Chapter Text
And it's a good day for a meltdown / All my thoughts getting too loud (...)
Took a left, hit a nerve / Took a right, hit the curb
Is there room in your life for a little chaos?
(little chaos - orla gartland)
One of the first things Enid Sinclair discovered about herself was that she couldn't live without music.
Wherever she went, she was always humming a song, always had some melody playing in her head, always had a rhyme to hold on to.
When they were in the car, she always asked her parents to turn on the radio. When they argued, she would put on her headphones and listen to what was on her brothers' old player.
When her older brother went off to college, he left his guitar behind. Enid would pick it up when no one else was home. With old books from flea markets and patience, she learned its secrets, how to play the damn chords, and how to pick the strings.
With each note she felt she had unveiled the greatest of secrets.
She'd been listening to music in her head for so long that she could pick out melodies by ear, she could feel out the chords of her favorite songs. And when she was really sure no one was listening, she could sing them.
But soon things moved on, and Enid discovered many other things.
At fourteen, she discovered she liked girls.
At fifteen, she learned that this was going to be a problem at home.
At sixteen, she pretended she didn't care.
By seventeen, she was sleeping on her friend Yoko's couch with a black eye and only a backpack as her only possession.
By eighteen, she had cleaned the houses, gardens and pools of more wealthy people in San Francisco than she could count.
By nineteen, she had saved enough to buy a guitar so she could play again.
Music had sustained her through all those moments. No matter how hard her life was, she always had her music.
When the screaming in her head became unbearable, she sang to calm herself. When she had one task after another, during shifts that never ended, she sang songs out loud to cheer herself up.
Enid hadn't continued going to high school. She couldn't bear the possibility of running into one of her brothers, or worse, her parents. That's why she'd been working in the meantime.
Yoko had, however, continued; she intended to go to college, and her family, not extremely wealthy but well-off enough, was willing to pay her tuition.
They never said anything about Enid showing up at their house one night with all her belongings in her backpack, as the Tanaka family was reserved and didn't interfere in anyone's business. Enid tried to be as invisible as possible to make up for that kindness, or rather, that lack of hostility, which was more than she'd experienced at home.
But once Yoko left to study in Los Angeles, Enid was afraid she'd have nowhere else to go. She never said it out loud, but her friend must have read it because one day she awkwardly patted her head while they were lying in bed watching a movie and said, "I've been putting up with your stinky face for two years, you're not getting rid of me now".
Enid cried as she stared at the screen without really seeing, and went to sleep with puffy eyes and a smile.
Yoko had gotten an apartment to live in during college. It had two bedrooms, though Enid's could hardly be called a bedroom; it was more like a closet with a bed inside. But it wasn't her parents' house, and that was enough.
She insisted on paying the rent for the shabby room, even though Yoko refused at first. That's when Enid started working at the diner, and she was able to earn a more stable salary than the odd job she'd had up until then. She'd come home smelling of burnt coffee and bacon, but even though she felt exhausted, it felt satisfying because she had her job, her home, and her best friend.
Yoko was studying to become a dentist and took care of the rent and most of the expenses. Enid had been promoted in the diner and was in charge of bringing in the leftover food from each shift.
Those were peaceful, pleasant, and monotonous years.
Enid would come home from work and lie down on the sofa in the living-dining-kitchen area, her clothes smelling faintly of greasy fries and grilled cheese, and play her guitar. The walls were very thin, but the neighbors were watching TV so loudly that they probably wouldn't even hear her.
Yoko studied at the kitchen table while she played, or at the diner while she worked. When they had free evenings, exhausted from work, they stayed home. Enid would take out her battered guitar, and Yoko her bass.
As a child, she was forced to play the clarinet, but she hated it completely, so when she grew up, she bought a completely different instrument, just to go against the grain.
They played everything and nothing, lost themselves in the music, and accompanied each other.
“We should start a band”, Yoko said through the smoke of her cigarette one day.
“That takes more than two people”, Enid laughed.
"Says who?" the other replied, slapping a riff in her bass. "But if you insist, I guess we'll have to start looking".
Enid met Ajax Petropolus when she was twenty-one. He was a nice guy, had a nice smile, and had stopped by the diner several times, always with a beanie and his skateboard. When there weren't many customers, they'd talk about music, about her playing guitar and him playing drums, exchanging song recommendations and laughing.
Three weeks into their first meeting, he asked for her number and asked her to hang out.
“I should tell you I only like girls”, she said.
“Sweet, me too!” he replied with a goofy smile. “Anyway, y’wanna hang out this weekend, dude?”
