Tainted: Listening to the Silence

TEN

Copyright Credits:

Dear Agony. Copyright 2009. Published by Breaking Benjamin Music and Seven Peaks Music. Song written by Benjamin Burnley. Perfomed by Breaking Benjamin.

Salvador

I woke up early (with just a tiny bit of reluctance), showered and got dressed quickly, ate my breakfast quickly, and then still chewing, ran out the house and towards Ollie’s place. Today was a particularly exciting day because after three weeks of listening to Ollie sing for me, I finally decided to tell him to be our singer. The first times, I’d had to cajole and beg and even play a bit dirty, telling him how much it affected me when he spoke, which was true, to get him to sing for me. But after that, he sang willingly and happily, and his voice was absolutely beautiful and with natural perfect pitch.

Of course, it was clear he knew nothing about posture, about keeping the airways clear, about taking as much air as he could, about making his air last, but he knew about tempo, and timing, and about when was the right time to enter the song. And he felt the music, the lyrics, the songs so deeply, so personally, that I thought he was feeling whatever the singer had been feeling, happiness, sadness, frustration, anger, all of it. And that attitude of his, the way he truly felt the music was the reason I wanted him to become our singer, because as good as Em’s technique was, she did not feel things like Ollie did.

I was so nervous and excited at the same time, I knew he’d probably refuse, which was why I was nervous, but I also knew that if I chose my words correctly, he might just accept. And I wanted him to accept more than I’d ever wanted anything in my whole life, I wanted Tainted to become his home like it was for me, I could see his potential, his future, the possibilities, and all stemmed from Tainted. Sal, people are entitled to have their own opinions and wants no matter what you think they should think or want, my mind scolded me. I faltered, but my mind had a point, I couldn’t force him to do anything, it would be cruel and hypocritical of me. If he really didn’t want to be our new singer, I would respect his wishes and let him be, but not before I gave convincing him my best try.

Once I stood outside Ollie’s door, I smoothed down my clothes and calmed my breathing down before ringing the door. The door opened and there he was, looking gorgeous and perfect like he always did, in his average, let’s-not-cause-waves clothes. Well, that was a battle still in progress, but I thought I was making progress by again, playing dirty and telling him how good the punk clothes looked on him. I smiled at Ollie, almost tempted to kiss him right here in front of his door, because it felt like decades had gone by since the last time I saw him and touched him even though I knew that it had only been eight hours. But I was very aware that both pair of parental eyes were watching us like hawks and -I didn’t know about Ollie’s parents but- mine were just waiting for him to breathe wrong to keep me from seeing him.

Stupid Ash and her hardheadedness that no amount of Mina’s Spanish recriminations could cure her of.

Instead I grabbed his hand and laced our fingers together, which I loved doing and Ollie seemed to like it as much as I did. We always walked to school like that, with our hands laced together, and I no longer tried to stop the stupid smile that spread my lips. How did I ever live without him, I didn’t know, it felt like I should mark my life with acronyms, BO (Before Oliver) and AO (After Oliver).

Right then I remembered that today I had something very important and very delicate to discuss with Oliver, namely his singing for Tainted. I reluctantly let go of his hand and got a few steps in front of him, turning to face him and walking backwards.

“I have something very important to ask you, and please, please, please consider it before you say no, because I know you’re going to say no, but consider it very well before you answer, okay?”

Alright, I was rambling, there was no way around it, and I was probably making Oliver nervous with my vagueness.

“Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong, this has nothing to do with us, with you and me together, and our relationship. This thing I have to ask you is something else entirely, this is about Tainted.”

“Alright. I’m listening. I can’t promise anything about my answer. I’ll do my best. I don’t really know what I have to do with Tainted. Or why you’d want to ask me anything about that.” Oliver did seem nervous, even after my clarification, but he kept looking behind me and I didn’t know if his emotional state was related to our current conversation topic or to my walking backwards. “Sal, you really shouldn’t do that, you can’t see where you’re going.”

“I don’t need to see where I’m going, I just need to know where I’ve been, do you know how many times I’ve walked down this sidewalk? I know it like the back of my mind, but anyway, I’m getting off topic here. So the question I need to ask you, the very, very, very important question to which I hope you answer yes instead of no like I think you will.”

For some reason, now that I had Ollie in front of me, now that I’d decided to ask him to be our singer, I just couldn’t make myself ask the damn question, and I was making a fool of myself.

“Sal. Ask already. Please. You’re making me nervous.”

I took a deep breath and told myself to stop being stupid and just ask already and let thing be however they’ll be.

“Alright, so, I would really, really, really love it and appreciate it a lot if you could please be Tainted’s new singer.”

“What?” Oliver literally stopped walking, just stood there frozen, that’s how shocked he was by the question and my heart began to race with nerves because it would hurt so much if he said no.

“Please, please, please, with sugar on top, could you be Tainted’s new singer?”

“But… Sal I can’t sing. I don’t know… I don’t know anything about singing.” Oliver still looked shocked, which was a good thing, because it meant that he wasn’t yet convinced without remedy that he would not sing for Tainted.

