Afraid of the Dark

Banner by my dear Shelli, aka Suicide Made Pretty. Thank you, wifey! <3

Wentz's mind worked like a kaleidescope, in beautiful, constantly-morphing patterns, as haphazard as they were calculated and symmetrical. I couldn't follow his train of thought and I gave up trying to after the first ten minutes of the interview.

I decided to let him direct that first interview--since we barely knew each other and the interview was going to be short anyway--and he did so without rhyme or reason. He talked about the origin of Fall Out Boy for a while, then the concepts behind the new songs, then his childhood, then his head-over-heels love for his wife, Ashlee Simpson(-Wentz), then plans for the new tour, all punctuated by random bursts of adoration for his newborn son. The whole thing was kind of sweet and kind of funny and kind of intriguing, but in the same way a crazy person is sweet and funny and intriguing. The answers he gave were as confusing as they were captivating.

All in all, though, it went pretty well for a first interview. We only talked for about forty minutes, once we actually got down to business; Wentz was cheerful enough, and surprisingly polite, but he seemed pretty jetlagged, so I decided not to push him for more today. The whole band was going to have dinner together that night, and I was invited along with them, so I decided to just do some more interviews afterwards and let everyone have a little break until then.

In the meantime, I went back to my hotel room, which was just down the hall from Wentz's and almost as nice. The magazine arranged and paid for everything for me, and I was delighted with my accomodations, but no amount of fancy drapes or jacuzzi hot tubs could ease my chronic loneliness--the loneliness I had known for so long that it had become an intrinsic part of me over the years. For me, lonely was no longer a state of being, but a personality trait.

As much as I hated to admit it, my job was getting to me. I missed having a home that I spent enough time in to remember what I kept in each cabinet and drawer, or friends that saw me often enough to miss me when I was gone. I missed my family. I missed not feeling alone.

But I was alone, as usual, in my cavernous hotel room that day, and I kept returning to the image of Wentz smiling as he told me about his wife and baby. How Bronx looked like Ashlee when he was first born but was beginning to look like Wentz more and more every day... How Wentz hoped that his son would be more like Ashlee when he grew up--happy-go-lucky and so easy to love... How Wentz first met Ashlee and fell for her, hard, how no one else could understand because they weren't there to see the way she smiled at him as they rode bikes side-by-side down an empty street in the summertime, laughing, in love...

It hurt to watch him smile like that because, deep down, I knew that smile was for something I would never have.

-----

We--the four members of Fall Out Boy and I--were all going to dinner at some ritzy celebrity haunt later that night, so I picked out a skirt and a nice blouse to wear with my best heels. I got dressed and labored over my make-up for longer than usual, but it didn't do much good. I was jetlagged and tired and stressed and alone, and it showed: I looked rough, even by my usual flying-across-country-to-hang-out-with-rockstars-in-loney-hotel-rooms standards.

Once I was finally decent and ready to go, I met Fall Out Boy in the hotel lobby, where we awaited the arrival of our chaufferred car. A hotel employee came over and waited for a break in our conversation to offer us some drinks while we waited, because when you're rich and famous, suddenly everyone falls all over themselves to cater to you.

Trohman asked if the hotel had any orange juice. Wentz laughed and said, "But seriously, man, some wine or something would be great," and Trohman looked genuinely disappointed when they brought out a bottle of White Zinfadel, but no orange juice.

None of us managed to finish a glass of the wine before the car arrived. We climbed in and, ten minutes later, the car pulled over on the curb to idle outside of some fancy restaurant--just as I had expected.

The four members of Fall Out Boy clambered out of the backseats of the car with little grace or order, scrambling to claim a spot on the sidewalk before the car drove away. I was the last to get out, and, always the gentleman, Wentz insisted on helping me out of the car.

"Thanks," I mumbled.

"No problem." He beamed at me, his smile almost as blinding as the streetlight behind him, which lit up his hair like a thin, glowing halo around his head. An urban angel in sunglasses and bright red Supras.

The other three shuffled around on the sidewalk like lost sheep, and eventually, it was Trohman who finally took the initiative to lead the way into the restaurant. As Wentz and I stepped inside behind the others, he took off his sunglasses and slipped them into the back pocket of his skintight jeans. I had met a lot of people in my life, many of them famous, but I had never met anyone who actually wore sunglasses at night before. Wentz wasn't kidding when he called himself a diva.

