Chapter Nine
Nick
We left around noon after we’d eaten breakfast and hung out in the hotel for a bit. We dropped Drew and Mike off at the airport on the way out of Paris, then it was just me, Brian, and the open road ahead of us as we drove northeast toward Frankfurt. The sun was out, shining off the snow that lined the freeway, but Brian was driving so I was free to lean back in my seat, sunglasses on, and ignore the blinding reflection of light on ice crystals.
I ran my hands over the auxiliary output cable I’d strung from the car’s stereo to my iPod and flicked my thumb over the menu on the player. I was constructing a playlist of songs I knew Brian knew. I had a very vague plan for how to begin my personal take on Brian’s therapy and this was one of the first steps. I’d get him to sing in a place where he was less stressed, like there was no pressure, just to be sure that it wasn’t entirely stress related. Then, we’d move on to some of the exercises his therapist had taught him, just in a more Nickified way. I’d teach the guy how to sing all over again if I had to, the same way I’d been taught when I was a kid.
I had read this really cool article on Google the night before about these twins in Boston who participated in a singing therapy program to help repair brain damages after one of them had a stroke. The kid hadn’t been able to speak for over a year ‘til someone up there realized that singing and talking were very different neurologically, and decided to give it a whirl getting the kid to sing. Lo and behold, singing was possible even when speech wasn’t because it was controlled by a different part of the brain. Maybe, I’d reasoned, we could teach that part of the brain to be stronger than the part that didn’t properly control his vocal chords anymore. And if Lauren had taught me anything, it was that strength comes from repeated training, from doing something. You can’t sit around and theorize about it. You gotta do it.
So I pressed play.
Brian looked up as the first bars of Thriller filled the car as we shot up the Interstate, a look of excitement gleaming in his eyes.
An hour and two McDonalds stops later, we were jamming down the highway still, a cup clasped in Brian’s hand as he gripped the wheel with the other and I chewed on a handful of fries as I danced in my seat to the beat of Wham!
George Michael, eat your heart out you bastard, I thought, ‘cos Brian and I were killin’ it.
“You take the grey skies out of my way-ayyy,” Brian sang, bopping his head.
“You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day,” I slid through the notes, popping fries at the end.
“Turned a bright spark into a flame,” Brian continued, “My beats per minute never been the same….”
“'Cause you're my lady,” I sang to him.
“And I'm your fool,” Brian answered.
“It makes me crazy when you act so cruel,” I grinned over at him, “Come on, baby --”
“Let's not fight!”
“We'll go dancing--”
Then our voices blended:
“Everything will be alright!
Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that high
Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin’ on going solo
Wake me up before you go-go
Take me dancing tonight…”
Brian tilted his head back, fully immersed into the moment, and belted out, “Wanna hit that hiiiiiiiiiiiigh…”
I grinned as he continued on singing the next repetition of the chorus by himself. I stared at him as I chewed the little crunchy fries at the bottom of the bag (you know, the best ones). His voice didn’t crack at all as he sang carefree as anything, hands beating against the steering wheel, his eyes dancing with excitement, face flushed. I licked the salt from my lips.
Maybe this would be even easier than I’d thought.
He looked over when he realized I wasn’t singing. “Hey, why’d you stop for?” he asked, reaching for the volume knob. “We were doing good.”
I nodded, “Yeah we were,” I replied. “You were.”
Brian thought about it for a moment, “Well I mean I’ve made it longer than a song without it breaking before,” he pointed out.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But still. It’s a start.”
Brian nodded, “Yeah.” He hesitated, then he grinned over at me a moment. “Thanks for… for deciding to help me,” he said after a few moments. “I mean, it’s been getting -- well it’s been hard,” he admitted, “I mean, picturing, you know, going on with my voice like this.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about --”
I shrugged, “That’s what friends are for,” I said. I patted him on the back and turned to toss my empty fry package into the little trash bag we’d started on the floor as the next song started.
Brian
Nick was just so damn proud of himself that when he interrupted me, I couldn’t go back to finish my sentence. I’d been about to tell him what I’d been thinking about. Just incase it didn’t work out and I did have to leave the band after all he’d have some time to get comfortable with the idea. But how could I bust his excited, egotistical bubble? He just looked so pleased… his smile was so wide… and it’d been such a long time since I’d seen him smile like that…
So on we drove, singing along to various pop songs that he’d loaded onto his iPod. Everthing from Maroon 5 to Katy Perry to Neil Diamond and back again. We sang about phone booths and fireworks and blue jeans all the way to Germany and when we crossed the border, Nick and I stopped at a rest area to go inside the little welcome building so he could use the restroom. I stood outside and stared at one of those little kiosks of brochures as he went, picking up random booklets and flipping through the tiny pages, looking at pictures of various tourist attractions.
