Blazed (39 page)

“A fresh start,” she says. “A new life. Tomorrow is really going to be the first and best day of my life. I love you.”

“I love you, too. I really do. I mean that. I love you so much.”

“What's wrong?” she asks.

“What?”

“What's wrong, Jaime?”

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You just told me three times in a row how much you mean that you love me. What's going on?”

I don't say anything.

“Jaime,” she says. “Come on, my boy. Tell me. Go ahead.”

“It's just I've been doing some thinking.”

“Okay?”

“Ya know, a lot of things have happened. Good things for both of us.”

“Jaime,” my mother starts. Her voice is shaky, though. “I've taken care of you for fourteen years for better or for worse. Please, just tell me what's going on.”

“Okay,” I say. “I've decided I wanna stay in San Francisco. I wanna move here and live with Dad.”

Silence on the other end of the phone.

It's killing me, too.

This conversation.

“Mom,” I go.

She clears her throat. “Yes.”

“That's what I've decided.”

“Okay. I understand that. Can I just say something?”

“Of course.”

“I deserve this.”

“Hey—,” I start.

But she cuts me off.

She says, “No heys or buts, please. I'm crushed right now, but I deserve this.”

“No,” I say. “It's not about you.”

“Oh yes it is!” she snaps. “It's all about me.”

“It's not, though,” I snap back. “For once, it's about me. My happiness. I'm not staying out here because of Dad.”

“What'd he tell you?”

“It's not about that,” I press. “It's not about you or him. It's about me and having friends for the first time and being in a band and having a really cool girl who likes me a lot.”

“You can have all that here. I've never stopped you from doing any of that.”

“It's different here, though.”

“So it's my fault that the kids in Joliet aren't as cool and nice as the kids in San Francisco? I don't get it, Jaime. If this isn't about me, then what is it about?”

“Me!”

“So you're choosing your father over me?”

“No.”

“It sounds that way.”

“Mom,” I go.

“Just don't,” she says. “Stop trying to explain yourself. I get it. I fucked up. I'm sorry. I put you in this position, and for the first time in your life, you've had a choice and you haven't chosen me. I always chose you, though. Don't forget that. I always chose you, Jaime.”

“It's not like that.”

“Oh yes it is,” she says. “Please spare me your justifications. It's exactly what it is. So you're going to live with your father. Maybe I'll be able to visit sometime.”

“Hey.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Jaime. And I wish I'd gotten the chance to show you me clean, me sober.”

“I'll see that tomorrow when me and Dad fly out there to pack my things.”

“Will you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she says. “Just nothing. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Mom.”

“Tomorrow, sweetheart. I love you.”

“Yeah.”

“Good-bye.”

MY FATHER DROPS ME OFF
at eddie's crib right at six. Everything's been finalized. We fly out tomorrow morning into Chicago. Take a car to Joliet. Rent a U-Haul. Drive it to my house and pack my stuff, and then me and my father will drive across country, back to San Francisco, together.

The drive will take us three days.

“Bummed about the Stones,” I said in the car.

“We'll go see them in Oakland instead.”

“I made the right decision.”

“Okay. I trust that you did,” he said. “Have a great show.”

“Thank you.”

Eddie and Brandon are in the driveway, loading gear.

“Damn, boy,” says Brandon. “Looking sharp.”

“Kristen put it together,” I say. “Eddie's new girlfriend.”

“I hope so,” says Eddie. “Now get the fuck over here and help us load.”

What I'm wearing is this: a white V-neck tee under this orange long-sleeve Hawaiian shirt, which is under this blue jean jacket that has a black Growlers patch sewn onto it. I'm
also wearing tight black jeans and a pair of sick black leather cowboy boots with spurs on them.

It takes about twenty minutes to load our gear into the back of Eddie's truck.

When we're finished, we sit in his garage and the two of them share a blunt.

“Well,” says Eddie. “Next time you visit, we'll have to play another show and puke up another EP.”

“Yeah. That'll be rad,” I say.

“When do you think you'll come back?” Brandon asks.

“Pretty soon, actually,” I say.

“Cool,” says Eddie. “Like some end-of-the-summer bullshit?”

Taking a hit, I go, “More like some next week bullshit.”

“What?” they both ask.

“I'm moving here,” I say. “Me and my father are going to pack a U-Haul tomorrow with all of my stuff and drive back to SF.”

“Dude,” says Eddie. “Congratulations. Welcome home.”

“Best news ever,” Brandon says. “You're gonna love living in the best city in the world.”

“I think so too.”

“This calls for a shot,” says Eddie.

“Nah,” I go. “I'm good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But thanks.”

“Well, fuck you then,” he snorts, grinning. “The two good thirds of Skullburns deserve a shot.”

I laugh and watch the two of them take not one, not two, but three shots.

“Skullburns,” says Eddie.

“Skullburns forevah,” I say back.

AT LEAST EIGHTY PEOPLE ARE
in this alley-slash-parking lot when we are finally ready to play. It's gray out and windy and perfect. Kristen's there in the front row. So is James Morgan and so is Michael and so is Omar Getty.

Love these Whip Pad, Lamborghini Dreams dudes.

Into the microphone, Eddie says, “Thanks for sticking around, homies. We're Skullburns, and we thought this was going to be our first and last show but fuck that, it's just the first. To new beginnings. This first song is called ‘I Saw Her First.' ”

Brandon counts off and we go. I'm nervous for about three seconds and then it's like nothing. It's just like being back in Brandon's garage practicing.

It's really cool, and most of the kids seem to be really into it.

On this song, I'm doing backup vocals and keyboards too during the intro and the bridge.

Just having James Morgan there is like a fucking dream come true. And then this dream, it gets even better, just like that.

Toward the end of the song, I notice Dominique sneak into the crowd.

