Page 155 of The Sound Between Us

40

the final show

Harrison

The roar doesn’t just hit me—it swallows me whole. Forty thousand voices, each one a fragment of something bigger, something ancient. It’s a sound so massive it feels like the ground might crack open beneath me.

The Pyramid Stage is lit like a dream—gold spilling into smoke, a haze of fairy light and sweat and bass that vibrates straight through my spine. I can’t hear myself think.

“Good evening, Glastonbury!” I shout, my voice burning against the mic, and the crowd erupts like I just set fire to the sky. Phones raise. Arms wave. Someone throws a bucket hat. And just like that, we’re in it.

One last time.

I don’t look left or right at first. I don’t dare. Not at Jamie, thundering steady on the drums. Not at Dex, backlit and sober and eerily sharp, fingers flying across the synth keys.

And definitely not at the wings. Not yet.

We launch into the set. No build-up, no soft landing. Just a sprint through ten years of music that held us together, broke us down, and stitched us back up again.

I sing. I scream. I sweat like it’s penance. The stage feels too small and too big all at once.

I finally glance sideways.

There she is.

Seren.

Fuck.

She’s in the shadows offstage, half-lit by the spill of floodlights. Wearing our first album tee. Hair messy. Shoulders set.

She looks like everything I’ve been trying not to dream about for months.

She looks like home.

I grip the mic harder, just to stay standing.

I’m wearing my Revelry tee tonight. Damon’s band. It smells faintly of old whiskey and rehearsal rooms.

We close out “Static Heart,” and I’m drenched. My voice is rasping at the edges, fingers raw from playing too hard. The crowd won’t let it go—chanting the chorus back like a heartbeat. Forty thousand lungs working in tandem. It’s too much. Not enough. Everything.

I hold up a hand. Signal the band to cut.

Jamie throws me a look like, You sure? Dex just raises his eyebrows.

The crowd hushes. Slowly. Wonderfully.

“This is it,” I say. Just me and the mic and the kind of silence that buzzes in your blood. “Our last show as Elementary.”

A gasp. Murmurs ripple through the crowd.

“But…” I drag the word out, soften the blow. “We’re not leaving you empty-handed.”

I grin, even though my stomach is a knot. “Our final album is dropping. Right now. Like, in thirty seconds. So you’ll have something to ugly cry to when this hits you later.”

Laughter rolls forward like a wave. It’s healing. Disbelief giving way to delight.

“Want to count it down with me?”