Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (18 page)

For a moment, I close my eyes and listen too, wanting desperately to grasp as well, some part that I haven’t seen in a long time, one that I vowed to protect and make new again. This was one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She is beautiful, every part of her. The ones she hides and the ones she shares. Always.

It takes a nudge from Adrienne to break me out of the trance Sophie
’s song has put me into. When I open my eyes, she is not in front of the microphone stand where she was when I shut them, but at the edge of the crowd, where the stage becomes a sea of people. Their hands and fingers lap at the toes of her boots and up her calves, practically begging for her to dive in. I can’t do much besides pray that she doesn’t listen to them. If she enters the crowd, there’s no telling what could happen.

But just as soon as that thought passes, before I have any real time to form a reaction or a plan to get her out of there, she is being carried, walking on the hands and faith of the people in the audience. They erupt in cheers, excited that she
’s accepted their invitation, supporting her weight as she continues to sing the song, a slow smile spreading across her mouth. Sophie’s eyes are closed.  She’s finally losing herself, the way she used to when she played. Like the first time I saw her sing and shed her armor. She doesn’t know anyone in the crowd, but she’s trusting them not to let her fall, to keep her raised up so she can finish the song, and I smile too.

It
’s subtle, so I don’t think Alex and Adrienne or the few other vampires in the club can notice it and it’s always been hard to put into words. The air becomes thicker around me, as if the oxygen has turned to smoke. I have to grip my hands around the railing at the edge of the balcony in order to keep my balance.

“
You okay?” Adrienne asks, his carefree tone gone.

I keep my eyes trained on Sophie below us, not answering his question.

She’s abandoned walking. Now she’s falling, sinking into them. I recognize the look on her face. I know it quite well. It’s the same one I feel spread across me whenever I feed. Whenever the monster within me is soothed and quieted.

She
’s draining them.

Only this isn
’t blood. This isn’t fangs. This is energy; this is the essence of being. It’s only something we use sparingly, when blood isn’t around, and even then, it can’t keep us going forever. This takes centuries to learn and more time to perfect in order to not harm the human you take the energy from. She shouldn’t even know how to do this, let alone drain an entire room.

“
Is she?” Alex asks.

“
Yeah,” Adrienne answers.

“
We can’t let her do that,” Alex says in my direction, but I can’t take my eyes off of Sophie. Not for a second.

Without any word from me, Alex disappears, running down the stairs to the emergency exit. Below me, Sophie melts into the crowd. Some people let go of her, moving away from the more dense areas of the audience to catch their breath. They will think it
’s only because of how hot it is in the room, how sweaty the other bodies are pressed against them. They wouldn’t even begin to think the real reason for their sudden rush of dizziness or nausea. They wouldn’t know the real cause of that dull ache in the back of their skull.

Even though she seems to be draining them fast, the people are relentless in their efforts to grab a part of her.
When one person disappears to get some air, another takes their place. They engulf her with their hands, their mouths fighting for equal time to share the microphone with her as the song builds up to its last few lines.

Fortunately, Adrienne finds the fire alarm before it goes any further, and instead of the song ending in Sophie
’s voice, feeding them more of herself, it ends in a shrill panic.

***

I don’t remember going onstage. I don’t remember playing through our set or going to our booth to sell merch when Honus went on and I don’t remember going back onstage to play the encore. All I remember is my pulse pounding in my ears, sweat, and breath. And then a loud screech as I was pulled off of everyone and shoved outside.

We’re standing by the bus, waiting around for some reason, when Manny
walks back out of the exit door. “Okay,” he says. “They want us back on the bus so we can get to the hotel. The club managers are saying there’s no point in going back onstage now when we were pretty much done anyway.”

The collective
members of Honus sigh and curse under their breath but I honestly can’t be bothered. I just want to go back to sleep, where things are still complicated, but at least I don’t have to pretend. At least I’m not looking over my shoulder.

I would settle for just lying down and not moving for a while. I feel so heavy,
like there is the weight of a hundred peoples’ problems and worry and heartache sitting on top of me in addition to what I was feeling before the show.

And there’s this strange buzzing in my head, like a mosquito I can’t see or catch. When I turn my head in the direction of where I think the sound is coming from, it’s the entrance to the club, which I can only see half of because of how far away we are. There are people exiting, some scrambling the building really is on fire, some nonchalantly walking just far enough away from the building to make the security guards happy. One face sticks out amongst the mass of people.

A guy with short blond hair is wearing a leather jacket with patches on it and jeans, but I recognize how thin he is under the thick material, how much his cheekbones stick out and how dark underneath his eyes are. My heart thuds loudly in my ears and he smiles at me, most likely hearing the sound.

But when I blink, it’s not Michael’s face staring back at me from a
distance, it’s just a random person I don’t recognize. He’s wearing the same leather jacket and jeans. His hair is dyes half purple, half red. Did I really see Michael, or was it just me? Are his memories more real to me than what I’m actually seeing?

Jade wrapping his arm around my back breaks me out of my thoughts.
“You okay?” he asks.

I nod, noticing that the rest of my band as well as Honus are already getting back on the bus.

“Ready?” he asks, trying to poorly conceal how concerned he is.

I nod again, and it seems like it takes more effort than ever to get my legs to lift from the pavement, my feet to move in front of one another.

