In This Starless City

Jack’s Point of View

“Pretty girls don’t put out,” she murmured with secrecy and then turned her head to look out the window so that I couldn’t see her eyes.

I was wary of Charlotte’s emotions from the moment she looked away from me, but I’d be lying if I didn’t notice that something was bothering her and I couldn’t help but wonder what that “something” could possibly be.

I had known Charlotte for only about a month and a half—almost two months, I supposed—and despite how well I thought I knew her, it’s times like these that just completely throw me for a loop. She’s got the weirdest mood swings at the oddest times. I hadn’t noticed a pattern in her behavioral changes, however, which makes it maddeningly unhelpful and incomprehensible. My only hope to stay close to this girl was to just roll with the punches (literally, if I had to) and hope for the best.

And what I imagined as the best was a far-fetched dream, to say the least, at that moment.

My day seemed to get better when we started sound check for the show that evening. The walls of the venue had the most perfect acoustics I had come across in a long time and Alex’s voice, Rian’s drums, Zack’s bass, and my guitar all flowed together with such flawlessness, it was hard to believe that we were still the same old band playing the same old instruments we had been all tour

I wish I could’ve said the same for Charlotte. She sat on an amp offstage, her cell phone in her hands, texting away furiously to a recipient that I couldn’t put a finger on. Her bandmates were all standing around her, smiling to each other and to her, so it couldn’t have been any of them, and I could concur by the look on her face and the speed and intensity of her thumbs as they pounded away at the keys of her phone that she wasn’t talking to her parents. Based on the stories she’d told me of them, she would never imagine them with such a foul expression on that beautiful face of hers.

I racked my brain for any remaining name that she may have brought up with spite in her tone in conversation, but none come forth in my mind. Either I’m misreading her facial expression entirely or I’m an awful friend for being an awful listener. Either way, I’ve come up with the shitty end of the stick.

We were practicing “Dear Maria” and as I stepped up on the speaker before my microphone stand, I took a casual glance to my right toward where Charlotte had been seated on the amp, but to my surprise, she had vanished, leaving only Oliver, Brandon, and Nathan standing there. Each were looking a little put off as they discussed something amongst themselves, and I was no lip reader, but I had a feeling it had something to do with Charlotte’s sudden disappearance.

I finished out the song and then requested they rehearse the rest without me, using the “I have to pee” excuse. I ran offstage, ignoring the middleman of asking the Melancholic boys where Charlotte had gone, and instead walked straight into the dressing room, my heart and stomach plummeting like lead when I saw Charlotte sitting on the couch, her hands clenched tightly around a tissue and her phone tossed carelessly onto the floor in front of her. Her mascara was running down her cheeks and she had looked up at the sound of the door opening, and when she saw me, she whimpered slightly.

“I cut myself,” she says quietly and with a sniffle, bobbing her hands up and down in front of her as she balanced her elbows on her knees.

I hadn’t noticed that blood that was reddening the paper towel in her grasp and the crimson streaks that were dripping off of her knuckles until I had stepped closer to her. There was a puddle of blood on the tile at her feet, shards of glass sparkling with ruby droplets on them.

Hurriedly, grabbed a towel off the makeup counter and rushed to her side. I pulled her hands apart and my gut rolled. Her left hand had a few cuts here and there that were already beginning to clot and stop bleeding. Her right hand, however, had received the full blunt of the accident. The gash in her right hand extended from the base of her index finger diagonally to the heel of her hand.

Her arms were limp and when I pressed the towel onto the wound with force, trying to stop the steady flow of blood, only her eyelids twitched. Her eyes didn’t move from her cell phone that sat on the floor and I wondered for a minute if she was going into shock.

“What happened?” I asked as I dabbed at her hand. The bleeding was slowing and she didn’t respond right away. My nerves were beginning to wind tighter. “Charlotte?”

She jumped, her eyes twitching to me. She looked pale, her dark eyes lifeless and darker than usual, and my worries flared again. She looked like she had forgotten I was even in the room; hadn’t even realized that I was treating her injury.

“I hit the mirror,” she turned her head toward the makeup counter and I followed her gaze, my eyes widening when I sat the makeup mirror had a huge, spider web-like crack in the middle of it. It looked like she had punched it. I looked down at the puddle to see that the shards of glass were reflecting the ceiling of the room. “I can’t really remember what happened.”

“Charlotte, I think you need to go to a hospital,” I had peeled away the towel that was now more red than white to see that the slash was still bleeding progressively. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Charlotte pulled her hand away from me quickly and I looked at her. “You don’t need to take care of me, Jack,” she says, pulling her hand away from me and taking the red towel along with it. She skittered to the counter and grabbed a pair of scissors that sat there, snipping into the towel once before tearing it into two strips. She wrapped one of them around her hand haphazardly and was about to start wrapping the second one when I walked up to her and laid my hands across hers.

