Encore to an Empty Room (8 page)

“I will do my best.”

We get off the freeway and head west into Los Feliz. There's excellent food here, and I wonder if this is our destination. A nice dinner? A dessert stop? But then Caleb turns and we start to wind up the twisting road into Griffith Park.

“Intriguing,” I say.

“Did you know,” he says with a little grin, “that today happens to be a special day?”

“And what would that be?”

“Today is our half-year anniversary since we started dating.”

“Um,” I say. “We've only been dating since September.”

We twist among houses, then through park gates and up into dark hills and overhanging trees.

“September sixth,” says Caleb. “It's been 112 days.”

“Do we need to have a talk about math?”

“I'll show you,” he says.

We emerge from the steep canyon road and arrive at the Griffith Observatory. I haven't been up here since a field trip in fifth grade, and I remember it looking a little bit like the lab of a mad scientist. Since it's dark out this time, the white walls are glowing in soft lights. The observatory's three domes are green by daylight but at night they are shadowy and secretive. It wouldn't surprise me to see lightning jump between them, to find scientists inside wearing white coats and dark goggles, tinkering with their experiments.

We park and when we get out of the car, Caleb opens the trunk and grabs his guitar. Seeing it gives me a nervous flutter. “Can I ask?”

“Nope.”

We walk up the gentle incline, past an obelisk ringed by the great old white men of astronomy. The breeze carries a sweet smell of dry hillsides and pine needles. The Hollywood sign glows in the near distance. In the other direction, the city shimmers like a map of constellations, the light blinking and pulsing.

“Check it out.” Caleb points to metal rings set in the cement walk: the orbits of the planets. I take a photo of him standing far off on Pluto that I can't wait to post sometime. Or maybe it will be album art? We hop from ring to ring and kiss at the sun.

“This way.” Caleb leads me to the side of the observatory, past a bust of James Dean, to the railing overlooking the glittering hillside. He points to the sky above the observatory. “It's our half-year anniversary there.”

At first I think he's pointing to the radio towers that blink on a dark patch of mountain, but then I see a bright, jewel-like star just above the horizon.

“Planet?” I ask.

“Venus.”

“The planet of love, ewwww.”

“If we lived there,” he says, “we'd have dated for half a trip around the sun.”

“Most people call that a six-month anniversary.”

“Well, but then that's tricky, because a day on Venus is actually 243 Earth days, so a month is like 7,290 Earth days, and—”

I put a finger to his lips. “That is so hot.”

“Thank you. I spent like an hour trying to memorize it.”

I sink into Caleb's shoulder. “We'd be wearing shiny suits, flying in the eternal sunset clouds . . .”

“Steaming up each other's helmet visors,” he adds.

“And I bet no one would request that you play Allegiance to North songs there.”

“Somebody would find out,” says Caleb, but he smiles. He kisses me, but it's light. His hands are fidgeting. Nerves. He points to a bench. “Now, sit please.”

He opens his guitar case and gets out his acoustic. People walking by are noticing and I feel my heart racing. Caleb sits beside me and strums a G, checking his tuning. I see his fingers twitching as they dance from string to string.

“Okay,” he says quickly, “I know it's been a drag, with the Eli thing. And I'm really lucky, and I never say it enough. I barely even know how to, so . . .”

“Just play it.”

“Right.” Caleb takes a deep breath. “This is called either ‘Love Ballad with Astronomy References,' or just ‘Starlight.' And it's for you.”

He starts to strum a light, upbeat pattern, chords that
are hopeful, like balloons. Even by the end of the intro I already know it's amazing but I also know that I am pretty much zero percent objective right now. He sings in a high register for him, eyes closed, neck straining, hair catching the breeze, and all around stunning:

Caleb's voice and the guitar loft on the breeze. Heads are turning all around us, groups drifting closer as they walk by, but I try to ignore them, to turn off the part of my brain that can't help evaluating: Is this song a good single? What could the drums and bass do— Ugh, shut up, Summer! Just be here!

Every now and then Caleb's eyes pop open, like he's
just returned from somewhere far, and he sees me and both of us have to look away. I smile each time but it also hurts.

He finishes, and applause echoes from here and there. Caleb looks at me sheepishly, like he actually doesn't realize how incredible that was. I throw my arms around him, guitar and all.

“So, that,” he says.

“That.”

