Chapter 12: Shock and Awe

Lexie had felt it for a whole verse before she turned around.

A pressure behind her, like standing too close to a speaker stack. The hair on her arms lifting. She’d thought it was the subwoofer. She’d thought it was just a good show.

Then the crowd went quiet in the middle of a chorus, and nobody in a basement ever goes quiet in the middle of a chorus.

She turned.

It was hanging in the air right behind her head, close enough that she could feel its heat on her face. A ball of light the size of a basketball, blueish white, crackling, turning slowly like it was looking at her. Her reflection bent across its surface, small and stretched.

Her voice died in her throat.

Behind her, the song came apart one instrument at a time. Rodney missed a beat, then another, then stopped with his sticks in the air. Ryan’s bass faded out under his hands. Meghan played two more bars by herself before she looked up.

“Lexie?” Meghan said. “What are you…”

Then Meghan saw it too, and didn’t finish.

The crowd was still coming. Slow and calm, all of them, faces tipped up toward the light, stepping onto the carpet one after another like they were walking into the sea. The boy in a denim jacket brushed right past Lexie’s shoulder without noticing she was there. He was heading for the back wall, for the power strips and the blackened outlet and the bare cables snaking behind Rodney’s drums.

And right behind him was Mika.

She had her camera hanging from her neck and a soft, dreamy smile on her face, the kind Lexie had only ever seen on her when she found a really good jacket at the thrift store. She stepped onto the carpet. She kept walking.

Lexie grabbed the camera strap and yanked.

Mika stumbled back against her and didn’t even look at her. She just leaned forward against the strap, gently, still smiling, still trying to get to the light.

“Mika.” Lexie wrapped the strap around her fist. “Mika, hey. Look at me.”

“It’s so pretty,” Mika said softly.

“Yeah, I know, it’s gorgeous, stop walking.”

Mika didn’t stop. She was stronger than she looked. Lexie dug her boots into the carpet and held on with both hands, and the bracelet bit into the burn on her wrist, and she held on anyway.

Over Mika’s shoulder, past the crowd, she found Eliana in the front row.

Eliana was on her knees on the concrete, popping the latches on the guitar case.

She had the guitar out of the case when Lexie yelled.

“Kill the power!”

It came out raw and enormous, and for a second the whole band just stared at her. Then Rodney was already moving. He came out from behind the drums so fast he knocked a cymbal stand over.

“Breaker’s behind the furnace!” he shouted, and shoved his way through the crowd. Nobody shoved back. Nobody even looked at him. They just kept walking.

Eliana got to her feet with the guitar in one hand and the pick in the other. Lexie was right. No power meant no PA, no amps, nothing carrying them any further, and no door for anything else to come through. But the one already in the room wasn’t going to leave just because the lights went out. Ground it, Dylan had said. You don’t fight it. You just… make it a better offer.

Somewhere behind the furnace, a metal door banged open. Then there was a heavy clunk, like a giant switch being thrown.

Everything went black.

The string lights died. The PA speakers popped and went silent. The fog machine wheezed and stopped. For one second the basement was completely dark, and someone near the stairs screamed, and Eliana couldn’t see her own hands.

Then the wisp lit the room by itself.

It hung above the stage, blue-white and crackling, and with every other light gone it was brighter than ever. It threw long, shaking shadows across the low ceiling and the faces of the crowd, all of them still tipped up toward it, still walking.

It didn’t care about the breaker at all.

It flickered once. Then it moved.

It went into the string lights, which were dead now. It slid along the wire stapled to the beams, and every little bulb it passed flared bright and blew out with a soft pop, one after another, racing across the ceiling. The crowd turned to follow it like sunflowers. It came down a beam and into Lexie’s mic stand, and the whole stand lit up blue from the inside, buzzing, and Lexie jerked her hand off it and swore. It jumped from the stand to the strings on Ryan’s bass, which crackled and sparked under his fingers, and he dropped it with a shout.

It was going into anything metal it could reach. And the crowd followed it everywhere it went, closer and closer, their hands starting to come up.

