Rockstar (Credit: Heleneee on DeviantArt)
There is no moment more electrifying than the briefest of pauses in the universe before playing your first note on stage. Every square inch of your body lights up, overpowered like the Chernobyl reactor in the nanoseconds between the disastrous attempted shutoff and the catastrophic detonation. The stage even offers the same set of circumstances: a pending disaster due to an excess of energy that must be directed somewhere in an impossible timeframe. And yet, these magical musicians do exactly that – time and time again – for their adoring audience’s enjoyment.
It is tonight, on an early October Friday night, that I’m carrying enough voltage in my veins to power the entirety of the easter seaboard for a hundred years. This week kicks off the most thematically appropriate month for Bishop College. So-named for the first victim of the Salem Witch Trials, the school was opened in 1792, a century after Bridget Bishop’s death, and renamed in her honor in the early 1900s. Tonight’s concert is a newer tradition, begun four years ago when Martin and I started an impromptu jam session on the quad which birthed our old band, the Accidental Warlocks.
The Warlocks were a fun ride, but as we’ve grown up and swapped out members, we became more refined. Kim Parker, our bassist, was in another band in college. We traveled in similar circles and knew each other, but were never really friends. Kim’s original outfit folded when she and the lead guitarist graduated, and the drummer and keyboardist were caught naked together in the drummer’s dorm room. That was a big deal because the keyboardist was dating the rhythm guitarist at the time. After Kim graduated, she decided to stay in Grantchester for a little while and continue making music, leading her to reach out to me, when she became a founding member of the Firelock Runaways.
We normally play two or three school shows in October, so we try to give the setlists a spooky flavor. Tonight, we’re kicking off our run of October shows with a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” played in the vein of Stevie Ray Vaughan.
The aforementioned explosion happens after the ratatatatatatatat lead-up on the snare drum played by one Martin Grace. Wielding my Stratocaster as if it was a claymore against the dragon of the crowd’s expectations, I waste no time in launching the concert into sixth gear, scratching out chords with an occasional lick while Kim lays down a juicy groove for the crowd to sink their dancing shoes into, Amber rounds out the sound with organ stabs from behind one of her four keyboards, and my wingman on the guitar, Cory White, provides the melodic flourishes that turn this rendition from a passable cover into a reinvention of a reinvention. Towards the end of the first verse, a selection of horns from Bishop’s music program make their entrance, infusing the song with a glint of the funk that characterized the original.
The normal weight resting on my shoulders is cut loose for a few fleeting moments. Temporary invincibility by virtue of a guitar in my hands plugged into an amp cranked up to eleven, a crowd of adoring fans content to dance the night away to forget the terror of assignments and assessments for a few minutes, and the untold possibilities that lie ahead.
“How ya doin’ Bishop!?” Sparks practically leap from my lips to the microphone while the rest of the band takes a breather. The question is met with roars of approval from the crowd, applause, and screams. “Stay excited! There’s a lot of great stuff yet to come!”
Something tells me that statement will be a bit more prophetic than I realize.
The concert draws me out of my shell in a sense. It’s as though I surrender, and let the music get channeled through me. Consciousness doesn’t seem to be familiar, and I don’t even recognize I’m directing my own actions until I’m agreeing to dinner at the diner after the show.
The Normandie diner has been a fixture in Grantchester since the mid-1930s, being built on-site with a contemporary flair. Or, at least contemporary for 1936. Larger than usual, featuring a vaulted ceiling, black and white tiles on the floor, a long burgundy countertop with black-topped stools bolted to the floor, booths with either red or blue seats around the outer edge, and music from the 40s and 50s coloring the air from an old Wurlitzer jukebox that dates back to the Truman administration, the Normandie has been the steadfast eatery of Grantchester for generations. To paraphrase an old saying, “This is our diner. There are many like it, but this one is ours.” And, because it is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, is also the traditional late-night hangout for the younger crowd in town.
Indeed, many a student from Bishop College has ingested pots of coffee while the red and blue neon outside mixes to create a purple in the hazy peripheral of their vision while their eyes strain harder and harder at the much harsher light of their laptop screens. As have many a family ventured to the Normandie for a late Saturday lunch or early Saturday dinner after soccer, basketball, or baseball games. The Normandie has seen make-ups, break-ups, million-dollar ideas, hirings, firings, and the occasional wedding. Tonight, it sees three out of five of the Firelock Runaways celebrating another successful entry in this new band’s initial run of school year shows.
“Do you know how much I absolutely hate any King Crimson song we keep in our rotation?” Martin inquires of me while absentmindedly picking at a tray of nachos as he’s lankily skewed across an entire bench of one of the red booths, his foot resting on the windowsill and right arm across the back of the seat. “With a burning passion. You and your weird time signatures. If I have to play in thirteen-eight one more time, I’m going to smash you over your head with that new amp of yours.”
