Chapter Twenty-Six: Tomorrow

459 21 16

by ajswrites

by ajswrites

TOMORROW

"Ladies and gentlemen," I hear the announcer croon into the microphone from where I'm standing behind a piece of stage structure, a fair ways behind him. "Here's your new favourite, Pallet!"

I high five the members of Pallet as they walk onstage, instruments all on backs or strapped to the shoulder, except for the drummer, who hangs back a moment. He high fives me.

"Thanks for getting us this gig, Nathan," he says, honesty in his eyes like nothing is more pure a truth. "I don't know what I would have done with my life other than this." He nods out to the screaming crowd.

"Don't worry about it, John Harvey." I say and pat him on the back. I watch, peering out, as he sits behind the same drum kit I saw a long time ago. Pallet makes enough money for him to buy a new one, but he's kept it. I admire that.

"Nathan?" someone whispers to me just as Pallet's cover of the song, 'Brain Damage' by Pink Floyd starts playing.

I turn around and I'm greeted with braided peach-coloured hair and countless freckles. "Oh, Bee," I say. She kisses me on the nose.

"Don't forget to turn on their lights, it's starting to get dark out there," and it is, the sun touching the water I can see out to Bondi. I don't mean to, but I can see Raisa with white flowers on her face. I wonder if she still likes those flowers. I wonder if she still has the Polaroid, because after a lengthy check of my bags, I definitely don't have it. I look Vivienne in her pale blue eyes and press the buttons that operate the concert lighting.

It's been two years. That is, since I saw Raisa last. Daniel Johns, way back at the Balmain Bridge, had given me the number of a lighting director for triple j's music festivals who is looking for an apprentice. I took it and thanked him and didn't get him to sign anything—I wanted this memory to purely be a memory, not worth anything outside my own head. Raisa was in the backseat next to me as we drove to my place first, where I was dropped off. I kissed her goodbye, and tried to convey all my hopeless emotions into that kiss but it ended up being sort of disgusting. I gave Joel a hug and promised him we'd meet up again, all of us, one day or another. My dad came sprinting (the first time I've seen him sprint since we played footy when I was small) with a newspaper rolled up in his hand, yelling after Joel's car as it drove away. Raisa waved. My dad looked at me in total bewilderment. "We thought you were dead," he said.

"I thought I was too," I replied, and walked inside, because it smelled like mum was making pancakes.

A month after that, February 2000, I relapsed. I felt so much better I took myself off my medications for a week but within a fortnight the voices had become so loud I tried to overdose. I was back in Six South. For two weeks this time. They monitored me more heavily, listening to every heartbeat. I did more psychological screening tests than group therapy. Josh wasn't there anymore. Neither was Georgia; nobody who was there last time was there anymore. They'd all gone home, and even though at first I was disappointed, I let it sink in and I was happy for them.

I wondered where Josh had gone, if not home to his family.

I was released from the psychiatric ward in mid-February and I was armed with some new breathing techniques, a different medication, and honestly, little else. I promised myself I'd stay on my drugs this time. The car ride home was totally silent, and my mum's radio played U2's new song, Beautiful Day. I felt my heart drop at the thought that Raisa would hate it, because it was too pop-y, or too mainstream, or something. I liked it. It sounded like sunshine.

The first thing I did when I got home was use the phone to ring the lighting director. I read him a list of notes I had written myself while in the hospital, to make sure I didn't say the wrong thing, and it must have worked. The next Tuesday I had the director, Elliot Webber, my school counsellor, Dr Joseph, my fifth form head teacher, and the principal in a room discussing if pressing buttons to put lights on was a reasonable cause for leaving school.

I was called in to sign the papers in March. On some of my days off from being an apprentice, I went to a public library and borrowed textbooks my friends said they were studying. I taught myself year ten mathematics all over again over the period of three months. I know reading the theory work and writing essays out of books in my spare time won't get me anything material, but I don't want to have missed out, and being a lighting co-ordinator requires a lot more mathematical thinking than I first thought. I think Mr. Webber likes me, at least, he must, because he got me the gig of triple j's New Year's Eve festival, at least for four acts. It's a lot of work but it makes me proud once I've done it.

I heard police reports of a missing girl, 'aged fifteen, dyed white hair, five foot four' named Rosemary Hawthorne who I pretended I didn't know every time the radio was turned on. I knew she wouldn't go home. Her mind wouldn't have let her.

In April, 2000, I started talking with Joel again. I started going to his gigs, and he got me another fake I.D. so I could without risking being thrown out. He made me promise I wouldn't drink, though, because my new medication doesn't work if I mix it with alcohol. During May, June and July, Mr. Webber put me on youth group dances and school formals, and I would coordinate the lights show. On the first of August, my last day working at a church youth group's dance, I met a girl called Vivienne, who was only there because her friend had invited her. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a black and yellow striped cardigan over a black t-shirt. I imagined her with antennae and tiny little wings.

Halfway through September, Bee and I started dating. I took her to the beach, the first time, and told her about how I went swimming near the pier, but I stopped myself when I realised that it was with Raisa. Halfway through September and I hadn't heard anything from Raisa. The police were still looking but I had resigned, myself. I knew she wasn't dead. I also knew she wasn't anywhere near Sydney. Perhaps she'd finally gone back to her home planet.

In November I turned seventeen and I moved out of my parent's house (with much protest from Harry and Kieran) and into the student house Joel had somehow gotten. I now live with four other people, but we don't bump into each other much. I'm the youngest in the house but they treat me like I'm as old as them, which I like.

By November 2001 I had finished my 'catch-up' course and went full-time as a lighting director. I do formals and parties but sometimes I get called up to design light shows for entire concerts. I work for Mr. Webber's company and I earn enough for me to buy a latte from the café down the street every morning on my way to work. I got my first real I.D. when I turned eighteen and celebrated by going to a nightclub for the first time legally with Joel and ordering a lemonade. I hadn't drunk in nearly two years and I wasn't about to start.

Bee and I are still together. She doesn't live with me, she's living at university, studying to be a journalist. I'm hoping she doesn't get sent off to some far-flung place and leave me for some exotic European man. But I smile to myself every time I think that because I know she won't. I got a new diagnosis; which is bipolar disorder. It turns out I actually go through cycles of up and down. They have me on lithium and Bee used to joke about me being the inspiration for the Nirvana song. I love her.

Four songs later, Pallet are launching themselves offstage while the lead singer, a tall, skinny boy, waves his hands at the audience, trying to milk some more applause out of them. I don't blame him; I would do the exact same thing in his position. I press a few buttons on my keyboard and a strobe light flashes above the boy, who revels in it and seems to soak it up, and it flashes off his teeth. He runs off the stage half a second later in a flash of body odour and a ripped t-shirt and forgets his guitar.

Where's the next band? I look around. I can't find the singer anywhere.

I start to step out to stage. My earbuds only numb the sound to a certain point, but I can hear the audience of thousands in the park as loud as any audience, and it makes me glad I decided to keep my earbuds in. I pick up the guy's guitar and the screaming gets louder. It feels so good to be up hear, being yelled at. I can't explain it. I think I see Raisa, for one mad second, but it isn't her.

People's heads form a sea that goes from right beneath the stage to two hundred meters back, like a wave has washed them in. Every car is stopped from here as far as I can see. Half the city is terrified and the other half is confused. But we're all part of it. I can't help but wonder how I got here.

The crowd screams even louder, and I take the guy's Stratocaster by the neck and carry it offstage.

All this for being alive? I think to myself, and smile.

THE END.