“And also, Merry Christmas.”

“It was amazing.” He's a little bit sweaty and I can hear his heart hammering from the nerves and I hold him tighter. I realize that I need Caleb to be as stormy as he is, to not be able to see outside of his emotions sometimes, because I feel like I am all too good at that. At managing myself and everyone around me. Sometimes you need to feel out of control, and overwhelmed, otherwise, will you ever really do anything about where you're at? Will you ever really take the big risks, do the big things?

“Summer,” he whispers.

Suddenly I feel sure of what he's going to say. . . . “Caleb, I love you.”

He pulls back, a surprised smile on the corner of his mouth.

It makes me trip. “What. Wasn't that what you were going to say?”

He stares at me a second longer, just enough time for me to hit the panic button—

Then grins. “Yes, you just beat me to it.” He rubs his lips against my cheek, toward my ear. “I love you, too.”

The words make me freeze up. “Good,” I say, barely breathing.

“Good good?” he asks. “Or scary good.”

“Good good,” I say but I find myself squeezing tight and fighting back tears. Shit! Why is this freaking me out? Maybe because it's a lot. It's this moment, but also you don't say these words unless you're thinking about the future.

And it was bad enough considering next year when it was just about the band, but what if I love him? How can I leave him?

But those thoughts are stressing me out when what I really want to do is not think. I kiss him and try to just be here in this moment, in the cool night hugging Caleb, the song still on the breeze, with no worry of what comes next.

The rest of break is marked by monotony. We spend the whole school year waiting for the vacations but then after a few days being at home is kind of boring. Plus, I'm sorely missing all those built-in times to see Caleb each school day.

The two pieces of news I do get are mixed. One is that I reply to Jet City and Tessa gives me a general sense of the terms of the record deal: a small advance of a few thousand dollars to record an EP, and then marketing and tour support on top of releasing the album. Some research online confirms that this is a pretty standard deal. The band agrees about stalling to respond until after a possible Denver trip, so I let Tessa know about how slammed we are with our
school EP obligation and she seems fine with that.

The other news is less good: most Denver clubs are already booked up according to my blogger friends. They say we'd have better luck aiming for the April vacation, but I feel like that's too late, both for the band, and for me. An all-ages place in Boulder does have an opening but it's on the Saturday night at the end of the vacation, and there's no way we could make it to Denver without missing school.

The one great opportunity that seemed like it would pan out was a house concert series called Hanging from the Rafters. They've actually had a great roster of bands and the organizer, Jerin, says she can guarantee at least two hundred people. The only problem is, they don't actually have a headliner for their February show. Not many bands are touring in the winter, and they may cancel the night. But she says if I knew a headliner we could make it happen. Problem is, I don't.

And all of this assumes that our parents even let us go on this trip. That's a huge “if,” and while everyone feels optimistic about it, we still won't know until we ask. But then nobody wants to ask until we know about a gig. It all leaves us kind of stuck.

The band rehearses twice to get ready for our New Year's Eve gig at Haven. That's the all-ages music space that's run by PopArts. It's really just a room at the community center next to school, but when the black lights are on and the music is turned up it's pretty great. We also have our first studio session on the night after school starts back
up, so we're getting ready for that, too.

It's probably worth mentioning that I still haven't written my essay. Break isn't over yet, though, so I have plenty of time. You know, if I wasn't busy starting an online wall of inspirations for Dangerheart's EP cover art, searching for a Denver gig, hanging out at Caleb's, daydreaming about being serenaded under the stars . . .

Thinking about the L word.

Isn't that weird? Telling someone you love them when it was so obvious already that you did shouldn't make things feel any different except that it does. I mean, duh, I knew I was into Caleb from the moment I impulsively kissed him an hour after meeting him. It seemed so obvious. But now we're “in love.” I mean, it feels like the next step in how you look at a relationship. Even the fact that I told him first, as opposed to a year before when Ethan told me, seems to matter. And I'm not worried about whether or not he loves me back. The song pretty much confirmed that. And this version of love feels way more real and mature and valid than last year's version . . .

Still, these thoughts make my heart race. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's just big.

What I should be doing is just reveling in how amazing that is, except instead I'm thinking about how writing my college essay means actively working toward not being near this very person I'm in love with.

Searching for a gig sounds a lot easier.