My phone vibrated and played an old country song that reminded me of Kevin, his ringtone. I cleared my throat, “Hey,” I greeted him, staring down at a brochure about a cathedral in Berlin that boasted itself as a WWII historical site.
“Hey,” Kevin’s voice was slow.
Slower than usual, I mean.
“What’s wrong?” I asked because whenever Kevin talked slower than usual, even, there was something wrong.
“Nick got into a bar fight?”
I hesitated, “Well. Not exactly a bar fight,” I said, pausing. “I mean, he got punched in a bar, and I guess it was the result of a - a kind of fight, but -- not like… a lot… really. Why?” I realized what was weird about Kevin asking that, “How did you know about that?”
“The news,” Kevin answered. “It’s on the news. Apparently some photographer witnessed it. Nick comes off as a real asshole the way the story’s told. Adds beautifully to the -uh- alleged threats he delivered last week.”
I sighed. “It wasn’t like that,” I said, defending Nick.
“You know how the media is,” Kevin replied. “Anyways. You might wanna tell him what’s up before someone else does or he finds out on his own. His mother’s been talking to E News. They posted some shit about her saying he needs anger management classes, saying this is how his father started out before he got abusive.” Kevin’s voice was tense.
I ran my hand over my face, flattening my nose and groaned as my lips pulled tight under my palm. “Damn it,” I muttered. Nick’s good mood was as good as out the window with this new information.
He came out of the bathroom and started walking toward me, his eyes still sparkling with amusement from our ride thus far. We still had a couple hours to go. “Look, Kev, I gotta go,” I said. “But I’ll tell him.” I hung up before Kevin could answer because the last thing I needed was Nick overhearing anything we were saying. I shoved the phone into my pocket.
“Who was that?” Nick asked. He glanced at the brochure I was holding and made a face.
“Kevin.” I answered. Then, to change the subject, I waved the brochure at him, “Not a fan of the fancy church visit?”
“God would fuckin’ smite me if I walked into a church,” Nick answered, heading for the door of the welcome center, “Instant lightening bolt to the heart.” He mimicked stabbing himself in the heart and made a noise something like I imagine a strangled cat would sound like. I assume it was supposed to be an electrocution sound effect but it got lost somewhere in translation.
I stood there looking down at the brochures in my hand for a moment, even as Nick went out the door into the cold, where his breath floated away from his mouth in a cloud. My mind spun over what Kev had told me. Nick came back to the door. “Dude, B-Rok. You comin’?”
“Sorry.” I shoved the brochures back into a random slot on the kiosk and rushed out after him.
Nick
It was my turn to drive and Brian was sitting in the passenger seat. The radio was nothing but a dull hiss of static background noise on the speakers turned down so low we could barely hear it. I held onto the wheel, stealing quick glances at Brian’s hunched form in the next seat as he stared at his hands on his knees.
“You a’ight?” I asked him, “You’ve been quiet since the welcome center.”
“Yeah-huh,” he replied. He paused, still staring at his hands.
“Are you sure, dawg?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yep, uh-huh,” he nodded.
I sniffed. “Well then, please tell me what exactly is soooo fascinating about your hands then, will ya?”
Brian looked up, confused, “What?”
“You’ve been staring at your hands for about a half hour now,” I answered.
“I have?”
“Okay, what the hell is wrong?” I asked, “Seriously?”
Brian licked his lips. “Okay. I’m gonna tell you about something, but you gotta not freak out, okay?”
“Okay…” I was a little scared. I obviously was not gonna like whatever it was he was about to tell me or else he wouldn’t have attached this disclaimer to it. I braced myself.
“So. Kevin called,” he said.
I nodded slowly, “Okay.”
Brian stared at me a moment. “Okay. So there was a photographer at the club last night. Your, uh, the -- the fight - that was on the news.”
I groaned, “I must look like a pussy.”
I went down so quick. It hadn’t been so much of a fight as much as a brutal ass beating.
Or face beating as the case may be.
Brian cleared his throat, “Not exactly a - pu-- wuss, no,” he said, editing my language.
I glanced at him.
“It was kinda spun to be a little more… uh… well, like… I guess they made it look like a more, uh, involved fight.”
I raised an eyebrow. “They made me look good?”
“Well. Not good...”
“Brian, cut to the chase, please,” I said.
“Your mom toldenewsyouneedangermanagementtherapy,” he spit the words out all strung together like one big long word. Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious ain’t got shit on Brian’s new word.
All I managed to pull out of it was your mom.
I pulled the car over, though. I could feel my muscles tightening. Cars whizzed by us as we slowed on the shoulder of the highway. “Excuse me?”
