Chapter 3: The Echo

April 2002, Costa Mesa, California

"Okay. That was pretty damn cool."

There was something in Eli's voice you could hear — a kind of respect that had been hiding in there all along, but this time it came out as a straight compliment.

The living room was the biggest space in the apartment. Roxy's kit in the corner, the two combos against the wall, cables running across the floor — everyone knew by heart where to step over what. The mic stand loitered alone in one corner like it was serving a sentence. Along the wall stood Vex's and Cayde's mattresses, propped upright to win back a little space. During the day, anyway.

It wasn't cramped. That was the whole point: everything was in one place, and they never had to go anywhere for anything. Sleeping, rehearsing, arguing, eating — same room.

On the coffee table, three glasses, an ashtray, and yesterday's pizza box nobody had taken out. The fan stirred the room's lukewarm air with a loud rattle that made it only marginally cooler and made understanding each other significantly harder. But they were used to it by now — you talked during the quiet sweeps and laughed during the rattling ones.

On the wall beside the couch, stuck up with double-sided tape, slightly crooked, hung a copy of the demo. Next to it an envelope with a hundred dollars in it — the first money they'd ever made playing music. They'd put it up in February and nobody had touched it since.

"Riiiight?"

Roxy's voice cut across the room like a teenage girl who'd just grabbed the new Tiger Beat off the newsstand. The drumstick kept turning between her fingers, the way it always did when there was nothing to hit.

"Everybody stayed to the end."

Cayde meant it as a joke, the way he meant most things, but his voice came out sounding more surprised than anything.

Two days had passed since the show they'd since taken to calling "UNPLUGGED."

Eli sat on the arm of the couch, cola bottle between his hands.

"You couldn't have been any louder than that."

Cayde snickered. "Nobody heard a bloody thing. Us included…"

"Maybe not, but the noise you made is still echoing. I've heard it past the edge of town."

"If you ask me," Vex said quietly, "it was a bigger deal for us than for the people who came."

"Well, whoever had the better time, you've got three shows next week."

"Whaaat?" They all groaned at once.

"Relax. Two in town, one next door. Easy."

He took a sip of his cola.

"Okay, but how the hell do you do it?" Roxy laughed at him. "Somebody drops a snotty tissue and you can book a gig off it!"

"Told you. I'm talented. But this is all on you, and for some reason everybody thinks I'm your manager."

Vex clutched his chest theatrically.

"Why? You're NOT?"

"Nah. I just help out when I can."

Nova looked up. The bass was lying across her knee and she was fiddling with a tuning key.

"How many times have you said that by now? A thousand? Bullshit."

Eli didn't answer.

"ELI! Seriously, you know it and we know it—" Vex looked around at the others, who all nodded at almost the same moment, "—that this is a hell of a lot more than just helping out. Without you we'd be nowhere."

"First of all, you just proved that isn't true. Second of all, it isn't true."

They laughed, but you could tell Vex wasn't done with the subject. The others shifted visibly too. Roxy stopped the drumstick between her fingers.

"Okay, you're starting to scare me. What's going on?" Eli asked.

The box had been sitting on the table all evening, next to the pizza box. Vex got up off the couch like he was embarrassed about something, and picked it up on his way around the living room.

"We decided we wanted to give you this, for all the help. We couldn't figure out how else to thank you, since you say no to absolutely everything — but maybe this one's useful for both of us."

He held out the plain cardboard box.

Eli had to put the cola down to take it.

He opened it slowly.

Dark silver cards lay inside, in a neat stack squared off at the edges. Thicker stock than anything the band had ever held — next to their flyers, this was a product from a different industry.

ELLIOT JAMES PIERCE

manager

That was all that sat in the middle of the cards.

Eli took one out and turned it over. On the back, set precisely in the center in the same typeface, his phone number.

"Guys… this must have cost you a fortune, and you should be spending it on demo CDs, not on me."

He looked down the row of them.

"Thank you. Really. I don't know what to say."

The gift had clearly thrown him. He was still holding the card between two fingers.

Vex and the others had spent two days running around town getting the printing sorted. It had eaten almost all of their food money for the month, but it was the only thing they had to show what they owed the guy who'd appeared out of nowhere and for some reason taken it on himself to clear a path for them… and he really, really was fucking good at it.

"Okay, back to the shows. You killed it! Three gigs next week, and they're calling like, constantly now. Fine, that's an exaggeration, but everybody's curious about you. Even the ones who turned you down want you back. They still all want to pay in beer, of course, but I'm trying to negotiate something you can actually spend."

They cracked up. The tension dissolved in a second and they picked up where they'd left off.

Eli didn't put the card back in the box. He slid it carefully into the card slot of his wallet.

