Andy

I closed the hotel door behind me quietly, but Andy was already up and about, holding in his hands, the small note I'd left him/my family on the piece of hotel stationary. Only it wasn't a note anymore, but now transformed into a small, unique little origami crane.

“I got bored.” He clarified, extending the crane towards me, bits of my handwriting visible on the outside of the folds. I grabbed it from his extended hand, twirling it around in my hands carefully, a look of curious amusement on my face. “Ghostly thing or human thing?”

“Human.” He replied with a prideful smile. “It was something my Grandpa taught me. One of those afternoons spent sitting at a lake somewhere, waiting for fish to start biting, he’d pull out an old gum wrapper or something and transform it into these cool little creations. I never learned more than the crane, though.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

I looked back down at it, sitting perfectly upright in my palm.

“So...”

“So...?” I replied with the same hesitant, awkward drawl to mock him.

“We’re going to Mickey and Eva’s house today, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

He pursed his lips in hidden concern.

“What?”

“I don’t want to desert or anything...” He trailed off.

“What are you getting at?”

“I actually had some things I wanted to check out, if that’s alright? I mean I can put it off if you want me to come with you.” He amended in a hurried voice.

“Oh...” I say, taken by surprise. “No. no, do what you need to. I’ll probably just be catching up with Eva today, anyways. Not really your thing, right? Girly drama and gossip?”

He made a sickened face and shook his head. “Not really, no... Anyways, are you sure you’re okay with it? I can do it any other day if needed.”

“No way, do your thing. We’re still hanging out tomorrow, right? It’s the day off from traveling and visiting.”

“Of course!” He exclaimed as though he couldn’t believe I was doubting the plans we had. “It’s just this stuff, isn’t the same as that stuff... It’s just me visiting old friends and making amends.”

“The same way you did in Pendant?” I wondered, fiddling with the crane.

“Yeah, about the same. Because to them, all my friends at the university and work, they had plans with me. To them, I’d be back in one week, and we were going on a road trip to visit all these insane attractions across the US. To get the call saying I’d died in a car accident and would not be attending, that’s just not news that’s easily processed.”

I nodded in agreement, unable to contribute to the conversation in any positive way. “I’ll see you tonight, then. We can go swimming or go to the arcade downstairs or something. Or even stream the entire Batman movie series, if that fits better.” I joked, he rolled his eyes, moving away from me to don the Prophet jacket from the headboard of his bed, pulling it over one of his ratty, cut up old Black Veil Brides shirts.

I abandonned my bag of purchases on the bed next to my suitcase and watched him get ready to go on ghostly adventures. The more stories he told me, the more I wished I was going with him instead.

“Where’s the eyeliner?”

I grabbed it from my makeup bag on top of my suitcase and extended it towards him with a frown. “I thought I gave you my last bottle of it?”

“Used it already.” He clarified as he pulled out the wand, inspecting it briefly before putting it to his face, carving a precise line trailng off the right corner of his mouth, before adding a few black strikes across it to replicate stitches.

I didn’t even have a reply for him, I just hung my head shaking it sadly while laughing.

“What?” He demanded self-consciously.

“You use more makeup than any girl I know, myself included!”

He narrowed his ice blue eyes at me, turning towards the mirror to continue adding the spiderweb looking paint design around his eyes, coloring it in dark. “Pardon me for looking damn fabulous in eyeliner.” He replied sharply with a spark of sarcasm and laughter.

I checked the time, realizing I still had forty-five minutes. I turned on my music in shuffle, taking out the headphones and turning the volume all the way up, until the vocals of Panic! At the Disco’s The Ballad of Mona Lisa sounded slightly static and fuzzy.

“More of your emo trinity shit?” He joked, meeting my eyes in the reflection of the mirror he worked in front of.

“It ain’t no AFI or Alkaline Trio, but thank the holy Heavens it isn’t Justin Bieber.”

“Justice Bieber?!” He chortled, and I turned to stare at him with concern and amusement.

“Justice?” I echoed, fighting the grin that would inevitably come.

“Of course.” His face grew very serious, the way someone trying to tell a great joke straight-faced might. “Actually, I came up with that during an old interview I did with my cousin Joe, Patrick Fogarty, and we were interviewed by Bryan Stars... Hey, I think that thing is still up on YouTube somewhere.” His gaze became distant as he faded away into the land of deep thought.

Pulling out a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, he fished around for his lighter. “You know what? That’s what we should do tonight. Watch old Black Veil Brides videos!”

I looked at his eyes and saw so much excitement and curiosity, and I felt most the same thing. It’d always facinated me to hear about his time in the band, especially since he was so vauge about the details.

“I think I’m heading out now.” He said, standing in front of the mirror, then looking around the room to be sure he’d gotten everything he needed. “I’ll see you tonight?”

“Yep. Have fun on your ghost adventures!”

“Will do. Have fun socializing.”

