JELLIE: A Band Story

05. Numb (Cover)

This time around, even though Elise was over ten minutes early, Jen was already there.

The place she had invited her to looked like a regular apartment complex from the outside, but Jen had explained that it was actually used by artists and musicians to be able to create in peace. Their drummer—Felix, Elise remembered his name was—had found it through his connections, and the band had a small space reserved for them in the basement on Tuesday and Saturday evenings.

The door was unlocked when Elise stepped inside, the way description Jen had given her easy to follow. Descending down the run-down staircase into the basement, Elise walked past a row of heavy doors with their yellow paint peeling off them in places. From some came the sound of muffled music, but most were quiet at the moment.

Spotting the door whose number Jen had given her—number 021, like their age, she had said, easy to remember—Elise tentatively turned the doorknob and found it unlocked again. From the inside came a single voice: Jen's voice, singing along to another canned version of a song Elise recognized.

"Tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface..."

Slowly, careful not to disturb her, Elise slipped in through the door. Jen hadn't noticed her at all. She kept singing into an old microphone wrapped up in silver tape, her voice reverberating off the concrete walls, too loud and too furious for the cramped room with the single dusty window.

"Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes..."

Hovering in the doorframe, Elise held her breath. Once again Jen was pouring her all into the song, but this time something felt strange. It made sense that her tone would match the mood of the song; Numb by Linkin Park was a dark, angry number filled with frustration and despair, and yet it seemed to Elise that she was getting much too into it. It wasn't the mood of the original that Jen was trying to match; this despair felt like entirely her own, her voice trembling as she sang, always on the verge of breaking to pieces.

"Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control?
'Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you..."

Jen's hands dug into the microphone, her eyes tightly closed, her hair falling into her face every time she bent forward, pouring her heart and soul into every note and every lyric. It was beautiful, beautiful in the way all of Jen's singing was—and yet Elise didn't feel like she was watching a concert. She felt like she was watching the artistically rendered version of an emotional breakdown, and she had no idea if she should stay or leave.

Finally the song ended, and Jen stood with her eyes closed for a few more moments, catching her breath. Then finally she looked up, and Elise instantly felt like a creep who'd been caught spying.

"Whoa! Where did you come from?" Jen spluttered, instantly bouncing back to her usual self, though to Elise it seemed like her eyes looked wetter than usual. She blinked it away. "Wait, how long have you been here?"

"For pretty much the whole song, actually," Elise admitted sheepishly. "You were getting so into it, I didn't wanna disturb you."

"Really? Wow, I didn't know I had an audience." Jen cracked a grin, and the last of the shadows disappeared from her face. "If I'd known, I would've put on a performance!"

Elise laughed awkwardly and looked away. Someone braver, or nosier, might have brought up the obvious now: that it didn't look like Jen had been singing only for fun, more like someone trying to vent, and performing for an audience must have been the last thing on her mind. Someone particularly brave might even have asked if she was doing okay. Elise wasn't brave when it came to such things. She held the belief that if someone wanted to talk to her about a difficult topic, they'd come to her themselves, and pressing the matter would only make them uncomfortable.