Cheap Trick

(i want you to want me)

At the end of the strangest 36 hour period of her life to date, it all culminates in this, with Katie finding herself standing behind the curtain. The bass is pumping in her ears, but it’s barely audible over the drumming of her heart. She picks up the guitar and a familiar wave rises through her, that mixture of shame and anxiety, it burns through her skin, feeling hot in her blood flow and blooming red through her skin, leaving flaming scorch marks on each cheek. Despite all the time spent with her head way down, she’d lived her whole life feeling like she was on stage, paralysed under an everwatchful gaze.

“Hey,” James approached from somewhere behind her. “You look nice”

“So do you, except for the alcohol on your breath.”

“What’s that saying, the pot can’t call the kettle black?”

Katie rolls her eyes and smiles. “You don’t have to worry about me tonight, at least.”

James’ gaze lingers on her for a moment. “I know I don’t.”

The wave of self-consciousness reaches a peak within her chest. But when the curtains begin to open, the wave washes over her like the tide after a storm, and the stage grows brighter like morning light.

(36 hours earlier)

(Katie)

“Shit, shit, shit!”

Katie shoves the books in her bag three more times before they finally slide in.

“You’re going to be late,” observes Sara, walking back in from breakfast. “Y’know, I saw that James left early, I wonder where he’s off to.” She raises her eyebrows suggestively.

“Wow, that’s really interesting,” Katie rolls her eyes and ignores the heat rising in her neck.

Sara smiles. “Think fast!” She chucks the muffin across the room where it hits Katie in the forehead.

She grabs it from the floor and takes a hungry bite as she slings her bag over her shoulder.

“I bloody love you!” She calls over her shoulder as she runs out of the dorm into the corridor.

(james)

“Shit!”

As James rounds the corner he finds a wooden bookcase in contact with his skull.

“I swear that thing has never been there before!”

Actually he is right. Fate works in funny ways sometimes. It all started a couple months ago, towards the end of last academic year. He was being detained in a prison just off the border of Mexico, not through any fault of his, as he would find himself insisting for many months to come, but because he’d been locked out of the venue he was scheduled to play at. His best mate and keyboard player Luke had been M.I.A all day, which he later found out was because he had lost pretty much everything he owned in a badly thought out bet, which unfortunately included his phone, and was at that moment undertaking in harried efforts to remedy the situation. Finding himself standing out in the cold, with no cell reception, there was really nothing left for James to do other than throw his guitar over the fence and scale the wall after it. He never did make it to the stage that night, and the audience had enjoyed a sub-par performance lacking two critical components of a band, but that sour memory had long been replaced with plenty of success stories. Part of his sentencing had involved some voluntary community work, which he had spent dusting the surprisingly large collection of furniture in the oldest building on campus. Some of these had been moved off the wall for his benefit, lest he slack off from reaching some of the trickier corners, and once placed back, some items didn’t quite make it back to their original position, leading to one particular artefact now taking up much of the personal space of James’ face. So it could be said, karmically speaking, that he had it coming.

“James!” He looks up and his stomach does a somersault, which he convinces himself has everything to do with the suddenness of the exclamation and nothing to do with the pretty redhead standing before him, catching her breath with the look of someone who has braked quite suddenly.

“Sorry,” she says, a rosy hue creeping throughout her face and already beginning to walk past him.

“Hey, are you going to that party tonight?” he calls after her.

“Yeah maybe,” but he barely catches it and then she’s past the next corner, out of sight.

(going through the motions)

All the things she could have said, if only she had the nerve. Funny word, nerve is, because it sounds like ‘nervous’, but while she’s never known anything more elusive than the former, the latter follows her like it’s her best friend. He’d been about to flirt with her, hadn’t he? That was something she could take some pride in. But she hadn’t wanted to risk her dignity and find out for certain, so ‘about to be flirted with’ was the very best she could ever claim.

“Katie? Can you answer question 4?” Her music theory professor breaks through her reverie.

She squints at the board. “A monotone occurs when there is a failure to produce a melody.”

Her professor nods and moves on to the next question, and Katie stares listlessly out the window, her mind taken away to a decision from a far away place and time, a childhood bedroom with a now dust-ridden electric guitar long replaced with textbooks and a world that was wide open for those who were brave.

“...And remember, keep applying yourself in rehearsals because reading music doesn’t compare to creating it.” Katie looks up to see the class wrapping up and stands.

“Yo, Katie,” Luke calls one row down, “You going to send it tonight?” he teases.

“Ha! You’d be hard-pressed to even see me tipsy.”

(at the party)

“You are so wasted,” Luke observes.

Katie lifts her head wearily from the couch. “Shut up.”

