I woke up in my bedroom at my mum’s house.
Sitting upright, I looked around as intense confusion hit me. I was back in the room I had grown up in, the room that had housed my childhood… Something was wrong. The familiarity of the place should have given me some kind of comfort, but instead I began to panic. The bewilderment mixed with dread and suddenly I was shaking, my breathing completely erratic.
Something was very, very wrong…
Frantically untangling myself from the bed covers, I bit down on my arm- hard- but nothing happened. There was no waking from a dream, no snap back to reality. This was it. My arm began to bleed. I ignored it.
“Mum? Mum?” I screamed loudly, desperately, my voice cracked and strained.
I couldn’t breathe. What the fuck was happening? My heart pounded against its cage. Why was I here?
My bedroom door was wrenched open and Jake came running in. He put his arms around me and started to talk in a gentle voice- but how the hell was I supposed to calm down? The last thing I could remember was heading back to the hotel to party after our tour debut. What was so bad that I had ended up at home? Surely nothing that terrible could have happened- I’d be able to remember that…
“It’s okay, James, you’re okay…” Jake whispered.
As my breathing returned slowly back to normal he sighed and stood up, crossing over to the wardrobe and opening it. I watched him in complete disarray as he began to pick through my clothes before pulling out a formal black shirt and smart black trousers. The wardrobe doors were then closed and the outfit hung on the handle. He slowly turned back to face me.
“Jake, just… say it. What the fuck is going on?” I asked.
He looked away and paused. “You should get dressed-”
“Why should I? Why am I here? Tell-”
“Because today is M… Maisy’s funeral, James. That’s why.” His voice was void of all emotion as he spoke and I stared at him.
He had to be kidding, right? That couldn’t be the slightest bit possible. There was no way I would be unable to remember Maisy dying. No way. No way… He was joking. I waited with baited breath for him to crack a smile, to laugh, to playfully punch me on the arm. But he didn’t. He just stood there. He just stood there and avoided my gaze and shuffled his feet.
“That’s not-”
“You really don’t remember a goddamn thing, do you?” he interrupted me. Was that a bitter tone to his voice? I shook my head- which pounded- and a wave of guilt consumed me so strongly I thought I might drown.
“Just… how?”
Jake sat down on my bed once again and took a deep breath. “It was the second to last day of the tour. Maisy and Bex came to watch us play. They got very drunk- we all were, obviously- and on their way to meet us back at the hotel Maisy got hit by a car. She was taken to hospital and… passed away from head injuries…” His voice was so monotonous as he spoke that it scared me a little.
“Holy shit, are you fucking joking?” I whispered, burying my head in my hands. He snorted somewhat derisively.
“Yes, James. This is all a big fucking joke. I’d completely make up an important person in our group dying. Now c’mon- get the fuck ready so we can just fucking go.”
As he left the room hastily his voice broke. I stood up to follow him but… I just collapsed back down onto my bed. My head was such a mess… it was painful, puzzled, perplexed. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t the case, this was no dream- or nightmare.
Where was George? From the way Jake spoke and the way I felt I could tell I had been completely out of it for a while- hell, I could only remember frenzied fragments of the tour. What day even was it? Where was George, why wasn’t he there to be with me when I woke up?
And then I remembered: Matt. Of course George would be with Matt. Fuck, I was so selfish. Such a stupid, worthless idiot. Only I would be able to drink myself so far into oblivion that I couldn’t remember a friend of mine dying. Only I would be able to hear the news of a death and still be so egotistical. Visions of Matt in pain coursed through my mind and nothing I tried would shut them off…
A few minutes later I mustered up the strength to go and take a shower. Black dirt had somehow accumulated underneath my fingernails, and I found myself staring at them for a while. Everything was so… different. It was like I had died and woken up in another world- and I sure didn’t like it here. Considering that the tour itself lasted for two weeks made it incredulous to find that my memory of it was almost entirely gone. There were just snippets of intense movement and brightness and then- black. Never ending and totally consuming. During that time anything could have happened to me and I would have been pretty much powerless to stop it. Anything could have happened to anyone around me, too. Including Maisy dying. Whilst it sounded like we had been travelling back to the hotel separately, it was impossible to stop myself from concentrating on the idea that maybe if I hadn’t been so drunk things would be different.