Brian took a deep breath, “Your mom told E News that you… you might need… anger management therapy.” He cringed.
I ran my hand through my hair.
“Nick, her opinion doesn’t really matter, though, right? Like the fans know she’s full of… of bull, right? So why’s it matter,” his voice was desperate for me to agree.
I shook my head and turned to face the wheel. “Well fuck,” I cussed and I pressed my forehead to my white knuckles, which were gripping the wheel. “Fuck.”
Brian frowned. “You okay?”
“No I’m not fuckin’ okay, for Christ’s sakes,” I snapped. “Fuckin’ my mother’s always gotta be doing some shit ass thing and --”
Brian frowned.
“Yanno what, fuck. This is bullshit.” I shook my head, “Anger management my ass. I’ll fuckn’ anger management anybody wanna say that crap to my face.”
“Not exactly the strongest argument against the accusation,” Brian mumbled.
I scowled.
Brian
Nick stayed quiet for over ten minutes following that. I sat there fidgeting, feeling awkward in the silence. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t tell if the tension radiating from Nick was aimed at me or a general anger at the world, so I didn’t quite dare to speak. I was afraid to ruin our almost-one-whole-day-without-fighting streak. It sounds stupid but that was kind of a monumental streak for Nick and I at the time. A whole day without us fighting was like a year in normal people time.
I thought back to times back in the day, when Nick would be mad at me and I’d diffuse it and we’d end up sitting and laughing instead of fighting. I needed something like that to do now. But honestly, I wasn’t really sure, even then, what it was I did that cheered Nick up so well. Back then, I really had been kind of like a Nick Whisperer, like all his girlfriends always thought. But those were different times and also most of the things I could recall specifically doing involved stuff like random cartwheels, backflips and what not, none of which I could do in the interior of a moving vehicle.
I swallowed back some of the anxiety.
Nick sighed and shifted his hands on the wheel, his eyes glistening with frustration.
I reached for my ipod from my backpack and started sifting through songs on it until I found what I was looking for. I plugged it into the AUX cord Nick had left hanging over the rearview mirror when we’d gotten out at the welcome center. I plugged in my player and turned the volume up a little. Nick glanced at my fingers on the dial of the radio, then shifted his eyes back to the road.
I hit play.
Why do you build me up, build me up Buttercup baby just to let me down?
The music blasted through the speakers.
I stared at Nick.
He stared ahead.
I cleared my throat and jumped in a couple lines in.
“Worst of all… you never call baby when you say you will,” I sang, “But I love you still! I need yooou… more than anyone darrrlin’...”
He wasn’t biting.
Or singing, for that matter.
“You know that I have from the start…” I continued, “So build me up, buttercup, but don’t break my heart…”
Nick reached for the volume control, turning the music down again. He paused, glancing back and forth between me and the road. “Do you think she’s right? Do you think I need therapy? Am I fucked up?”
“No,” I replied quickly.
Too quickly.
Nick frowned, “You didn’t even think about it.”
“I didn’t have to,” I answered.
He sighed. “Brian, why --” he mumbled, but then he paused, contemplating whether he was gonna finish the sentence he’d set out to say.
“Why what?”
Nick chewed his lip. “Nevermind.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “New rule between us. We talk shit out. No more letting things simmer for twelve years. We talk about things. We’re gonna be those guys. No secrets, no hiding things, no lies. We tell each other everything. Deal?”
Nick’s smile spread slowly, “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Tell each other everything.” He nodded, “Deal.”
“Okay. So now why what?”
Nick took a deep breath, “Why can’t my family just either love me or, if they hate me why can’t they leave me alone?” he asked, glancing over at me.
I contemplated the question a moment, not wanting to give him a form answer like forget them or whatever. I looked over. “Maybe… maybe they only think they hate you. Maybe… maybe they love you deep down but they hate themselves too much to know it and they can’t just leave you alone because… because they don’t want to. Because they need you.”
Nick gripped the wheel tighter.
“The same reason we never left each other alone?”
Nick laughed, but it was a heavy laugh, filled with emotion. “Jesus Christ, Brian,” he said, shaking his head. He looked over at me. “Maybe.”
“I mean don’t engage them, but… maybe it’s the candle in the dark. Maybe it’s a sign that there will come a day when you’ll all understand each other again. Maybe.” I shrugged. “Just don’t let their harshness ruin you.”
“Like you didn’t let mine?” he asked. He shook his head, “You couldda quit the band like I told you to do. But you didn’t listen to me. You stuck around. And I’m glad.” He smiled brilliantly.
I bit my lip.
In retrospect… that’s when I should’ve told him.
Then none of the rest of it would’ve happened.
There's Us by Pengi