Sitting to her right, Sara claps her shoulder. “C’mon girl, let’s get you home.”

Katie barricades herself with a cushion. “Nuh uh. I’m not ready to go yet.”

“Hell yeah, that night is still young” says Luke, “What crazy thing do you want to do tonight?”

In the weeks to come, Katie would remind herself that the drunk brain is not rational, and that it is a waste of time to try to explain whatever stupid decisions one might make under the influence. She would be the first to admit that she was probably not the most reliable witness to this night. But one thing she would clearly recall was this moment, right now, where she had an opportunity, an opportunity to take an impulse and act on it. Maybe she had just wanted to feel something, and maybe she had decided this was worth sacrificing her dignity, she couldn’t be sure, but what she would remember is a moment with a choice that she had decided to take.

She looks up and meets Luke’s eyes.

“James,” she says.

Then she blacks out.

(the morning after)

“Wakey wakey sleepyhead.”

“Mm,” says Katie.

“Wake uppppp.”

“Mhm.”

“WAKE UP!” yells Sara.

Katie groans. “What is that awful light?”

“Umm the sun?”

“Oh God,” Katie sits up and pushes her hair out of her eyes. “I’m going to need you to fill me in on last night.”

“Okay,” Sara says, “Don’t freak out…”

Katie’s eyes grow wide. “Not the way I want that to begin.”

“Well, it’s not that bad. It’s fine, really. It’s like not a big deal.”

“Yeah…?”

“You just might’ve spent two hours telling a bunch of strangers about how in love you are with James Fischer.”

Katie stares.

“Hey, you good?”

A beat.

Then she screams.

(gig)

“Yeah man, she wouldn’t stop talking about you, like I mean obsessed.”

“Oh. That’s cool,” replies James. “You coming to my gig right now though, yeah? I need your car, can you drive?” He throws the keys at his brother.

“Yeah, c’mon.”

On the way down to the garage, he mentally runs through his chords, no other thoughts in his mind.

Scene 6: she is trying to stalk his social media and is blocked everywhere. Then she gets some sort of message from him that says stay tf away from me and her heart stops and then she wakes up in a cold sweat.

(blocked)

“Shit. This can’t be happening.”

Katie clicks again on the instagram search handle and begins typing. J A M E…Still, nothing comes up. Her heart sinks.

No. No no no. He must hate her. No, worse, he must think she’s weird. No, worse, everyone must think she’s weird. Of course, in the collective consciousness, all those years of acting normal grow dim like the stars in the daylight sky once there’s been something as memorable as a very public crashout.

There is a ringing in her ears that is growing louder and louder as she feels her world crashing down around her. Her heart palpitations are consuming and her breath gets stuck in her throat and her eyes dilate to pinpricks and-

She wakes up in a cold sweat. There’s nothing there but an alarm clock and an empty room. Alone. And she realises that no one is watching her.

(bass)

“There’s something funny about jumping off a cliff, you know? I guess that’s not something you would immediately think, like ‘throwing yourself off the edge’ isn’t something that immediately screams ‘haha funny’. But there is something funny about it and you know what that is? It’s that the only scary part is getting over the edge. After that, you’re free.”

“...Because you’re dead?” asks Sara.

Katie scowls. “No, because you’re in freefall. You’re flying.”

“Until you crash and die.”

“Everyone dies,” she pauses dramatically. “But only a few fly.”

Sara laughs. “Okay, you win. Give me that bass beat, yeah?”

What with driving to her childhood home and back all in one 8 hour stretch last night, she might have been intoxicated again. The prize of the journey lies on the bottom bunk, smooth polished dust-free mahogany wood and four silver strings glinting in the early morning sun.

Katie picks up the guitar and begins strumming the familiar progression.

Sara joins in at the second repeat, “I want you to want me, I need you to need me…”

As they reach the end of the song, Katie laughs and Sara throws a pillow at her. “Go crush that audition.”

(the verdict)

Katie takes a deep breath. Then she does it, the hardest task she has ever tried to accomplish. She looks up and meets James’ eyes.

A beat.

Then…

“You’re in!”

Katie squeals, “Ohmygod I can’t believe it!”

“Are you ready to play tonight?”

“More ready than I’ve ever been for anything.”

(deep breaths)

At the end of the strangest 36 hour period of her life, the curtains begin to open, and the familiar heart palpitations take up the space in her ears, building through her head and creating that powerful force that has kept her chin down for her whole life.

Then the beat drops and everything else disappears.

“I want you to want me…I need you to need me…I’d love you to love me…Oh I’m begging you to beg me…” The roaring of the crowd fills her ears as she meets James’ eyes and there is no word to describe how she’s feeling other than flying.