Run, Baby, Run

Becca was experimenting with drugs.

She had split a joint with Dirk earlier, laced her Sprite with LSD (even though she knows you spike dark sodas), and she’d even tried snorting a line of cocaine, all in the last hour. The singer had shot down a fifth of vodka on her own tonight, and I knew she’d tried heroin. I told her not to. I know she did.

I was getting scared.

I mean, I know that when a tour ends, and it was as wild as ours was, that you have a huge party and things get out of hand. But I never thought she’d be this far gone. Then again, I never thought I’d end up dating the girl, never thought I’d see her after that first gig on the tour. I never thought we’d do the crazy shit we did on that tour. And I never thought that at the end of it, Becca would choose to stay in Arizona with me for a week before her band drove back home to Seattle.

I looked over to her, watching her green eyes light up as she looked around the old parking garage everyone was at, seeing all the friendships we’d made on those two months of tour all come together. I got distracted by the way she’d move in the slightest way, and her brunette hair would fall over her shoulders. I had to admit, I kind of missed it being cherry red. But Becca was still gorgeous.

She leaned against the wall of the second story of the parking garage, sipping on her laced soda with an earnest passion. “Becca…” I started, grabbing her attention. “Maybe you should slow down.”

She opened her mouth to reply when I heard Joel shout, “She’s got a gun!”

Becca and I spun around to see Joel with John, Pat, and a blonde girl I recognized as Lauren. She shushed the Seattle Silver bassist, smiling. “Don’t ruin it, Joel! Russian Roulette!” Lauren exclaimed.

I looked nervously towards Becca. Please, I silently prayed, please don’t get into that mess, Becca…

Much to my protest, the singer said, “Sounds like fun.” I cursed in my head. Grabbing my hand and lacing her fingers through mine, she asked, “Garrett, you going to come?”

No. Hell no. I’m not going to watch you shoot yourself in the head.

I took a deep breath. She was having fun. Who was I to stop her? “Not to play,” I replied. “But I’ll come to watch.” I smiled, trying to cover my nerves. She grinned, planting a kiss on my cheek before leading me towards Lauren.

“I’m in,” she told the armed blonde.

Pat shrugged. “I’ll try,” he said. That surprised me. Next it was Nick, then Joel, and finally our friend Trevor joined the group for the dangerous gun game.

“Alright,” said Lauren, spinning the cage of the handgun. “Straight to the temple. No chickening out and putting it somewhere else, got it?”

We all nodded. I started to feel my knees quiver, so I grabbed a folding chair that was propped against the wall and unfolded it, sitting down.

“Like this,” Lauren instructed, putting the barrel of the gun to her temple. She pulled the trigger.

All it did was click.

She passed the gun to Joel. “Becca, I just want you to know…” he said dramatically, “I always hated your bunny pajamas!” he joked, pulling the trigger shakily.

A blank shot.

Laughing from adrenaline, he passed the gun to Becca. My Becca. My girlfriend,Rebecca Hayley Anton. I tried my hardest to not throw up from nerves. I never thought I’d have to see a girl I was this involved with hold a gun in her hand. “Please,” I whispered. I gripped the beer bottle in my hand until my knuckles turned white. “Please, miss. Miss, Becca, miss…”

She leaned over and kissed me. I was afraid it would be the last time. Becca pulled the trigger, her lips still on mine. I tensed, but she pulled away and laughed.

Thank you.

“That was wild,” she said. Becca was grinning ear to ear. The singer tossed the gun to Pat, then put her hand around mine on the bottle. “Garrett, that was so wild. It’s like… I was that close to dying. But I didn’t!” she giggled.

I was that close to watching the girl I loved die, but I didn’t, I thought.

“Y-Yeah,” I stammered, my heart pounding so fast I thought it would burst. “Becca, just don’t do it again. Not tonight,” I said. “Promise.”

She nodded. “Anything, babe. I don’t want to die tonight,” she agreed. “I’m not going anywhere, Garrett.”

Becca sat on my lap, putting her arms around my neck. “That’s what I want to hear,” I whispered with a smile. I ran my hands through her hair, pressing my lips against hers.

I could feel her heart racing. It was beating off the charts.

“Becca,” I said, pulling away. “Becca, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she replied.

My mind knew better. “Becca, your heart is racing… Are you sure you’re okay?”