“Sure you can, and you do it so beautifully, with such talent and emotion and perfect timing, and your voice is simply gorgeous. You can sing Oliver, trust me on that, you can sing better even than people that have taken professional singing classes, I would know, I’ve listened to you sing for a month now. And you’ve already progressed a lot since that first time you sang, you control your voice a lot better, it doesn’t break as often as before, and your throat doesn’t hurt as much now. Of course, you’d be even better at singing if you took classes, if you learned about technique, about posture, about clear airways, about breathing exercises. But you’ve got so much natural talent that I’m equally parts afraid and excited to see what you’d sound like with just a bit of effort and dedication because already your voice plagues my mind and dreams.”

Alright, so that last bit was a bit of cheating on my part, because I knew Oliver simply could not resist things when he knew I liked them so much and that they affected me so much. But I wasn’t lying at all, to the present day whenever Oliver spoke, a shiver coursed through my body and I immediately became hard. I was like Pavlov’s hound but with Oliver’s voice, it was embarrassing and I would’ve never admitted it at all if it weren’t because in turn, Oliver really liked having an effect on me. And just as I thought Oliver blushed and turned to look elsewhere because he was embarrassed or turned on, I wasn’t entirely sure. But then he turned look at me again and his eyes were troubled.

“Sal. I mean. I’m flattered. But singing for you is one thing. Singing for your band is another one completely.”

“No, it’s not, it’s all the same thing, you’ll just be singing for me accompanied by even more instruments and in a cluttered slightly ugly garage. We’re not singing in venues or anything like that, we’re not that famous, nor that wanted really, so you don’t have to worry about that. There’s no singing professionally yet, no crowd to impress, no studio to record in, there’s just Em and Dusty and me. And if singing in front of Em and Dusty, makes you nervous, because they’ve never even heard you speak, much less talk, then you just have to focus on me and imagine you’re singing for me in the privacy of your room, or mine.”

Oliver still looked troubled but he wasn’t refusing outright, maybe because I was the one asking or maybe because he knew how much his saying yes meant to me, or maybe both things at the same time.

“Sal, I… I don’t know. My voice…” Oliver faltered and I took the chance to keep on pushing, keep on trying to convince him, a small voice said maybe I was being too insistent, but I argued that he hadn’t said no with conviction yet. If I just pushed a bit more, just a tiny bit more…

“Is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, and don’t look at me like that, you know I mean it, I don’t lie and I don’t hand out praise where it isn’t due. Come on Ollie, you know we’ve been looking for a new singer and a rhythm guitarist for the longest time, and I swear your voice is perfect, for us and our songs and our sound. Your rough voice that you hate so much, the low tone you feel so self-conscious of, fit’s Tainted like a glove, and vice versa, you fit in Tainted perfectly.”

“But Sal…” Oliver looked unsure, like he stood at an intersection and didn’t know which road to choose, and I decided to pull the big guns, to give that last push.

“You don’t have to commit to anything, but I just want you to try, just come to practice with me together and sing and try being part of Tainted, and then once you’re done you can tell me officially if you completely hated it or if you loved it. But just try, okay? Please give it an honest try, for me.”

I used my most persuasive puppy look because I was actually that desperate, that’s how badly I wanted Ollie to become part of us, part of Tainted. Ollie looked at me for a few seconds before looking away, and I feared the worse, but then after a few minutes of deep thinking and silence, he turned to look at me again and nodded. I couldn’t help jumping for joy, doing my happy victory dance and then throwing myself into his arms, I was so happy I felt like my chest might burst from it. Oliver looked surprised when he saw me throw myself at him, but he caught me either way, his body not even faltering.

He was so strong, so talented, so beautiful with his shaggy brown hair, his hazel eyes and his tempting pale pink skin, and he was my boyfriend. I pulled back because I felt like my very skin hurt with how much I cared about this boy and leaned down to kiss him passionately, right there in the middle of the sidewalk. And then -because things escalated too much, and I was seriously tempted to turn back, skip school and spend all day in bed with him- I pulled back to hug him tightly. I swore nothing could ruin my day but it turned out something did.

“Disgusting,” I heard a familiar voice sneer.

Oliver let me go, his eyes narrowed at someone behind me, and I turned to see Brent and his friends standing there. I rolled my eyes, and contained the sigh that wanted to push out, because I was sick and tired of this asshole, that never learned and never let anything go.

“f**k off, Brent,” said another familiar raspy and sexy-as-f**k voice.

I turned to look at Ollie with wide eyes, because I was so shocked, and thank God he wasn’t looking at me, his eyes were still locked on Brent. He’d spoken out loud in front of someone else other than me and my mother’s and his parents and my heart was so full of pride and so touched that he’d spoken to defend me. Brent looked surprised too and Ollie took that chance to grab my hand and drag me away, probably wanting to avoid a confrontation if he could. He brushed right past Brent as if nothing and I swear I could feel myself liking Ollie that much more, and I closed my eyes and sighed happily. See, mom, both of you, I told you, I told you that Ollie wasn’t like Brent, not at all, he wasn’t going to give me up and betray me like Brent had done.

