LITMIR.BIZ

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But the thought of playing sends a rush through me that’s greater than any high provided by a needle stick or inhale of smoke.

      I slip my finger over the cymbal, careful to move slowly enough and soft enough to not make a sound. Smooth but worn, cold but warming under my touch. A winding inside of me at the thought of hearing the high-pitched crash.

      “You should play,” Axle says, and I withdraw, shoving both of my hands into my jeans pockets.

      No, I shouldn’t. When I was behind the drums I had no self-control. When those sticks were in my hands, I went to another level in my brain, another realm of consciousness. It was raw freedom, and that freedom made me feel invincible. I was addicted to that feeling, addicted to thinking that I could never die.

      But I did die—at least the old me did—and I don’t trust myself to allow that sensation of flying and freedom that comes with playing the drums again. I wasn’t strong enough to handle who I became with those feelings before, and I don’t trust myself now. I’ve got to be better than who I was. I deserve that and so does my family.

      “It’ll piss the neighbors off. We’ll do acoustic.” I’m also good at the guitar, and playing the guitar never gave me that manic rush playing the drums did. Maybe I can keep music if I go down another path because the feelings associated with the drums lead me to hell. “Where’s Marcus?”

      “Eating and chatting with Dominic about Fender guitars. And the late excuse is sad. We’ve always played late.” My brother leans his shoulder against the door frame. “That’s nothing new.”

      “Don’t want to wake up Holiday. I saw she was tired. She’ll want to head to bed.”

      “You playing would make Holiday’s year. Since you’ve been gone, there hasn’t been a beat. No one will touch those drums.”

      “Because they’re cursed?” I meant it as a joke, but seriousness leaks through.

      “Because they belong to you.” Axle goes silent like his words are somehow meant to sink in and make everything okay, but they just bounce off me and hang in the air.

      He pushes off the frame and enters the garage. “The rest of us know how to play, can do the counts, but none of us can hold it steady like you. We can’t shift fast enough with the change up in rhythms and still keep the beat. We couldn’t release the sticks like you do to get the same sound. When you played, Drix, it was all emotion, all heart. It was the type of beat I could feel in my blood.”

      Yeah. I used to feel it in my blood, too. Playing consumed me, and that was my sin. “I was becoming Dad.”

      Silence. The heavy kind. The type I dread. A pit in my stomach because part of me said it so he would disagree. It hurts he’s not offering up a denial.

      “You didn’t commit that crime,” Axle says, “but I was relieved when you were arrested.”

      Concrete fist straight to my head, and I hear bones snapping.

      “You needed that year away. You needed that program. It gave you something I couldn’t. You were going one hundred miles per hour toward a cliff, and I couldn’t get you to stop.”

      Because I wouldn’t listen.

      “I know coming home is tough. I know you don’t know how to fit back in. It’s okay not to fit back in. It’s okay to be the person that’s come out on the other side.”

      I crack my neck to the side. “That’s it. That’s the problem. I don’t know who I am.”

      “But you know who you aren’t. That’s a big step.”

      I pick up the banged-up guitar Axle bought me for my birthday when I was younger, claim one of the hundreds of picks left out and sit on a stool. My fingers begin moving before I give conscious thought to the motions. I’m listening to the notes, closing my eyes with the vibrations, twisting the tuning pegs searching for the perfect pitch.

      After a few seconds of silence, Axle grabs his acoustic guitar, sits on a stool across from me and starts tuning his instrument by ear, as well. I’ve dreamed, literally dreamed, of this moment for a year. Me making music again...there’s not another feeling like it in the world.

      “I’m thinking of applying to that youth performing arts school,” I say as casually as I can. Marcus is a good guy, but he can have a big mouth. If I don’t spill, Marcus will. “The application deadline is in a month.”

      Axle’s fingers freeze, then he’s smart enough to keep tuning. “What instrument will you audition with?”

      “They have to accept my application before the audition.”

      “What instrument?”

      When the hell did he become an optimist? “The guitar.”

      “You’re a beast on the drums. Don’t throw that gift in the trash.”

      I don’t want to, but I don’t trust myself. “We all switch up playing something one time or another. It’s time for me to give up the drums.”

      “The drums are who you are. The rest of that bull you had going on before you were arrested, that was the aftermath of ego. That was you allowing Dad to play with your brain. Dad’s on tour, and I told him if he rolls back into town, he’s not welcomed here. The house is mine. Custody of both of you is mine. He’s gone. Playing the drums doesn’t make you Dad. How you decide to behave once you get some fame, once you succeed, that’s what’s going to separate you from Dad.”

      Dad taught me to play drums. He was the one who hooked me up with a band that had success. He was the one that showed me how a real man celebrates his success—with a needle. “I can’t risk it again. I don’t want to return to who I was from before.”

      “You won’t.”

      My hand lies over the strings to stop any sound. “You don’t think I know the drums aren’t to blame? I know it was me. I know I made the wrong choices, and I’m scared as hell that I’m going to choose wrongly again. Getting back into any type of music scares me, but it’s the only thing I’m good at. It’s my only shot of doing something worthwhile. I can choose to look at it that music destroyed me, but I’m not. I felt like a god when I played the drums, and I don’t trust myself to feel like that again and make the right choices. I’m trying here, Axle. Try with me.”

      “I’ll try with you.” Marcus walks into the garage, half of a ham sandwich in his hand. “Not sure what we’re trying, but as long as it doesn’t violate parole, I’m in.”

      Marcus unzips his case and extracts his electric guitar and wiring. Outside the garage door, in the shadows, there’s movement. First Dominic hopping the fence to go home, then Kellen leaning against the fence between our house and hers, watching me.

      Guilt feasts on me because playing without Dominic is sacrilegious, but so is how Dominic is dumping on our friendship by not opening up to me about why he left me behind after I passed out the night of the robbery. I’ve done my part, a year of it, and it’s time for him to tell me the truth. Only then will he and I play.

       Ellison

      Forget my mother and Sean, my father is never going to let me out of the house. The three of them took turns yelling at me, berating me, making me feel like the sludge of humanity because I wanted to play Whack-A-Mole. Because, as my mother explained, I lied by omission.

      Now, all of them, along with other selected staffers for my father, are downstairs in his office, each trying to figure out how to contain me, the media abomination. I messed up yesterday, and I’m quite aware there’s no way my parents will ever allow the internship now.

      I’m in my room, on the floor, laptop in lap, and I’m trying to find my happy place. I’m coding, and the code isn’t running correctly, but that’s okay. I find it calming to take something apart

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