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The air is stale with sweaty bodies and alcohol, but Clay couldn’t feel better about the night. As the final notes settle across the stage, he looks out at the crowd, at the drunk, sweaty college students that currently party like he’s the best performance they’ve ever been to. It’s a heady feeling- people around him, crying out for him, because they like him. Because they enjoy him. If the two enthusiastic men behind him weren’t so tired, he would have pushed for a second encore round of song.
Looking back at Cole and Braeden, a long-gone warmth settles in his chest. It’s been ages since he’s felt this happy- this free. After their last song, Scrawny, he’s still got the adrenaline coursing through his body, and he feels high on this feeling.
The crowd slowly thins, as people head home for the beginning of their weekend. It’s late, or early, depending. Cole and Braeden pack their instruments away, the ones they brought that weren’t provided. As the bar empties, Clay feels the adrenaline pump out of him gently, leaving him with a tired, content feeling.
He still isn’t used to people truly just enjoying his presence and wanting him to stick around. As he makes his way from the stage and to the door for a breath of un-stale air, people clap him on his back and whistle at him, and the smile on his face feels like a permanent fixture.
Outside is just as loud as in, with drunk college kids lining the street on their shaky way home, but the noise is good. Clay likes the noise- it keeps the occasional bad buried in the back of his head, far away from his thoughts and emotions. Dr. Ellman would be proud of him for finding a coping mechanism that wasn’t destructive. The jagged, criss-cross lines on his arm itch as he thinks that. They’re fading, old, but they still prick in discomfort occasionally.
He leans against the brick building, watching the drunks in amusement, when a small clap to his shoulder startles him. Clay turns his head, and his eyes widen.
“What the hell?”
A scruffy, blond-haired man stands beside him, eyes calming and smile blinding. “Wow, it’s great to see you too, Clay.” Before he can think, he’s being pulled into a hug with shocking force. “What- Tony? What are you doing here? Why- How did you know I was here?”
Scoffing, Tony lets him go. “Dude, your name is everywhere. Posters literally everywhere. Zero exaggeration, I could hear the gossip about you from a mile away. Some girl said you were going to be here tonight, so I came to see you.”
He feels the warmth from earlier spread into his fingers and toes. “Oh- oh. You just…came to visit? Nothing’s wrong?” Tony squeezes his shoulder, eyebrow arched. “No, man, nothing’s wrong. We just wanted to drop by and say hi, but it seems like you’ve got plenty of people saying hi to you tonight.” He wags his eyebrows at Clay, but Clay feels more confused now. “Wait, ‘we’?” But of course, as he says it, three more people come out of the bar, heading towards them with equal smiles bright enough to knock out the strongest drunk on the road.
Tyler, Alex, and Jess all look…good. Healthy. The bags under Tyler’s eyes have subsided, and there’s a gloss in Jess’s hair that hadn’t been there in years. He feels himself smile wider than them, and he meets them halfway. Immediately, Jess throws herself around him, chirping in his ear. “Clay! Oh my god, we’re so proud of you, that was amazing!”
Tyler places his hand on Clay’s back, nodding. “We didn’t realise you were so involved here. We really did just come to visit originally, but then people kept telling us you were here tonight, and it sounded hype, so we dropped by.”
Tony laughs radiantly, pushing the warm feeling further through Clay’s mind. “So I guess we know what you’re doing here. A band? Really, and you didn’t want to mention that to us?” He shrugs, free from their arms and hands now. Pushing his hands into his jean pockets, he feels sheepish now. He hadn’t really considered the fact that eventually, inevitably, his friends and family would find out about it. They were a glowing success in Rhode Island, so he hadn’t thought that all the way in California and Nevada, his friends would catch wind of it.
“Wait, but isn’t it like…hours to get here?” Alex shrugs. “We all pitched in and got a flight together, it was only eight hours.”
Clay looks around at them, feeling warm and light, but also feeling the small nag at the back of his head begin to surface. Before he can dwell, Tony grips his shoulder again. “So, the band? Wanna tell us about it?”
