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Standing in the back in the faint shadows of the shallow stage wings at the Breaker Box, you found yourself wishing that you’d listened to Amir more when picking out an outfit for this evening.
He’d looked over the layers atop your skin, and knowing the hot searing lights of the stage, made a tactful comment or two. When you’d shaken your head at him and insisted that the fantastic red cropped leather jacket was a key piece of your ensemble, he’d then left you to discover the follies of your decision for yourself. At the moment, you’d decided that having more fabric covering your skin from the shadowy faces of your ‘housemates’ in the crowd was worth the risk of overheating—but Amir was right, it was going to be warmer than you could imagine when you were standing on the stage itself. To be fair to yourself, however, he’d clearly been given some insider information (juicy gossip) about just how many familiarly strange faces would be in the crowd made up of your household objects.
There were at least three objects from every damn room in the house out there. It wasn’t quite everyone in the house crowding around the stage and attempting to hold seats at the booths and bar, but you were sure that was only because you hadn’t met everyone yet.
Volt—it must be Volt, based on Johnny’s description of what the two proprietors looked like—vaulted onto the stage from the crowded dance-floor with an ease that surprised you. It seemed that the personifications of the breaker box were as representative of the electricity within as they were the wiring. Volt was a showman, the perfect conduit to gather the attention of all the objects here tonight.
And you had no idea how you’d manage to avoid his attention long enough to sneak all the way onto the stage.
“Good evening, you scofflaws and ducky whatsits!”
You had no idea what either of those things meant, but from the hooting of the crowd, Volt clearly had managed to get them eating out of his hands with a single sentence. He waited for them to quiet down, and you could just make out the charming grin affixed to his face, despite only seeing him in profile.
“There’s an awful lot of you here, so please give a warm welcome to our next act. Looks like Johnny Splash is gonna be singing for us tonight. Be warned, patrons—you might get wet.”
Oh dear.
It looks like nobody had thought to warn the Breaker Box that their entertainment for the night would be changing. Your hands were somehow much sweatier than they had been a moment ago. An impressive feat, given just how nervous the large turnout had made you.
You stepped out onto the stage, and beneath the blinding lights, gripping the microphone Johnny had found for you with clumsy and white-knuckled hands. (In reality, it was the long wooden handled back scrubber you hung just outside the shower doors so that you wouldn’t ruin the finish by leaving it in the damp and humid shower stall).
“Hi there,” you began awkwardly.
Volt jolted, and you tried to pretend you hadn’t seen the way loose electricity had snapped and popped along the length of his wild white-arcing hair at the sound of your voice. The crowd shifted restlessly, but you could hear a scattered smattering of applause from a few friendly faces.
“As you might be able to tell—I’m not Johnny.”
“Good!” yelled Amir from somewhere towards the back of the room. Cam grumbled in agreement from the outskirts of the crowd. You cleared your throat and tried to continue.
“I’m not Johnny, but I hope you’ll accept me as a decent substitute, given that he’s…busy getting some…work done. Repairs and stuff.” Your voice lost a significant amount of volume by the end of the second sentence, and from the catcalling and whistles being thrown around by the crowd, you were hoping that you hadn’t embarrassed either yourself or Johnny too badly. It’d only been about a month since you’d gotten the Dateviators—and there was a lot to learn about inter-object etiquette and what was and was not appropriate for polite discussion.
You turned to where Volt had tucked himself next to the stage. He stood there, implacable, shoulders stiff, hand on his chin, an unreadable look in his eyes. You knew better than to scan the crowd for Eddie—due to the bright lights of the stage, you could really only make out the faces of those directly adjacent to it, or those who were loud enough that you could identify their voices. You’d never heard Eddie speak, nor had you seen his face, so it’d be futile.
Meaning that Volt’s inscrutable look was the best guess you had as to how the two proprietors were feeling about your unexpected hijacking of their show tonight.
When Johnny suggested this, you’d thought he’d discussed it with Eddie and Volt first.
You winced, and turned back to your audience. There would be time to worry about the consequences later. For now, the show must go on.
“Thanks for coming out here, everyone. I’ve got a song for you,” and you took a deep breath, and let the confidence instilled by your fantastic red jacket rise and cover you, until you hefted the synth keytar Bodhi had lent you, and the song fully rose up and possessed you. “So let me reveal—exactly why I’m here.”
Maybe the song wasn’t something original, not like what Johnny would have tried to do, and maybe you still felt a little guilty for not handling your performance tonight as a true understudy. But you’d picked it out because—because it felt right, the smooth hum of the synth in treble over the steady pulsing bass and the amping power chords—and your voice spun and sparked in the space between spoken, croon, and sweet siren pleading as you built an ode to quiet dedication, promising a listening ear and reciprocated affection if only someone would see you.
Perhaps this was more dangerous than you thought at first. After all, there were plenty of strangers here, and here you were making promises like that—you pulled your eyes away from the silhouettes of the crowd, from where you had been trying to guess in vain where (and who) Eddie might be.
Line by line, chorus by chorus, you held on to the persona—the persona comprised from the threadbare confidence boost of the jacket, the magic of the crowd, and your own desperate desire to prove that Volt had been right not to drag you off the stage by your hair the moment he realized you weren’t Johnny.
And in the uproar as the song slipped to a stop, the final notes from Bodhi’s synth keytar ringing out into the room, you were just barely able to slip into the churning maelstorm of objects before Volt reached for you, something having settled in his eyes—mirrored in the unseen figure watching as you fled from his place behind the bar.
Hopefully you hadn’t ruined anyone’s first impression of you.