Lua had hitched a ride with the band, so I didn’t see him until the lights rose and he took the stage wearing a silver-sequined tuxedo. He’d gelled his pink hair into chunky spikes and applied dramatic dark makeup to accentuate his eyes and lips. The rest of the band looked painfully drab in comparison.
Calvin and I hollered loudly for Lua, our voices joined by the enthusiastic crowd. I’d missed spending time with Lua, but by the end of the first song it was clear the practice had paid off. The band tore through each song with an unparalleled intensity and theatrical flair. The only thing missing was a bucket of pig’s blood for dramatic effect.
It was near the end of the set, during a soulful, acoustic cover of two Taylor Swift songs mashed together, that I realized I was witnessing the precise moment Lua transformed from an unknown singer in a local band into an honest-to-God rock star. He owned the stage and every one of our souls. His confident fingers skated along the strings of his acoustic guitar, gliding through paragraphs, making the whole thing look like magic, while he melded his voice with Poe’s haunting, raspy contralto, and mesmerized the entire club for three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
Conversations died, the bartenders stopped serving drinks. Every face in the packed club was tuned to Lua.
In that moment I glimpsed Lua’s future.
I realized I’d lost Lua as surely as I’d lost Tommy and would soon lose my brother. Lua was going to leave Cloud Lake. Hell, he was already gone. I didn’t want to watch him go, but I couldn’t turn away. I’d never been so sad to be so happy.
After the band’s set, Lua joined me and Calvin on the dance floor. I hadn’t told him I was bringing Calvin, and he didn’t question it when he saw us, but I was certain he’d grill me about it later. Lua was magnetic, and kept attracting random strangers who couldn’t stop gushing about the show, and when a tall tattooed woman with platinum-blond hair dragged Lua to the patio to talk, that left me and Calvin to entertain ourselves.
“Want to get out of here?” I shouted into Calvin’s ear. The band that had taken the stage after Lua played screeching, spastic punk that sounded like puppies in a blender. Actually, I think that was their name. Plus, the air in the club was suffocating, and I was sweating through my velvet suit.
Calvin nodded.
We still had over an hour to kill until midnight—I’d considered going home, but I looked hot and refused to let my suit go to waste—so we walked down Clematis Street, becoming just two more party people on the already crowded sidewalks.
“Lua was amazing,” Calvin said. “I mean, really amazing. He’s going to be famous, isn’t he?” There was something different about Calvin. He seemed more at ease. His limbs were looser, his face more relaxed.
“Probably.”
“You don’t sound thrilled.”
As we walked east from the club, the throngs of midnight-anticipating revelers waxed and waned. Starbucks was booming ahead of us, as was the wine bar across the street, but it was quiet near the railroad tracks.
“I am,” I said. “But it means I’m going to lose him.”
“How so?”
“He’ll sign with a record label or become an Internet sensation and go on tour. I can’t follow the band like some obsessed groupie, so when that happens, we probably won’t see each other a lot.”
“But aren’t you planning on going away to college anyway?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I stopped at the intersection and waited for the light to change so we could cross. “But that’s not important. I’m happy for Lua, but I’m sad at the same time. Does that make sense?”
“I guess. It just seems like a waste of time to miss someone before they’ve gone.”
We walked in silence until Clematis dead-ended at the intracoastal. We sat on the seawall and dangled our legs over the side, but we weren’t alone. Families and couples and groups of friends had gathered to wait for the fireworks. Some sat on the wall like us, others lay stretched out on blankets in the grass. A few boats drifted past, their passengers shouting “Happy New Year!” to us from the water.
But even surrounded by all those people, I still felt like it was just me and Calvin.
“There are so many stars out tonight,” Calvin said.
I looked up at the sky. At the nearly full moon hovering over our heads. At the twinkling stars. “Not as many as there should be,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Tommy had once told me that astronomers believed it possible that the Milky Way might contain forty billion planets capable of supporting life. If even one tenth of one percent of those were populated by sentient beings, then our galaxy alone could contain over four million life-sustaining worlds. I didn’t know how many stars had already vanished, but I couldn’t help feeling their loss.
“Ozzie?” Calvin rested his fingers on my hand. I flinched but he didn’t pull away. “Are you okay?”
“What if I never find Tommy? What if the universe shrinks until Cloud Lake is all that’s left?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But it is happening.”
Calvin scooted closer. Our arms touched and I shivered.
“After my mom took off,” he said, “my dad went through a religious phase. It didn’t stick, but for a while he was all about going to church and reading the Bible. He even guilt-tripped me into getting baptized at the beach. The one by the pier.”
“I know it,” I said.
Calvin cleared his throat. “Anyway, so it was my turn. I waded into the ocean toward Pastor Luke. He said a prayer before he dunked me under. I started to panic, thinking he was trying to drown me. But then God spoke to me.”
I arched my eyebrow, trying to hide my are-you-kidding-me-with-this look. “What’d God say?”
“He told me I could breathe.”
“Well, that’s anticlimactic.”
“Underwater,” he added. “And when God says you can do a thing, you do it, right? So I opened my mouth and I breathed.” Either Calvin was such a good actor he should have been auditioning for the lead in the school play, or he actually believed God had spoken to him.
“Come on. You’re messing with me now.”
“I swear I’m not.”
“So, what? You’re Aquaman?”
Even as more onlookers waiting for the fireworks to begin crowded in around us, I still felt like the night belonged to me and Calvin alone.
“You asked me what had changed. Why I quit wrestling and let my grades slip.”
“You gave up because God said you could breathe underwater.”
“Yes, but no.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We think we’re supposed to drown when we breathe underwater, but we don’t have to. We just have to believe.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But what do you believe in?”
Calvin shrugged. “I’m not sure yet.”
“I remember people and things that no one else does, and you talk to God.” I smiled at Cal. “We’re the lamest superhero duo ever.”
Calvin’s clear laugh rang through the night, drawing eyes to us. “Just, if we start fighting crime, you have to wear that suit.”
“Deal.”
A light streaked across the sky. Just a faint flare that disappeared so quickly it could have been my eyes playing tricks on me.
But it wasn’t.
“Falling star,” Calvin said. “What’d you wish for?”