I can’t go on with the charades anymore. My costume is threadbare. And anything else my heart conceives is just going to be taken from me. They’re going to take it all. Like any of it even matters.

And that’s the cruelest joke: I know what’s important, now, finally, and I can’t have it.

But do you know what? The universe works in mysterious ways. Two years staring at the blank page and I finally had a break through. I can finish the album. I have the final pieces and they’re my best yet.

Exile. Anthem. Encore.

I finally know what to write about, thanks to you.

But first I have to get the house in order. These songs, these gifts are too precious to let the bastards steal.

I’m going to hide the tapes. And then I may have to do something drastic to clean up this mess. Or maybe I’ll just mess it up more, so much mess that we just drown beneath it.

“Whoa. Drown?”

“I know,” Caleb answers quietly.

It feels good to write to you. I can’t trust anyone else.

Maybe with some luck, years from now, we’ll go together to see Vic, and get a Reuben with pickles. Then get a kiss from Daisy and search for a hidden yesterday.

For now, though, while I die in the spotlights tonight, at least I’ll know that you’re sleeping peacefully, unaware of me.

We are far comets, on impossible journeys. Maybe some day our paths will cross, and we’ll find each other in all that dark.

—E

I sit back, heart racing. “Wow. Not all of that made sense to me, but . . .” I glance at Caleb, and can’t resist looking around to see if anyone is close enough to hear. “This is obviously written to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think this is a suicide note? That he—”

“Meant to drown?” Caleb shakes his head. “That didn’t happen for another four months. But he thought something bad was going to happen to him.”

“He says, they’re after me. Who do you think he meant?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was no accident that this bag ended up in Randy’s car. Do you think Eli hoped someday this would get to you?”

Caleb just nods, eyes on his yogurt.

“And then . . .” I look back at the letter. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying? About hidden things?”

“Have you ever seen the old tracklist,” asks Caleb, “from Into the Ever & After, the album they were working on when Eli died?”

“I remember hearing about it. There were missing songs, right?”

Caleb taps the letter with his finger. “The three track titles were ‘Exile,’ ‘Anthem for Penelope,’ and ‘Encore to an Empty Room.’ He was working on them.”

“But he wanted to hide them,” I add. “He didn’t trust . . . who? Band mates? Drug dealers?”

Caleb shrugs. “I think he wanted me to have them.”

I look over the letter again. “What do you think he meant by Vic and Reuben with pickles? Daisy and all that?”

“I don’t know. I did searches for those words, combined with Eli and Allegiance to North and everything, but there was nothing.” Caleb suddenly slaps the table. “He was stoned when he wrote it. The whole thing might just be nonsense.”

“But the songs might be real, Caleb. These tapes might be out there.”

“Yeah,” Caleb says quietly. “If they are, I have to find them.”

I take his hand. I worry about getting his hopes up. Hidden tapes from his long-dead dad? How likely is it that they even exist? And if they do, how likely is it that they’re even still out there? It’s all hard to believe, especially considering this is the same guy who bailed on his band during the biggest tour of their lives, who literally went AWOL for two months. Who went swimming off the Santa Monica pier while high and wearing cowboy boots.

But seeing the look in Caleb’s eyes, I decide to save all that worry. “Where do you want to start looking?”

Caleb shrugs. “I have no idea. I looked through this”—he reaches into the bag again and pulls out a paperback copy of On the Tip of Your Tongue—“but only a little. Maybe there are clues in earlier letters.”

I look at the cover. There is Eli, along with Kellen, Parker, and Miles, and they’re all glamming at the camera, tongues out, only instead of being decked out in leather and makeup like a metal band, they’re wearing loose flannels and all have scruffy beards. They look like they’re having a blast.

“Yeah, hard to believe they hated each other by the end,” says Caleb.

The Eli on the cover looks so young, silly, and carefree. The one in the letter is so full of regret, so weary.

“Are we going to tell the rest of the band?” I ask.

“No. Definitely not.”

“But wouldn’t it be good to get their help? They all seem like good guys.”

Caleb’s face darkens. “We don’t know if we can trust them yet.”