Ollie kept our fingers intertwined as we finished our walk to school and through the halls, firmly the rest of the world, probably because he was that angry, probably because the attention made him uncomfortable. Yup, we were, once more, everything the town could talk about, because we were the first official and public gay couple.

I have to tell you that the first day was an interesting experience, for different reasons, the first of which was that I had been expecting to get glares, frowns, and sneers from everyone, but instead got stares. People just seemed mind boggled at the fact that there was a gay couple in our small-ass school, and they just stared at us wherever we went in school, even in the bathroom. Even if the reaction was far better than I ever imagined it would be, it still made us nervous because neither of us liked attention after all. The problem was that after a whole month of us going out the other students were still staring at us, and I wished fervently that they would get over it already.

The second reason our becoming a public couple was interesting was that, when we got to school everyone already knew, I mean, they were shocked before we had the chance to shock them. Don’t ask me how they knew about us going out even before we had the chance to come out, no matter how much I asked around I never got an answer.

Oliver walked me to the classroom and for once the teacher was there on time, or we were late, so he saw us, hand in hand, when Ollie left me by the door of the classroom, and he frowned. When I saw his reaction I noticed that somehow, we had managed to avoid teachers all this time, but our lucky strike ended this Tuesday. Ollie, who probably noticed the teacher’s but acted as if he hadn’t, leaned in to kiss my cheek, like always, and waved me goodbye as he left to go to his classroom. I felt the teacher’s glare like a needle in my neck as I walked to a free desk, and wondered what was the matter now.

The class started and, thankfully, the teacher took his focus off me, but that only made the weight of the students’ stares on the back of my neck heavier and more obvious. Please, please, please, could people stop staring at me before I snapped and flipped them all off.

“Salvador, what do you obtain if you derive 5x2?” The teacher asked, turning to look at me with what I could only describe as a smug smile, and I gritted my teeth.

Talking about flipping someone off, I felt like telling this asshole to go f**k himself, because he knew I wouldn’t answer, like always, and he asked to humiliate me and give me detention. I should answer him in sign language and make him look stupid and discriminatory for trying to force the mute kid to talk. After all I could guess that he didn’t know s**t about sign language for all the air of intelligence he exuded. I took a deep breath to calm myself down, think things through Sal, you don’t want to do something stupid in the spur of the moment. It was true, God only knew what this retched school would do to me if they found out I was mute, I’d come so close to being expelled the last time...

“The class is waiting Salvador,” the teacher said, clearly mocking me, and making the whole classroom giggle and laugh at me.

Oh, to hell with logic, I would show that asshole who the hell he was messing with, I’d sat by quietly, letting them pick on me but I would not sit here and watch this guy openly make fun of me. I was about a second away from answering in sign language, when someone about two rows in front of me stood up.

“The answer is 10x. First, you’d need to subtract 1 from the exponent, that’s two, and it’ll leave you with an exponent of one. Then you’d need to multiply the coefficient time the exponent, which leaves you with 10. And all together results in 10x,” said the girl, and I didn’t know who she was, in fact, this was the first time I saw her in school, but I was starting to like her already.

That took the smug smile off the teachers face and that reaction made one form in my face because he’d been expecting to mock me without interruption. In that moment, I felt so happy and touched, I could’ve kissed that girl, because this was the first time someone other than Em, Dusty or Kev had stood up for me.

I observed her, determined to notice her from now on, to etch her into my memory, and took in her short, black-with-purple-highlights hair. Her clothes, from what I could see, consisted of a black tee and skinny black pants that hung low on her hips only held in place by a studded belt. Since she was in front of me, I couldn’t see much more, but what I was seeing I definitely liked. Damn, why hadn’t I ever noticed this girl before? She looked like we might get on real well, and that judgment was just based on her clothes, but also on what my gaydar was telling me.

“Thank you, Gretchen, but I was asking Salvador,” the teacher said, not able to hide his anger that stemmed from being interrupted in the middle of having fun at someone’s expense.

“I know you were, that’s why I answered. I don’t know why you insist on asking him, you know he never answers. Wouldn’t it be better to ask the people that want to answer? Like me,” Gretchen said cheerfully.

The class snorted loudly, and the teacher’s face became red and I wasn’t sure if he as angry or embarrassed, but damn it was satisfying to see him look like that.

“I’m the teacher, young lady, and I’m the one that decides who to ask. It’s none of your business which student I choose or why I do so,” the teacher said through gritted teeth.

Right then the bell rang and everyone rushed to pick up their stuff and get out of the room, probably sensing that the teacher was only needed a look to start handing out detentions. I got up and gathered my stuff slowly, watching as students tried to hurry and linger all at the same time, they didn’t want to be on the receiving end of such wrath, but they also wanted to know what the girl’s punishment would be, if there was a punishment. The girl gathered her stuff nonchalantly, like she hadn’t just talked back to a teacher and said teacher looked like he was trying to gry her with the power of his mind.