He blinks. “Oh, uh, yeah. We can- we should go inside, Cole and Braeden are probably still here.”
Inside the bar, there are a few stragglers, older customers and lonely college kids, and up on the stage, Cole and Braeden are seated on the edge with looks of exhaustion, joy, and excitement. When the group reaches them, they both smile, nodding at Clay.
Clay gestures a hand toward the four behind him. “Guys, these are some friends from high school. Tony, Tyler, Alex, and Jessica.” Turning and gesturing to the two on stage, he speaks again. “These are my bandmates and best friends, Cole and Braeden.”
It stings as he says it, which isn’t normal. Maybe he catches sight of Tony’s smile fading slightly, or Tyler’s unconscious confidence drop. Clearing his throat, he nods to himself. “Okay, so…I’ll catch you guys tomorrow? I’d better get them somewhere for the night.” Braeden nods back, still cheerful, oblivious to Clay’s internal thoughts. “Cool, dude, we’ll see you.”
They take a seat at one of the back tables, the four in the booth and Clay in a chair dragged from another table. There’s a small silence, everyone taking one another in, before Alex speaks. “So…your best friends?”
Clay really does feel awful.
“Uh, yeah, we’ve been friends for a few years.” Alex nods slowly, looking at the table. He feels awful about this, and the warmth is gone from his skin. “I’m not- I still love you guys, you know that, right? I haven’t replaced any of you, I just- they’re here and you guys aren’t, and I still need people here.”
Tyler looks up, eyes piercing. “Do they know anything?”
“What? Anything about what?”
Tyler scoffs. “About-” his voice lowers to a whisper. “About Hannah. About how we're all fucked up. About any of it.” Clay’s body feels like it’s been torn in half, left to ache and rot. Tony reaches over and elbows Tyler while Jess rolls her eyes. She places her hand on his crossed arms, and he flinches slightly. “Clay, it’s fine. We all have new friends, we expected this.” She says the last bit to Tyler, who slouches back in his seat.
Clay isn’t sure why he feels so bad about having other friends now. Sure, he called Tony every other day to talk about literally nothing. He kept up with the group chat, with each and every one of their lives. But he was here, across the country, and they were all there. So of course he took a chance on the two boys that sought him out because they thought his smile was goofy and his voice was magical.
He’d never really had much stock in living, in doing something with his life. It had always been survive, and nothing else really cut through that. So when these two music majors sought him out to recruit him to their cause, pulling him away from his undecided major and into the world of song, of course he took it. He’d been alone coming here, while all of his friends still had one another on the opposite side of the country.
He still thinks of that night, early in his freshman year. He’d barely known Cole and Braeden then, barely had any stock in the school at all. But Cole had still answered the phone at two a.m, groggy and half-sober.
The thoughts were too much again. He was alone again. Hannah was dead because of him. He couldn’t save Justin. He wasn’t fast enough to save Jeff. His friends still had to live with their trauma until they died, because he wasn’t able to save them from it. He could have done something. He could have protected them.
The bathroom on this floor is yellow, old and peeling in a vintage way, but Clay couldn’t care less. The yellow tiled floors are being washed out, turning a hateful reddish-brown. His arm hurts, burns like hell, but he slashes the pocket knife across it anyway. There’s so much blood, so much- his eyes are watering, aching, but he can’t look away. Is this how Hannah felt? Did she look at it, or did she turn away when she did it? Did she care how much blood there was?
So much blood.
He gasps when the knife cuts through the crook in his elbow. One large line, from his wrist to shoulder, pouring blood until he can’t see his own skin. Smaller cuts, criss-cross and overlapping above one another near his wrist. It’s too much- his clothes are soaked, his hair is matted to his skin in sweat. He drops the knife, gasping for air that won’t come into his lungs.
Before he realises, his hand is shuffling for his phone. He doesn’t look, maybe he can’t, but he presses the first text message he sees. He’s calling, and it rings, and rings, and then-
“Hello?”
