Westbound Sign ➵ Billie Joe Armstrong

DIY or Die

Collin

The motel room smelled like a mix of drugstore hairspray and leftover fries, and the A/C was humming like it had something to prove. I was lying on the bed with the motel phone pressed between my cheek and shoulder, the cord stretched taut while Erin flipped through TV channels with her usual hyper focus. Every few seconds, a new flash of static and noise lit up the room.

"How's the record hunting going?" my mom asked, voice crackling slightly over the line like it was coming through one of the cassettes I kept in my glovebox.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Technically, we had stopped at one shop a little ways into town after the band left and I found a scratched up copy of London Calling that smelled like mildew and teenage heartbreak. But mostly? Mostly I'd been distracted by one green eyed ghost.

"It's good," I said, aiming for casual. "Lots of bins to dig through."

"Uh-huh," she replied, slow and suspicious, like she could smell the half-truth a thousand miles away. "You sound... off."

Erin landed on The Nanny, the unmistakable voice of Fran Drescher cutting through the air like a glittery buzzsaw. Erin turned toward me, grinning. "She's everything. Tell your mom I'm gonna start dressing like her."

I snorted. My mom caught it. Of course she did.

"Who's that?"

"Erin," I said, already bracing.

Another pause. "And where are you two exactly?"

"In Dallas," I said. "We're going to a show tonight."

''A show,," she repeated. "That wouldn't happen to include a certain boy with a postcard, would it?"

I inhaled like the room had suddenly lost oxygen. "Yeah," I said quietly. "Yeah, he's here."

From the couch, Erin shouted, "And he's a lot cuter in person!"

There was a beat of silence on the other end. Then my mom let out the tiniest laugh. "You don't have to lie to me, Collin. I'm not your father."

I blinked at the phone like it had said something impossible. She wasn't mad. She wasn't giving me the lecture about good girls and caution and practical futures.

She was... teasing me?

"I just didn't want you to worry," I said, voice softer. "It wasn't exactly planned."

"Neither were you," she said, with a wry smile in her tone. "But look how good that turned out."

My eyes burned a little.

"You're okay?" she asked gently.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm good."

"Is he?"

My stomach flipped. "He's... different. Not in a bad way. Just... real."

Another pause. "Derek was real, too."

I knew she didn't mean it as a comparison, but it still hit like one.

"Derek was..." I exhaled. "Safe."

"He was."

She didn't say it like a compliment. More like a fact. Like "safe" meant "easy." "Predictable." "Familiar."

"But safe isn't the same as right," she added. "I just want you to be happy, sugar. Really happy. The kind that makes you feel like your insides are dancing."

I smiled, even though she couldn't see it. "Yeah," I said. "I think I'm getting there."

"Good," she said. "Because the way your voice sounds? I haven't heard that version of you in a long time."