On New Year's Eve afternoon—essay status = still not written!—I get together with Maya for coffee and shopping in old downtown. She's been after me to hang out all break, and it's not that I've been avoiding her . . . just that maybe I've been avoiding her. With fresh new clues about Eli's lost songs, being around her means lots of
not
telling her things.

We did agree to let her in on the Jet City news, though, so at least we have that to gab about.

“You guys must be so excited!” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, “mostly. We're trying not to rush it.”

“Man, I'd love to see the look on Jason's face when he finds out that Seattle had poached one of his bands.”

“But you can't tell him.”

“Summer.” Maya sounds a touch annoyed. “Don't worry, I know.”

“And we are so not
his
band.” I say this with a smile.

“No, of course not,” says Maya, backpedaling furiously. “But you
should
be, from a Candy Shell point of view. So can I just squeal for five seconds?”

“Sure.”

Maya does a little dance, making foamy drops of her eggnog latte splatter onto the sidewalk. “You guys totally deserve it. I had to harass Matt to tell me. He was all secretive. You must have really put the lean on him!” She's smiling but there's always the slightest note of concern in
her voice when Matt and I are in the same sentence.

“I don't know about that,” I say, “whether we deserve it, I mean.”

We're headed for Kinesha's, a chocolate and bath boutique where Maya has to return some bath salts.

But she stops outside the door. “Hey, um . . .”

“What is it?”

“It's weird to ask you this, but . . . does he say anything about me?”

“Who, Matt? Of course.” I try not to squirm. I'm not technically lying, but kinda.

“He's seemed distant lately. Like I annoy him. Do you know what might be up?”

I push back a wave of guilt. I hate this feeling of knowing more than she does and yet if I have to choose sides, it sort of has to be the band, right? “You want me to try to find out?” I say. “You know, in a subtle way.”

Maya shrugs. “Maybe? If there's something, I want to know. I don't pretend that we have something like you and Caleb have—”

“Oh, stop.”

“It's true! But still. Okay, sorry. Said enough.” Maya makes a motion like zipping her lips. “On to the bath salts.”

While Maya gets in line at Kinesha's, I wander between the displays. There are so many colors and aromas and promises of relaxation in the bath salt world, it's dizzying. I pick up a jar of “lavender breeze” and gaze at the large,
chunky crystals. We're shower people in my family. Quick and efficient. Filling your bath with salts sounds silly, but who knows? Maybe—

“Summer?”

I look up. It takes our brains something like a tenth of a second to interpret what the eye is seeing, but that doesn't account for the denial that you feel when you see something that you don't want to believe.

“Hey. I thought that was you.”

Like your ex-boyfriend, standing on the other side of a bath salt display.

“Oh,” I manage.

It's been six months since I last saw Ethan Myers. My first thought is that he looks bad. Actually I'm a big liar: my very
very
first thought is hello, hotness, oh no! But then everything else about our relationship comes rushing back, and by everything I mean the bad: how he cheated on me, and how he left me behind when Candy Shell came along.

His hair is longer, a straight mop that now has to be pushed out of his eyes. While he'd always had sideburns and the occasional soul patch, he's finally succumbed to the full hipster beard, but, typical Ethan, he's pulling it off. It probably makes his gray-green eyes more startling. Flak-jacket green I used to call them, because they seem war weary, the old soul behind that young face . . .

And yet don't I also remember feeling, afterward, like his old soul was just another calculation? Like one of those
glowy lights that dangle in front of deep-sea fish, drawing you in. Except those occur naturally whereas Ethan's is more like he ordered it from Sensitive-Artist.com or something. Never mind, I am thinking far too much and need to speak.

“Hey.” I smile out of habit, but then wish I hadn't.

“Sorry,” he says immediately.

I feel a shower of pure adrenaline in my guts. Sorry for what? For Missy, Royce, and that other girl, the one in San Diego? Sorry for feeding me lines about art and our connection when all you were really thinking about was yourself?

“Didn't mean to startle you,” he adds.

Oh. That's right. Knowing Ethan, he's probably not even thinking about all those things that are on my mind. Come on, Summer! Think faster! “What are you doing here?” I ask.

He holds up a canister of pink crystals. “Angeline loves hibiscus bath salt.” That's his sister. “But, silly me, I got her vanilla. Those for you?”