His breath feels ragged, and he’s so tired. “Clay? Hello?”
Did Hannah feel this exhausted? Did she feel herself dying, or did she just…fall asleep?
“Clay, you okay? What- what’s going on?”
Maybe he could just sleep here. Just for a moment.
“Hey, you need to breathe. Can you tell me what’s wrong? Clay, you need to breathe.”
His lungs don’t work, or maybe they do, but he can’t tell. His mouth moves lightly, tongue heavy in his mouth.
“Bath…bathroom. I don’t- I…help. Fuck. I can’t-” His mouth won’t move, and he can’t move his hands. The phone slips from his grip, clattering loudly but he can’t flinch.
Words bubble from the phone, indiscernible. “...hold…coming- stay…”
He doesn’t hear it. His eyes close, and he feels light now.
Clay never could have called his other friends. They would only have panicked. They couldn’t have helped him. Sometimes, he wonders if he should have called Cole. Sometimes, he wonders if he was supposed to die that night. Or if he should have died months and months ago, on the cliff with Tony. Or months ago when Justin pulled the gun from his hands.
Jess leans forward, all teenage excitement back in her features. “Sooo, about this band…when the fuck were you gonna tell us you could sing?” He flushes a bright red, even under the sharp bar lights. Tony nods along in faux-offense. “Yeah, man, all these years and you’ve been holding out on me? That shit was sick, dude.”
He isn’t sure why he thought they would make fun of him. He thought they would hate it. He’d hoped he would be too big and famous by the time they heard about it so he could ignore the taunts.
Rubbing his neck awkwardly, Clay laughs uncomfortably. “Uh, yeah. My bad, guys. I was gonna mention it eventually…” Even though they all know he’s lying, they can all see the discomfort on his face. Alex nods towards his face, eyes above his. “Nice hair.”
His face cannot get any redder than it is. Jess reaches up to tousle it, grinning at him. “It’s cute. It suits you, Clay.”
His decision to bleach and dye his hair came to him in the middle of the night, weeks after his night in the hospital. He’s laying on Cole’s couch when it does. Cole and Braeden are in the kitchen, despite it being well past midnight. Walking quietly in his mismatched socks, he pads into the bright room, eyes bleary and wide.
“What’s up, Clay?”
So the three find themselves at a Walgreens at four a.m, buying box dye and bleach and toner. None of them have ever dyed hair, but the tired man at the counter has seen enough weird customers to just point them to where they need to be without much question.
Then, they find themselves in Cole’s bathroom, Clay sitting clothed in the bathtub while the other two sit on the floor beside him. They’re playing Uno and waiting for his hair to develop properly, too delirious and slaphappy to care that they all needed to be in bed literally yesterday.
He has his hoodie rolled up so he can play his cards from the tub, and Cole and Braeden don’t bat an eye at him. The inflamed scars are stark against his pale skin, some still in stages of healing. The large, straight one is still scabbed and gruesome.
When his hair is eventually a nice shade of bubblegum blue, they all end up falling asleep in various positions in the bathroom. The room is warmer than the rest of the house, with the heating vent heating a smaller area than others. It’s awkward, but entirely too comfortable, and despite the weird wet angle he’s laying at in the tub, it’s the first full sleep he gets in weeks.
“Uh, yeah, thanks. I just felt like I needed a change.”
The group eventually falls into idle chatter about classes and what various kids are up to on social media, and Clay grows more tired by the minute. By the time they all decide it’s far too light outside, he can hardly keep his eyes open.
He bids the group goodbye, promising to text later and meet up to hang out. Walking to his own apartment feels hazy, and he knows he won’t remember most of the night when he wakes back up. But the soft warm glow is back in his bones, and he feels happy. Truly, unrestricted happiness.
Maybe he should call his mom. He thinks his dad might actually get a kick out of his newest musical endeavor.
His arm itches, but he pays it no mind. His brain is still.