Finally, the students, either hauled ass to their next class or they’d be late, so they late hurriedly, if a bit reluctant. I walked out, giving the girl a last glance, because the teacher had called her up to his desk, she saw me and smiled cheerfully. Ollie was outside the classroom waiting to walk me to the next classroom, something that normally melted my heart but today I was too focused on the girl. I quickly explained everyone to him, while we waited for the girl to walk out, unlike everyone else who left because they cared about being late for class, neither Ollie nor I gave a f**k.

The girl walked out, no sign of a piece of paper or anything in her hands, looking as cheerful as she’d looked when she smiled. She looked a little surprise to see us standing there but when she noticed the worried looks on our faces, because Ollie was a little worried too, I think she understood.

“He told me not to answer when I wasn’t being asked anything and to never question his authority or his class method again,” the girl (was it Gretchen) said, shrugging and taking out a detention pass from her pocket.

She reminded me so much of my own attitude towards detention that I smiled involuntarily, thinking that this girl was hella cool. I offered her my hand and she grabbed it with a sunny smile at me.

“Sal, I know you. I’m Gretchen, but you can call me Gret. I like your snakebites by the way, this look so nice on you. I’ve been thinking of getting some piercings too, but I think I like the shark bites better.”

The girl had looked a bit like a man when I’d seen her from behind, but now that I was looking at her from the front my perception changed completely. She had an oval face structure and high cheekbones that made her look gorgeous, and her make up accentuated it. She had a circular barbell through her septum and a stud on the left side of her nose, and if she got the shark bites she would look awesome. She let go of my hand and offered it to Ollie, who took it slowly, he looked a little wary if you ask me but there were too many reasons to guess. Maybe because of the way she acted so friendly and familiar with us, or because she was new and Ollie always look a little wary with strangers, or because of her looks. Who knows?

“Oliver, I know you too. You’re the one that punched Brent. And then the one that broke Brent’s hand. I was there both times, it was great to see someone finally stand up to that jerk,” Gret said still smiling and I wondered if her cheeks didn’t hurt from smiling that much that often.

Ollie nodded shyly and let go of her hand, then he grabbed my hand again and squeezed it, and I understood that he was a little uncomfortable.

“Anyway, we should go to class, don’t you think?” Gret said, signaling the empty hallways.

Right then the bell that told us we were running late rang and Ollie looked at me with worried eyes, he wouldn’t be able to walk me to class.

“Go to class, we can continue the introductions during recess. Swing by my locker, it’s the 197,” Gret said, giving us that sunny smile before walking away.

Oliver watched her walk away and then turned to look at me with a frown, would we swing by her locker? I thought about his questions, weighing our options, on one hand we kind of had to talk to Em and Dust but that could wait for band practice today. Yeah, we could talk to this girl, so I nodded and Oliver’s frown stayed on his face, but what about Em and Dust? I just shrugged, we could tell them later, when we went to the garage, and he rolled his eyes, annoyed at me for being too laid back. I smiled at him, he loved me like that, he frowned and tried to deny it but then he sighed and nodded, he did love me like that. Then he winked and gave me a small smile, not that he regretted it or anything.

Wow. We already had whole conversations without even talking.

Ollie leaned down a little and planted a small kiss on my lips before waving and going off to class in a quick pace. I waved back at him and walked to my own class at my usual pace, slow, so when I got to class I was very, very, very, late and the teacher scolded me and gave me a detention slip too. I just shrugged and grabbed it making my way to an empty desk, thinking that it looked like I’d be accompanying Gret in detention. Gret. I didn’t really like that nickname, it was so common, I wanted something more original and different. Let’s see, her name was Gretchen, right? Gretch was even more common than Gret, so thank you. Maybe something with Chen? Chenny. No, that sounded horrible. En. Oh, that sounded good, it had potential. I could call her En, but then I thought that it sounded too similar to Em. Maybe Ennie. And I found the winner, I liked Ennie the best, it was a good nickname, simple and feminine.

The bell rang and I walked out to meet Ollie and we made our way to my next classroom, where he gave me another peck on the cheek and left. That class went by as quickly as the one before it, my thoughts a million years away on Ollie, and Ennie, and Tainted. The bell for recess rang and I made my way to the classroom door, where Ollie was waiting, he stood by the door and looked as gorgeous as always. God, I had it bad for the guy, I really did, please let him not be like Brent, because this time I don’t think I’d be able to take it.

I walked over to him with a goofy smile on my face, the result of too much care inhabiting my chest, but he saw me and gave me a small smile with warm eyes, and the care tripled. I could tell we were in this together, that he had it just as bad for me too, and I sent up a different prayer, please, don’t let me hurt him. Ollie grabbed my hand and walked us to Ennie’s locker, which made me snort because if he really didn’t want to spend time with Ennie, he could’ve directed us elsewhere. He had to have liked her if he was willingly going to her locker to continue our conversation with her instead of going to the music classroom like we always did. We had just gotten there when I saw Ennie walking towards us, she saw us, smiled, came over and put her things away.

