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Dee was never one to go to bed early. He always felt like there was more he could do with his day when there was no one to bother him. After dinner, he would head upstairs, do his homework, study ahead for the next day, take his evening sertraline, catch up on his favorite series, and by the time he was two episodes in, he would hear his dad come into Heavy’s room to say goodnight. At least having to walk through Heavy’s room to get to his own meant that everyone else had to do the same.
The sound of his brother’s door opening was a signal for him to jump onto his bed and open his phone; a ruse to appear as though he was winding down for the night.
His doorknob rattled as it turned. “Goodnight, Dee,” Glam only peeked through his door to respect his privacy.
“Goodnight, Dad,” he said without looking away from his phone. He had three new messages from his online friend.
Once he responded, his eyes wandered to the corner of his phone to see the time. Only half-past ten.
He got up and reviewed his bookshelf. He would swear he had read all of these within the last month if it were possible. The stories were all still so fresh in his mind. He settled on a Tolkien book and sat cross legged on his bed. Something familiar, yet he would always realize something new on each read. He read through the book for another hour before there was a disturbance in the next room. His brother was still awake.
Dee groaned and opened his door into Heavy’s room, noticing the game he was playing on his PC. Heavy’s unwashed mane of hair covered the majority of the monitor, so he couldn’t make out what he was playing, but it was something multi-player.
“Woo hoo, guys, we got another w” Heavy exclaimed a little too loudly for near midnight. “Just a few more rounds tonight and all of our ranks are going up.”
Dee carefully closed the door in front of him, as if he could be heard over all the ruckus. A few more rounds? He had no intention of going to bed this soon, but if he did he would not let his obnoxious little brother disturb his sleep. He considered what he would do next a service to Heavy, even if Dee wasn’t sleeping, his brother sure would.
He used to try yelling at him to shut up at night. But shouting and throwing metal objects at the wall never seemed to get his attention. This way always worked.
Dee clicked through his phone to the master switch he installed for the wifi. He put it in for exactly this purpose. Dee toggled the button to off, then sat back on his bed with his book innocently placed in his lap.
“Hello?” Heavy called into his headset, increasing intensity with each attempt. “Guys? You there? Hello? Guys?” He stopped for a moment. “Noooooo!”
Frantic stomps approached Dee’s door before Heavy busted in. “Dee,” he whined with big eyes. “The wifi!”
“What ever happened to knocking,” he scowled at his brother, lifting his eyes from his book to glare.
“I know, but it’s an emergency,” Heavy pleaded. “Did you lose signal too?”
“How should I know, I’ve been reading,” he gestured to his phone sitting face down on his desk.
“Maybe it’s just my computer,” he stepped towards Dee’s phone with his hands in grabbing mode. “Let me just-“
“You touch that, you die,” Dee extended a warning point of his finger.
Heavy raised both his arms in fear, but then broke a smile. “Why? Are you afraid I’ll see your secret girlfriend?”
Dee could feel himself blush with a mix of embarrassment and anger. “Get out of my room!” He stood up and pushed Heavy out the door, nearly slamming it to punctuate, but the last thing he needed was to wake up his mom with an argument.
Through the door he could hear Heavy mutter. “Always so hostile.”
Perhaps he was too harsh. Usually, he would give his brother thirty minutes without wifi; enough time to freak out, try to fix it, give up, and go to sleep. But in the spirit of benevolence, he set a timer to twenty five minutes. Heavy should consider himself lucky to have such a caring brother.
Dee wished he had a lock on his door, but after such a heated exchange, he was sure no one would enter his room for the rest of the night. This provided an excellent excuse to escape through his window.
He gathered his phone, the jacket he kept under his bed, and a pair of headphones. Everything he needed for a night out. He then climbed out of his window and slipped down the garage, keeping as quiet as possible, in case his family were to believe he was an intruder.
Once his feet hit the concrete he was free. It was like there were no rules for him to follow, nothing from his dad saying to stay close to home at night or to keep on the sidewalk. He was free to go anywhere he’d like to map the uncharted territory in his mind.
He placed his headphones in, started playing Virus of the Mind, and began walking. He didn’t really have a direction, just wherever looked interesting he would walk. He couldn’t hear very clearly outside of his music, but he felt the dead grass crunch under his combat boots.
He didn’t come to the woods very often anymore. Ever since Heavy made it his go to place to take his friends after school, it was like it lost its magic for him. Something about brothers gentrifying the woods. But on his own, the bad karma, or whatever it was, was washed away. The night only had other mysteries to explore.
He marched forward with a grimace, as he caught the view of a large spider web within some branches. As long as he had his music with him, he could keep going through here until he found something that interested him.
He gazed up at dead trees, down to half-consumed carcasses of prey, reminding him to pray he wouldn’t encounter any wildlife. He was wide awake, like he had just woken from a coma. He felt this way most nights. He had an energy he couldn’t explain or diminish after the sun left. Walking into the night was enough to satisfy an itch and aid in expelling himself of excess energy.
