Lisa Ko - The Leavers

Thad stood, dusting off his jeans. “I’ll be back.”

“What do you think about the tracks?” Roland said to Daniel.

Daniel bit into the callus and tore off a piece of dead skin. “Good, I guess.” He looked at the posters again. In high school, stoned at this party in Cody Campbell’s barn, he had thought he was seeing bats, freaked out until Cody had to tell him that those weren’t bats he was seeing up there on the ledge, but shadows of gardening tools. “Chill-ll,” Cody had said. It was funny, ridiculous, the thought of barns and bats and Cody Campbell in this random basement in Queens.

“Hey, remember Cody Campbell?”

“What, that fat douche?”

He chewed on the piece of skin. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Of course you can. The past shows have been perfect. That first one was just a fluke.”

“I don’t mean shows.”

But how could Roland understand? In Ridgeborough, Roland’s last name and light brown skin had made him suspicious, but he was clearly a Lisio, too; he and his mother had the same pointy faces and thin, dark hair. Playing shows in towns where people didn’t know them, there’d been a few guys who had heckled Roland in fake, singsong Spanish — the same sort of guys who’d throw Konichi-waah! at Daniel — and then there was the time a cop had pulled them over on the highway outside Ridgeborough, ticketed them for speeding, bogus charges as the old mail truck Roland drove could barely hit the speed limit. The cop had given Roland a sobriety test even though he and Daniel were sober, Daniel terrified in the passenger seat, noting the fear in Roland’s back as he stood on the highway with his hands behind his head, the cop saying something about drunk Mexicans. When they were free to go, Roland had driven straight to Ridgeborough, and it was one of the only times Daniel had seen his friend at a loss for words. When Roland finally did speak, he said, “We have to get the fuck out of here.” And Roland had, and so had he. Still, Roland had never spoken any language other than English, never had any other name but his own, had known his whole life who his mother was and where she could be found. What had set him apart in Ridgeborough — the dead Latino father, the widowed white mom — Roland had used to his advantage. Looked as different as he could. Dressed like a freak, invited people’s stares, ate it up.

“Were you taking me and Thad seriously? I was talking out of my ass. Thad’s always talking out of his ass. We don’t have to have bring in more vocals or anything you don’t want.”

“I’m not sure if this is the direction I want my music to be going in. I don’t want it to be more layered.”

“So what do you want?” A sharper tone slipped into Roland’s voice. “This is a collaboration.”

“It doesn’t feel like it. This is the sound you want to make, to please Hutch. You write all the songs.”

“You’re more than welcome to write a song.”

Daniel was so mad his leg was twitching. “All you care about is being cool, people liking you.”

Roland looked stunned, like the time they were walking through Washington Square Park and a pigeon had shat on his shoulder. “Like you don’t care about that? Come on. I was trying to help you out.”

“Help me?”

“I could’ve found anyone to play in the band. Like there aren’t any good guitarists in the city? But you needed a reason to leave upstate.”

Daniel pushed an empty coffee cup with his foot. “I’m not your charity project.”

“Everyone likes you but you,” Roland said. “You know how many times I’ve sung onstage? Every single time I get nervous. One time, I puked in the bathroom before sound check.”

Roland’s chin bobbed as he talked, a vestigial trait from childhood, and Daniel had a flash of lost affection for the young Ridgeborough Roland. He couldn’t bail on his closest friend.

“So we’ll play with Yasmin on May 1, think of it as a warm-up, and then the big show on May 15, the one Hutch will be at. Two weeks to get it all ready.”

“Wait,” Daniel said, “what day is it?”

“Monday.”

“I mean, today’s date.” He looked at his phone. April 27. There was a missed call from an hour ago, from the person he’d been thinking of. “Hold on, I’ll be back.”

He wandered through a maze of hallways, past the kitchen, where he caught a glimpse of a countertop splattered with pesto and blood, Sophie and Thad bandaging a guy’s hand, and found a door that opened onto a gravel lot. The night was cool, a slice of moon shining over the building’s plastic siding. He unlocked his phone and called the number labeled “Mom and Dad.”

He was glad it was Kay who answered and not Peter. “Mom,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

“I called you earlier, I didn’t leave a message.”

“I know, I saw it on my phone. ”

“Your father doesn’t know a thing about this, and I’m not about to tell him, but I spoke to the dean at Carlough and she’s willing to set up a meeting with you. You could still get in for the fall.”

“Wait—”

“She said to see her in two weeks, the Friday after next. May 15. You need to be up here by that afternoon.”

“I don’t know — how’s Dad? What are you doing for your birthday? Did he make you a treasure hunt?”

“We’re fine. We did the treasure hunt this morning. The first clue came in the mail, he put it in an envelope that looked like a bill! Then he had me walking down the street to find a clue in the Lawtons’ tulips. Now he’s cooking me dinner.”

“Tell him I didn’t mean it, with the essay.”

He heard Peter’s voice yell, “Honey?” and Kay said she had to go.

MAY 1, TWO WEEKS before the big show, Psychic Hearts played a few songs in an outdoor lot under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, opening for Yasmin. Daniel had invited Michael, and he came up afterwards and shouted, “That was amazing.” Roland, Nate, and Javier looked over; Daniel had never had a friend appear at a show before.

He introduced Michael as his cousin, and Michael held his hand out to be shaken. Roland took it, while Nate and Javier nodded, then resumed talking.

“Your band rocked,” Michael said.

“Thanks for coming,” Daniel said.

Michael looked at Roland. “How do you two know each other?”

Roland raised his eyebrows. “We grew up together? Daniel’s like my oldest friend.”

“We grew up together, too,” Michael said. “We lived together in the Bronx.”

“You lived in the Bronx?”

“For a few years,” Daniel said.

“And your moms — your birth mom — they were sisters?”

“Something like that. Close enough.”

“Did you speak to her?” Michael asked.

“I left her a message, but I haven’t heard back yet.”

“Hold up,” Roland said, “you called your mom?”

“I got her phone number from Leon. Michael’s uncle.”

“It could’ve been the wrong number,” Michael said. “It was an old number.”

“It was her voice mail. I recognized her voice.”

“Then fuck it,” Roland said.

Michael’s mouth hung open. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I know it’s your birth mom and all, but if she doesn’t want to talk to you, it’s her loss. I told you, if you called you’d regret it.”

“You told him not to call his own mother?”

Roland brushed his hair back with his palm. “She’s not his mother.”

Daniel said, “She is my mother.”

“She didn’t raise you. I mean, I never knew my dad, and whatever, you know?”

“I never knew my dad either,” Michael said. “But Deming, I mean Daniel, he knew his mom really well.”

“Okay, do what you want then,” Roland said.