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Cassie
Playing at the Skylark was like playing in the basement of a surreal little house. The whole place was painted dark red. Soft disco lights made patterns on the unfinished floors and pipes snaked across the black ceilings. Nora and I had pooled our tips to get her a used amp that didn’t sound like total shit. We’d played Petey’s, and from Petey’s we got picked up by the manager of Les RAV—one of their openers had dropped out and they needed a last-minute replacement.
We were on our second to last song, our newest song, the first I’d written for the album, and I never wanted it to end. Mom was here. She was sitting in the back, stone-faced, her purse clutched on her lap, but she was here.
My fifth Christmas, Mom bought me a small, plastic Casio keyboard, and I couldn’t stop playing it. After about a year of telling me to shut up, she had a headache, she had converted her sewing room into a music room and left me to it. My big vocal cords must have been from my dad’s side of the family, whatever Euro-clan they came from. All I knew is that he grew up in Iowa, had freckles and brown hair like me, and fell in love with Marisol Salazar in the checkout line at the San Juan Public Library. Beyond that, there’s a wall in Mom that I don’t get to cross. And believe me, I’ve asked, wheedled, interrogated.
Nora plucked, almost inaudibly, and the crowd whooped like it was over, but at the bottom of the quiet we shot again: “Give me too much, give me too much, give me too much.”
I stepped back from the mic and banged out the bridge. The lights felt brighter, splitting my vision. I looked sideways at Nora. Whoa, I mouthed. I was smiling bigger than I had in months.
Then the good got too good. My gut jumped, warning me. I felt my skin crawl with shivers. But if anything, the lights felt too hot. There shouldn’t have been shivers.
“You give me too much,”I sang back for the chorus, “I didn’t ask for it, / You’re heavy enough, / I didn’t ask for it, / I got big bones, / I’ll play you for it.”
I hit the D chord, waited for Toby’s triplet. Nora switched keys and I was right there with her on a slight delay, like an echo, with the words I had written on the back of a receipt during a slow night.
While the last notes faded, I drooped with exhaustion. I could barely press the keys.
Shit.I hadn’t had anything but a sandwich since lunch. Maybe that was it. I had meant to get something on the way over, but I’d gotten caught up trying to fit the amp and keys in the backseat of the Subaru.
“Thank you,” I called, chest heaving. I stepped back from the mic, grabbed Nora’s wrist. “Be right back.”
Nora swallowed, stepped up to the mic next to me. “We’ve got EPs for sale back at merch, and thank you to Les RAV for having us...”
Panic struck. Darkness rimmed my eyes as I left the stage, holding on to whatever I could to stay steady as I found the door to the greenroom.
“Are you okay?” Toby’s voice sounded behind me.
I didn’t answer. My legs started to give out, so I knelt, too hard, bruising.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I heard him step closer, and he held my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not feeling good, T,” I tried to say, the words slurring together. I crawled toward the wall.
“Should I get your mom?” He was next to me again, kneeling, too, soft blue jeans. I was covered in cold sweat.
“No, no.” I flopped my hand, dismissing, embarrassed. “It’ll pass. Go back out there.”
I opened my eyes—when had I closed my eyes?—to Toby’s face in front of mine, in a haze. He looks like white Jesus, I thought. How had I never noticed this before? Brown hair, reddish beard, blue eyes. Not Cat Stevens.
He felt my forehead. He had taken out his phone. “Should I call 911?”
“No, no, no, no, no,” I said. The room tipped again. No money for the ambulance. “Just stay here for a second.”
Toby scooted next to me.
Through the wall, I heard Nora tell the audience to have a good night. What was happening? This seemed like more than skipping lunch. This was serious. I fought the urge to cry.
“I’m calling 911,” I heard Toby say. I saw black rain, felt my neck go slack. I couldn’t answer.
•••
Mom had ridden with me in the ambulance. I’d blinked in and out until I was awake enough to drink some orange juice. The paramedic had said it was likely a blood sugar issue. Now we were at Seton Northwest, waiting for the doctors to release me.
“You used to be such a good eater.” Mom sat next to me between blue curtains in the ER. She took her thumb and scraped under my eyes, frowning.
“I’m still a good eater.” I was grateful she wasn’t there to see the worst of it.
