Page 12 of Scream For Me
“There are just so many bands like us in Bridgeport. We need to stand out.”
As the words leave my lips, they lose their momentum and crumple at my feet. If I were back in middle school, I’d definitely have ran out of the auditorium and thrown up in the bathroom by now.
Luca rests his bass against his amp and walks up to me, gently taking the cowl from my hands and pulling it over his head. He tugs it slightly, adjusting it around his head.
“People don’t deserve to look at my beauty anyway,” he says with an invisible flip of his hair.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding as laughter fills the room. A familiar hand rests against my forearm and gives a little squeeze.
“We’ll do it, Kat,” Harper says, her eyes filling with an emotion I can’t place.
A surge of gratitude fills me as I look at my band. No matter what happens, my port in the storm is here. For the first time in years, I have a safe harbor.
Six
Kat
Crazy Train – Ozzy Osbourne
The dressing room feels smaller than it did an hour ago. The hum of the bar seeps through the walls, filling it with the energy of the crowd. Glasses clink, conversations melt into one, and the sound of the house speakers sit in the background. We arrived at Headstone way before we needed to.
“We look like amateurs,” Ryland had said, but eventually agreed that we needed this extra time.
Bringing our own amps had been completely unnecessary. The ancient amps we’d used during our audition were not the same ones that are now on stage. These ones are brand new, the sticky residue from the factory stickers still visible. There’s easily thirty thousand dollars on the sound system alone. At least Gareth helped us carry our amps back down to Ryland’s van—we’d never hear the end of it if Luca had to do it.
The air in the dressing room is electric with nerves and anticipation, making my skin prickle. Harper is in the corner, one hand pressed to her diaphragm, working her voice through slow scales. The notes start as a low hum before filling the room with loud trills. Her voice is steady.
Mine definitely fucking isn’t.
Ryland is in the other corner, tapping a stable rhythm on his thighs. The wooden sticks make a thwack against the denim in perfect time. Luca and I carefully turn our machine heads to just the right pitch. No one speaks, but there’s an unspoken understanding—everything has to be perfect. Because if it isn’t, this disappears—the residency, the money, and the chance to be something other than another band swallowed into extinction by rent and bills. This isn’t some open mic night or birthday party. This is Headstone. This is our residency. Four thousand dollars a night. Over one hundred thousand dollars if we don’t fuck this up.
IfIdon’t fuck this up.
I glance at Harper as she runs another scale, flawlessly as always. She deserves this. They all do. Ryland has somehow always produced the cash to keep his gear upgraded—we’ve learned not to ask questions about how. Luca and his husband put their surrogacy journey on hold so Luca could keep playing. We all have something on the line. We all have so much to lose, yet they look like they’ve been doing this for years. I’m the one falling apart. Visibility terrifies me—but obscurity hasn’t exactly kept me safe either.
There’s always that voice in the back of my mind whenever I’m on stage. The one that’s formed through years of being told I’m not good enough. I’m too big. Tonight, it’s taking every ounce of my concentration to quieten. When we played in the past, the crowds were small, and I could see the faces of everyone watching us. But here at Headstone? It’s impossible. There are too many. I’m just thankful for the cowl that’s resting on the couch waiting to be put on.
“At least if we bomb, the only one of us that the crowd will recognize is Harper,” Ryland says with a mischievous grin.
Harper flips him off without missing a note of her scale.
When the final E string reaches the right tone, I let out a breath and stand up. My fingers find the cool metal of my necklace, soothing the soft flutter skimming the inside of my chest.
The creak of the door slashes through the tension. Every muscle in my body tightens as I whip my head towards the sound. Gareth strides into the room. I push down the disappointment that it’s not Elias.
“You’re up,” he says, his tone clipped, as he holds the door open for us with a bored expression.
That’s it? No buildup? No warning?
I sling my guitar over my shoulder and pull the cowl over my head. With the fabric framing my face, any nerves I had soften, settling into a buzz of adrenaline instead of panic. Noise dulls and my vision narrows as I adjust it just enough to cover my face, but not enough that I can’t see the crowd. In the mirror, I tilt my head up just enough that my silhouette comes into focus beneath my cowl and I barely recognize myself. A calm washes over me.
I look good.
My ripped band shirt shows off the perfect amount of cleavage, tucked into my leather pants that hug every curve and show off my wide hips and ass. The pants are the same ones I wore for the audition, but something about the way everything looks with the cowl makes me appear seductive in an ‘I might haunt your dreams later’ type of way. I’m quickly realizing that I feel so hot because I don’t look like myself right now.
The hallway to the stage feels longer than it did during the sound check. The bass from the new house speakers vibratesthrough the floor, syncing with my hammering pulse. The noise from the crowd is growing louder now as we leave the confines of the dressing room area. Someone laughs loudly. Glass shatters. The sounds only get louder the closer we get.
I roll my shoulders, adjusting the strap of my guitar until it feels right.