My fucking heart races.

She has no idea about the news either.

She's wearing these black tights, this really big white Purity Ring T-shirt, and this tight black leather jacket. She's also got an acoustic guitar on her back.

She winks at me and I wink back.

Her being here, it makes all the difference in the world.

Her being here, it means I made the right call earlier. If there was any doubt, Dominique's appearance just erased it like that.

The rest of the set goes awesome.

The third song we do, we cover Sonic Youth's “Making the Nature Scene,” which I do lead vocals on. When we play it, everyone loses their minds. It's pretty epic to see. I love this city and I love my band and I love my girl at the back of the crowd looking pretty and singing along to one of my favorite songs of all time.

DOMINIQUE STILL HAS NO IDEA
that i'm staying. Me and her, we're walking down the street holding hands after the band finishes loading the gear back into Eddie's truck.

“This is so crazy that I'm here,” she says.

“Why?”

“Cos what's the point? I'm just gonna be sad for a week and cry.”

I smile. “Really? You'd cry over me for a week?”

“Shut up,” she laughs. “Don't make fun of me.”

“I'm not. I'm just asking a question.”

“Ugh. Well, I think I'm gonna come see you.”

“When?”

“Maybe in August. Before school starts back up. I don't want this to end because you're going back. So I'll come there. I'll save money from work and get a ticket before the end of the summer.”

“Awesome,” I say. “Thing is, I won't be there.”

“What?” she snaps. “Is your mother sending you somewhere else?”

“Nah. She's not.”

“Well, where will you be? I'll fly anywhere to see you. I promise. I will.”

“You shouldn't plan on that,” I say. “Spend your money on records and clothes and gear.”

“What are you talking about, Jaime? Do you know how hard this is for me? I won't see you for so long.”

“You'll see me sooner than you think.”

“When? How?”

“How about in, like, four days when me and my father get back to San Francisco with all my stuff?”

The look on her face right now, priceless. I can't even describe it.

She gasps and holds her hand over her mouth and goes, “You're not fucking with me?”

“I'm not fucking with you.”

“Baby,” she goes. “Yes!”

She throws her arms around me and we make out and then she grabs my hand and starts fucking running.

“Where are we going?” I say.

“I don't know,” she says. “I'm happy.”

ME AND DOMINIQUE, WE CLIMB
this rusted ladder on the side of an old warehouse in the part of the city known as Dogpatch. She says she found out about this place from Keisha when they went out tagging their band's logo around the city, like, six months ago.

She says it's nice up there.

She says people don't climb up there because the ladder is actually broken.

She says this right as she pushes off the wall and glides to the side of the building where the beginning of the fire escape is and grabs it and pulls herself up.

“It's easy,” she says. “Come on.”

Doing what she did, I fail twice. But the third time is a charm, and she pulls me up with her, then we climb onto the roof.

Immediately, she starts running around and twirling and giggling. She looks so relieved. She seems so relaxed.

Up on this roof, where it feels like we can lick the moon and sleep in the clouds, up here Dominique tells me she wants to go to Paris one day and live in a loft and go out dancing every night.

She says, “I wanna listen to Francoise Hardy records while it rains outside, and while I furiously crib pages in a notebook, then read them to you as you chase me around the loft in my underwear, and I throw the pages I just read to you into the air and then we'll laugh and spin around in circles on the hardwood floors, and I'll also become an expert on Sartre by reading him for three hours every morning.”

She says, “I wanna walk through the jungles of Asia and jump off the sides of secret cliffs into the gorgeous water and lie in the sun all day and trace notes in the sand with my fingers. I wanna build a tree house in Prague and listen to teenage death songs all day and study Ginsberg and Rimbaud and Wilde and learn everything there is to know about the Decadent movement and memorize every word of every Wes Anderson movie and read every Denis Johnson short story and learn every single note and lyric of every 13th Floor Elevators song. I wanna recite Nietzsche, I wanna scream his words out loud while I dance in the heavy London rain. Have you ever seen that movie
The Beach
?” she asks me.

“One time. A few years ago,” I answer.

“It's one of my favorites. You should read the book, too,” she says.

“I'll buy it right away,” I tell her.

And she goes, “We should read it together.”

She goes, “We should buy a couple of books every month,
really awesome books like James Morgan ones and everything by Poe and Hemingway and Hunter S. and Zachary German and Burroughs and we should buy a binder in New Orleans and we should keep notes in it as we ride the train around the country, just the two of us, chronicling our lives, and then we'll bury it one day in some garden in San Francisco with a copy of
Vertigo
and a copy of
On the Road
. And after that, we'll rent a motel room in Lawrence, Kansas, and we'll spend a week straight reading every word Bukowski ever wrote out loud to each other while Mazzy Star and Wendy Rene records spin all day. His poems especially,” she gasps. “That's what I want my first tattoo to be, actually.”

“What's that?” I ask.

“I wanna get his poem ‘Bluebird' tattooed on my ribs. It's the greatest piece of writing in the whole history of the world.”

Me, I say, “I love that poem.”

And then she kisses the side of my face and keeps twirling under the light of the moon, laughing like the soft, mad child she is, before falling into my arms and after I catch her, she does the same thing except this time she's not reciting Bukowski. This time she's singing that song “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las.

Finally, me and Dominique, we sit on the edge of the roof with our legs dangling over the side of it and we split a bottle of Coca-Cola I took from the show, and we split a cupcake that someone made and brought there, and she asks me if I'm scared to see my mom.

“I'm not scared,” I tell her. “I'm happy to see her. I miss her so much.”

“You're doing the right thing, though,” she goes.

“I know I am,” I tell her. “I'm just so nervous about what's going to happen to her when I leave. It's going to be really sad to leave her.”