He knew he was on the right path when he saw a black cat run between the trees in the woods. There must have been some semblance of civilization ahead, or, if he set aside logic and embraced his hopes, maybe one of his books wasn’t just a story.
He kept walking until he came to a clearing. It looked kind of like a park. He had never encountered this before. Though, he and Heavy used to play aimlessly in the woods, never out of sight of the houses. He had never just walked straight through the woods. Dee looked at his phone, concerned that he had lost track of time. He was about a two hour walk away from home, his phone read a quarter past two.
He couldn’t go much further, but he removed a headphone to gather his bearings, and was filled with intrigue. Running water. His eyes darted across the vast park, looking for a water source. Surely it would be a sewer or some lane fountain.
He followed the sound across the park until he came across a footbridge. A river. Or maybe it was just a long stream.
His pace quickened as he approached the bridge, pure excitement filled him to relish in this experience. Admittedly, it wasn’t much to look at in the dead of night, but at least it was different. The moon reflected on the uneven surface of the gentle flow of the water as he leaned against the railing.
This was a good place to break before he headed home. He reached into his jacket pocket and found his cigarettes. Well, his mom’s cigarettes. Every once in a while she asked him to hide a pack for her when she told Glam she was going to quit. She never remembered where he would put them, so after a week or so of hiding, Dee would retrieve them for himself.
He lit the end with a lighter his dad purchased for candles, and took a deep breath in. The smoke wafted from his breath into his eyes, stinging them until a tear formed in his scrunched face. He had been smoking off and on for a year, but was still working out the fine details.
Dee ashed into the water. It made him feel dirty for polluting such a mystical place, but it also made him feel like he was marking it as his. Leaving his spot to prove that he was there. He removed his other headphone from his ear, listening for birds, cars, a waterfall. Something.
He could hear traffic from the distance. If he listened closely, he could still hear the rustling of leaves from the woods behind him.
Against his better judgment, he ventured further into the park. As he walked away from the noise of the river, he finally heard something that intrigued him: music. Not from a stereo, not even a concert, but someone in this park was preforming.
He squinted and scanned the area with his eyes, trying to find a source. He couldn’t see anything for certain, but there was a light post, within eyesight from where he was standing. He looked back down to his phone, how could ten minutes have passed so quickly?
He knew it was best to walk back, but he had to know, he had to experience. So, he took another drag of his cigarette and marched forward toward the music.
He tried to act casual, keeping a steady pace and smoking on his way up, but he could feel his heart pounding to the feeling of finding music in the wild. There was a bench under the light post, sitting on it and was someone playing an acoustic guitar. He didn’t want to interrupt the intimate conversation between this man and his guitar, but he needed to know what song he was hearing.
Metallica, Fade to Black.
Before he felt he was too close, he dug his phone out of his pocket and searched up the song to add to his playlist. However, whether it was his proximity or the light from his phone, the man noticed him and ceased playing.
“It’s ten bucks if you wanna record me, kid,” the musician called out.
Dee froze. He wasn’t used to being seen so late at night, let alone spoken to. In fact, he couldn’t recall a walk where he had an encounter like this before. The strange part was that his sleep deprived mind allowed him to believe he knew the voice speaking to him. He couldn’t find the words to respond.
“Uh,” he squeaked. He cleared his throat. “What makes you think I would want to record you?” He took another drag of his cigarette for emphasis and to appear more confidence over the situation, but the taste of filter stung his mouth.
The musician leaned over his guitar, his face read as if he were making calculations in his mind. He scrunched his eyebrows. “Dee?”
Dee felt his face go red. “Ches?”
He abandoned the last of his cigarette on the park floor, and walked closer, under the same light as his adult friend.
Ches lifted the guitar from his lap and set it on the bench. “Dee, what are you doing here?”
He tried to accumulate a valid response, but came short. “I was out for a walk.”
“Isn’t it incredibly late for you to be walking? Don’t you have school in the morning?” Ches introduced valid concerns. He wasn’t usually so protective over his honorary nephews.
“Well, yeah,” he sighed, the dissatisfied looks making him feel small. “I just needed a walk. To clear my head, you know?” He sat on the bench next to the guitar, only now realizing how far he had walked with the aching in his resting legs.
He looked down to his feet, trying to remember the last time he felt like he disappointed someone like this.
“Yeah, I get it,” Ches nodded, his eyes flickering with youth. “But seriously, you should not be out this late.”
Dee didn’t formulate a response. “That was Metallica, right?”
Ches grinned at the recognition. “Fade to black,” he looked longingly at his guitar.
“It sounded really good. Ideal tone for the song.”
“Thank you, it’s one of my favorites.”
Dee looked Ches in the eyes. “And what are you doing here at this hour?”