The singer smiled. “Garrett, I’m fine.”

My mind completely knew better. The drugs, it told me. She’s overdosed on the drugs. My pulse picked up its pace. This was my fault. How could I do this to her? How could I let my Becca, Rebecca Hayley Anton, overdose on drugs? We were with her band, and my band, and a few other kids around Arizona… Eighty-One Twenty-Three wasn’t supposed to be this way. “Becca,” I pleaded, “you’re not okay. I’m taking you to a doctor.”

She screamed. “No!” the singer begged. “No, babe. They’ll find it in me. They’ll run tests and see that I have it all in my system.”

“Have what in your system?” asked Joel. I saw Becca’s face scrunch up in what was either pain or guilt. It was probably both.

“Mary-j,” she replied. “Acid. Coke. Heroin, vodka, ‘shrooms… Everything, Joel,” Becca cried. Tears welling up in her eyes, the singer buried her face in the crook of my neck. “I’ve done something awful.”

The long haired bassist’s face fell. I knew he cared about Becca like a little sister. I knew how bad hearing her say that must have hurt. Hell, it hurt me. “Oh, God…” Joel had a hard time swallowing.

I ran my hands through Becca’s hair as she sobbed into my shoulder. She never cried in front of me. She was always upbeat, and joking. She’d never been down, or cried. Something was terribly wrong. “Rebecca,” I said, sternly. “I am getting you to a doctor. I think…” I swallowed. Saying it made it so much more real. “I think you overdosed. Your heart is racing trying to handle the drugs. We have to go.”

Joel helped me get her to her feet. “You want me to go with you guys?” he asked. I shook my head. I didn’t want him to get carted off, too. Losing one Seattle Silver member was bad enough. If I could stop it, I wasn’t going to hold the two Seattle-based musicians in an Arizona jail. He nodded, understanding. “Get her better, Garrett.”

“I will,” I assured him. “Now, come on, Bex. Let’s get you out of here.”

“Garrett?” came Pat’s voice.

I shook my head. “Becca’s not feeling well.” Truth. “I’m going to take her home.” Lie. The drummer nodded, waving us away.

I’d gotten Becca to the ground floor before she started hissing, her face scrunched up and her hands clutching her chest. “It’s…” she hissed. “It hurts, Garrett.”

I shushed her, pressing my lips to hers. “Just across the street, Becca,” I whispered. “Just to my car. Just to the car.” She nodded. Her breathing was shallow. Every step seemed to hurt more than the last. It hurt me, too. I led the singer out of the parking garage and onto the sidewalk. “Just to the car,” I repeated.

She nodded again.

“Garrett!” I heard Joel shout. I let go of Becca and spun around, seeing his lanky frame leaning out of a window. He dangled her jacket. “Catch!” I walked closer to the building to catch the falling zip-up hoodie. It was just within my grasp when I heard her scream. Becca let out another piercing, shrill wail, making me spin back around and let the jacket hit the ground.

I couldn’t breathe.

Becca was standing in the middle of the road, clutching her heart, screaming. Just screaming. No words, Just screams.

She was paralyzed in pain.

I was paralyzed in fear.

Her shoulders were heaving with heavy sobs from the pain in her chest, and her face was dripping wet from the tears. “Becca!” I screamed my voice cracking. “Get out of there!” I couldn’t run out to help her. I couldn’t move. I was standing rigidly still, watching her suffer, and hearing her scream. Becca took long, shallow breaths, and then let them out screaming. Always the screaming.

“Rebecca!” I shouted. I could feel the hot tears rolling down my cheeks. I could hear Joel’s shouts, Matt and Nick’s chorus of screams. I knew Pat, John, Jared and Kennedy were at the windows, too, praying she’d move. We all were.

I could see her frame start to light up. Lights.

Lights. I knew what was going to happen. My mind took the one word, and translated: car.

“Becca!” I screamed, shriller than before. I held out the ‘a’, my voice cracking as the vowel turned into sobs. I screamed for her, my blue eyes bloodshot and the tears welling so high in my eyes I couldn’t see. But I knew what happened. It was too late.

The car barreled into her.

I fell to my knees on the pavement, and then gravity took my body and slammed my face into the asphalt. My glasses cracked and skid away from me, but I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I just lay there, my lip bleeding and my cheek scratched up, in silence. I was in a shock-coma. A vegetative, non-responsive state.

