Page 6 of Final Serenade

“She started it, Mom,” Ashton whined.

“He hasn’t cleaned his room in months.” I gestured at the pile of dirty clothes on the floor by my feet and spun around to face our mother.

The air in the room became heavy with invisible threat. “Both of you!” Her finger bounced between me and my brother. She looked ruffled and disproportionate. Her face pale, jaw clenched. “Wash your hands! Dinner’s ready.” There was a certain level of creativity in the way she ignored obvious problems. Just like she ignored my commentary on the condition of Ashton’s room. Sometimes I wondered if my brother’s lack of enthusiasm and incapacity to handle simple day-to-day tasks had been inherited from her side of the family.

We gathered in the dining room a few minutes later. The silverware and plates were put out in grim silence that seemed to drag on forever, and sticking around for dinner seemed pointless, but I forced myself to behave.

“I’m not going to tolerate this anymore,” our mother said when we finished setting the table. Her arms fell to her hips and she gave us a long, exasperated stare. “You need to stop fighting.”

“I’m not even doing anything,” Ashton grumbled, dropping into a chair.

“Okay then”—I took my seat across from him—“why don’t we talk? Why don’t we have an adult conversation?” I tried hard not to sound like a cynic, but it didn’t work. My voice was a perfect blend of harsh, mean, and bitter.

“Yeah, why don’t you tell us what your problem is, sis?” Ashton tore his gaze from his plate and flashed me a classic go-fuck-yourself smile.

My problem is that you’re a lazy douche who doesn’t think about anyone but himself.

But I choked back the words and decided to be smarter this time. “Did you hear from Scott?”

No response.

“Honey?” Our mother perked up.

“Not yet.” He shook his head.

“Really?” I pressed, “Last time I checked, Scott was still hiring.”

“Oh yeah?” Ashton leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “I guess he didn’t like my application.” A shoulder shrug.

“I believe you didn’t care to fill it out,” I countered. “I talked to Scott a couple of days after I picked up the application. He said you never came.”

A frown carved into my mother’s already distraught face.

“It’s not fair!” He looked at her, probably hoping for some sort of support, but none followed. “Why does she get to do whatever she wants and I don’t?”

“How the hell did working twenty-four seven turn into doing whatever I want?!” The nerve the little bastard had. I was ready to strangle him right there and then.

“No screaming at the table.” Our mother lifted both hands in a placating manner and closed her eyes. The vein in her temple pulsed madly.

“You get to hang out with all the bands and party while I’m supposed to wash dishes in some lame ice cream shop?”

“First of all, I don’thang out. Second, I don’t party. This is work. We don’t have days off, Ashton. I think you’re disillusioned about what I do.”

“I could help out at an event.”

“No. You can’t.” My palm slapped against the tabletop. I heard my fork rattling, but all of it—the clanking of the silverware, the frustrated gasps of my mother, my brother talking under his breath—was just background noise. “I busted my ass to get where I’m am. For years. I filled out more applications than you can imagine.” I stood up from my chair because anger was boiling in my blood. “Not once has anyone granted me anything because I was someone’s friend or a relative. I earned it. You need to earn it too. Levi and I aren’t going to give you any gigs until you understand what a work ethic is and how to do what we do. And for that, you need experience, and experience doesn’t come to those who sit in their room all day.”

Blind rage washed over me. I knew what my mother was going to say next. This was the part where she always took Ashton’s side because, in her head, he’d suffered the most when our father bailed. He was the youngest and the sensitive one. I was the old, mean sister who blasted rock music all day in her room and worshiped Satan. Even when Ashton picked up a guitar and hit the black emo hair and crappy attitude phase, I was still the bad kid.

“I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to let him go with you a couple of times.” Mom’s voice squeaked to my right.

“Because he has no manners and because he doesn’t understand how to behave around the kind of people I work with.”

An embarrassing memory blazed through my brain like a torch. Ashton was fourteen. He’d begged me to take him to The Deviant event Levi and I worked. After the show, we all ended up in the VIP area. A treat from Linda. Justice Cross was doing rounds and talking to guests when Ashton asked me to introduce him. We stood, facing each other, shook hands, and briefly exchanged a few words. The entire night was surreal. At that time, Justice Cross was the biggest name on the list of musicians I’d chatted with.

My heart dropped to my stomach when I heard Ashton telling the internationally acclaimed singer I’d interviewed four hours ago that I had his poster up on my wall. And not just any poster.The kinky one.That’s what my brother called it. I felt humiliation of the worst kind. All the hard work I’d put into making sure rich, famous, arrogant men like Justice Cross took a music journalist my age seriously had been ruined in a matter of seconds.

It stung, even after all this time, and I wasn’t going to risk seven years of labor that earned me my respect in the industry to humor my brother.

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