Ches’s smile faded into a softer one. “Oh I come here all the time to play. There aren’t many people here to bother me when I’m not looking for an audience.”
“But why here?” Dee gestured broadly to the park with his left hand. “Why not at home or somewhere… less secluded from society?”
Ches chuckled. “I’ve been coming here for years. This park…” his words trailed off with the memory. “It reminds me of the one your dad and I used to hang out in when we were about your age.”
“Huh.” Dee looked at his surroundings a bit more profoundly, like he was trying to see them from his dad’s eyes. He couldn’t help but wonder what his dad was like at his own age, he knew very few details about his dad’s childhood. “What was my dad like when you met him?” Dee gave Ches a wide eyed look, yearning for details.
Ches looked like he was hit by a bullet when he heard that question. Dee was expecting a smile and chuckle, maybe a story about how they bonded over their passion for guitar and rock. But the man on the other side of the bench had a sudden dark expression.
“Your dad was… very different when I met him.” Ches searched for the right words to explain, but he knew it wasn’t his story to tell. “His dad was very serious about him studying violin. He was cla- trained to play classical violin and I taught myself to play guitar. We were complete opposites.”
Dee physically leaned in to the story, trying to figure out how his dad’s closest friend could say that they were nothing alike to begin with. His dad had always been so withdrawn from his past, only ever going so far back to share brief details from when their band was on tour. He craved to know more. “Was his makeup awful or something?”
That drew a small smile on Ches’s lips. “No,” his smile fell after one word, “he didn’t wear any makeup back then. It took him a while to get to the style he has today. He was dressed in full suits every day before I met him.”
“Wow,” he tried to picture what his dad would look like in proper formal attire, but the image failed to appear.
“I’ve always thought…” Ches hesitated, afraid of diminishing the father-son relationship of his best friend. Again, he recognized that Glam’s story was not his to tell. Removing the details, but maintaining his own perspective, he restated the thought. “I’ve always thought you look like him.”
Dee suppressed the need to roll his eyes. He had been told this his entire life: he was a carbon copy of his dad, practically a clone. But he never saw the resemblance.
“As you get older, you look more and more like him,” Ches smiled sadly at the ground. “But the way your dad was at this age… I see a much happier version of him in you.”
Happier? Dee sat on that notion for a minute. He didn’t feel very happy most of the time. Maybe his need for antidepressants was passed down to him paternally. Or maybe being forced to study violin was just as bad as trying to learn guitar, but on a daily basis. Intuitively, he knew if he wanted more details he would have to find a good time to press his dad for them. So, they sat in silence for a while, both lost in thought about two different versions of the same person.
Dee broke through his train of thought to check his phone for the time, it was nearly three. If he wanted to get back home before his dad woke up he would need to start walking half an hour ago.
“I should get headed back home,” Dee stood from the bench and took a couple steps back to the woods where he emerged. Maybe if he tried a shortcut or picked up his pace he could get back without raising suspicion.
“Ha,” Ches let out a staccato laugh. “No way in hell I’m letting you walk back through the woods at this time of night. I’m taking you home in my van.”
He considered fighting the offer, but he knew his only option would be to run for it, and this time of night he just didn’t have that type of stamina. He shrugged and followed him.
The van was parked along the curb, a short walk from where they were sat. Dee found his way into the passenger seat while Ches placed his guitar into the case in the back. Dee really didn’t want to accidentally wake his family with the sound of that van pulling up to his house, but he was in no position for bargaining.
Ches gripped the steering wheel a little bit tighter as he drove, thinking about their conversation. “Do me a favor, would you? Don’t tell your dad I told you about that stuff.” He left most of the important details out of it, but he didn’t want to get Glam angry at him for revealing what was so deliberately hidden in his past.
“Only if you do me a favor,” Dee tried to hide his fear of asking. “You keep everything you saw me doing tonight secret.”
Ches briefly took his eyes off the road to look at him to make sure he was serious. Seeing Dee nearly sweating in anticipation of his response, he couldn’t hold back laughter. “Hahahaha,” he let out a laugh so genuine his stomach hurt a little bit. “Which part did you think was secret from your parents: the sneaking out or the smoking?” He gathered his breath to ask.
Dee’s tired eyes went wide and he turned his entire body to face him. “They know??”
“Yes?” He didn’t mean to respond in a question, but he thought he knew they knew. “Did you think they’ve never heard you walking on the garage at night or going downstairs smelling like a stale cigarette in the morning?”
Dee faced himself foreword, trying to conceal his now bright red face. “Just drop me off a few houses down and we’ll call it even,” he spoke in monotone.
The rest of the ride back was nearly silent, with Dee motionless and Ches trying his best not to break into more incredulous laughter. Both knowing they’d keep their promises to each other, the van stopped four houses down the road.
Dee hopped down to the sidewalk, but he looked back up before walking back to his window.
“Ches?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”