I was an awful human being.
Jake came back upstairs after a little while to check on me. My mother was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t know whether or not she was downstairs. I didn’t ask, either: the answer might make me feel even worse. As Jake pulled up my collar to do my tie for me, I looked at him. Dark circles were housed under his eyes and he looked as though he had lost a few pounds since that first day on tour. It wasn’t simply that he looked thinner, he just appeared smaller too; the hyper energy that seemed to constantly emanate from him had disappeared. The intensely dark brown fringe that he frequently hid behind when avoiding people of authority was greasy and tucked behind his ear, the rest of his hair sticking up at odd angles.
“How’s Matty doing?” I asked in a quiet voice. Jake folded my collar down and sighed. As I straightened my tie, he sat back down on my bed and stared at the floor.
“I don’t know how he’s gonna…” he muttered. Almost like clockwork he reached up and ran a hand through his hair three times before clasping both hands between his open knees. I sat down beside him. “It’s the waiting, y’know? It’s the fucking waiting, and not knowing. It’s driving everyone crazy. He won’t talk to anyone, hardly even to George or Ms Foster, and I just find myself sitting by the phone and waiting and it hurts…”
“I know, dude.”
His head jerked towards me sharply and he grunted scathingly, a twisted smirk toying with his lips.
“No, James. You don’t. You haven’t been here, you haven’t been around it all- not completely consciously, anyway. Just when we thought it wasn’t possible- bam- things are worse than they have ever been. It’s not just this whole Matt and Maisy thing, y’know, it’s you as well.” He clasped my forearm suddenly and his eyes were freakishly wide as they bore into mine. “Do you have any idea how fucking… worried we’ve all been about you? That word doesn’t even cover it. No offence, Matt is still our priority at the moment, but you’ve been totally zonked since the tour. And, again no offence, but you’re not exactly in the best mindset, dude. I’ve been living by your side for all this time just in case. That hurts. It hurts everyone.”
I avoided his gaze as the wave of guilt enveloped me again.
“I’m sorry.”
He snorted disdainfully and let go of my arm. “C’mon. We’ve got a funeral to fuck up.”
We slowly made our way downstairs and I watched as Jake sorted things around the house as we went. He seemed so mundane, so dull; it was unsettling to observe. Finally he opened the front door and stopped to let me go out first. My heart rate increased slightly as my eyes locked on my mother’s car by the front gate. She was sat at the driver’s seat, the motor was running, and she didn’t look up when I emerged from the house. My head was kept bowed in guilt or disgrace and I slowly meandered over to her as Jake locked the front door behind us.
In the car the music was turned off and all that could be heard was my mother’s shallow breathing. Her eyes didn’t flicker from the road ahead of her as we pulled away from the house. I wanted to ask how she was, what had happened recently… but found myself mute. The awkward tension as we drove along was crushing and I wanted to escape it, to just jump out and run away. But today I wasn’t important, and neither were my biological family issues.
The journey to the funeral home was both drawn out and swift simultaneously, very perplexing to my already disorganised brain.
My mother cleared her throat as we pulled up outside. “Jake, could you give us a minute?”
“Sure thing, Lizzy.”
First name basis. He and my mother must have bonded even more while I’d been out of it…
“Are you not going to the funeral?” I asked her quietly. Neither of us could muster up the strength to look at each other. I kept my eyes on a bird flitting around in a tree, mum kept hers on the patchy blue sky.
“No, I wasn’t invited. I think I only met the poor girl once…” She sighed. “I’m disappointed in us, James.”
I turned to her. “How can you possibly be disappointed in yourself? I’m the one who’s fucked everything up. I’m so sorry, mum.”
“I know you are. But I’m your mother, I’m supposed to keep you safe and happy. And I’ve failed.” She paused, possibly to suppress tears. “Maybe we should talk about this later. Matt needs you now.”
“Mum, are you okay?”
“I’m not important-”
“Yes you are. I promised dad that I would-”
“Please don’t bring your father into conversation on a day like this. Go on, Jake’s waiting.” She grimaced and cupped my chin, but her eyes still wouldn’t focus on me. “We need to have a very serious talk, and soon. But I love you, James. You know that, right?”
“Yes mum. I love you too.”
I got out of the car and joined Jake where he stood. Together we waved my mother away before heading towards the building.