I’m not sure I agree about that, but I’m fine keeping it just between us for now. “Did you tell your mom?”

“No,” says Caleb. “She made up her mind about Dad a long time ago. I think she’d definitely shoot this down.”

As he stows the letter away again, I let my thoughts unspool. Something big has been on my mind since the moment I finished reading the letter. “If we found these songs, Caleb, I mean . . . we’re talking about the lost songs of Eli White. It would be . . . huge. Can you imagine if we performed them—”

“No,” Caleb snaps. “This isn’t about profiting off my dead father’s songs.”

I recoil. It didn’t seem like such a threatening idea when I was thinking it, but clearly Caleb is on edge. “Hey, come on. I wasn’t talking about money. I just meant more like . . . You’re his son, the perfect person to play them. And every band needs a break. This would be huge exposure for—”

“Summer, I said NO.” Caleb lurches to his feet. He grabs his bag, knocking his empty dish to the ground in the process. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Caleb, stop.”

“You’re managing me again and that is exactly not what I need. I just needed you to listen.”

I stand up, too, and try to brush off the sting of his words. “Caleb, I did listen, I’m just trying to help.”

Caleb is silent, staring out toward the street. “Can we walk?” he finally says.

We throw out our bowls and walk up the sidewalk, not touching. I want to reach for his hand, but suddenly I don’t feel sure. This is the second time today that Caleb has accused me of managing him when I thought I was trying to help.

Was I wrong to jump right to the idea of what to do with the songs? Or was that a completely normal thing to think about? I know this must be hard for him; even the idea that he has a dad is a new one. But if we actually found those songs, how could we not release them to the world? Isn’t hiding them away just as selfish as profiting from them? There’s no doubt that people would want to hear them.

And . . . with the lost songs by Allegiance to North, you could write your own ticket. Any band would kill for that kind of break. You wouldn’t need some heartless record label like Candy Shell to come along and sweet-talk you.

But maybe that’s more about me than about Caleb.

Hello, complicated.

We eventually settle into trivial stories about relationship drama involving a few bands at school. When we say good night, he kisses me: same lips, same tongues, but somehow now there is distance. I refuse Caleb’s offer of a ride and as he leaves me at the bus stop, I hate this new feeling that I have. Now that these songs exist, I worry that nothing in our relationship can be just us anymore.

8

MoonflowerAM @catherinefornevr 7m


This just in! Dangerheart may have found a bass player! I guess Hot Chocolate was right! #ibelieveinmiracles #nottheyousexythingpart

I am halfway to practice when Caleb’s text arrives.

I think we have our bassist.

I reply: No way! Who?

But then nothing.

I didn’t even realize that we had any bass tryouts today. Someone must have been referred to the band directly. At this point, with only four days until the Trial, we’d come to terms with the fact that Dangerheart would be playing its first gig bass-less, with Jon using an octave pedal to fill in the sonic hole. We did try out one person on Saturday, but he turned out to be a forty-year-old guy named Rod who wore leather pants and claimed he could still “rock it on to the break of dawn.” Next.

The band has been sounding good, regardless. And Caleb and I are past the awkwardness of the other night. Sunday evening, we met up at Sacred Cow, an Indian place in the center of town and read through On the Tip of Your Tongue, looking for any clues about those strange references in Eli’s letter. We found nothing, but we did find two amazing quotes:

I guess that’s why you should never eat sushi on a trapeze.


—PARKER, ON HURLING ONSTAGE AFTER A VIDEO SHOOT FOR THE SINGLE “SUBSURFACE REFLECTIONS”

And:

That album caught on so fast. It was like ear lube.


—ELI, ON THE RELEASE OF THE BREAKS

“Ear lube” made us laugh. A lot.

We also read a lot of darker stuff about Eli’s stints in and out of rehab, and a time he got arrested for disorderly conduct on Sunset Boulevard. This was less funny. He ran out of a bar bathroom and down a street convinced he was being chased by the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis, and he was screaming the lyrics to “Great Balls of Fire” at the top of his lungs. And his pants were apparently still in the bathroom.