She stopped moving and she looked up at me, her eyes daring me to offer assistance when she had just told me that I didn’t need to. But that I was just the thing: just because I didn’t need to didn’t mean I didn’t want to.

“Come here,” I brought her hands closer to me and I could tell that she was reluctant in allowing herself to step closer to me. I hid my upset and unwound the towel, encircling the first strip around her hand slowly and then wrapping the second one around tightly. Her fingers were trembling and I knew the pain must’ve been practically unbearable, but when glanced at her eyes, she was looking at her phone again.

I’d never wanted to know what was going on inside someone’s mind as much as I did in hat single moment.

She pulled her hand away from me after a tied a knot on the top of her hand, analyzing the bandage job. “Thanks,” she mumbles as she ran her left fingers across her bandaged hand.

“That’s not going to stop the bleeding,” I say assertively, trying to get her to look at me. She looked jittery as her eyes flicked to her cell phone and then to the door and then back to her hand. She looked like she was about to run out of the room. “After our set, we’re going to the hospital.”

Her eyes rose to mine. They were lifeless, just as they had been a few minutes before, but now, the tears were gone and her eyes were dazzling with glossiness. I thought she would start crying again. At the thought, my mind started racing, but my movements remained slow, cautious, like I was placing my hand on a hibernating bear. My hand connected softly with her jaw and my thumb traced the semicircles that lay under her emerald green eyes. While they are usually a bright, laughing, and for the most part sarcastic, they were dull and exhausted while I was looking at them. The rings under her eyes were soft and each time I ran my thumb over them, her fluttering eyelids moved slower until her eyelids slid closed and stayed closed. For a moment, I thought she’d fallen asleep right there on her feet. “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she murmurs tiredly.

“That’s not an option you’re permitted to make,” I respond quickly, still stroking her lifeless eyes. “Sorry.”

Her eyes opened quickly and after glaring me down for a second or two, she closed to gap between the two of us and wrapped her arms around my neck. My body went rigid in surprise and I could only stand there in shock for a moment. But finally, after mentally screaming at myself for standing there for so long like a fucking idiot, I melted into her and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her close to me.

She chuckled, her body shaking against mine as she did so. “Take you a little by surprise, did I, Jackie?” My arms tightened around her involuntarily and I pressed my face into her hair, smiling as I inhaled. She smelt wonderful. My head was in a flurry as I breathed. She turned her face inward and pressed it to my neck and I hoped she couldn’t feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

She unwound her arms from around my neck slowly and while I couldn’t help but frown as her body began to distance itself from mine, as her face passed mine, she stopped and placed a kiss on my cheek, close to the corner of my mouth.

My heart was pounding in the back of my throat instantaneously.

“We should go,” she says quietly, distractedly, before walking around me and toward the door. I turned and watched her go but just before she got to the door, she turned and looked at me. “Coming?”

I was about to answer when the door slammed open and Alex came in. “Dude, you’re going on in like, a minute!” he said to Charlotte. He grabbed her right hand and pulled her toward the door, causing her to wince as she stumbled behind him. At the sound, I jolted, my stomach tossing and turning with anxiety as her face held an agonized expression. She shook her head at me, her eyes brimming with pain, but I knew she didn’t want to make a big deal of any of it.

She walked to the offstage area and pulled on her bass, fidgeting as the strap was twisted behind her. Her left hand tender and her right hand incapacitated, she was having a difficult time flipping it around as the strap was right between her scapulas. I approached the back of her and cleared my throat, and after looking over her shoulder, she stood perfectly still while allowing me to straighten her strap for her.

“Thank you,” she says after she turned to face me. The crowd was beginning to get restless behind her. “For being here for me.”

“I said I always would be,” I replied quietly.

She smiled and it seemed cheesy that the moment she did, the lights on the stage behind her cascaded down like angels were descending from the heavens. She was silhouetted by the brightness behind her and when she looked up at me again, I could see the vitality had returned to her eyes.

“I’ll see you when I get off stage?” Like she even had to ask.

“I’ll wait for you.” My lips and vocal chords worked without myself having to think about or control them, and with one last wide grin, she skipped onto the stage behind Oliver and the crowd roared, making her smile widen again.

She looked more beautiful than ever.