The hostess didn't ask for a name or confirmation; she just smiled hugely and chirped, "Right this way," leading us along a winding course past couples and families dining in sparse seating arrangements to a small, private room in the back. A long black table, gleaming and beautiful, took up most of the room, with delicate vases and ornate floral arrangements adorning each corner. Elegant chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and paintings of sweeping landscapes on the walls made up for the utter lack of windows.

We all sat down around one end of the table (it was so gigantic that spreading out along its length would have made conversation impossible) and the hostess dealt out menus that sort of looked like oversized wedding invitations. I opened up the menu and scanned the prices: just as I suspected, the cheapest thing on the menu, a maccaroni side dish, cost $96. Ordinary people didn't go out to eat with their families here on Friday night, after a long week at the office. Rich people, famous people, very important people dined here. Hence the V.I.P. room.

In Hollywood, V.I.P. rooms are big status symbols. Most superstars and young starlets alike cherish V.I.P. status and flaunt it whenever they get the chance to. So it was sort of perplexing that Fall Out Boy seemed unimpressed--perhaps even annoyed--by the mild star treatment they had recieved so far.

Though they were all polite to the waitress, they avoided her eyes while ordering, staring down at the words on the menu instead. They fidgeted uncomfortably in their plush seats, their limbs moving in restless patterns because they could not rest them on the shiny black surface of the long table. Hurley kept glancing down at his wrist compulsively to check the time every few minutes, though he wasn't wearing a watch, and Stump bit his lip, his expression vacant in a troubled sort of way as he stared off into space.

"Wish there were some windows in this place," muttered Trohman once the waitress had left.

"I don't," said Stump. "Then people outside would watch us and I'd feel even more like a fucking display."

"Yeah," agreed Hurley. The look on his face was bitter and full of resentment--for someone, for everyone. "We're like animals in a zoo or something."

Everyone laughed, nervously. It was obvious by the relief in their faces (the relief that comes with venting) and the strain that still lingered there anyway that this was true to how they felt: cooped up and trapped and gawked at by the masses.

"Nah," said Wentz after a moment. It was the first time he had spoken since our arrival at the restaurant, and we all looked around at him in surprise. "We're more like relics in a museum now."

He was smiling, but somehow, the look on his face was just grotesquely sad. Time passed slowly for a few moments as the other band members just stared at Wentz with blank horror in their eyes as the truth sank in. And then Stump saved the day.

"Yeah," he laughed. "We're ancient history. The Jonas Brothers are the new Fall Out Boy."

"And Miley Cyrus is the new Ashlee Simpson," added Joe.

As everyone else laughed, Wentz just smiled the tiniest ghost of a smile at the mention of his wife. His pleasant expression looked frozen into place, stiff and forced, as he shot an oddly furtive glance at me across the table; when I met his gaze, he looked down to stare at his empty placemat instead. And it was hard to see his face at that angle, but I'm pretty sure he stopped smiling long before the rest of us stopped laughing.

-----

On our way out of the restaurant, I asked Wentz if, when he was younger, he ever thought he would be famous. He pulled his sunglasses down low over his eyes, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and stared at the ground with purpose as he kicked around a tiny pebble. The rock skittered across the sidewalk, tumbling into a second pool of sultry yellow light beneath another streetlight.

"I don't think so," he said, brows drawn together over the tops of his sunglasses as he frowned in thought. He kicked another rock into the shadows and elaborated. "I don't think I ever really thought I would be anything, though. I never really thought about what I was going to do later on. It was always just now, or then--I had no concept of tomorrow."

We were waiting for the car. The driver was late. I had a feeling he would not be hired again--at least not by Fall Out Boy's management.

The other three still didn't feel as comfortable around me as Wentz seemed to, and they stood noticeably apart from us. Trohman was leaning casually against the next streetlight down while Hurley and Stump stood nearby, their hands tucked up under their armpits in an effort to keep warm. Judging by the harsh pink flush of Stump's cheeks, it wasn't working.

"I didn't even think I would end up being a musician, really," Wentz went on. "I mean, I never thought I'd make it. I studied political science in college." He paused long enough to laugh cynically. "But I guess I wasn't so far off. The music business is just another form of politics anyway."

