Page 2 of His Sound
Beeep.Beeeeep.
My laptop starts wailing with the sound of an incoming video call. I glance at the time. My daily chat with Justine isn’t supposed to start for another ten minutes, but she’s one of those people who believes that early is on time and on time is late.
I drop into a seated position on my mattress and cross my legs, pulling the computer onto my lap and hitting the ‘Accept’ button. Justine’s face materializes on the screen, her rows of tight black braids threaded with new copper strands and pulled into a huge bun on top of her head.
“Helloooo Molly, the hottest tamale.”
Her voice comes out tinny through her microphone.
“Hey Justine, queen of the scene.”
We made that greeting up when we were seventeen and got tipsy off wine for the first time at Justine’s mom and step-dad’s wedding. For some completely unjustified and regrettable reason, it stuck.
“I like the new do,” I tell her.
“You noticed!” Her smile is quickly followed by a groan. “I hate getting my braids done, though. It takes for-fucking-ever. You look hot, by the way.”
“Oh, thanks.” I reach up to pat my cheek. “I just did a Korean face mask with snail extract in it.”
Justine shakes her head. “No, like, you literally look hot. I don’t know how you’re surviving in that place without air conditioning.”
“I’m not surviving. I’m slowly dying, day by day, hour by hour...” I flip myself onto my stomach and adjust the laptop screen. “I’m like that episode where Patrick and SpongeBob get stuck on dry land and start shrivelling up.”
“That wasn’t an episode; that was the SpongeBob movie,” Justine corrects, and then starts imitating SpongeBob’s wheezy and dehydrated voice as she begs, “Water! Water!”
This girl gets me.
We’ve been best friends since the first week of ninth grade. Justine’s parents made her take an art course to ‘balance out’ all of the math and science she loaded up on, while I had to plead with my mom to let me take the class. Justine and I sat next to each other, and when she saw some of my drawings, she begged me to help save the integrity of her 98.9% average by giving her art tips.
“Well, the silver lining is that in just a few weeks, I’ll be freezing my ass off in here once the fall weather hits,” I add. “As Stéphanie and I learned last year, the heating in here sucks as much as the ventilation.”
Some nights I would have to wear my coat while studying.
“How are things going with Stéphanie?” Justine asks.
I shrug. “She walked in on me singing my laundry song in my underwear. I had my disturbing face mask on too. I think I might be the weird roommate, Justine.”
She laughs while shaking her head. “Oh my little tamale, there is no alternate universe in which youaren’tthe weird roommate.”
I drop my head onto my comforter and groan. Even my best friend agrees that I’m a freak. At least she loves me for it.
“Has Mr. Rock Star been walking around shirtless lately?” Justine asks, while my face is still pressed into the blanket.
I try to brace myself against it, but my mood plummets as fast and hard as the temperatures we were talking about. All it takes is one casual reminder that he exists and my mind flits right to the stack of posters featuring his photo I still have hidden among all the other crap under my bed.
Ace Turner is the reason I used to have an ‘I’m In Love With My Roommate’s Boyfriend’ playlist.
I know love is a bit of an overstatement; ‘enamoured’ or ‘infatuated’ would be more accurate, but you don’t obsess over someone for years like I did with Ace Turner and not feel justified in calling it something more.
The summer after we graduated high school, Justine and I were at a music festival in Ottawa, camped out in the front row as we spent all day waiting for The Lumineers to headline that night. We’d discovered pretty early on in our friendship that we were both music junkies, and neither of us even batted an eye at the idea of spending eight hours standing in place to get a good spot for a band we loved.
I always feel bad for the smaller acts at festivals, stuck with a shitty afternoon slot and playing for a handful of people all obviously there for someone else. The first band to play that day was called Sherbrooke Station, and I’d never heard of them before.
When they walked on stage, my breath caught in my throat. When they launched into the first track of their set list, everything around me blurred. When their front man took the microphone in his hand and started to sing, I knew the rest of the male species had been ruined for me forever.
Sherbrooke Station didn’t even have a full length album back then, but from that day on, Justine and I became their number one fans, and Ace Turner became my number one fantasy.
I know every single lyric he’s ever written off by heart. I’ve read all his interviews. I’ve watched him perform from the front row seven times. I’m not naive or crazy enough to believe that actually counts as a connection, but part of me still felt like I knew him. Part of me felt like Iunderstood. I’ve let his lyrics voice my sorrows when I couldn’t voice them myself. His songs have been the soundtrack to some of the best art I’ve ever created. I’ve let his music into a part of my heart no one else has ever seen, and I couldn’t help thinking that had to mean something.