I stayed just offstage through Charlotte’s entire set, watching in awe as she danced around the stage. For claiming repeatedly to be such a clumsy girl, onstage, she was fluid in her movements, aware of every single millimeter of her surroundings. Not once did she stumble over the many cords and wires that littered the surface of the stage. The fingers on the neck of her bass never missed a string, never missed a note. Her voice was perfect each and every time she harmonized with Oliver and Nathan. Her eyes would sparkle each time she looked up at her bandmates, the bright stage lights rebounding off of her green irises, making them look like glistening stones of peridot. Each time she smiled, something in me would roar to life, pawing away at my insides, but only causing me to smile myself.

They had finished their fifth song when Oliver stepped up to the microphone. “How’s everyone doing out there?” he asks, breathing slightly heavily into the microphone but the crowd’s screams drowned out the sound. “Well, as much as we’d love to stay out here on stage, I have a feeling all of you are eager to see All Time Low!” The crowd went berserk and my stomach back flipped with excitement.

Charlotte stood at her mic, turning the keys on her bass and picking the strings one at a time, tuning it slowly and carefully. Every few times she plucked a string, her eyes would quiver, her cheeks would twitch, and her pearly teeth would bite down on her bottom lip. It was clear that the slice on her hand was paining her.

I almost walked right up to her and pulled her off stage to take her to the hospital the moment I saw her lips part and I could only imagine the whimper that was passing through them.

As if she could hear my thoughts or sense my muscles becoming rigid, she looked up at me. Our gazes met but before I could insist on her going to a hospital after her set, she had shaken her head at me and turned back to face the crowd. They had started their last song and while she was doing an unbelievable job of faking being pain free, I knew better.

They finished the song and exited the stage and while I let Oliver, Nathan, and Brandon pass me, when Charlotte got to me, I stepped toward her and she stopped walking forward and took a few steps away from me and against the wall that separated us from the screaming crowd.

“You and I are going to the hospital after our set,” I say. Her eyes widened in challenge and I wondered if she truly was avoiding the hospital of if she was just trying to avoid me. The latter made me want to spit…

“I’m fine,” she insists, breathing sort of heavily from dancing on stage for forty-five minutes. “I thought I told you to stop trying to take care of me all the time.”

My irritation with her hard headedness flared. “And I thought I told you that I don’t listen to girls that may or may not be losing blood by the pints,”

She made a face. “You’ve never told me that,”

I made the face back. “Well, I’m telling you now,” we were at a standoff, staring each other down. Her green eyes were dazzling, but not with the same upbeat emotion that was there when she was onstage. Now, they were filled with denial. “After our set, we’re going to the hospital.” She continued to glare for another moment or two before walking to the dressing room and slamming the door closed behind her. She would get over it, I told myself as I walked toward the room as well. Hopefully.

I knew that she would already be figuring some master plan to try and slither out of visiting the hospital or to get out of being around me or whatever was going on in the rat maze of a mind of hers, but I was one step ahead of her. To ensure that she wouldn’t make a run for the border, I approached Oliver and pulled him close so that I could shout into his ear of the chanting audience. “Don’t let Charlotte get too far out of your sight tonight,”

“Why?” he hollered back.

I wanted to lie to him about her hand because I knew that’s what she would’ve wanted, but at the same time, I knew it wasn’t my place to decide what was best for a member of their band…or for one of his best friends.

But you’re closer to her than they are, a voice in my mind whimpered hopelessly, but I smothered it.

“She’s trying to avoid going to the hospital about her hand, but I’m going to take her after our set,”

Oliver’s eyes lit up with comprehension. “Why don’t I just take her to the hospital now if it’s that bad?”

Don’t let him, the voice broke away from the restraints I had put it under and I couldn’t help but grimace as I ignored it again. “If you think it’s what’s best for her,” I didn’t know why I responded that way.

I turned and grabbed my guitar from one of the crewmembers, pulling it over my head and adjusting it around my shoulder. Oliver was already looking around for Charlotte. “In the dressing room,” I shouted as the crowd’s screams increased ten fold when Rian and Zack stepped onstage. Surprisingly, he heard me and as he turned to open the door to the dressing room, I had turned to walk out on stage and as I did, I plaster a smile on my face for all of the flashing cameras in the crowd.

Our set was going well and I felt my worries slide off of me as soon as we had jumped into our first song. Every so often though, I would glance offstage in hopes of seeing Charlotte standing there waiting for me as I had stood there and waited for her. But she wasn’t there and deep down, I supposed I should’ve known she wouldn’t have been.

The voice ripped through my head again. You’re so pathetic when it comes to girls you like, it said viciously and though I felt myself flinch, my fingers didn’t miss a single note on the strings of my guitar while my stomach was suddenly fluttering. That’s right. You like her.