Rodney came shoving back through the dark. “I killed it!” he yelled. “It’s off! Why is it still…”

Nobody answered him.

Up on the stage, still holding Mika back by the camera strap with one hand, Lexie looked down at Eliana. In the blue light her face was white and furious.

Eliana held up the pick.

Lexie nodded once.

Eliana climbed up onto the carpet with the guitar, and Lexie turned to the band.

“Meghan! Take her!”

She shoved Mika backward. Meghan caught her without thinking, arms around Mika’s shoulders from behind, and Mika kept leaning forward against her, still smiling, reaching for the light.

“Don’t let her go,” Lexie said.

“What is happening?” Meghan said.

Lexie didn’t answer. She grabbed the mic stand. It had stopped buzzing when the wisp jumped off it, but she still flinched when her hand closed around the metal, and then she held on anyway.

Eliana stood at the edge of the carpet with Tommy’s guitar across her body, no cable, no amp, nothing. She found the E. The pick was hot between her fingers, hotter than it had ever been.

Across the stage, by the blackened outlet, the end of the copper wire was still tucked under the leg of the chair. She couldn’t see it in the dark, but she knew exactly where it was.

“There,” she said, and pointed with her chin. “We push it there.”

Lexie followed her look and nodded.

Eliana brought the pick down.

It wasn’t loud. An unplugged guitar in a basement should have been nothing. But the chord came out of the guitar like it had been plugged into something enormous, and the low E shook the concrete under her feet.

Lexie leaned into the dead mic and screamed.

back up, back down

Her voice came out of the speakers.

They weren’t plugged into anything. The PA had been dead since Rodney threw the breaker. But her voice came out of both of them anyway, huge and wrong, too deep in some places and too sharp in others, like a recording played back from the bottom of a well. Somebody in the crowd flinched. The fog shivered.

Lexie slammed her wrist down on the mic stand in time, and the bracelet cracked against the metal, and Eliana saw her teeth set against the pain.

this ain’t your town

The force went out of them in a wave.

It caught the wisp on the drum kit and shoved it, hard, back toward the far corner. It skidded through the air, crackling, leaving a streak of blue light behind it.

Then it slipped sideways. It jumped off the line they were driving it along and into Rodney’s cymbal, which rang out by itself, blue and screaming, and the crowd swung toward the sound and surged after it.

The boy in the denim jacket was close enough to touch the cymbal now. His hand was coming up.

They pushed again. It moved, and it slipped again, into the snare, into a mic clip, into Ryan’s bass where he’d dropped it on the carpet. Every time they shoved it toward the corner, it found something else metal to slide into, and the crowd followed it, closer every time.

Eliana’s fingers were burning on the strings. She was playing it right. Every chord was right. It wasn’t enough.

She looked past the wisp, at the crowd.

At the front of it, still caught in Meghan’s arms, Mika was smiling up at the light with her whole face, like a little kid seeing snow. She was still reaching. Her fingers were open.

Eliana stopped thinking about the chords.

She thought about Mika, who had told her to be nice, and called herself wallpaper, and left a lucky cat on a sticky note, and was about to walk into a wall of live wire with a happy look on her face because something wanted her to.

No…

you heard me once

It came out of her fingers like it had come out of her chest. Lexie must have felt it too, because her voice went through the dead speakers so loud the beams shook, and the last string light still on the ceiling burst into dust.

don’t make me twice

The wave hit the wisp square on.

It didn’t slip this time. It flew backward across the stage, over the drums, past the blackened outlet, and down into the corner, crackling and spitting, right over the chair.

For one second, the wisp hung over the chair in the corner, like it was deciding.

Then it touched the copper.

It didn’t explode. It didn’t fight. It just went, all at once, like water finding a drain. The light poured out of the air and into the bare end of the wire, and the wire lit up.

A line of blue fire ran along the floor, quick and bright as a lit fuse. It raced out from under the chair, along the back wall, and under the edge of the carpet, where the whole carpet glowed for a moment in a long blue seam. It shot across the concrete and behind the furnace. The curtain over the laundry corner lit up from behind like a lantern.

