Every Bright and Broken Thing

Chapter Three - Liam

In the morning, the pounding, throbbing, aching in my skull is almost enough to convince me to stay in bed. But duty calls.

To avoid jarring my head, I sit up slowly and swing my legs over the side of the bed, eyes fixed on the floor. I don't bother to turn on my bedside lamp – the light that filters through the window above my desk is bright enough to turn a vampire to dust as it is. My head pulses and I feel like I could vomit, but that seems like a horrible way to start the new school year, so I swallow it and take slow, deep breaths. Just like Mom taught me.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand I reach for it halfheartedly and knock it to the floor. With a groan, I stoop to retrieve it and the screen lights up with a new message from Theo: Last night was wicked, bro.

Me: Dude, the cops busted me.

Theo: Woah... How hammered were we?

Me: Too hammered.

Theo: But that's the best kind.

Me: You're not wrong.

I rub my eyes as I stand, yank my towel from the bedpost, and shuffle across my room to the bathroom. On my phone, I press play on Little Image's "Dear Orphan." Setting my phone on the bathroom counter, I strip free of my boxer shorts and turn on the shower.

The warm water soothes the chill that crawls just beneath the surface of my skin. Eyes closed, I tilt my head upward and let the water wash over my face, forcing my wild, dark brown hair into my eyes. My skin burns in the kind of way that feels good. I suck in a deep breath and hold it, my chest inflated, gut hollow. Then, I let it out. Running my fingers through my hair, I lower my eyes to trace my lean frame.

For a long time, I do nothing but breathe. It feels good. Simple. Far simpler than everything else in my life. Far simpler than keeping up appearances at school. Far simpler than being the front man of a high school band. And far, far simpler than trying to find an answer to the last question Mom ever asked me.

"If you could write one song to save your life... what would it be?" she asked, lying there in her hospital bed, body and skin fragile like porcelain, like parchment, eyes sunken but bright. Always bright. Nothing could steal that light. Even as she faced the inevitability of her own death and that of a future lost, death could not conquer the light that hid behind those green eyes.

Mom already knew my love for music. She fed that passion early on. My bookshelf is full of journals given to me for birthdays and Christmases, full of songs I wrote in my childhood and, with my brother's help, put to music. And with her question, it's almost like she knew. One song to save your life... She knew how deep the grief would run. Maybe she even knew what would happen to me that night two years ago. But I think her question was less of a question and more of a dare. She asked my brother his own question too. It was almost as if on her deathbed she was commissioning me for this mission. And it's haunted me ever since. For years, I've wrestled to articulate the lyrics. I feel them in the deep of me, but can't seem to set them to paper. A part of me feels that my failure to write the song means I've let her down. I've written a lot of songs since Theo and I started our band. But none of them are the song. For all these years, the song has been infuriatingly elusive.

Now, with a shrug and a sigh of resignation, I decide that I'll never find the song – the one that could save my life. But the deeper truth is that I'm not sure my life is worth saving anymore. All of reality has filled my life with such noise, such chaos. How could I ever hope to find that lifesaving melody in the middle of it all? It's like trying to pluck the single working string of a guitar from out of a tangle of broken ones.

There's only one line. One line that rings true. One line that stands alone, with no verse, no chorus, no melody.

I go there in my dreams.

And I write that line. Over and over. I've filled page after page with that singular, broken line. But the rest? It's yet to be written. But I've begun to think that'll probably never happen.

My headache has partially receded by the time I step out of the shower to dry off. Towel cinched tight around my waist, I wipe the steam from my bathroom mirror and catch my own gaze in the reflection. Sometimes I stare at myself and, even though I know that this is me, it doesn't feel real. For a moment, I wonder if I'm real. Because when I see myself in the mirror, I see someone I don't recognize. I see a work of fiction, a painting in a museum, a statue on a shelf, a song on the radio. I don't see the things that are felt deep inside my gut. I don't see the confusion or the regret or the weakness or...

I swallow.

Looking in the mirror, I realize I don't even see me anymore. I just see a body. Nameless, worthless. And nobody can know. Nobody can know what I see. Because then they would see it too. And if they saw what I see, they'd run.

I blink, then grab the side of the mirror and tug it open. I pull out mydeodorant and apply. Then, teeth. Last, I do my hair. This is what they'll see. They'll see what I need them to see. And that's okay with me. Lies are how we survive.