Lisa Ko - The Leavers

After dinner, Peter called Daniel upstairs to the study, where he was kneeling on the carpet with a mess of computer cables, whistling softly. “Where does this go?” Peter peered over his reading glasses.

“Here, let me.” Daniel took the cord and tried several slots before a green light flashed on the speakers.

“Aha. Take a seat.” Peter cleared some old bills from a folding chair, typed in a website address and pulled up a YouTube screen. “Look at that, you can get all kinds of music for free online. The other day, I watched footage from a concert I attended in 1978. Aerosmith at the War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. I was twenty-one — your age. Can you imagine, a concert you go to today, seeing it online in forty years?”

This was the most Peter had said to him in months that wasn’t lecture-based. “Is that what we’re going to watch now? Did you see yourself in the audience?”

“No, you can only see the stage, and barely even that. Video technology was primitive back then.” Peter pressed play. “But here, listen to that.”

It was video footage of an actual record spinning as it played Jimi Hendrix’s “1983. (A Merman I Should Turn to Be).” Daniel and Peter sat in their chairs and listened as the track slowed to a break and picked up again. Creeping, plodding. “That backwards tape, it’s a slow burn,” Peter said. “They didn’t need computers to make good music in those days.”

“It’s a good track, Dad. One of his best.”

“I used to listen to this song when I was a kid. The age you were when you came to live with us in Ridgeborough. I had a few of my older brother’s records that he left behind when he took off for college. We used to share a room, and after he left I’d sit on his bed and listen to his records. That’s where I got my music taste from, your Uncle Phil. They say you always maintain a fondness for the first records you listened to. Like you and Hendrix.”

“I listened to music before Hendrix.” There’d been music in the city, plenty of it, and even Hendrix seemed kind of childish to him now.

The song transitioned into red-tipped sparkles, feedback and clanging bells. A shift in keys felt like the sun peeking through the clouds. “I’m working on some new music,” Daniel said. “Trying to, at least. You’d like it, it’s just vocals and guitar, no computers. It’s really different from what Roland and I were doing.”

Peter delivered a few soft slaps to the back of Daniel’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back in school. Glad you’re back at home.”

How easy it was to make Peter proud, how hungry he was for Peter’s approval. “I know.”

AT THE FOOD LION, picking up groceries for Kay, he heard a voice go, “Hey! Wilkinson!” and saw Cody Campbell in a cashier’s uniform, waving to him from one of the registers. Cody looked mushier than he’d been in high school, where he had played football; he was still bulky, but his muscle had converted to fat.

Daniel got into Cody’s checkout line. “Hey, Cody.”

“I heard from Amber and Kelsey that you’re back in town. Thought I’d see you around.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Same old, same old.” Cody scanned a package of frozen peas. “Hoping to get out to Colorado soon. Couple buddies of mine are there. Bryan Mitchell and Mike Evans? They’re going, too. Mike’s brother lives out there, says they legalized weed. You can walk into a store and pick up edibles there, like you’re going to the grocery store. You can buy it with your credit card, get stoned, like right there.”

“Wow. Colorado, huh?”

“Yeah. You coming out to the Black Cat tomorrow?”

“I think I’m busy,” Daniel said.

The next night, the phone rang on the landline and Kay called up the stairs. “It’s for you, Daniel.” He was staring at his notes for Professor Schenkmann’s class. Their final assignment, three short essays, were due tomorrow, and he hadn’t begun. When he tried to work on them he would end up googling Psychic Hearts, which was how he found out they were playing Jupiter at the end of August.

He picked up the extension in the study.

“Hey, it’s Cody. You want to grab a beer?”

“I would, but — another night.”

Daniel was about to hang up when Cody said, “Hey, you still smoke?”

They drove out to the pond at the bottom of Cedar Street, where they had hung out on summer nights in high school. Cody pulled his Jeep into a clearing at the edge of the woods and parked.

“You still live with your folks?” Daniel asked, as they passed a bowl back and forth. He couldn’t see anything outside, the darkness vast, the silence eerie. He switched on the radio, which was tuned to a classic rock station. Pearl Jam flew out.

“Yeah, but—” Cody flicked the lighter. “I’m getting out soon. Got to save up.”

Daniel took another hit. Several moments passed, and the familiar, grateful fuzziness arrived. He leaned back in the passenger seat, thinking he should buy weed off Cody and go to class high. “For Colorado.”

“Right. I have to get my cash money in order, you know? I have some debt I have to pay off, but I’m working on it.”

“I have some of that, too. Debts.”

“Sucks, man. Fuck a debt.” Cody packed another bowl. The car was choked with smoke. “Hot-boxing in the front of my Jeep,” he sang to the tune of “Party in the U.S.A.” His voice wasn’t half bad.

“Nice. You should record an album. Roland and I recorded one a few weeks ago, with this record collective in the city. Meloncholia? You know it? The band, Psychic Hearts, we’re playing a show on August 18 at Jupiter. This club down in the city. ”

“In Colorado,” Cody was saying, “there’s mountains everywhere. You can live on a mountain and ski to work. That’s what I’m going to do. I don’t know how you could live in New York Shitty. It’s fun to party in, but it smells like a bag of assholes. Anyway, I couldn’t live in one of those little apartments that cost nine thousand bucks a month. I want a house in a mountain. A whole house in a whole motherfucking mountain.”

“It doesn’t cost nine thousand bucks. That’s only for celebrities. So where are you going to live?”

“What? I said, Colorado.”

“I mean, in Colorado. Where are you going to live in Colorado.”

“In a mountain! I said that. You’re not listening. Where Mike’s brother lives. The — I forget the name of the town. His name’s Chris.”

“When did you visit him?” This was ridiculous. Daniel wanted to tell Roland about getting faded with Cody Campbell at the pond at the bottom of Cedar, about going to Econ every morning with Amber Bitburger, but he hadn’t spoken to Roland since getting kicked out of the rehearsal space. It wasn’t like Roland had contacted him either, but he missed Roland, damn it, missed him like subways and rooftops and singing, even if being back in Ridgeborough was an unanticipated reprieve. He had eliminated the possibility of feeling out of place by banishing himself to no place , stoic nights alone in his bedroom or flipping through news magazines with Peter and Kay.

“I haven’t gone there yet, Wilkinson, I saw pictures. I told you, I’ve got to get my money in order, pay off that debt, but I’m working on it, I’m figuring it out. Like you. Gonna make our dreams happen, right?” Cody held out the pipe. “More?”

“Yes, please.”

Cody’s phone chirped, signaling a new text. “It’s Amber. She wants to know if we want to go to the stupid Open Mic at the stupid Black Cat.”

“Let’s go.” Daniel wanted to be around other people, even if they were Amber and Kelsey. He rolled down the window and heard crickets and frogs over the radio, but the woods seemed sinister, foreboding. One time in high school, Mike Evans had driven his brother’s moped into the pond.