Chapter 8: In the Cycle

22 May 2001, Costa Mesa, California

Even days later, Nova still couldn’t reconstruct exactly what had happened that night, and that bothered her most of all. She always knew. She was always analyzing the space, the people, the sound, the vibrations beneath the floor. Always counting in her head, almost reflexively. How many people were standing in front of the stage. Where the sound would reverberate. Where the rhythm might start to slip. Where she needed to back off a little, and where she had to push harder so the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart. That was her world. A system she could keep under control.

At the start of the concert, everything was working. The bass sat solidly on the drums, the guitar drove it forward, and Vex’s voice sliced through the din like a blade. Then, suddenly… no. It wasn’t the equipment failing, it wasn’t the cables giving out, and it wasn’t the instrument betraying her. She herself began to unravel from the inside, as if someone had flipped too many switches in her brain at once. Thoughts started to backlog, her movements constricted, and for a single moment she lost that cold, calculating focus that had always protected her.

And then Vexley just stepped in. Not dramatically, not like a hero, not in any way that anyone could pinpoint as the reason it happened. He simply began acting like a complete idiot. In front of fifty people. Playing the role of a commentator for a jump nobody had asked for. Arguing with an invisible panel of judges, then launching into an imaginary guitar solo with a look of such fierce determination, you’d have thought his life depended on it. Then he dropped to his knees and bellowed some horrifically familiar, plastic-happy pop song snippet into the mic. The crowd laughed at him. Loudly. And she let them. Hell—she needed it.

Nova replayed that scene over and over in her head. The commentator bullshit. The jump. The fake melody. The bow. That bow, which wasn’t shameful at all but some strange, stage-humble gesture—as if that were truly his job. To make himself ridiculous if that was what it took for the band not to collapse in a single bad moment. As if it came as naturally to him as breathing.

And at the end… that look. When he straightened up from his bow and met her eyes, for a split second there was complete silence in them. A raw, simple fact in his gaze.

You are Nova Wrenley.

You are the center of the world.

Nova clenched her fists. That look opened something inside her—some energy she hadn’t unleashed herself, and that she couldn’t immediately bring under control. Her body reacted before her mind. Her voice grew stronger, her playing wilder, and she tore through the songs with twice the intensity of any rehearsal. That was what was truly unacceptable. Not that Vexley had humiliated himself. Not that he’d saved the concert or saved her. Not even that, somewhere deep down, she was grateful for it.

But that she had lost control of herself for a single moment. And she couldn’t forgive it. Neither him nor herself.

What made it worse was that Vexley had probably already forgotten the whole thing. He’d acted as if it were an instinctive gesture, a spontaneous reflex that came and went. As if the entire episode had been nothing more than a failed joke.

Nova just couldn’t process that.

Vex lay back limply on the couch, grinning up at the ceiling…

A glass clinking onto the table broke her train of thought. I sat up on the couch; Nova was still hunched in exactly the same position, as if her thoughts were physically nailing her to the chair. Eli, by contrast, stood in the doorway as though this entire apartment were merely a pass-through on his way to the next party. The cola can in his hand was practically a trademark. I was beginning to suspect that without it he wouldn’t exist—take it away and the guy would simply dissolve into thin air.

“Park gig on Friday,” he announced finally, with no introduction whatsoever.

I didn’t even look up from the couch. One leg was still draped over the armrest, and doing nothing felt too good to suddenly start taking life seriously. “That already sounds better than anything we’ve done in the last three days,” I muttered. “Is there grass? Shade? Oxygen?”

Eli smiled. “There’s a ‘stage,’ too.” He traced enormous quotation marks in the air with his free hand, nearly knocking a lightbulb loose in the process.

“You get a spot away from the bar. You run through a few songs. Nobody’s gonna pay much attention. Six other bands are playing. No hype. No big production. You just show up. Get into the rotation—if you’re interested.”

Cayde sat up instantly. He always sat up whenever the word “play” came up. “Pay?”

“Beer,” Eli shrugged. “A few—cold, if we’re lucky.”

—

Roxy nodded as though she were hearing the details of a serious contract. Nova, however, just stared at Eli with that sharp, X-ray-precision look.

“And why is this worth it to you?” she asked.

Eli tossed the can in his hand for a moment.

“Hobby. I’m pretty good at it. And I like putting it to use when I have the knack.”

Then he smiled faintly.

“Besides, six cans of cola from you guys aren’t a bad deal.”

I laughed out loud. “Six? Man, are we really throwing money around like that?” I teased, playing offended at this so-called over-the-top manager fee.

For a second, Nova closed her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or toss me out the window. He just waved her off.

“In two weeks I’ll be back with more. There’s always someone looking for a band. Parking lot. Skate park. House party. Rooftop terrace. Doesn’t matter. The point is you play.”

And that’s how it went. Not two weeks passed without Eli showing up with a new opportunity. The guy was some kind of goddamn genius at spotting where to jump in, who canceled at the last minute, or which host wanted to impress their guests at a house party with a live band.

And we took every gig.

Six weeks went by, five shows, and we didn’t make a goddamn dime. Yet I felt like we were the richest people in the world. The band was working. It grew easier to play anywhere you could call a stage: grass, packed earth, rotten planks, the edge of a terrace, the middle of a parking lot.

It got easier to be present. Loudly. Confidently.

The core audience was almost always the same twenty people from the skate park and parking lots of Costa Mesa. Familiar faces. Familiar cheers. Familiar beer-scented hugs at the end.

And somewhere along the way it stopped mattering how many people were watching. It just mattered that when we struck the first chord, the four of us fell into the same gravitational pull.

Everything else? …would figure itself out.