As soon as we’re back on the bus, while everyone else is talking and setting up some video game on the TV, I make a beeline for my bunk without bothering with any of the covers. I think more than one person asks me what’s wrong but I don’t want to answer. Maybe I don’t know how to answer. All I know is that no one should have to feel this heavy all at once.

Chapter 11

All f
or Show

“
Crash into my arms. I want you. You don’t agree, but you don’t refuse. I know you.”–Morrissey
 

The crowd erupts in a vast wall of white noise. I
’m not sure how loud it actually is or how loud I’m hearing it, but adrenaline pumps through me and I don’t care. I don’t even have to think as I take the microphone at the front of the stage. There is no announcement made; a guitar plays the first few chords and Manny begins.  I don’t have much time before I have to follow them. I didn’t think it was possible but the crowd becomes even louder when they recognize the song. The throbbing in my temples is back but I push it aside, concentrating everything I have into the lyrics:

There
’s fifty-two ways to murder anyone.

One and two are the same, a
nd they both work as well.

I find that it
’s impossible to keep the mic in its stand, so I take it out. It’s also hard to keep my feet from moving forward toward the edge of the stage, where there is almost nothing separating me from the audience. There are a few security guards in orange T-shirts and a small fence-like barrier I can barely see because there are so many people squashed up against it. It would be so easy to hop it, to become part of that heaving, sweating, pulsing mass of bodies. They each have their own colors. A girl is completely yellow, someone else is green, another purple. They all mix together and separate, sometimes making hues I didn’t even know existed, sometimes turning the color mucky like dirty paint water, depending on how close people are standing next to one another. I only take one look back, scanning my gaze over Boo, Trei, and then Manny. They all nod once in my direction. I have approval.

Two steps and
I’m balancing on that barrier. Someone–maybe more than one–grabs my ankles as one of the security guards holds onto the back of my shirt. This should be scaring me. This should be making me feel sick and uneasy. But it doesn’t; I just feel calm. Completely. Someone else grabs a hold of my arm, tugging me forward. I can’t really see one person at any given time. It’s more like a jumble of colors and assorted body parts: a head here, an arm reaching out for me to touch there. I take a step forward and the crowd has me again.

They
’re singing along with me. They’re part of this with me. They support my legs and feet as I walk on top of them, into them. A girl is surfing the crowd too, coming right towards me. I can see her lips moving to the words until there’s a pause in them. Then she’s in front of me, holding onto my hand and singing into the microphone when the words pick back up:

I
’m sitting in the bedroom where we used to sit and smoke cigarettes.

Now I
’m watching, watching you die.

She
’s off key and exhausted but it doesn’t matter. There’s that warmth again. And it’s different from the sweat pouring down my back. It’s something I welcome and the more I accept it, the more it flows through me. Up my hand, into my arms, through my neck and into my head. It makes me feel weightless, careless. Before I know it, the song is nearly over and I’m falling, falling, falling. But they catch me. There are a ton of fingers, palms, and faces against my skin. And I want it. I want all of them.

I sink into their warmth, my head spinning,
my limbs feather-light. Nothing else matters. Then someone sets off a fire alarm and all hell breaks loose.

***

“Hey,” Jade is saying, but his voice sounds far away. I wrap the blankets around me even more, making sure the curtain is closed all the way before I shut my eyes. If I could, I would get up and leave the bus but I’m too tired.

“Hey.”
Another voice. Great. Myles is here too.

Now instead of just physically feeling like I’m being torn in half, I fee
l the same way mentally as well.

“Boo and Trei told me she was sleeping in,” Jade says. “I tried to get her to wake up and eat breakfast with everyone before we left for the day but she’s not responding to anything I say.”

It
’s quiet. Then there are footsteps. Or it could be my head pounding. I can’t tell anymore.

“
Sophie?” Myles’ voice is on the other side of the curtain, and then I hear it slide open.

I roll over so I
’m facing the wall. “Come on,” he says gently. His voice makes me want to cry. He probably thinks the reason I don’t respond is because I’m mad, but I physically can’t. My mind and body hurt so badly that if I try to force words out of them, I’ll crumble apart.

“
See?” Jade says. I can hear his clothing shift, the slight squeak of his jeans. The enhanced sounds go through my head so sharply that I close my eyes even tighter. “Last night she wouldn’t stop crying,” Jade continues. “She wouldn’t tell me what happened. I can’t even guess what she’s going through right now. I’ve accepted that if this is a problem with...her new life...I’m going to have to let you handle it.”

Myles doesn
’t say anything for a long time before he says, “I’m sorry, Jade.”

“
Don’t be sorry,” Jade practically snaps. “You did this to her, you fix it.”

Another
pause.

Sophie
. I don’t know how he’s in my head right now but I can’t find it in me to shut him out. The voice is something between a feather tickling me and something else...something that warms a spot on my right temple and spreads outward. It’s almost enough to distract me from my agony.

I don
’t know how to concentrate enough to send a message back in the same way, but luckily, after a few minutes, a whisper escapes my mouth. “Go away.”

“
I can’t do that,” Myles says. “I’m here to help you.”

I try to snort
but it comes out as more of a sigh.

“
Can you please face me?”

May
be I would if I could roll over but my arms and legs shake when I try. It’s so bad that I whimper and I hate it.

“
Okay,” he says to himself. “You think you could help her, Jade?”

My brother doesn
’t say a word. I just feel his hands on me, lifting me slightly so I’m turning on my opposite side. I try not to cry when each one of my muscles ache at the movement but I can’t help letting a few tears escape before I force them to dry up.