Page 94 of Levi

So am I.

The set ends, the stage goes black, and thousands of phone lights come up. I turn for the exit lane, ready to get the hell out of here. Benji grabs my arm.

“Where do you think you’re going? The house lights are down, Dante. The band left their instruments on their stands. He hasn’t played the song these people drove four hours to hear. There’s a scheduled encore, possibly two, and leaving before a scheduled encore is leaving a wedding before the cake. I’ve never allowed guests to leave before the cake.”

The band comes back. The first encore is his most popular song, according to Benji, and the field screams until they’re hoarse. Benji films it vertically, wide-eyed, narrating under his breath. By the second encore, Benji’s voice is gone too and he’s mouthing the words to a song he learned nine minutes ago, hands up, boots forgotten.

I stand next to him, arms down. Lee Streeter holds the final note a long time. Then the house lights come up and it’s really over.

Benji makes it three steps.

“Okay. Assessment time. Both heels are gone. I felt them go during the first encore and I made an executive decision to feel it tomorrow instead. Tomorrow came early. I need a minute. Possibly a stretcher. A tasteful one that makes me look pretty.”

I crouch over in front of him. “Get on my back.”

“No, Dante, you’re not carrying me out of a country music festival.” He’s already climbing on and wrapping his arms around my neck. “You’re carrying me out of a country music festival. Don’t drop me! These boots were four hundred dollars and I’m not losing them in a field.”

He’s light and he’s loud. Someone starts a chant and Benji conducts it from my back, boots swinging. He yells the fake name with the rest of the field. The eagle-shirt guy salutes us on the way past. Benji waves back at him, almost kicking me in the side with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old.

I carry my best friend on my back across a sandy field, his voice spent on a stranger’s name. I don’t say a word, and Benji, between yells, lets me not.

Ten thousand people scream into the dark, and every scream is another shovelful burying Levi. They love him so much they’ll never let him out.

I came here to prove I could stand here and feel nothing.

I’m leaving it as the only person here who knows where they buried Levi.

Chapter 35: Levi

I come off the stage with the crowd still loud behind me, and the numb starts thinning on the walk to the trailers. Worst part of the night. Under it is everything I switched off to go on stage.

It comes back like a numb hand you slept on. Pins first, then the deep ache, then the limb hollering it was there all along. The show’s done. The adrenaline drains out the soles of my feet. And Levi comes back up whether I want him or not, into a body that just went flawless for a field of people and has nobody left to perform for.

I did it. Sober. Every song, every mark, the fans out of their minds. Held the set together with no supervision and no bottle, the exact thing Freddie swears I can’t do.

Which means I’m clear. That was the deal.

That’s the small dumb hope I carry into the house, the one that’s kept me obedient without my ever looking straight at it. Be good enough, finally, and they let me up for air.

I find Freddie in my kitchen with his phone like he owns the place now, and I decide to ask him. Plain and simple. Collecting on a thing I earned fair and square.

“So am I clear now?” My voice is rough from the show. “Label’s happy. I proved it. I did my part. Showed up sober, no improvising, and nailed it. So we’re good? You can ease off?”

Freddie doesn’t quite look up. He gives me a quarter of his face and keeps the rest on the phone screen. “Ease off,” he says, like I’ve said something charming and a little stupid.

“That was the deal. Sober, prove myself, and—”

“Levi.” He sets the phone down now, and he’s patient, and the patience is the worst of it. “We’ve got a viral video to bury, a two-week run that just started, press climbing the walls, and you want to talk about easing off. One clean night. You want a medal for one clean night when half the internet’s watching you sing on a beach? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Get through the run. Then we’ll see.”

I’ve heard it before. Heard it after the first record went platinum. Heard it after the first of the stadium tours, after the awards, after every single time I held up my end and waited for the part where it got easier.

Tonight, the numb is thin enough that I can see the truth. I could be perfect from now till I die and the leash never comes off, because the leash was never about how I act. It’s just the leash. The bargain was never a bargain.

Which means Freddie saying, “I’m protecting you from yourself” was never true either. You don’t protect somebody by sliding the line back every time he reaches it. That’s not protection. That’s just control.

The word comes up out of me. “Why?”

Freddie blinks at me.