“I know a great place where we can talk without worrying about eavesdroppers,” she said as soon as she closed her locker and without waiting for us to agree, she started walking.

Ollie looked at me with a frown and I shrugged. We weren’t risking anything by following her, anything except for wasting our time if she turned out to not be as cool as we imagined. She walked past the cafeteria, past the library, past the empty classrooms, continuing towards the courts and I had no idea where she was taking us. Finally, I realized she was taking us to the small clearing to the side of the football field.

The football field had originally been a big expanse of grass and dirt, this was before the school thought of getting an athletic team. When they did, they discovered they needed tracks, and a place to put the high jump mattress, and a place to build the track and sand pit for long jump. And so they used the remaining grass and dirt and built all that, killing whatever grass and trees were left. They’d only left a small clearing with a single tree on the other side of the whole thing, which looked weird but the tree was gorgeous and great to sit under. I hadn’t ever thought of going there, but it was a pretty private spot, as much as eavesdroppers went. Everyone could see you there, but they were far enough that they couldn’t hear what you were talking about. Also, you were able to see anyone approaching from the very moment the began to move in your direction.

“Welcome to my little spot,” Ennie said with a smile.

We all sat down on the ground, Ollie against a tree and me leaning into him, our hands entwined, Ennie across from us.

“Thank you for helping Sal,” I heard Ollie whisper.

Ennie looked a little surprised at first and Ollie squeezed my hand, telling me he was uncomfortable and insecure. I squeezed his hand and my thumb caressed it as a sign of my support and pride, and he squeezed it again, this time turning a bit to give me a small smile before turning back to Ennie. She still looked a little surprised but had mostly gotten over the fact the Oliver talked.

“There’s no need to thank me. I just got sick of watching the teachers pick on him because they have a lot of power. Seriously, the adults in this town are such square-minded assholes that it’s not even funny. For the longest time I’ve watched them pick on you two and wished I could do something but I was afraid of the consequences. And today when the teacher decided to mock Sal just because he saw you two together, I exploded,” Ennie said shrugging.

That reminded me of the fact that I too had gotten a detention slip, so I took it out of my pocket and showed it to Ollie and Ennie. I was a little sad that I had to be away from him for an hour and a half, but then I saw him take his own detention slip out and I couldn’t help the snort. This felt like a f*****g club. It could be named The Detention Club, after all I got detention almost every day, Ollie did too, Em and Dusty often did, too. I didn’t know about Ennie but it seemed like it didn’t bother her at least, even if this was her first detention from what I understood.

“Well, seems we’ll be keeping each other accompanied today,” Ennie said laughing.

Ollie and I laughed too and I couldn’t help thinking that her happy personality didn’t match her clothes at all.

“So, changing the topic, I heard Tainted is looking for a new guitarist.”

Had everyone in this f*****g town heard we were looking for a guitarist?! I was going to kill Dusty, slowly and painfully, and with lots and lots of blood so that I knew he really suffered. I think Ennie noticed my murderous look because she looked apologetic almost immediately.

“Sorry. I just heard it from this guy in my biology class. He’s been telling anyone who would hear that he’s going to be Tainted’s new guitarist.”

What? There’s was no one that would want to be… except for Kev, but it couldn’t be him.

“His skin is a bit dark, as if he were perpetually tanned, and he wears his hair in a sort of short mohawk. I think his name was something by K. Kyle… Kent… Kevin! That’s it, the guy’s name is Kevin.”

Okay, so change of plans here, let’s kill Kev and Dusty both, because they couldn’t keep a damn secret if their lives depended on it. There was no f*****g way Kev would be the new guitarist now, none at all, I’d make sure of that myself.

“Anyways, I was just saying because if you are, I play the electric guitar,” Ennie finished with sunny smile and a small blush in her cheeks.

Another girl? It could be, but Kevin had wanted to be the guitarist too, not that I’d let him be the guitarist after being an asshole about it. But eitherway, we could hear them both out and choose one. The other one could stay a close friend of the band and help us out, they could act as publicists, and talk to venues and get us gigs. I looked up at Ollie, wondering what he thought of Ennie’s offer, and he just shrugged as if saying, why not? I looked back at Ennie and nodded with a smile, but instead of ecstatic she looked taken aback.

“What? Really? No way.” And then the excitement kicked in, her smile going from sunny to nuclear. “That would be so cool. Thank you!” She said all but jumping for joy and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“When do you want to hear me out?” She asked practically vibrating.

I thought about it before answering, because after weeks of pestering Em she’d finally agreed to hear this guitarist friend of mine out. If I brought Ennie as well without any type of previous notice or preparation she’d probably throw a fit. But it had taken too long to convince her to listen to Kev, so I decided that we might as well get this over done with and have both of them play.

