Westbound Sign ➵ Billie Joe Armstrong

Things We Outgrow

Collin

Erin didn't ask this time.
She just showed up.

Pulled into the driveway in her car at dusk with the windows down and music leaking out like smoke. She honked once. Leaned her head out the window and yelled, "Boots or sneakers?"

I stared at her from the porch.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Smith's."
That was all she said.
Sal's was the one grungy venue slash bar a couple towns over, infamous for giving any half baked band a Friday night slot if they brought their own amps and had a drummer who showed up on time.

I should've said no.
Should've said I was tired. Or still had a paper to finish. Or that I didn't feel like watching strangers scream into microphones when I couldn't even look at a guitar case without something seizing in my chest.

But I didn't say no.

I went inside, changed into my old boots, slipped on a faded flannel over my tank top, and got in the car.

Erin played Hole on the way there.
I stared out the window, let the static between tracks smooth over my nerves.

...

Smith's smelled like beer and body spray and faint mildew. The kind of place that had never seen a mop and never would. Erin knew the bartender, because of course she did, and within minutes we were holding two cheap drinks and swaying near the back of the room, waiting for the music to start.

I felt... untethered.
Like someone had left me in the lost and found and forgotten to come back.

But then the lights dimmed, and feedback shrieked from the stage, and everything sort of... snapped into place.

The band was nothing special. A three piece outfit with a girl singer who could barely hit the notes but didn't care, and a bassist who looked like he'd slept in his car. The drummer was the only one keeping it together, but they were loud. Loud enough to rattle my ribs. Loud enough to make my head stop spinning.

They launched into their first song - some original track that sounded like a mix between L7 and someone's leftover garage demo. And I laughed.

Actually laughed.

"Holy shit," I shouted to Erin over the music, "they're terrible."

She grinned at me. "Right?!"

But the thing was - it didn't matter.
They were up there. They were loud. They were trying.

I edged a little closer to the stage. The lights were flickering in and out, painting the floor in red and blue and then darkness. The singer was thrashing her whole body into the words, not even looking at the mic half the time. I could feel the bass in my teeth.

Somewhere in the middle of their second song, something shifted.

I stopped thinking about Billie.
Not completely. But just for a second.

Stopped thinking about the motel rooftops and desert photoshoots and the feel of his mouth on mine. About how we didn't say goodbye, not really. How the last thing I said was, "I meant it," and how he didn't believe me.

I wasn't fine. Not yet. But for two minutes and thirty seven seconds, I was just a girl in a crowd with a drink in one hand and sweat on the back of her neck. Nothing aching. Nothing haunting. Nothing in pieces.

Just noise.

The song ended, and I screamed like I meant it.

Erin turned to me with wide eyes. "Who are you right now?"