from Into the Ever & After, the album they were working on when Eli died?”

“I remember hearing about it. There were missing songs, right?”

Caleb taps the letter with his finger. “The three track titles were ‘Exile,’ ‘Anthem for Penelope,’ and ‘Encore to an Empty Room.’ He was working on them.”

“But he wanted to hide them,” I add. “He didn’t trust . . . who? Band mates? Drug dealers?”

Caleb shrugs. “I think he wanted me to have them.”

I look over the letter again. “What do you think he meant by Vic and Reuben with pickles? Daisy and all that?”

“I don’t know. I did searches for those words, combined with Eli and Allegiance to North and everything, but there was nothing.” Caleb suddenly slaps the table. “He was stoned when he wrote it. The whole thing might just be nonsense.”

“But the songs might be real, Caleb. These tapes might be out there.”

“Yeah,” Caleb says quietly. “If they are, I have to find them.”

I take his hand. I worry about getting his hopes up. Hidden tapes from his long-dead dad? How likely is it that they even exist? And if they do, how likely is it that they’re even still out there? It’s all hard to believe, especially considering this is the same guy who bailed on his band during the biggest tour of their lives, who literally went AWOL for two months. Who went swimming off the Santa Monica pier while high and wearing cowboy boots.

But seeing the look in Caleb’s eyes, I decide to save all that worry. “Where do you want to start looking?”

Caleb shrugs. “I have no idea. I looked through this”—he reaches into the bag again and pulls out a paperback copy of On the Tip of Your Tongue—“but only a little. Maybe there are clues in earlier letters.”

I look at the cover. There is Eli, along with Kellen, Parker, and Miles, and they’re all glamming at the camera, tongues out, only instead of being decked out in leather and makeup like a metal band, they’re wearing loose flannels and all have scruffy beards. They look like they’re having a blast.

“Yeah, hard to believe they hated each other by the end,” says Caleb.

The Eli on the cover looks so young, silly, and carefree. The one in the letter is so full of regret, so weary.

“Are we going to tell the rest of the band?” I ask.

“No. Definitely not.”

“But wouldn’t it be good to get their help? They all seem like good guys.”

Caleb’s face darkens. “We don’t know if we can trust them yet.”

I’m not sure I agree about that, but I’m fine keeping it just between us for now. “Did you tell your mom?”

“No,” says Caleb. “She made up her mind about Dad a long time ago. I think she’d definitely shoot this down.”

As he stows the letter away again, I let my thoughts unspool. Something big has been on my mind since the moment I finished reading the letter. “If we found these songs, Caleb, I mean . . . we’re talking about the lost songs of Eli White. It would be . . . huge. Can you imagine if we performed them—”

“No,” Caleb snaps. “This isn’t about profiting off my dead father’s songs.”

I recoil. It didn’t seem like such a threatening idea when I was thinking it, but clearly Caleb is on edge. “Hey, come on. I wasn’t talking about money. I just meant more like . . . You’re his son, the perfect person to play them. And every band needs a break. This would be huge exposure for—”

“Summer, I said NO.” Caleb lurches to his feet. He grabs his bag, knocking his empty dish to the ground in the process. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Caleb, stop.”

“You’re managing me again and that is exactly not what I need. I just needed you to listen.”

I stand up, too, and try to brush off the sting of his words. “Caleb, I did listen, I’m just trying to help.”

Caleb is silent, staring out toward the street. “Can we walk?” he finally says.

We throw out our bowls and walk up the sidewalk, not touching. I want to reach for his hand, but suddenly I don’t feel sure. This is the second time today that Caleb has accused me of managing him when I thought I was trying to help.