Sure, she said.
Kyle-Slash squinted as he looked around the room. He found a half-empty bottle of Gatorade and sprinkled one of the mounds into it.
Order up, he said.
The others gathered around the stool, pinched their doses, and dropped them beneath their tongues. He shook the Gatorade bottle, handed it to Charlie.
Here. It’s better this way for newbs.
Charlie looked with uncertainty at the bottle, then took a swig. Beside her, Greg was fiddling with a sheet of paper dotted with what looked like miniature stickers of Donald Duck. Charlie craned her neck to see better, but Kyle-Slash batted the paper from Greg’s hand and stuffed it into the front pocket of his bass case.
No candy flipping before the show!
It won’t kick in that fast, Greg whined.
Don’t be a fucking baby, Lem said. You can have your candy back after.
Charlie stood there, unsure of exactly what had happened, but soon Kyle-Slash’s face was light again, and his attention returned to her.
Almost forgot, he said, jamming his hands back in his pockets. Brought you something.
You need a fanny pack, Charlie said, and she saw Lem snort.
He pulled out what Charlie thought was an unwrapped condom, and she grimaced when he held it out to her.
Jesus, ya perv! It’s a balloon! he said.
Charlie took the thing between her thumb and forefinger, still holding it away from herself.
Thanks? she said.
I saw it in a documentary. About the punk scene in ________, where they rented out a Deaf club for shows. You blow it up and you can feel vibrations through it.
Concerts at a Deaf club? she said.
He shrugged.
That deaf people went to?
Sure. It was their club.
She took the balloon and shoved it in her back pocket.
Thanks.
You get that you have to blow it up, right?
I’m not going to stand out there with a fucking balloon.
It’s not Jeff. They’re not gonna make fun of you.
You can stay backstage anyway, said Lem. If you want.
Whatever, said Kyle-Slash. You’re not gonna give a fuck in about twenty minutes.
He tapped the Gatorade bottle in her hand, grabbed his bass, and motioned his bandmates toward the stage. Charlie chugged the rest of the drink and searched for a way out of the greenroom and back to the audience.
What she didn’t tell Kyle-Slash was that she knew all about the way sound traveled through balloons. Speech therapists at Colson Children’s had invented myriad ways to use them against her: blow up the balloon; suck the air back out; hold it to feel loud and soft, high and low. Those appointments had always left her feeling sad for the therapists, who insisted on calling their sessions “games.” She wondered whether those sweet-smiling women were really so easily amused.
Generally, Charlie understood music as an extension of her mother, the grace of it in dance and in the orchestra, the gentle ballads she coached her pageant girls in singing. For her part, Charlie could hear the sounds that made up music, but she always had the sense she was doing it wrong—music for her was flat where it should’ve swelled and dipped, sounded far away when it should’ve been intimate.
This wasn’t like that. When she returned to the floor, the music razored through her, a thousand scrapes of knives across plates. Quickly she removed her processor, relieving the pressure in her head, but even without sound the room was overwhelming—she lingered at the back watching with no small horror as the audience collided in a circular crush, boys hurling their bodies at one another with abandon, centrifugal tumult. The room had already taken on an acrid, beery smell—sweat and yeast and weed—and the floor was coated in spills in various states of drying, slippery in some spots and tacky in others, booze and soda gumming up the soles of her Chucks.
She considered leaving, but when the crowd came for her it was easier not to fight it. The sensation was even enjoyable (except when she took an elbow to the chest), to be carried along by an energy that wasn’t her own. This is what the ocean must feel like, she thought, or those churches where people fainted, the arm of a spiral galaxy sweeping her inward.
Eventually the maelstrom thrust her forward and she scraped the lip of the stage while the musicians thrashed before her—Slash sweating and nodding the bass line, Lem’s blue hair and purple guitar a blur as she passed.
Charlie’s vision was growing streaky, as if she’d stepped into someone’s night photography art project—she could see the aura of the stage lights, the jump trail of Slash’s and his bandmates’ every movement. She could feel the music on her skin, but it wasn’t until she reached the front corner, the speaker stack hulking over her, that she felt it in her, a ripple in her stomach, a strike in the back of her throat, pulse quickening to keep time with Slash’s rhythm. It was both enthralling and a little nauseating. She pulled herself from the current and pressed against the speaker’s mesh face. Music banging hard inside her rib cage, music like a heart attack. She closed her eyes, felt the strobe against her lids and the music on her skin, and stayed there until the lights came up.
* * *
—
The next thing she knew the crowd had dispersed, she had slid down to the floor to sit with her back against the mains, and Slash was standing in front of her, kicking the toe of her sneaker.
Jesus, you’re like the only person in the world who’s ever nodded off while rolling, he said.
I wasn’t asleep, she said.
Slash held out his hand and she took it—he was stronger than she’d anticipated and she wound up pressed fully against him. Slowly, she raised her eyes to his. He slung his arm low around her hips, and she felt a tingle run the length of her torso, as if some of the music was still trapped inside her. She slipped a finger through his belt loop, their bodies melding together without them trying—without her trying, anyway—thighs and stomachs a single surface as his lips brushed hers. But when Charlie raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him harder, he lurched backward and yelled something over her shoulder. He paused, then threw his arms up in exasperation.
Right fucking there! In the pocket!
Charlie turned around to see Greg clamoring through Slash’s bass bag.
If you’re too fucked up to find it, I don’t think you need a tab, said Slash. I’m not carrying you home again.
Greg just smiled, ripped one of the Donald Duck squares from the sheet, and dropped the paper in his mouth.
You’re the worst, said Lem, snatching the rest of the sheet from him.
Charlie’s heart was racing now, sweat prickling at her hairline, but somehow it felt thrilling, more amusement park than anxiety attack. Her field of vision was wider, the front of her mind broad like her forehead had hinged open. She reattached her processor and the sound gathered again at the top of her head in a warm tidepool.
Are we going or not? said Lem.
Of the group, she was the only one who seemed impervious to the high.
Where? said Charlie.
Waste of a flip if we didn’t go dancing! said Slash, pulling Charlie close to him again.
Outside, Vine Street had transformed before her eyes—its emptiness full of possibility, the Day-Glo plywood now celebratory. Each traffic light had a tail like a kite, each headlight a shooting star.
Do you see the comets? said Charlie absently.
Lightweight, said Lem.