And that's how the adorable idiot Ajax came into her life.
Divina Fischer appeared a year later.
Yoko had a neck contracture and had read that swimming was good for that kind of pain, so she signed up for the campus pool.
There she ran into Divina. Or rather, Divina ran into her, trying unsuccessfully to open her jammed locker. Yoko had just entered the locker room; Divina had just gotten out of the water. They talked for a long time, went for a walk together, exchanged numbers, and Yoko never even set foot in the damn pool.
She hadn't gotten rid of the contracture, but they had gained a new addition to the group, which was infinitely better.
One of the many nights Divina stayed over at the apartment, Yoko and Enid played a jam for her. Enid asked if she played anything, and she said she'd taken piano lessons during high school, but didn't play much anymore.
“Oh my goodness!”, Yoko laughed. “E, call your stoner friend, we've got a band now!”
Ajax lived in the converted garage of his parents' house.
It turned out that the Petropolus didn't care that their son didn't do much with his life and just spent his time skateboarding and smoking.
There, he had a drum kit that had belonged to a cousin of his uncle or something, and he could play as loud as he wanted because it was the last house in a long suburb.
They played Mitski and Japanese Breakfast because Yoko loved her angsty lyrics and riffs, they played Troye Sivan and Beach House because Divina liked getting lost in the dreamy keyboard melodies, they played covers of Taylor Swift and boygenius because, according to Yoko, Enid had a serious case of sapphic longing, and Ajax was high half the time and was just happy to be with his new friends and play his drums.
Enid had been chosen to be the leader because no one else dared to step in front of the microphone, but Yoko and Divina sang backing vocals so she wouldn't feel so alone.
At first, she was very embarrassed, but she soon became comfortable with her voice. Not just with how it sounded, but with how she could make it sound.
Divina's twin brother, Kent, would sometimes come over. He'd bring them takeout or help them load their stuff into their van. He became good friends with Ajax and became part of the band even though he didn't play anything.
Kent didn't know anything about music, but he had some really good ideas. He'd say, "Hey, why don't you put a badaboom tadatada bam in this section, or something like that?" And somehow it made sense.
And they started taking the band more seriously.
They decided to brainstorm a band name, which, as everyone knows, is the most important thing. But they'd already spent two hour and torn out many notebook pages, and nothing was coming out right.
"Ajax's amazing ensemble!", the drummer exclaimed.
"I like it", Kent hummed, rubbing his chin.
"No", the three girls said simultaneously.
“Enid's amazing ensemble, then”, Ajax huffed, throwing himself back on the beanbag with his arms crossed.
"What about something with our initials?", Yoko suggested. "Eyad… Daye… Yaed".
"Just leave it", Divina sighed, getting up and placing her hand on her shoulder. “Before you summon an entity”.
The music they had playing continued in the background, a steady beat and a melancholic voice enveloping them as they tried to think of something else with furrowed brows and tired eyes.
“I don't know, guys”, Ajax hesitated, too stoned to think anymore. “Maybe we should leave it, the moon is like, rising and…”
“That actually sounds good”, Kent chuckled.
"Wait, wait," Yoko said, raising her hand. "Enid, what was that thing that happened when you were born?"
"What?" the blonde asked, confused.
“Yeah yeah”, she insisted, “that thing you told me happened when you were born and that your parents thought you were going to be Satan but you thought it was really cool”.
"Ah, the blood moon?" Enid said.
"Blood moon rising!" Yoko exclaimed, putting her hands to her head.
Everyone looked at each other, noticing a change in the atmosphere. Ajax, without saying anything, stood up and sat behind his drums, banging his sticks on his head as he shouted:
“We’re Blood Moon Rising! One, two, three, four-!”
They looked for songs that everyone could enjoy, they made mixes and medleys, they almost always talked about music and the band, they each practiced on their own, and once a week they rehearsed in Ajax's garage.
When Enid wasn't working, she played. If not with them, it was quietly in her small room.
Her voice was no longer timid and small, her words no longer choked or stumbled.
Feeling so big and bright for the first time, she remembered when she'd felt so, so small. And she remembered the small notebook she'd stuffed into her backpack years ago.
She had spent so much time listening to other people's voices that her head began to fill with words, her own words. They came to her in an unscripted way, and she had to hurry and jot them down.
They weren't songs, but they wanted to be. For the first time, Enid thought about raising her own voice, getting the words out of her head, letting people hear them, hear her.
And they were still a cover band, but Enid knew she just needed a little push to dare to go further.