“Sounds like you have a lot of thinking to do.”
I laugh. “Yeah, but where do I start?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She just sits and stares into the dregs of her coffee for a long time, thinking. “Start here, with you and me. I’m glad you’re back. And…for what it’s worth to you, I forgive you. I’m sorry things worked out the way they did…or, at least, I’m sorry you got hurt. I can’t be sorry for finding Oz, but I’m sorry you got hurt in the process. I never wanted to hurt you, I just didn’t know. If you’d said something years before, maybe—but there’s no sense rehashing the past. You’re my oldest friend. I’ve known you literally my entire life, and the past…what, almost two years? It’s been hard without you. I’ve missed you. We all have. So…you don’t have to confide your secrets in me, but just know that I’m here. I’ll listen. I’m your friend, and I love you. Like a—not like a sister, but—like a friend, I guess. Like family, I love you. I want you to be happy. I want us to put the past behind us, okay?”
I nod. “Thank you.” I meet her eyes, and she’s not the only one with emotion rife in her eyes. “And Kylie? I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. Maybe someday I can meet with Oz and he and I can sort out our shit.”
Her eyes shine. “I know he’d like that a lot. He doesn’t have a lot of family, and he doesn’t make friends easily, so if you and he could—patch things, I guess, it’d be wonderful to see him have his cousin in his life.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Kylie digs her phone out of her purse and glances at the time. “I’ve got studio time in a few minutes, so I’ve got to go. But let’s do this again, okay? Soon?”
I stand up and we hover awkwardly, and then we both laugh and give in to hugging. And it’s good to hug her. “Yeah, soon.”
She doesn’t let go right away, though. “And Ben? All I’ll say is this: if I don’t get to call you Benji anymore, you’d damn well better make sure she deserves to use the nickname I gave you.”
I rub her arms and then I have to let go. “Yeah, well…I guess I’ll just have to see how shit shakes loose, right?”
“Right.” She moves past me, waving. But then she stops once more and turns back. “And Ben, do yourself a favor: go on YouTube and look up a band called Echo the Stars. A girl’s music…it says a lot about her.” And then she’s gone in a flutter of khaki skirts and clicking boot heels.
I go home, up to my old bedroom, and I flip open my laptop. I type “Echo the Stars” into the YouTube search bar, click on the first video that pops up, a song called “Only the Moon.” It’s clearly a handheld video camera on a tripod set up in the back of a bar somewhere on Lower Broadway.
Echo, her blond hair down and curled into loose spirals, stands at a microphone center stage. A guy stands to her right with a mandolin, lank brown hair in his blue eyes. Another guy stands to her left with a banjo in his hands and an acoustic guitar on a stand behind him. There’s another guy with a fiddle behind them standing beside the drummer, an electric guitar on a stand next to him, and a female upright bassist with her own microphone on the other side of the drummer. Then there’s the drummer himself, who has an elaborate setup, a huge multi-tiered drum kit in front of him with an array of hand drums to his left, and a didgeridoo leaning against the wall on his right.
Judging by the variety of instruments, I have no clue what kind of music they’re going to play, but I’m already fascinated.
I hit play, and there’s the sound of applause dying out as Echo thanks the crowd. The mandolin player picks at the strings, adjusts a tuner, and then he and Echo glance at each other and exchange nods.
“Okay, this is ‘Only the Moon.’ It’s one of our originals,” she says.
The drummer swivels away from the drums and takes the didgeridoo, inhales deeply, purses his lips, and blows into the instrument. A deep, buzzing sound rises, the kind of sound you can feel in your chest even through the computer speakers, and it continues for a long moment, unbroken. And then the guy playing the didg takes a breath, pauses, and starts again, this time somehow making the instrument produce a high-pitched, buzzier sound, and the mandolin joins in, picking a high, circular counterpoint. The banjo player has traded that instrument for his guitar, and he starts in with a drum-like chord: thummmm—thummmm—thummmm. Next is the electric guitar and the upright bass, finishing the melody.
Echo is last, sucking in a deep breath, and then she lets out a long, high, wordless wail that carries and carries until she lets the note trail off. And then she sings, in a voice of starlight and angelfire and aching purity:
“It’s a long, long road to walk alone,
A dark and winding path that I must roam,
And I’ve only the moon to keep me company,
Only the moon to watch me on my way.
A broken heart chose this path,
A heart cracked by grief sent me this way.
And I’ve only the moon to sing me down the road,
Only the moon to warm me in this cold.
My feet falter, my tears drip,
Fall like rain, so much salt on my lip.
And I’ve only the moon to watch me weep,
Only the moon my secrets to keep.
I left you there,
I knew your heart,
And I left you there,
With only the moon to light your way,
With only the moon to hear you say,
Come back, come back, come back.
Oh, oh, oh, oh,
I’ve only the moon to sing me down the road,
Only the moon to warm me in the cold,
Only the moon to watch me weep,
Only the moon my secrets to keep,
Only the moon to hear me say,
Come back, come back, come back…”
And then she repeats the refrain, “only the moon” in the same grief-wrought wail, the instruments all playing in a crashing clash of colliding sounds, the didgeridoo puffing and buzzing like the breath of a predator, the mandolin circling and circling high rolling circuitous notes, the acoustic guitar providing a fast chugging base-rhythm, the electric guitar mirroring Echo’s sung melody, the bass thrumming beneath it all louder and louder like the rumble of distant thunder, until all the instruments fade away and all that remains is Echo’s haunting wail and the reverberating bass.
Echo’s hands lift to hover by her face as she holds the final note for an impossible length of time, fluttering as she runs out of breath, and then she lets the note go and the bass is silenced. Echo slumps forward, clinging to the mic stand as if about to collapse, head hanging, hair falling in a blond curtain around her face, and just before the video cuts to the sound of deafening applause, I could swear I see her shoulders shake with sobs.