“We can hear you out today, if that’s alright with you, we can go over when detention ends and you can borrow Em’s guitar or something.”

Ennie was so happy she no longer held back and jumped and danced all over the place until the bell signaling the end of the recess rang. We all got up, ready to make our way back to class, but Ennie said that she’d see us in detention before she left, still dancing around. Neither Ollie nor I could help laughing as we saw her walk away, that girl was so happy and funny. Ollie walked me to class, then waved me goodbye before going off to his classroom, and I went in with a reluctant sigh because I didn’t want to be in class, I wanted to be with him.

The rest of the day passed by quickly with my thoughts being filled with plans for Tainted, and plans for Ollie, and plans for our songs. Today we had two guitarists and one singer trying out, which might just be a bit too much information to take in all at once, but Em was an especially difficult person. So, she required especially creative solutions, plus, if she could try to overachieve then I could try to fit three different try outs in one day.

Anyway, I could care less about Kev and Ennie, my focus was on Ollie singing, and I smiled as I remembered he’d accepted to try ebing our new singer. Ollie’s voice was great, and I was pretty sure that Em and Dust and everyone would love it as much as I did. By the end of the day, I was actually angry I had to stay for detention instead of just going to band practice already. That was a miracle in and off itself, normally I liked band practice, but it was nothing to kill for, you know, especially with Em and her bitchiness. I met Ollie in his locker after I left my stuff in mine, and we walked to the music classroom together.

Ennie was already there and -Jesus the f*****g Lord Christ, what did I ever do that required this punishment- Kev was there too. We showed our slips to the teacher, she signed them and we sat down, all awaiting the moment she walked out of the classroom. I wanted to kill Kev very, very badly, f**k the school and f**k the law, but Ollie squeezed my hand, telling me to calm down, and I took a deep breath. I showed him a little smile in thanks for keeping me from becoming a murderer and he smiled back as if telling me that’s what he was there for.

When the teacher walked out of the classroom, Ollie went to the piano, probably to keep Ennie or Kev from talking and me from killing Kev. We normally spent our time in detention like this when it was just the two of us, Ollie played and I helped him when he got stuck. I hadn’t asked why he got so frustrated when he couldn’t find the right notes but I think it maybe had something to do with his past. I didn’t ask why the song kept changing either, again I thought that it was related to his past and his parents.

Since Ennie and Kev were here too Ollie just played songs already known instead of working on what he was making. He played Rachmaninoff and other famous piano sonatas and concerts until the time was up and we left the music classroom. Ennie and Kev complimented him profusely, telling him how great he played and how much talent he had, how good he was at keeping tempo. Ollie smiled a little but he squeezed my hand and I knew the praise and the attention made him more than a little uncomfortable.

Em had texted me when she noticed that neither the new guitarist nor me were there, which meant we weren’t going to be on time for practice. I had told her we were all in detention and she didn’t even answer, which meant she was very, very, very angry. Normally she was the type to flood your phone’s memory with recriminating and angry text messages, but when she was angry all you got was silence. I wanted to fix things, to make her happy, but there wasn’t much I could do. If he left early the school guard, who reported the time detention kids left to the principal, would get us into far more trouble.

I told her I would compensate her with two little surprises, trying to make her curious enough to answer, but there was no reply. When detention was over, and when Ennie and Kev were done praising Oliver, we all walked to Em’s garage. We couldn’t keep the two possible guitarists from talking to each other anymore, so they found out that there was one position and they both wanted it. Kev kept glaring at Ennie, meanwhile the girl just acted like her usual cheerful self and talking about how exciting it would be to play for a band. Ollie was a little tense beside me, because he really wasn’t comfortable around strangers, much less hostile strangers like Kev.

I was trying to give Ollie my support and help him calm a bit down, while I tried not to laugh as I watched Ennie not notice the fact that Kev was glaring at her, which made him glare harder. She was in cloud nine, dancing around on the sidewalk, jumping, skipping and simply being obnoxiously cheerful. We got to the garage and Em looked a little dumbfounded when she saw all the people I’d brought with me, but then her eyes passed over them and she glared at me.

“You’re missing one surprise,” Em said glaring at me. “And who are these two?”

Ollie waved at her with a nervous smile playing on his lips, which meant his smile was even harder to see, and she seemed to understand.

“Ollie is one of the surprises? Sal, what are you up to now?” Em said, looking at me with wariness in her eyes.

I sighed and decided I better start explaining now that she was at least a teeny tiny bit open minded.

“Do you remember when I told you I found us a possible rhythm guitarist? Well, guess what? Today I found another a second possibility. This is Kevin, the possible guitarist number one and this is Gretchen possible guitarist number two, they both go to our schools and are seniors.”

Ennie didn’t even bat an eyelash when she saw me talking in sign language, and something teased the edge of my mind. I had instinctively used sign language with her back when we were in the football field, and she’d understood without a problem, in fact she didn’t seem to notice.