He headed towards the front door, and disappeared silently out into the hallway.

~~~


After a while, I finally got up and went to get ready, leaving an episode of Spongebob playing in the background on the flatscreen. I didn’t change a whole lot about my appearance, and wasn’t in the mood to wear a dress again, so I simply brushed through my hair again and curled it to make it presentable. I added some changes to my makeup, and grabbed my purse, deciding to migrate to my parents’ room instead of hanging out alone for the last fifteen minutes.

Knocking on their door, after a few seconds, my Dad answered, his hair wet, staining the neckline of his light grey t-shirt.

“Oh, good morning Ash.”

I slithered past him into the room. Not about to admit I’d been lonely, because mark my words, it’d be the last time they’d ever give me my own hotel room. It’s not a lesson they would take the time to learn twice, unfortunately.

“Something up?” He wondered, unsure why I’d shown up and forced myself into their presence. “Just bored.” I replied. “Your room is dark.” I frowned, looking at the thick canvas curtains drawn tight over the windows.

“Are you allergic to the sun or something?” I asked, making my way across the room, grabbing hold of the curtains to rip them open, sending a briliant white splinter of blinding sunlight into the room, illuminating it in a foot wide slit across the floor, my Dad winced from the sunlight, momentarily blinded.

“Or a vampire...” I narrowed my eyes at him a bit, crossing my arms. I would have gone further with it, by crossing my fingers in a cross, shouting ‘back! back’ but he probably would have had a fit and lectured me about the misuse of a crucifix in a joke.

“No...” He sighed in irritation, slowly recovering from being blind. “Ow...”

“I guess you could say you saw the light.” I joked, but his frown deepened and he crossed his arms impatiently in front of him, an indication I’d already used my sum of patience and energy for the day.

“Ash...” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, breathing in slowly through him mouth. “It’s early. To early for this.”

I shot him a confused, yet amused look. “It’s almost twelve, Dad.”

“Huh?” He turned to look at the clock on the nightstand, the vivid red analog numbers declaring it almost noon.

“Oh...” He huffed, rubbing his face tiredly.

“When did you wake up?”

“Like... An hour ago or something. Just did take a shower.”

His spikey wet hair indicated at much.

“When did you get to sleep?” I wondered, my tone incredulous.

“I dunno, twelve?”

I stood there with my arms crossed, watching him strangely. The longer I looked at him, the more obvious it became that he was sleep deprived and stressed, and it only made me feel worse because of what an ass I’d been before we left Pendant. He was trying to make it work for everyone.

“Maybe you should take a nap, we could go tomorrow-”

“We need to do this today.” He interupted, running his hands through his dripping hair anxiously as he began to pace. “I need to do this. Or I’ll probably just back out and go home empty handed to return to that shitty construction job or something worse.”

Parts of him were falling away, exposing the worn thing, broken side of my Dad I’d never seen. As a kid, you always expect your parents to know what to do at all times, and to always have answers. So that one time they don’t and you realize they’re just the same as you can come as a shock.

“There’s other jobs in Pendant.” I reminded him as reassuringly as I could manage without giving away my anxiety, not knowing how to properly handle his abrupt meltdown. “There’s good jobs, good paying ones. What’s so scary about that? That it’s new and different? The change?”

He looked me in the eyes, his were worn and heavy looking, the vibrant blue faded and saddened in the dim light of the hotel room. “I’m not even sure yet...” He sighed, a small, barely amused smile illuminated his pale lips briefly, “Maybe it’s just my ego.”

I couldn’t make a smile appear on my face, even for his sake. The words he said hit home with a saddening weight. Like a Twenty One Pilots song, it sounded cheerful, delievered with a happy upbeat drum beat, but when you really listened, you could hear the fear and anxiety woven through Tyler Joseph’s voice as he described insecurity descreetly.

“You don’t have to prove anything.” I murmured, dropping my arms. “You’re doing your absolute best, and that’s the best I can imagine.”

He looked at me with wide fearful eyes, his lip twitched as he thought up a reply, but before he could, the bathroom door opened behind him, and my mother walked out, dusting the freshly curled golden strands of her hair from her shoulders, looking from me to my father suspiciously.

“What’s up? Someone die?” She meant it jokingly, but her face fell as well when she noticed the tension.

“What?”

I shook my head, sighing, striding past my Dad, still frozen in the middle of the room, holding a pair of dark denim jeans in white knuckled hands.

I just kept walking, repeatedly running my fingers through my hair to calm me down. We hadn’t even fought, it’d been a calm discussion, yet I felt guilt for putting him on the spot. I’m not a good listener, I guess. I’m quick to accuse and put my opinions and broad thoughts out there without much thought beforehand, normally resulting in an awkward phase between me and the person involved.

I cut through the lobby, out the glass double doors to an area secluded on the side of the hotel, hidden behind a barrier of red brick and decoratively cut hedges. Pushing open the wrought iron gate with the palms of my hands, the gate creaking and clattering as it swung open, I walked across the smooth stone tile that surrounded a massive pool of aqua marine blue water, not a soul in sight.

It was silent aside from the obnoxious clatter of my converse on the tile as I made my way around the edge of the water, obverving the shiny surface. The way the sun hit it, and reflected off of it into a dozen tiny brilliant white sparkles reminded me of something.

A year or two ago, I had read the book, Heaven is for Real for my church youth group, and the narrator had mentioned that Jesus’ robe was made of a fabric so white, it did not exist on plant earth.

Looking at that brilliant shimmer of blinding light, I found it hard to believe there was something brighter. I also couldn’t help but smile when thinking that maybe the shade was pretty close. I couldn’t imagine a very clear face of how I imagined Jesus, just the stereotypical version of him with a clean cut beard and smooth hair, but you know damn well no one ever saw him, and it was far too long ago for anyone to recall how he’d looked. I could only imagine him, with open, beconing arms, wearing a robe made of straight, undiluded sunshine.

Sitting down on the edge of a white lawnchair, I planted my feet and stared at the water, my mind seeping away into some sort of haze while I watched the shifting color under the sunlight.

I wasn’t quite sure what had led me to the water, it wasn’t instinct, necessarily, but just that this was where I wanted to be. Not because of the disagreement, entirely, either. I just felt like I needed to be here.

I stared into the hypnotic drifting waves on the surface of the water for a while longer before my eyes drifted upwards involuntarily, locking onto a figure across the water.

He startled me at first, but when I realized he wasn’t looking at me, I relaxed. He was strange looking, sure, but that seemed to be the everyday wardrobe around here.

I recognized him then, though... The dark sunglasses and shoulder length dark hair. He was undoubtably the man from the clothing store this morning. Standing there, across the water, smoking a cigarette, flipping through his phone. He didn’t seem to notice me there, staring at him somewhat confused.

He kicked the toe of his black cowboy boot against the stone tile absently for a few minutes, standing there until his cigarette was little more than a simmering bit of paper wrapped foam. He threw it down and stomped it out, tilting his head up a fraction, his sunglasses pointed my direction, but I couldn’t tell if that was the way he was looking. He froze mid-movement to look back at me the same way I looked at him, before gathering his things and sweeping back into the hotel without so much as a sideways glance.