“If you can lift it!” Kim chimes in with a devilish grin on her face. She tosses her next bite from the basket of jalapeño poppers in front of her into her mouth with unerring precision.
I rub my left hand in a vain attempt to stop the throbbing. While cleaning up the band’s gear, I slammed it into the doorframe of my car, thankfully without anyone else seeing. Unfortunately, it made every single request of theirs for help unbearably painful to follow through on. I tend to be a little hesitant to show weakness. Yes, I know it’s unhealthy. No, I don’t care.
My mind was a million miles away. As the house lights came up while we were taking our bows, I saw a face in the crowd who reminded me of someone I once knew. Martin and I have been best friends since grade school. For most of the years, my other best friend was Allison Graves. The three of us were inseparable. Allison lived next door to me until after college. Her parents had a nasty divorce, and she ended up moving to Seattle with her father. Her mom, Andrea, and sister, Katrina, stayed in the house, but changed their last names back to Andrea’s maiden name, Barton. I’ve talked to them a few times in the last five years, but I was more preoccupied with other things.
Allison and I lost touch a few months after she moved out west when my mother vanished. I guess I was so preoccupied with that and starting college that five years passed by and we never spoke. I know for a fact that she would have told me if she was back in town, and I never heard anything. Not that I haven’t missed her or wanted to hear from her, but I just think my mind is playing tricks on me.
Cory sides back into the booth, knocking Martin askew.
“Man!” Martin whines.
“I told you I was coming back,” Cory dismisses him.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Martin continues our tradition of ragging on Cory for being the youngest. Martin usually resorts to it when he’s losing. I know it. Kim knows it. And Cory knows it, because he silently gives Martin a grin and digs back into his plate of pancakes.
I like the fact that Cory came out with us tonight, I never get to see enough of him. Cory is the quintessential chill dude. A son of New Orleans currently in his senior year, Cory is studying music at Bishop. He’s an excellent student without needing to try hard, much to the chagrin of Martin. When the Accidental Warlocks broke up, Cory stuck with me and Martin. We briefly played as a trio, with Cory on bass, until Kim reached out and then Amber moved to town. One jam session later, and we formed the Firelock Runaways. Cory dreams of going home and making music in his hometown but he plans to keep playing with us until he graduates. I’ll miss him come May, but I’m trying not to think about that too much.
“That impromptu harmony you guys did in the middle of ‘Golden’ was totally killer, don’t know if I’ve mentioned that,” Kim addresses the compliment for the third time since we took our bows. I know she’s a huge Harry Styles fan and was overjoyed I threw that one into the setlist. My favorite song from the night was Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye.” He’s hard to play and even harder to sing right, but I feel like I nailed it.
The conversation continues on, and we go back and forth. Cory heads off back to campus, while Kim leaves to go hang out with the girl she’s been seeing to do some stargazing, leaving me with Martin. A dry silence hangs between us, even as the din of the diner fades into the background, there’s simply no small talk worth making. Half of every conversation Martin and I have is small talk, but it never comes without its weight.
“Hey man, I wanted to talk to you about something.” The uncharacteristically grave tone gives me cause for concern.
“What’s up?”
“I saw something I can’t quite make sense of. I was hanging with Amber and Kim before the show, we went to walk to the convenience store just off campus to grab some waters and snacks. They have those white chocolate Reese’s cups, and you know I can’t resist them things. Anyways, I saw a girl whom I thought was Allison. Freaked me out, you know?”
“Man, I know who you’re talking about. I saw that girl as the lights came up at the end of the show. I’ve been thinking about her and the past and all that since it happened.”
Martin’s mouth hangs open slightly as he puts some pieces together. “That why you’ve been so weird and quiet tonight?”
I nod silently in affirmation.
Martin looks at me in thought for a long time before he sighs. “You don’t think she’s back in town, is she?”
“Absolutely not.” There isn’t a hint of doubt in my voice. I am certain she would have messaged us if she was back. Allison is just an old wound I just can’t stop picking at, and nothing more.
Martin finishes his milkshake in silence, before bidding me adieu and heading for home. I think he’s absolutely exhausted. I look down at the half basket of fries I still have left, and absentmindedly pick at them for a few moments.
There is no way Allison came back. What reason? She built her life out in Seattle, far away from here. She’s on her way to conquering the world right now, and to be honest, the last thing I need from her is to come back and ruin the peace I’ve built in my mind. I’ve contemplated what to say to her in any mood I’ve been in. The occasional night of crying into my pillow, or having one too many drinks from the scotch in the liquor cabinet have done enough. I need to let her rest.
Pale, slender fingers snatching a fry interrupt my reverie. I look up to find a witchy ghost, cloaked in black pants and a flowy top, with a paradoxically melancholic and overjoyed smile on her freckled face sitting in the booth across from me.
“Hey stranger, fancy seeing you around.”
Allison Graves came back from the fucking dead.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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