The next show was on a Wednesday, at a place they'd never played before. Small, smoky club, a lot of kids who didn't feel like hanging around on the street and wanted something loud in the middle of the week. 

The stage was barely bigger than a double bed. Roxy's drums took half of it, and after that everyone stood wherever they fit. Nova on the left, pressed against the wall. Cayde on the right, so close to his combo he couldn't have stepped back if he'd wanted to. Vex out front, two steps from the crowd. If anyone moved, their shoulders touched.

A row of colored lights hung from the ceiling; three of them worked. The smoke had nowhere to go. It settled into the beams and hung there like dust in an attic window.

They tore into it the way they always did. Maybe there were a few more people than usual, but they couldn't confirm it afterward, not even between themselves. Maybe they just wanted it to be true. Between the smoke and the lights in their eyes they could only see the first three rows anyway.

Burning with Love was the first song, the way it usually was.

In a room that size the sound didn't spread out — it hit the walls and came back. Vex heard his own voice inside his skull, not through the monitor. Roxy's kick came up through the floorboards into the soles of their feet. People were already shoving at the front, and the whole thing had barely been going a minute.

This was the kind of volume that isn't meant for ears. In a place this small you couldn't play quietly — either nothing came through, or everything did at once.

They were in the middle of the song when the lights went out.

No flicker, no crackle. It was simply gone…

…and the room started laughing. It started at the front and spread backward, like people who get the joke before it's told.

Vex stood there with a dead microphone in his hand.

"No fuckin' way…" he managed, grinning.

Then a faint light came on. Behind the bar stood the owner with a flashlight in one hand. His other hand was still on the breaker. He was laughing his head off.

Then he pushed it back up, and the light returned exactly as suddenly as it had gone. Feedback screamed across the room, and Cayde hit the strings out of sheer fright.

The room roared.

"Do that again and you're getting up here to sing!" Roxy yelled over from behind the drums.

The owner nodded, like he was giving it serious thought.

From there the set ran itself. Nothing exploded, nothing fell apart.

Vex didn't say anything after the third song.

Normally he had to. Between songs there always had to be something — some stupid line, an apology for the sound, anything to carry the room through to the next one.

Tonight it wasn't necessary.

The applause came in on time, not a beat late the way it does with people who aren't sure whether the song is over.

Maybe it was the first show where he wasn't working out how many were in and who was walking out, and just looked at their audience instead. Yes — their audience, already in on the joke, the one even the owner had joined, risking that the room might turn on him for it.

On the bench along the wall, a guy slept through half the set. Leaned back, mouth open, and not even the kick drum woke him. Somebody nudged him now and then, and he'd look up, nod, and go back to sleep.

Two girls by the side wall argued the entire night. You couldn't hear what they were saying, and you didn't need to — the hand gestures made it obvious the fight had started at home.

Right down at the front, directly below the stage, stood a kid who couldn't have been more than fifteen. He didn't sing and he didn't jump. He watched Cayde's left hand and shaped the same chords in the air with his own. Sometimes he got it wrong. Sometimes he didn't.

A girl in the second row watched Roxy all night — not the mic, not the guitar. Roxy's hands.

During the fourth song somebody took a photo of them. The flash bleached out the front rows for a second. Vex squinted and kept singing, and never found out who it was, or whether the picture came out.

By the door the bouncer leaned against the wall, yawned, and kicked a discarded cup out of the way.

At the end, the same six or ten faces were standing in the front row as at the start.

While they packed up, nobody asked anybody whether they thought it had been good.

Only Cayde asked the question that was rattling around in all their heads.

"How did he know?"

Nobody answered.

The next day, at the record store, a guy said hello to Vex.

"Hey, Vane. Last night was fucking great."

A total stranger had called him by his name.

"Hi," he said back, like an idiot, with no idea what to think — or do.

A girl in the park asked Cayde if he'd say something in English. Cayde said something. The girl squealed and ran back to her friends. Cayde watched them go, grinning all over his face. Then he walked on, and the grin refused to come off.

Somebody recognized Roxy at the laundromat. She was alone, no band, one bag of dirty clothes, and she caught herself dropping her eyes straight to the floor. She'd practiced that for six years. She hadn't forgotten how.

Somebody spoke to Nova too. Nova nodded and kept walking.

In the park somebody shouted over at them: You guys were great! See you at the next one.

They got a little attention, and it threw some of them and lifted others.

Every wonder lasts three days, they say…

Then somebody asked Vex where you could get a demo.

They didn't have any demos. They'd given them all out, and the last stack had been carried off the bar after the night of the blackout. Vex said there'd be some next week.

There was no money for it.