~~~


It was stranger than you’d think, riding in complete silence for 20 minutes to Mickey and Eva’s house without the obnoxious sounds coming from the fictional creature that happened to be my best friend.

I didn’t pay as much attention to my surroundings today as we drove. Instead, I scrolled through the seemingly endless library of music on my phone, looking at all the new editions Andy must’ve added sometime last night. It was stuff I didn’t really listen to, or hadn’t heard of before, besides Kiss, AFI and Alkaline Trio. The rest seemed like underground punk acts that no one but Andy knew about.

I listened to them, drowning out the other sounds around me. I couldn’t make myself look at my father, because worse than yesterday, I only saw the sadness and desperation hidden in his eyes. It was unfair how much weight had been placed on his shoulders, and I felt guilty for possibly getting him fired.

It wasn’t often that we split and went our seperate ways. The last time he had done that, was during school, the day before the funeral, he had some work to catch up on, and came back later after the bell.

Which onl made it weirder to glance at the seat where he normally sat, only to find it empty.

“Okay, it says turn left when you get past the Marline Bar. Then continue down that road until you pass a church, then make a right. Continue down that road until you get into some desolate country, look for the white house with the number 246, there’s two big fir trees out front.”

I looked down the road we were headed, it was one of the suburban routes, disconnected from the main heart of the city. The breeze was nice, today there was no clouds, and the sun was already blistering hot.

I looked up when we slowed to a stop.

“This must be the place.”

We all studied the house, which was, in no way, a small, insignificant suburban house.

It easily had three stories, painted white, with a wrap around balcony on the second floor, guarded in wrought iron decorative fencing. There was kudzu vines climbing the freshly painted siding, reclaiming the right side of the house, tastefully curling around window frames.

I got out, watching my Dad warily.

“Okay... So he downplayed the appearance of his house a bit.” He chuckled nervously, wasting no time to force himself away from the car, up the nice cobblestone path that wove between the two mentioned firs. Before we’d even reached the door, it opened, and I saw the familiar man who I had not seen in ages.

Mickey Halican stepped out onto his front porch, wearing the happy grin of an Italian man with his family, which Mickey also, like my father had hailed from. He was a short man, not muscular by any means, rounded by years of good times and nice meals, dressed in an easy-going maroon colored t-shirt and denim jeans.

“David!” He exclaimed with the same accent I remembered him to have. He came forward and shook hands with my father, exchanging some brief small talk with him before turning to us.

“You’ve brought your family along! Wonderful. This is Asheen?” He stared at me in surprise and I squirmed in embarrassment under the spotlight that had been placed over me. “I haven’t seen her since she was just this tiny thing.” He laughed, and exchanged a handshake with my mother.

“Eva’s out for a bit.” He frowned in disapproval. “Said going to Oakland this morning to pick up uniforms for her baseball sports team just couldn’t wait. She should be back within the hour, though. Hey, come on in. I’ve still got some coffee brewing.”

The moment we sat foot through that door, was the moment a lot of things changed. Unspoken, but they changed. My father sold himself out to act like he was of the same stature in society that Mickey was, and I could just feel everything going at a slow but gradual, downhill pace from there.

Notes

Chapter inspired by: Smells Like Teen Spirit (By Nirvana) Cover by Malia

Shoutouts!
- anathema
- DarkQueen