Somewhere back there, the cold water pipe rang out like a struck bell.

The washing machine jumped once against the wall, a single hard rattle.

And then it was gone.

The basement went completely dark.

Nobody moved. Eliana stood at the edge of the carpet with the guitar against her chest and her right hand still raised, the pick between her fingers, and listened to her own breathing. Her fingertips were burning. Her arms had gone heavy all at once, the way they had in the studio, like someone had poured sand into them.

Then, near the stairs, somebody laughed. A short, startled sound, like waking up from a dream in the middle of a sentence.

A phone flashlight came on. Then another. Then a dozen, white beams swinging across the fog and the low ceiling and the dazed faces of the crowd. People were standing in a loose clump at the edge of the stage, blinking, looking down at their own feet like they had no idea how they’d gotten there.

“Dude,” somebody said, a little hoarse. “That light show was crazy.”

“I don’t even remember the last song,” a girl near the stairs said, and laughed. “I just, like, felt it.”

“I think I cried?” someone else said. “Is that weird? I think I cried.”

“Best show I’ve ever been to.”

The boy in the denim jacket was standing a foot from Rodney’s cymbal with his hand still half raised. He looked at it, frowned, and put it in his pocket.

On the stage, Meghan still had both arms locked around Mika from behind. Mika had gone limp against her and was blinking hard, like someone coming up from deep water.

Lexie let go of the mic stand. It clanged against the carpet. She stood there with her chest heaving, her wrist held against her stomach, and turned her head to find Eliana in the dark.

Neither of them said anything.

Lexie heard the breaker go back on before she saw it. A heavy clunk from behind the furnace, and then the overhead bulb by the stairs buzzed and came on, yellow and ordinary. Half the string lights along the beams stayed dark, little black husks of glass. The PA speakers popped back to life with a low hum.

Rodney came shoving back through the crowd, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt.

“Did you hear them?” he said. “Did you hear them? Best show they’ve ever been to! Somebody cried!”

“We didn’t finish the set,” Meghan said.

“Who cares! Somebody cried!”

Meghan didn’t answer him. She had let go of Mika, finally, and she was looking past Lexie at the front of the carpet, where Eliana was standing with Tommy’s guitar hanging off her shoulder like she’d forgotten it was there.

“Who invited her?” Meghan said.

“Me,” Lexie said. It came out as almost nothing. Her voice was gone again, worse than last Friday, a scrape at the bottom of her throat.

Meghan looked at her for a long second. Then she turned around and started unplugging her pedals, very carefully, one at a time, without saying another word.

Ryan was crouched by his bass, turning it over in his hands. Two of the strings had snapped. The rest were blackened at the bridge. He looked up at Lexie, then over at Eliana, then back down at the bass. He didn’t say anything either.

Mika was sitting on the edge of the carpet with her camera in her lap.

She was scrolling through the screen with her thumb, frowning. Lexie sat down next to her before she could think about it. Her legs were shaking anyway.

Mika tilted the camera so she could see.

It was blurry. Most of the frame was dark. But in the middle of it was a smear of blueish white light, too bright, like the sun caught through a window, and right under it, lit from above, was Lexie. Her mouth was open. Her hand was on the mic stand. Her face looked like someone Lexie didn’t know.

“I don’t remember taking this,” Mika said quietly.

Lexie didn’t say anything.

“I remember walking. And it was warm. And it was like…” Mika stopped. She looked at the picture again. “Lexie. What was that?”

“Light show,” Lexie rasped.

Mika looked at her. She didn’t look like she believed it. She looked like she was deciding whether to.

“Okay,” Mika said, after a moment. “I get it.”

She turned the camera off.

Across the basement, Eliana had disappeared behind the furnace. Lexie kept her eyes on the curtain over the laundry corner.

After a minute, Eliana came back out with the coil looped over one arm and the heavy clamp in her hand. Her face was gray, and she walked like her shoes were full of water.

