He shrugs. “I think so. She said she wanted to. I got her a pass.”
“And so the Roxle Coaster continues,” I say.
Cole stares at me like he’s trying to set me on fire with his eyes. “Thewhat?”
“It’s what the fans call you,” I explain, ignoring the death glare. “Roxle is like, Roxanne and Cole combined, and then they call you the Roxle Coaster because you’re always so up and down.”
Matt bursts out laughing so hard he clutches his stomach. “Oh my god,” he gasps, “how do you even know that?”
“Uh, Molly used to be kind of a Sherbrooke Station fangirl.”
I accidentally found Sounds of the Station open on her laptop one day, and when she got all defensive about it, I bugged her until she admitted to being one the people who started the site. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell the band, even though I tried to make her understand how impressed they’d be. That website gave us hope for our career back when we were still struggling to get people to listen to our music, never mind actually pay for it.
“Do they have a name for Ace and Stéphanie?” Matt asks me.
“Yeah, they call them Stacie. You and Kay are Kitty Katt.”
Matt looks very disturbed, but Ace nearly kills himself laughing. Even Cole cracks a smile.
“What would you and Molly be?” Ace wheezes. “Molp?”
“That sounds like someone gagging.” Matt pretends to cough. “Molp. Molp.”
We get called back to our instruments after that, and the sound check continues. My microphone seems to be fixed, and we rehearse a few songs before we’re kicked off the stage just before the doors open up. The place isn’t all that big of a venue, and there’s barely room for us backstage, but we’re told to stay out of view from the audience in case we start some kind of mob.
Nothing boosts your confidence like getting told just the sight of you can turn a crowd into a riot.
“The girls are here,” Matt announces, looking down at his phone. “They all arrived together. They want to watch from the front, so they’re not coming backstage until the end of the show.”
Code Viagra, of all people, have the first set of the night. We all bump fists before they go on. Truth be told, they put on a pretty good show, and the crowd is amped up for the second performance from some electronic duo. I angle myself to get a view of the audience, but I can’t spot any sign of Molly or the other girls from where I’m standing.
When the MC announces our set, I forget all about anything except the chanting crowd and the energy that starts to crackle through the air, making my hair stand on end. This is what it’s always like when we play. This is why people keep coming back for more. Something almost eerie fills the room whenever we take control of it, like people slip into this vortex where there’s no yesterday or tomorrow. There’s no up or down, no right or wrong, nomeand noyou. There’s justthis, and it’s enough to make you feel like you’re dying and flying all at once.
We take the stage in darkness. After so many shows, it’s a ritual for us now: the silent, slow walk to our instruments. I breathe in the anticipation on everyone’s tongues, and then I play a few low, wavering notes on the synthesiser. Ace echoes them on his guitar a few moments later. The crowd is completely silent.
Above us, the Sherbrooke Station sign we bring to all our shows—the one that’s made to look like a metro stop marker—flickers a few times before its blue light glows.
Then we start fucking thrashing.
It’s only when we pause after our third song, sweat dripping down my neck and chest as the crowd roars for more, that I remember to look for Molly. I find her right away, in the jostling front row, clinging to her spot on the railing for dear life. This place doesn’t even usuallyhavea railing, but I’m glad they set one up. These people look ready to rush the stage.
Molly’s wild hair is what I looked for when I scanned the front row to find her, but it’s not what makes her stand out tonight. Her whole body seems to be lit up, like she’s putting out some kind of force field that makes her look more alive than anyone around her. Her teeth catch the blue light spilling off the stage, and when her eyes shift to meet mine, I swear I can hear hurricanes howling and buildings collapsing and a hundred thousand speakers spilling out waves of sound so loud they burst.
It’s terrifying, and I don’t know what scares me more: the things I feel when I’m with her, or the emptiness that creeps in when I’m not.
She and I are a language I don’t know how to speak yet, so I pour everything I’m feeling into another language, one I know better than any other. I launch into our next song before the guys have even signalled they’re ready, and I play harder than I’ve ever played before. I work the keyboard like it’s her body, like if I hit the right notes at the right time, I can make her come apart in the crowd. I stare her down as I step to the centre of the stage, right in the middle of our last song. Ace backs out of the spotlight, and I pull my harmonica from my pocket to begin the solo I always perform during this track.
The crowd whoops and screams, their cries rising so loud they almost block out the music every time I let it swell. I fuckingwailon that thing, the solo getting more complex and intense than anything I’ve done on the harmonica before. I didn’t even know Icouldplay this way, but my mouth and my hands are controlling themselves now, carrying me along for the ride, demanding I call up the air they need from somewhere deep in my lungs.
We’re supposed to play the chorus one more time after my solo, but when I finally finish with a long, wavering note, there’s a split second of complete silence. I glance beside me and see Ace standing there, guitar hanging off his neck and his jaw slack as he stares at me. I don’t know who starts the applause, but it goes from hesitant to deafening in record time. When I search for Molly in the crowd again, she’s caught in a sea of raised and clapping hands, but her own are still clenched around the railing.
She’s looking up at me with eyes like holy fire, the kind of flames that make you beg for more even as you burn. Every muscle in her body seems like it’s screaming out my name, and I face her with a heaving chest too full to leave room for fear.
* * *
Later that night,we’re all packed into a grungy dive bar in the Mile End, a few blocks from the theatre. There was an official after party at a club, but Sherbrooke Station has reached the point where showing up at after parties just ends with us getting mobbed. We tried to help pack all our shit up tonight, but Nico said we were becoming a security hazard and shooed us out the back door. The girls met up with us a block away, and Kay suggested the dive bar.
I have my arm resting on Molly’s shoulders where she’s sitting next to me. My body turns into a sparkplug whenever she shifts against it. I know she feels it too, but we’re keeping it together. For now. Every minute that ticks by makes the sticky bathroom door in the back corner look more and more inviting.