He folded his arms across his chest and turned so that we were both facing the same way. He shuffled closer to the streetlight I was standing under until there were only inches of space between us, and we stood there side-by-side, staring out at the darkness from beneath the isolated patch of light we shared.

"You know..." Wentz trailed off and was quiet for so long that I thought he wasn't going to finish. But then he said, "It gets hard sometimes, this life. I think a lot of times other people feel like it's not worth it--the hotel rooms, the road trips, the lack of privacy, the shit-talkers and suck-ups... But to me it's the other way around. It's the only thing that's worth...well... I mean, there've been times when it was the only thing that made me decide to stick around. You know?"

I knew what he meant by "stick around" without having to ask and I stared at him through the dark, examining the lines of his face with that in mind. He didn't look sad, really. Just sort of tired. Resigned. Worn out.

And then he turned to me and was young and new again as he smiled. "A lot of people crumple under the spotlight, but it was never like that for me. All those faces in the crowd just made me want to be better. They made me want to stay."

The rush of feeling in my chest made me speak without thinking: "Well, maybe that's what you were put here to do, then--make music."

He turned away from me and the streetlight illuminated his profile, his dark eyes gleaming vacantly in the moonlight. "I don't think I was put here," he said. "But here is where I ended up."

We both fell silent. The wind blew my hair across my face like a caress and I felt more alone than I had in a while. And I usually felt pretty alone.

"Do you believe in God?" I asked quietly. I didn't look at him--I stared across the road, too, following his gaze to some empty point in space there.

He didn't say anything at first. Then: "I want to. I pray sometimes. When I'm scared." He paused. "I think that's the basis of religion, anyway: fear. We're scared of the things we don't understand, so we want to believe that someone's looking out for us. That someone's in control. That it all means something. We can't stand the idea that this is all there is."

"Do you think this is all there is?"

Still avoiding my gaze, Wentz shrugged and said, "I don't really know. I'd like to believe in the whole afterlife thing, but it doesn't make sense to me."

I swallowed back the knot in my throat and asked another question. "So, all of this," I said, gesturing around at the restaurant behind us and the rest of his band, "you don't think this is your destiny?"

He laughed, almost derisively. "No, it's not my destiny. There's no such thing."

"I disagree."

"Oh, come on," said Wentz, the corners of his lips twisted up in a sardonic farce of a smile. "If destiny was real, why the hell would God give me this gig? I should still be laying around on my ass at my parents' house, selling cigarettes in a goddamn convenience store or something--not rubbing elbows with fucking celebrities."

Huh--so Pete Wentz, world-renowned Cocky Douchebag, had self-doubts. Interesting. I could hear the skepticism in my own voice as I said, "What, you don't think you're worthy?"

He turned to stare at me like I'd just grown another, particularly repulsive head. "Fuck, no! How am I in any way worthy of--of this?" The thick yellow light of the streetlight cast a shadow of his hand against the sidewalk, its shape fluttering wildly as he indicated the row of fancy stores and restaurants behind us with a wave of his arm. "I'm not. I'm really not."

I frowned at him. "So then--"

"Look," he said, calmly, firmly, "I'm not saying I'm not grateful. I'm just saying it wasn't fate."

I spoke slowly, trying to understand the words as I put them together. "So if you don't think you deserve it, and you don't believe in fate, then how did you get here?"

"...Luck."

I blinked at him. He had his hands behind his back and I glanced down at his shadow on the ground to check and see if his fingers were crossed, but they weren't; they were busying themselves with the ring on the third finger of his other hand, his two hands intertwining and creating a monstrous knot of a shadow as one.

"Luck," I told him, an inevitable grin stretching across my lips, "is so much lamer than fate. Really."

"I don't know." He smiled his no-holds-barred smile at me. "Fate's kind of pretentious, don't you think?"

And, after all those years spent living in cramped rooms with my mother and my sister, neither of them knew me--really knew me, on the most private level of all--half as well as Wentz did in that moment. We had only stood there together beneath that streetlight for about ten minutes, but I in those ten minutes, I had shown him more of myself than I had ever shown anyone else before--and, more importantly, he actually saw me: he looked right at me, his gaze searing and piercing and enchanting in the lovely darkness, and his smile widened just a little, as if, somehow, he liked what he saw there.