Kevin Emerson: Exile

“Nothing bonds two people as deeply as music,” Ethan said to me once. (I know: in hindsight, SO LAME!). And I was the fool who assumed he was only referring to the two of us, when actually, Ethan had felt that deepest of bonds quite a few times during our relationship: like with a blogger named Alice he met in San Diego while on a tour I set up but couldn’t go on; with freakin’ Missy Prescott at Todd Forester’s house party a few hours after I’d left; even the night they got signed, with a Candy Shell intern named Royce.

And the poetic wordsmith’s excuse for all this? “I couldn’t help it. They were so into me. It was hard, you know?”

“I bet it was.”

I managed to fire that little zinger before the stupid tears and the storming out and everything else.

And then of course, after the breakup came the regret. I am still sorting out where on the scale of being played for a fool I fall. There’s the embarrassment, too. For two years, I’d hung out with Postcards all the time: at lunch, before and after school, sitting in the back row together at assemblies. They were my band of musician pirates. I felt like I’d finally found my tribe. I knew some people mistook me for a groupie, but I also believed they didn’t get it. Turns out they sorta got it.

My phone buzzes again. One of my blogger associates, FreakyLizzy , has checked in to tweet a “SQUEE!” in support of Postcards’s next song: “You’re My Forever.”

I remember when Ethan Myers first strummed that song idea for me last fall, after fish tacos on Venice Beach. I remember thinking, Damn .

“Have you had any more thoughts about colleges?” Dad asks. “Applications are due in a few months.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I’ll major in pre-law.”

“Law?” It’s hilarious watching Dad try to suppress his excitement. He works for a major construction firm downtown, managing the books. Concrete numbers, pounds of cinder block, foot lengths of two-by-four. The kind of guy who wears a tie even to a rainbow-colored burrito joint on a Sunday night. He doesn’t say anything more, but I know exactly what he’s thinking: Finally .

Of course I can count on Mom to say it. “Well, that would be a relief.” Mom’s use of pearls (on a Sunday! Eating burritos!) is like Dad’s tie. They’re like a law firm of their own. Carlson Squared, Parental Attorneys.

“Yep,” I say, still behind a sarcasm shield. And yet . . . would law be so bad? It sounds like about the furthest thing from art and passion, but where have those gotten me? I could stop going by my middle name, Summer, and switch back to the ol’ parent-conceived identity: Catherine S. Carlson.

What’s the “S” stand for? a striving jock attorney might ask me over cocktails in a mahogany bar off-campus where all the cool pre-law kids go.

It stands for “Settle out of court,” I’d reply. And everyone would laugh expensively.

“You could do entertainment law,” Aunt Jeanine suggests, also missing my sarcasm, or maybe not. She’s the only adult at the table who seems to actually empathize with my current plight. Maybe the only one who’s actually noticed who I’m really trying to be. “You could work to protect artists’ rights.”

“Meh,” I say, “I was thinking corporate law. You know, taking down the riffraff, those troublemakers like Greenpeace and MoveOn. Fight for the rights of the poor shareholders.”

Normally I’d revel for a moment in my parents’ total lack of response to that comment, but that old satisfaction just isn’t there, not even with the glycemic bliss that the Orgasmo is providing.

My phone hums with more updates from Silver Lake. Postcards has started their encore with “Never Leaving You.” I had to admit, it’s the perfect choice. Ethan has that lyric in there:

I’ll stand with you, as long as you can stand it—

And suddenly I seize up. Dammit! My breath catches and my eyes spill.

“Cat?” says Mom, using her old pet name for me. No matter what I do, I’m still Catherine to my parents, always have been, always will be.

I hate nothing more than having my parents see me cry. I try to hide my tears. What I want to say is, Please, no sympathy, no hugs, if you want to care just shut up, because anything you say will just sound patronizing, like my pain validates your worry, and yet your worry makes it worse . . . and around we’ll go!

But I never say things like that to them. Instead, I dab my eyes with my napkin. “I think there was some cayenne in my Orgasmo ,” I wheeze.

“Have some Coke.” Aunt Jeanine pushes my soda toward me. There’s a tissue between her fingers.

I snatch it and flash her what I hope is a thankful smile.

“I’ll Google colleges with the best law programs,” says Dad, my tears only further motivating him. “We can plan some trips.”

“Dad . . .” but I can’t finish, have to beat back this feeling, the overwhelming sense that life is already over, that I’ve missed the one best chance I had for doing what I really love, and that, in a beat-up rock club across town, the life I want is moving on without me, leaving me here in the same burrito joint, on the cusp of the future—

So, now what, then?

—with no idea how to answer the question.

Formerly Orchid @catherinefornevr 1hr

Senior Year existential sandwich. Me = the tofurkey between slices of whole grain Optimism and Oblivion. Pass the baconnaise! #Iworkedhardforthatmetaphor #stilllame

Seen from above, Mount Hope High looks so random: a spill of blocks, a bad joke of architectural trends, cost overruns, and budget shortfalls. Every five years it has to be added on to in order to support the town’s widening belt of sprawl and spawn. It looks like a slow flow of geometric lava. A five-year-old could do better with Legos.

Safety regulations have made it bulletproof, earthquake proof, heatproof, smog proof, nuclear fallout proof. It has a greenhouse that’s used for calculus classes, and the painting club has to meet in the chem lab. It has seven stairwells, twenty-two locker rooms, sixteen supply closets, and yet the only safe place to hook up during the school day is the vice principal’s office.

[pause for laughter]

The school has graduated 96 senior classes. Five hundred forty-eight kids per class, give or take an asterisk.1 That’s 52,608 human beings with hopes and dreams and wishes that have passed through its halls. I am some number between 52,609 and 53,156. And more will come after me, over and over, for as long as the antibiotics stay ahead of the bacteria and the sun doesn’t throw a supernova tantrum. Someday, long from now, when California is a desert island and humans are halfway back to dinosaurs, archaeologists will unearth this structure, read the inscriptions on the cockeyed bathroom doors and try to figure out who we were, and what we were thinking, and they’ll get it all wrong.

Of course by that time, myself and the rest of my senior class will have joined the entire current population of the earth in a fingernail-sized sheet of sediment.

Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme.

Formerly Orchid @catherinefornevr 3sec

There is no more avoiding this. #timetofacethemusic #orlackthereof

“Summer!”

I turn from where I’ve been rooted to the steps, watching the minnows file in through the barred-window doors of school. Contemplating the meaninglessness of my existence feels easier than going inside.

No one’s said hi to me. I’ve spotted a few people I could have greeted, but didn’t. Every now and then I get a glance that says, Oh yeah, her. She hung out with that band all the time. Too cool for the rest of us. Then she got dropped. Who knows what will become of her now?