I sighed to myself though I hadn’t realized how close I was to the microphone and how it made the crowd scream because of how closely it resembled a moan. I looked around at the sudden increase of noise, breaking away from my gripping thoughts, to see that Alex was grinning at me. It made me wonder if he knew something that I didn’t.

The song we were playing (“Holly” How fitting, I thought) ended, and the crowd was louder than ever. I thought I could feel a blush creeping up the sides of my face as Alex laughed into the microphone, commenting on my addition to the song.

“Alex is clearly jealous that he’s never heard a sound like that in his life,” I say back, faking a smirk.

“Especially from a woman,” Zack chimed in.

The crowd laughed and screamed when Alex made a pouty face, looking into the crowd with big, sad brown eyes. “Well, in that case,” Alex challenges me with a sly look on his face. “I guess we’ll just have to bring out a specific guest singer.”

He started strumming his guitar to the beginning of “Remembering Sunday” and I glared at him momentarily before laughing into the microphone. “You’re going to be a dead man,” I say lightly but with a biting underlying tone that I’d hoped Alex would pick up on.

But instead of picking it up, he laid down the first verse of the song.

“He woke up from dreaming and put on his shoes, started making his way past two in the morning. He hasn't been sober for days,” the crowd had simmered and was swaying to the sound of Alex’s voice.

He continued to sing and play and I joined the song as I always did. Zack played quietly as well. All of us were looking offstage, but the one that was wanted was nowhere to be seen.

“Even though she doesn't believe in love, he's determined to call her bluff. Who could deny these butterflies? They're filling his gut,” Alex glanced at me and I looked down at my hands.

Finally, we got to the part of the song where Juliet Simms sings. But since we lacked Juliet Simms, we wanted Charlotte. However, as we continued to play the chords to the song, no voice rode in. I looked at Alex. “I knew she wouldn’t join,” I laughed into the mic and the crowd laughed with me.

Alex nodded offstage. “You apparently don’t know anything,” I turned and looked to see Charlotte standing there, her eyes narrowed at me and Alex and her head shaking from left to right repeatedly. She wasn’t about to come out there and sing and Alex and I both knew it. Alex turned to the crowd. “Maybe you guys can help us bring out Miss Charlotte Melancholic to help finish out this song. What do you say?” The crowd screamed in approval. “Charlotte,” Alex says in a loud whisper, anticipating the audience to join. “Charlotte, Charlotte,”

And then the entire venue was chanting along with him. I smiled in excitement, turning to look at her, but she was still looking somber and shaking her head. But her eyes were focused on me. I could see from her neck down as the stage lights were being cast on her body and I felt my face get hot as my eyes roamed over her. But through the shadows that were being cast over her face, I could see her eyes glistening as they pinned me where I stood.

I couldn’t have looked away if I tried so all I could do was smile at her. Funny that just moments before, I would’ve given anything for her to stay offstage, but now I was dying for her to come out and sing with us. I wanted to be closer to her…if only for a moment.

So, I started chanting along with the crowd.

And of course, that set her off. Not wanting to disappoint the fans as she knew she would if she declined at that point, she turned to look at her boys before turning back to me, her stare staggering me again as she took a mic from a crew member.

And then, she had walked out onstage, running her hand across my shoulder blades as she passed behind me. I could’ve sworn I shivered slightly…

“Hey, New York! Did you miss me?” the crowd erupted.

“Now we can finally finish this song!” Alex smiles and I realized how long we had all been repeating the same notes. “Oh, I can see now that all of these clouds
are following me in my desperate endeavor to find my whoever, wherever she may be.”

And when Charlotte sang with Alex, it was impossible not to smile. “I'm not coming back. I've done something so terrible. I'm terrified to speak, but you'd expect that from me. I'm mixed up, I'll be blunt, now the rain is just washing you out of my hair,”

Charlotte continued alone. “And out of my mind, keeping an eye on the world,” She walked forward and smiled as she sang. “From so many thousands of feet off the ground. I'm over you now. I'm at home in the clouds, and towering over your head.”

“Well, I guess I’ll go home now,” Alex sang as the song was coming to a close.

“I guess I’ll go home now,” Charlotte sang quietly.

Alex smiled at her. “I guess I’ll go home now,” they traded again.

“I guess I’ll go home,” they finished in beautiful unison and it took every fiber of my being not to walk over to Charlotte and kiss her right on the spot. My heart fluttered when she looked at me, but then, she winced and looked down at her hand.

Blood dripped from the tips of her fingers and before I could warn Alex, her eyelids were fluttering. The microphone slid out of her hand and hit the stage, causing the venue to ring, but before she could hit the floor, I caught her under her arms as I had when she was drunk at Alex’s. “Someone call an ambulance!” The girl I was in love with was unconscious in my arms.