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Cassie
I’d gotten back from San Antonio a few days ago, after spending as little time as possible with Luke’s family. It wasn’t too hard. I still didn’t know the whole deal with all of them, but no one seemed to want to really talk, anyway.
Frankie was dead. That was all I could think about. Just when I’d forget, something would remind me again. Right now it was the smell of potato chips. This kept happening. One moment I was fine, happy even, and the next I would burst into tears. Frankie had always smelled like potato chips because his mom put them in his lunch every day, and instead of eating them all at once, he had liked to carry them around with him in a Ziploc baggie. He’d do that thing where he’d position them in his mouth to make it look like he had a duck beak. Cassie, look, he’d say, and I’d look up from whatever sand structure I was building. Ha ha, I’d say, and roll my eyes, because he did that every day.
Now he was erased from the Earth. Every time I was reminded of this fact, I was shocked all over again, like my whole body had stepped on a tack.
I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of Toby’s giant Longhorns sweatshirt. I was lying on his floor.
“Hey! Hey.” Toby looked down at me. “Are you okay?”
“Just thinking,” I said, swallowing what was left of the tears.
“Family stuff again?”
“Kind of.” I hadn’t figured out how to tell Toby any of it. It felt like explaining Frankie meant explaining Luke, and that felt so small compared to anything else. Where I knew I should feel guilt about lying to Toby, I felt only grief. I had never lost someone before Frankie.
“Well. Get up. Let me cheer you up.”
I sniffed and sat up.
A dissonant chime echoed through Toby’s apartment. Topy looked at me. My phone.
“I thought I’d left it at home again,” I muttered, making my way down the hall. I found it sitting near the front door, on the table where he kept his keys. A number I didn’t recognize lit up the screen. Something’s wrong with Luke. My stomach dropped.
“Hello?” I asked, my fists clenched.
“Cassie?” It was a man’s voice, unfamiliar.
“Yeah,” I said, my mind flipping through the worst.
“This is Josh van Ritter, with Wolf Records.”
Wolf Records? My brain was trying to catch up. Not Luke. Not bad. Good. Very good. “Oh, hi!” I said, trying to make my voice sound normal.
“Yeah, are you familiar?”
Was I familiar with one of the biggest indie labels putting out right now? Uh. Yeah. “Very. I mean, huge fan,” I told him, padding as quickly as I could to Toby’s room, and pointing to the phone, my mouth open in a joyful silent scream. I put the call on speaker.
“So Todd Barker, the manager for Les RAV, sent me your Bandcamp page and I’m interested to see what else you’ve got going on.”
Toby had sat up in his bed and scooted, somewhat undignified, to the edge, and was now riveted. He glanced at me and said, loud, “Hi, Toby Masters here, also in The Loyal. I hope you don’t mind Cassie’s got you on speaker.”
“Hi there, Toby. So I see you’ve got a few singles up. Do you have a full EP as well?”
“Kind of, but we have new stuff, too,” I said, matching his quick words, pacing around Toby’s room. “I can send you our first EP and we’ll probably get more tracks out after the New Year.”
“Tell you what, I’m booked solid until the end of the year, and it’s kind of crucial that our bands tour anyway, so I’d love to see you live. I’m going to fly down for your show in March at the...”
“Sahara Lounge,” Toby filled in.
“Right. You play me songs for a full album, we’ll talk. Sound good?”
After exchanging contact info, we hung up happy. My head spinning around with which of the new stuff to play, heart fluttering, walking to the kitchen on the balls of my feet.
Toby followed.
“That was Wolf Records,” I said to Toby, manic. “On the phone.”
