DAMAGED

KAT

The lights have a funny way of turning into colored balls that hover just out of reach when you walk down the makeshift maze of a music festival. My blood was hot and pulsing through me like a fever, the more I drank the stronger the heat. I wanted something that drove all the heat out, cold words or cold hands gripping the monster I couldn't shake. Why had I said those things to Court, why did I always throw punches? I had been looking for him, to apologize for the weirdness and to tell him I didn't want to pretend. I just wanted to change rooms, towns, and the skin I was in. I didn't want to pretend that I had anything in me that was good when I didn't. There was no hiding all the scars or that I was unashamed of them. The only place I was any good ever was when I was on stage, when I wore what I was supposed to be for the people who believed the lie to be truth. I was good at lying to everyone because it was easy to wear a lie and to later change into another one. The lie was that my father's passion ran through my genes, it was his talent clearly but the passion wasn't there. He had left me as his legacy holder; how some drugged up punk had ever broken the mold to touch this many people baffled me still. He had been a dirty poet with rage and a microphone. I wasn't a political billboard but they saw his beliefs painted all over my face anyways.

The world was swaying like water, two more drinks and I would go under. I dropped down into the grass by the stage where the acoustic chords pulled me back out of my lie and into myself. This was easier to love. This music didn't leave me empty and alone. Punk was a loud wound that bled me dry nightly. I could never hear it or sing it and just be me; I would always be the daughter of Lane Hale. I gathered it up and drank it down while the others wandered around me and the lovers groped in the shadows by the stage. The grass felt good when I laid back on it with the blur of legs by my face and the stars above. Everything could be beautiful if I had not let it get so messy, my drunkenness sloppy.

"Why are you on the ground?" I grimaced at the way his voice interrupted the absorbance of the universe around me. I have never been so agitated to have someone invade my space, why was he here? I just wanted the music, the grass beneath me, and the stars. I sat up and everything shifted and rolled slowly back into place.

"Did Joe hire you?" He stared down at me with his brow furrowed, either he was confused or I was hallucinating expressions. I closed my eyes for a second and the grass pulled me back down. His hands under my arms pulled me back to eye level.

"Why would you think Joe hired me?" The puzzlement was in his tone and not just in his eyes. Even drunk I couldn't understand how he didn't understand any of this until I thought about the fact that I barely knew him. Why didn't he think of that when he came up and bothered me? Why was he mothering me right now?

"Why would JOE hire me?" The puzzlement replaced with an urgency that couldn't connect with anything that made sense in my brain right now. Didn't he get it, I was a disaster and Joe had on occasion tried to contain the collateral damage.

"He has done it before. A few years ago when I was spiraling he hired someone to roadie for us. I thought he was just a cool guy but Joe didn't notice he had a journalism degree. I didn't notice anything but his face and what he made me feel, safe. I wouldn't be surprised if in his old age Joe tried to repeat the same mistake." My head started swimming backwards.

"Well no one is paying me to pick your drunk ass up off the grass. Judging by your boy Joe's face earlier I would say he has given up. He went on ahead. I care because I'm human. I have compassion, it's a finite amount but I have it. We are going to weave our way through this crowd and get an Uber or something. We have a travel day tomorrow. Go vegetarian one night, it won't kill you. There will be hearts to gnash on in the next town." His words were like whispers as I stood precariously with his arm wrapped around my waist. This would embarrass me in the morning. I spent a lot of mornings feeling embarrassed.