She stopped at the edge of the carpet and looked at Lexie over the heads of the crowd.

Lexie wanted to say something. She didn’t have a voice to say it with, and Meghan was right there, and Rodney was still telling people about the crying, and half the basement was looking at the girl with the guitar.

Eliana lifted the clamp a little, like a wave.

Lexie nodded.

Then Eliana turned and went up the stairs, and was gone.

Eliana’s phone was at three percent when she plugged in Hannah’s charger at the bus stop. She typed with her thumb, slowly, because her fingertips were raw.

The reply came almost before she’d sent it.

It was after midnight when she got there. The side door was unlocked, and she tripped on the recycling.

“Told you,” Hannah said from the kitchen.

She was sitting at the table in her socks and an enormous sweatshirt, with her knees pulled up on the chair. She looked at the guitar case on Eliana’s back, then at the coil of copper wire over her arm, then at her face.

“Wow,” Hannah said. “Okay. You look like you lost a fight with a lamp.”

“I didn’t lose.”

“So there was a lamp.”

Eliana set the guitar down against the wall and lowered herself into a chair, and Hannah was already up, getting the milk out of the fridge.

“Are you hurt?” Hannah asked, without turning around.

“No. Just tired.”

“Okay.” Hannah got a pot down. “I’m not asking.”

“I know.”

“I want you to notice that I’m not asking. I want credit.”

“You get credit.”

“Thank you.” Hannah got the tin down from the cabinet over the stove. “It’s killing me, by the way.”

Eliana almost laughed. It came out of her nose instead, and Hannah looked over her shoulder, pleased with herself.

The milk started to steam. Hannah stirred it the way she always had, too fast, so it slopped over the side, and swore at it quietly.

She set a mug down in front of Eliana. It was hot chocolate, the real kind, and piled on top was a mountain of tiny marshmallows, so many that they were sliding down the sides and onto the table.

“Have some marshmallows,” Hannah said.

Eliana looked at it for a long moment.

“This is what you made me the first time,” she said. “The night I rode my bike over in the dark.”

Hannah blinked. “Seventh grade?”

“Yeah. My mom wasn’t talking to me. For like three days.” Eliana turned the mug a little on the table. “Because I told a lady at church her baby looked like a potato.”

Hannah stared at her.

“It did,” Eliana said. “It looked exactly like a potato.”

“I didn’t even know that,” Hannah said. “You just showed up. You didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“You looked like you needed hot chocolate.” Hannah sat back down across from her and pulled her knees up. “Three days? Over a potato?”

“A potato baby.”

“That’s insane, Eliana.”

Eliana shrugged. When she spoke again, it came out quieter.

“You’ve said it every morning since. You know that, right? And there haven’t been marshmallows in it in years.”

“There are spiritually marshmallows in it.”

“It’s a vanilla latte.”

“It’s a spiritual marshmallow latte.” Hannah nodded at the mug. “This one has actual marshmallows. This is the special edition. You should feel honored.”

“I do.”

“You don’t look honored. You look like a lamp beat you up.”

Eliana wrapped both hands around the mug, even though it stung her fingers. Her throat went tight, and this time she didn’t swallow it down. She just let it stay that way.

Hannah watched her for a second. Then she reached over and pushed a marshmallow back up the side of Eliana’s mug before it could fall off.

“You can sleep in my room,” she said. “I already put the trundle out. You get the side by the window, because you kick.”

“I don’t kick.”

“You kicked me in the face in fourth grade.”

“That was one time.”

“It was a significant time.”

Eliana drank half the hot chocolate. She meant to drink the rest. At some point she put her head down on her arms on the table, just to rest her eyes for a second, and didn’t lift it back up.

The last thing she heard was Hannah sighing, very fondly, and saying, “Okay. Or the kitchen. The kitchen’s fine too.”

Then something soft settled over her shoulders, and the light clicked off, and Hannah’s chair scraped quietly up beside hers, and Hannah sat down in the dark and stayed.