Katie McGarry - Say You'll Remember Me

He slaps me on my back. “I see you quaking in those boots. You know you can’t keep up with talent like me.”

Axle holds the door open to our house, Marcus enters, and before Holiday goes in, I pull on her sleeve for her to stop. The front door shuts, and my sister looks up at me with those big dark eyes. “Everything okay?”

I keep my voice pitched low because our windows and siding are thinner than paper. “Do me a favor and offer him some food. Some of the leftovers from last night maybe.”

She nods and goes into the house not asking why because she understands. There were times in her life she hadn’t been fed either, and pride has a way of making you deny your aching belly. If Marcus is anything like me—which, from what I know about him, he is—he might not accept the offer with me in the room.

Dominic and Kellen watch me from the street. I don’t know if I’m ready to play music with Dominic again. Music, chords, strings, melodies...that was a shared bond between us, but I don’t know where he and I stand anymore. Not until he tells me the truth about what happened that night—even if it’s only an explanation on why he left me behind. Not until he thanks me for what I might have sacrificed for him. I should invite him, it’s what he’s waiting for me to do, but I don’t and instead head to the garage.

It’s not a place where we park. A car hasn’t been in here for years. What’s in there is more sacred than any church I’ve stepped foot in.

Using the key, I unlock the knob, then use my shoulder to shove the aging and stuck door open. I flip a switch, and the shop light overhead flickers, cracks and snaps to life. The scent of dust, mold and motor oil fills my nose, and I briefly close my eyes with the familiar mixture.

In front of me are guitar stands, cords, amplifiers, speakers, a keyboard, a piano and cases filled with guitars. There’s an electric, a bass, an acoustic and anything else to be thought of, and it’s heaven.

In the back, covered with a tarp, is the only place where I’ve felt like I’ve belonged. More than the house, my room or even my bed. Behind the drums, I used to feel like I was flying, like I was free. Anywhere else, it’s like I was constantly a snake trying to shed dead skin.

I pull off the tarp, a cloud of dust rolls into the air and there’s a tightening in my chest. Last time I saw my drum set was after the gig. I had broken it down, then placed it in the back of a truck. Axle. This is Axle’s work. Only he would spend the time to have tracked down my drums. Only he would have set it back up and covered it up with such care. My throat thickens, and I rub at my face to push the emotion away.

The last words we had said to each other before the arrest had been in anger. He mad at me. Me mad at him. I was the idiot. He was justified. I thought I was smarter, better, but I was too stupid to listen.

I was playing the drums for a band that was going places. Locally, we were becoming royalty. Regionally, we were making a name. Nationally, we had people starting to look at us. The fame filled my inflated ego, and I partied and behaved like I thought a rock star should.

That last fight we had was Axle trying to tell me what an asshole I was becoming, and I told him he was jealous. Now my gut twists. Yeah, like I was someone to be jealous of. There’s so much I wish I could take back.

My sticks sit on the stool, and my fingers twitch with the need to pick them up, but what does it say about me if I do? That I’m weak? That I’ll return to paths I don’t want to go down again? I felt like a god behind the drums, and when I was behind the drums, I made every bad choice available. But the thought of playing sends a rush through me that’s greater than any high provided by a needle stick or inhale of smoke.

I slip my finger over the cymbal, careful to move slowly enough and soft enough to not make a sound. Smooth but worn, cold but warming under my touch. A winding inside of me at the thought of hearing the high-pitched crash.

“You should play,” Axle says, and I withdraw, shoving both of my hands into my jeans pockets.

No, I shouldn’t. When I was behind the drums I had no self-control. When those sticks were in my hands, I went to another level in my brain, another realm of consciousness. It was raw freedom, and that freedom made me feel invincible. I was addicted to that feeling, addicted to thinking that I could never die.

But I did die—at least the old me did—and I don’t trust myself to allow that sensation of flying and freedom that comes with playing the drums again. I wasn’t strong enough to handle who I became with those feelings before, and I don’t trust myself now. I’ve got to be better than who I was. I deserve that and so does my family.

“It’ll piss the neighbors off. We’ll do acoustic.” I’m also good at the guitar, and playing the guitar never gave me that manic rush playing the drums did. Maybe I can keep music if I go down another path because the feelings associated with the drums lead me to hell. “Where’s Marcus?”

“Eating and chatting with Dominic about Fender guitars. And the late excuse is sad. We’ve always played late.” My brother leans his shoulder against the door frame. “That’s nothing new.”

“Don’t want to wake up Holiday. I saw she was tired. She’ll want to head to bed.”

“You playing would make Holiday’s year. Since you’ve been gone, there hasn’t been a beat. No one will touch those drums.”

“Because they’re cursed?” I meant it as a joke, but seriousness leaks through.

“Because they belong to you.” Axle goes silent like his words are somehow meant to sink in and make everything okay, but they just bounce off me and hang in the air.

He pushes off the frame and enters the garage. “The rest of us know how to play, can do the counts, but none of us can hold it steady like you. We can’t shift fast enough with the change up in rhythms and still keep the beat. We couldn’t release the sticks like you do to get the same sound. When you played, Drix, it was all emotion, all heart. It was the type of beat I could feel in my blood.”

Yeah. I used to feel it in my blood, too. Playing consumed me, and that was my sin. “I was becoming Dad.”

Silence. The heavy kind. The type I dread. A pit in my stomach because part of me said it so he would disagree. It hurts he’s not offering up a denial.

“You didn’t commit that crime,” Axle says, “but I was relieved when you were arrested.”

Concrete fist straight to my head, and I hear bones snapping.

“You needed that year away. You needed that program. It gave you something I couldn’t. You were going one hundred miles per hour toward a cliff, and I couldn’t get you to stop.”

Because I wouldn’t listen.

“I know coming home is tough. I know you don’t know how to fit back in. It’s okay not to fit back in. It’s okay to be the person that’s come out on the other side.”

I crack my neck to the side. “That’s it. That’s the problem. I don’t know who I am.”

“But you know who you aren’t. That’s a big step.”

I pick up the banged-up guitar Axle bought me for my birthday when I was younger, claim one of the hundreds of picks left out and sit on a stool. My fingers begin moving before I give conscious thought to the motions. I’m listening to the notes, closing my eyes with the vibrations, twisting the tuning pegs searching for the perfect pitch.

After a few seconds of silence, Axle grabs his acoustic guitar, sits on a stool across from me and starts tuning his instrument by ear, as well. I’ve dreamed, literally dreamed, of this moment for a year. Me making music again...there’s not another feeling like it in the world.