She didn’t even wait for me to finish the introduction, going right to Em to introduce herself. Em gave me an arched eyebrow when she noticed Ennie’s clothes, and I rolled my eyes at her, she was always judgmental of the emo crowd for some reason. Ennie offered Em her hand, looking straight into her eyes, and Em grabbed it, seeming in a bit of a trance.

“Hey, you can call me Gret,” Ennie said with a happy tone.

Em smiled back at her, which was a miracle in itself, because when getting Em to smile was damn f*****g hard.

“I’m Emerald but everyone calls me Em. I’m the lead singer and the lead guitarist.”

Ennie let go of Em’s hand before going off to meet Dust, who looked a little taken aback at Ennie’s obvious excitement. Em arched an eyebrow at me, once Ennie wasn’t watching anymore, and I knew she was thinking about Ennie’s sunny personality and her dark clothes. After that though, Em couldn’t take her eyes off of Ennie and I couldn’t help the devilish smile that spread on my face. When Em noticed I’d caught her staring, her cheeks turned a little red, and in my mind a voice sang, Em likes a girl, Em likes a girl.

I couldn’t help but want to have a little fun so I waggled my eyebrows at her, which resulted in her glaring at me. I didn’t even try to stop my laugh, which made Em glared at me with even more force, which made me laugh, and so on. I noticed Ollie was trying to hide his smile beside me and I just started laughing even harder, Ollie laughing along with me. Em glared so much at the both of us that it looked like she was trying to kill us with the power of her mind, which did little to quench our laughter.

Finally, I stopped laughing because my stomach hurt too much to continue and turned back to where Kev was standing. I was going to start the introductions when I noticed his eyes were glued to Dusty, who was studiously ignoring him, too much to be real. I shot a look at Ollie and he nodded at the silent question in my eyes, these two knew each other, and then he shrugged at the second question that formed, maybe there was history here? Oliver cleared his throat, snapping Kev out of his trance and making him pay attention to the rest of the world again.

“This is the guy I’ve been telling you about, as I said before his name’s Kevin but I call him Kev, and from what I know he has some serious skill. He used to play for Cinematic Paradise but got kicked out for picking a fight with Brent’s girlfriend, and I’m tempted to no let him try out because I really don’t like liars nor rumors.”

Kev gave me a sheepish smile, looking something between a mischievous child that was caught but won’t stop being naughty, and apologetic.

“You found out about that, huh? Sorry Sal, I just wanted Brent and his stupid girlfriend to know that I didn’t need their stupid band.”

“Doesn’t matter the reason you did it, I don’t like it and I won’t stand for it, keep your mouth shut from now on or I’m going to kick you out myself. Anyways, this is Em and this is Dust.”

Em shook his hand, looking a little bit interested (Cinematic Paradise was a great band) and a lot annoyed at hearing what he’d done. Dust shook his hand too, though he seemed a little uncomfortable, not looking Kev in the eyes and letting go of his hand far too quickly. Kev’s smile turned smug at that moment, I could tell he knew he had an effect on Dusty and he was enjoying making him feel awkward. Well, things were definitely going to get interesting from now on, no matter who became the rhythm guitarist and who didn’t.

“And Ollie is here to sing, I think he could be the new lead singer.”

“Excuse me?” Em yelled sounding really angry.

The atmosphere was suddenly thick with tenseness, and I knew this was going to happen, but I never thought she’d so strongly in front of two strangers. I could feel Ollie shrink a little next to me, he was still very uncomfortable around angry people, and squeezed his hand as a sign of support.

“Lower your tone of voice, I’m not yelling or screaming at you and I would really like it if you could keep a cool head about this matter. I want you to open your mind and just listen to him sing, you can refuse and yell and call me an i***t afterwards, but just hear him out. His voice is awesome Em, I mean it, this isn’t me being biased, I know what to look for and I seriously telling you that Oliver has a lot of potential. He’s a rookie, he’s got no technique, he doesn’t know how to take in air, and his voice still breaks from lack of usage, but I’ve never seen anyone with this much natural talent. I promise that you’re going to love his voice, and if I’m wrong and you don’t love it, then you’re entitled to chew me out all you want for making you waste for time.”

Em glared at me for a few seconds before she closed her eyes, grabbed the bridge of her nose and took a few deep breaths. She sighed before opening her eyes again, looking like she was running on her last nerve with all of us and I broke out my victory dance before she gave her answer because I knew I’d convinced her.

“Fine.”

No matter what mood she was in or what happened after Ollie sang, she had agreed and I felt like I could’ve kissed her.

“Thank you Em. I swear you’re going to love it, I’ll swear on whatever you want, you won’t regret this...”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s he going to sing?”

“Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin.”

Ollie turned to look at me a little panicked, he probably liked Breaking Benjamin a lot, but not enough to sing them to try and impress Em. Benjamin’s voice had a higher pitch than his, and he kept trying to imitate it perfectly, something I kept telling him not to do, but his voice was very low, so it was hard for him to reach the notes. However, when he adapted the song to his voice things went perfectly, and the song ended up sounding better than the original version. This was what I wanted him to show, the way he could adapt songs in the matter of seconds to go with his voice. He just needed to remember that imitating was not the idea here.