“Oh,” I say, realizing the salts are still in my hand. “Nah.” I put them back. “I mean in town. I thought you were supposed to be in Cleveland.”

While saying this reveals that I've been tracking Postcards tour dates, which might make it sound like I care, it's the only thing I've got because I am damn well not going to just stand here and make small talk about freakin' bath salts.

“Yeah . . . it got rescheduled.” Ethan's face scrunches and as much as I want to categorize that as another calculation, I did know him to make genuine faces now and then and this is one of them. Disappointment is a feeling that musicians never have trouble feeling, especially about their own success. “Actually, the whole winter leg has been postponed.”

“Oh.” I'd figured as much when I noticed last week that all the dates on their site had suddenly changed.

“Hey,” says Maya, arriving beside me. She takes up a defensive stance, angling her shoulder in Ethan's direction. It's funny to see her chipper face try to look tough, but I appreciate the effort. “Find everything?”

“Hi, Maya,” says Ethan.

Maya keeps looking at me until I nod.

“Hello,” she says out of the corner of her mouth.

“It's Ethan,” says Ethan.

“I'm aware of that,” Maya says thinly. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” I say. Maya turns to leave.

Nice,
I think to myself.
Don't give him any more.

Except then I'm asking: “So what happened to the show dates?”

Oh, Summer. Go ahead and tell yourself it's a business question and you're just interested in how Candy Shell operates. More likely it's because you can hear in his tone of voice that Ethan has fallen down a peg or two. Of course, maybe that's how he means to sound. Ugh, whatever! More
than not talking to Ethan, I don't want to let him drive me crazy either. There's nothing wrong with me checking in on my former band, and I can still keep my internal shields at maximum power, to let none of his charms through.

“Well . . . ,” says Ethan, rounding the table and walking beside me. I smell the musty tinge of his suede coat, the same one he's been wearing every winter now for three years. The same one I wore sometimes, even while Christmas shopping in these very stores. “You'll probably say
I told you so.
”

I make a mental note, more like a vivid spray paint scrawl, not to say that.

“We didn't have much buzz on the last leg,” Ethan continues, “and the album hasn't been getting the kind of traction we wanted. Jason thinks we need a fresher sound, so we're actually going back in the studio to do a new EP that will maybe have a bigger impact.”

I'm furious at what Ethan has just told me, not that I'm going to show it. “I'd say, just in my
non
professional opinion, that your first EP sounded pretty great”—
though not as good as the version we'd made ourselves a year ago
—“and that Candy Shell didn't put any effort into actually getting you guys some exposure in those towns. No local radio shows or blogs, no giveaways or promo appearances, no spark.”

Ethan shrugs. “That sounds like a more professional opinion than anything we've heard lately.”

“Is that because Jason is too busy with All Hail Minions!?”

Ethan rolls his eyes. “Don't even get me started on the Minions.”

I feel his eyes reaching for mine, and I know that sort of sympathetic soul-mate stare he's so good at so I make sure to avoid it. Still, it bothers me that he's hurting. It also bothers me that it bothers me, but I think as long as I keep shields in the fully on and locked position, I can handle this.

Also, it occurs to me now that Ethan Myers might be of some use to us in his current wounded state. If I play this conversation right, it might help out Dangerheart.

“Who knows?” Ethan is saying as we exit the store. “Maybe the new album will work.” He sounds sincere. “Candy Shell hasn't totally abandoned us. Jason says they've lined up Dr. Hans for a track. He's like a hit songwriter guy or something.”

“More like
the
hit songwriter,” I say. I read an article recently about him, and how he hangs out barefoot all day in his Malibu house just walking around and humming and singing melodies. He has the whole place wired to record his every sound, and then he has assistants go through the tapes of his day and edit them down to the key melodies, which they play back for him while he relaxes in a natural hot mud pit in the backyard. “But he writes for like Candy Stripes and Pearl Thomas and Ashley Bratt. I mean, that's not exactly your sound.”

What I really think is that Dr. Hans is sort of the enemy of music. But then at the same time I often find myself singing along to his hooks.

“I know, but apparently he's a genius.” It surprises me that Ethan is buying into that line. He's pretty proud of his own songwriting. And he should be. No matter what kind of jerk he can be. He has talent and I hate to hear him doubt it.

We step to the edge of the stream of shoppers. I can tell Maya thinks this conversation should be over. But my work is not done.