“It’s alright, you love that song, I know you do, you’ve told me, and you adapted it to your piano and your voice already, I want you to sing that version.”

Oliver looked a little unsure about my plan but nodded all the same and I felt so proud of him even if I knew he was still reluctant. I smiled at him, no matter what, his voice was beautiful and everyone would see that, and if they could not see it then they could go f**k themselves. Oliver looked a little calmer when his eyes met mine and I leaned in to kiss him, right there in front of everyone. He needed some support and comfort, and I didn’t care who saw me comforting the guy I was dating.

I heard cat calls and screams and Ollie tried to pull away but I deepened the kiss trying to make him drown out the rest of the world. When I felt his body relax, I let him go and I noticed his cheeks where a dark tone of red and that he was panting just a bit. He glared at me, this is not the place to turn me on like that Salvador, and I just smiled and winked, you’d needed it don’t lie. He nodded and smiled at me, his eyes all warm and happy and content because I was there with him and I made him feel safe.

“It’s going to be alright, just focus on me, ok?”

Ollie nodded and I saw him close his eyes and take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your lovey-dovey moment but we need a second guitar to play that song,” Em said.

“I know it by heart, it’s one of my favorite songs,” Ennie said excited.

“Well, we could hear out both the new singer and one of the new guitarists, and kill two birds with a stone. You see? Watch me be time-efficient.”

Em rolled her eyes, trying very hard not to laugh at the obvious joke that was the sole idea of calling me time-efficient, but a snort escaped from her throat. She went over to her guitar, Dusty went to sit behind the drums and I grabbed my bass from the corner where the guys had left it when they picked it up at my house earlier. More often than not they went to pick it up for me because I was always late for practice. We’d passed by Ennie’s and Kev’s house to grab their guitars so there was no need to lend her my guitar. Ollie walked slowly to the microphone, looking nervous as hell, like all the talking we’d just done went out the window. When he got to the microphone, he looked at me again and I smiled at him, and just like that he settled down. Dust marked the tempo and the song started with Em. Ollie closed his eyes, taking another deep breath, and I knew he was trying to get dragged by the music. He was so lost in thought and so focused that I really thought he wouldn’t enter the song at the right time but, of course, his tempo was perfect.

I have nothing left to give

I have found the perfect end

You were made to make it hurt

Disappear into the dirt

Carry me to heavens arms

Light the way and let me go

Take the time to take my breath

I will end were I began

His voice was as beautiful as always, made even more so because he’d changed the way he sang yet again to go with the tone and tempo of the other instruments. This version of the song was different from the one he played in his piano, more complex, and his voice was more complimented, cushioned, highlighted by us.

Suddenly the lights go out

Let forever drag me down

I will fight for one last breath

I will fight until the end

The rest of the world seemed to fall away as I watched the music take him away, drag him into whatever world he and it inhabited. And I felt jealous, ridiculously and stupidly jealous because I wanted to be in that place, wherever it was with him and share the space with him. But that was not possible, on the music could take him to that world, and I couldn’t go with him no matter how bad I wanted it.

Dear agony

Just let go of me

Suffer slowly

Is this the way it’s gotta be?

Don’t bury me

Faceless enemy

I’m so sorry

Is this the way it’s gotta be?

Dear agony

He sand with so much emotion, so much feeling, that it took my breath away, because I knew he liked the song and the lyrics a lot, but I hadn’t known how much. He’d tried to explain me, tried to tell me that the song spoke to him, about him, and that his skin itched to play it to sing it whenever he heard it. And I thought, well everyone identifies themselves with the lyrics, but this was far more than just simply understanding and empathy, this was true feeling. Ollie closed his eyes, and he looked like he was suffering as much as the lyrics testified, he looked like he was a second away from crying. And then he simply killed me.

I feel nothing anymore.

My eyes filled because I suddenly knew what I was seeing, I was seeing Ollie’s true feelings, the ones he tried to push down and keep away from his face. I knew suddenly, and Ollie had wanted to be carried into heaven’s arms along with his parents, that for a long, long, long time agony was his only friend and enemy. That during that time he wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to finally leave him alone and stop his suffering, or keep it there because if the agony left, he’d be left with nothing, feeling nothing anymore.

I wiped my eyes, put my bass down as quickly as I could without hurting it, and then ran and threw myself into Ollie’s arms and kissed him senseless. I didn’t know how to tell him the I understood now, that he really and truly felt the lyrics, that they were his outlet, that his emotions leaked out through his voice and the lyrics. The same way his piano told the story of whatever he was feeling, almost better than words ever could. I pulled back and smiled at him, because that was the best I could do, because words could never explain how I felt. He smiled back and that’s when I noticed the heavy silence that had fallen. I tensed and sent a silent prayer, please, please, please let them have liked it, because I didn’t know if I could stay in Tainted if they hated Ollie’s voice.