“Garrett!” I heard Pat scream. At least, I think it was Pat. “Garrett! Get up!”

No.

“Is he okay? Garrett!” The next voice was Jared.

No.

“Garrett, dude!” I heard John. “Garrett!”

No.

“No,” I mumbled into the pavement. Becca was dead. I should be, too. “No.”

Then, I took a long, shaky breath.

And I started screaming.

“Garrett, come on! You have to get up! Garrett, wake up!” came the muffled voice of Kennedy.

“Kenny, you know he can’t wake up until he starts screaming,” I heard Pat say.

“Well,” the guitarist grumbled, “he’s screaming again.”

That was when I jolted upright.

I was in the back of the van. The Maine was up in Seattle, not in Arizona. The Warped tour. Not a party at Eighty One Twenty Three. I frantically touched everything around me, making sure it was all real. My chest heaved with terrorized pants, and my fingers grasped at my face. I wasn’t wearing my glasses. My lip was fine, it wasn’t cut, it wasn’t bleeding. My fingers pat at my cheek. The skin was rough and bruised, and I could feel healing scabs, but it wasn’t cut and bleeding.

I closed my blue eyes, praying I’d stop having that nightmare. Begging my subconscious to let that night go, and let me move on with life. Hoping my brain would stop torturing me by making re-live that horrible night over, and over again.

“Garrett,” said Pat, turning around in his seat. “Did you… Have that nightmare again?”

I gulped, panting out, “Every… Every time I fall asleep.”

He unbuckled his seatbelt and crawled into the back with me. “I’m so, so sorry,” he said. “Her heart… Garrett, you heard them. Her heart just… burst.”

My eyes welled up with tears. “Pat… It’s my-”

He jumped on my line. “No, it’s not. Stop saying that, Garrett. It’s not your fault. It’s her fault. She’s the one who-”

I started screaming. I gripped fistfuls of my hair and yanked on it, screaming. I didn’t want Pat to finish that sentence. “It’s not her fault! She was a victim! She was the victim!” I shouted at the drummer.

He stood, rubbing his temple. “I’m sorry she died, Garrett. I’m sorry Becca had to be so stupid. But you’re the one who loved a drugee. You’re the one who loved a girl like that. You heard all the stories Joel told us. That’s the girl Becca was. That’s the girl you loved.”

I shoved him away from me. “Shut up!” I screamed at the long haired drummer, “shut up! She wasn’t like that! She was different!” I could feel my cheeks going red, and my eyes started to sting from the salty tears I was holding back. I reached out for my glasses, hoping the lenses would hide the fact I was about to cry. Defeated, I repeated, “She was different.”

Pat gave me a glare, but it softened to a different look. I couldn’t place the emotion. No, I could… pity. I cringed. I didn’t want my best friend’s sympathy; I wanted my girlfriend’s breath on my ear. Pat pulled his hair back, saying, “Garrett, I’m so sorry.”

I took a deep breath. “I smoked a cigarette with her once.”

“You’ve smoked?” Pat asked. I nodded. “With Becca?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nick smoked. You didn’t know that? Yeah, well, Nick smoked, and Becca always said she wanted to try, but she was scared. So she asked me, one night out in St. Louis? She asked me if I’d share one with her, so if she hated it, she didn’t have to smoke a whole cigarette. So I did,” I explained.

“Garrett smoked? What?” Kennedy piped in.

Ignoring him, I continued, “God, I remember our first cigarette, when she was coughing and coughing, and so I kissed her to make her stop… And then, things started getting… Well, you know,” I said, a little chuckle coming out as my brain finished the sentence, A little heated. Clothes came off, love was made. “God, Patrick Kirch… I love her. I really do.” I realized as I said that sentence that I had calmed down immensely.

He pat my shoulder. “I know,” he said.

“Pat,” I hiccupped, “take me back to the parking lots.”

“The parking lots?” Kennedy repeated.

I nodded. “Yeah. Back on that tour we had earlier this year. When us and Seattle Silver would get together in the parking lots of the venue we’d played and light soccer balls on fire.” I laughed at the memory, my eyes misting over again. “And the nights when we’d be driving all night to get to the next date, but no one would get any sleep because we all had our phones on speaker so we could all talk to Joel, and Nick, and…” My voice caught in my throat.

A small smile on his face, Kennedy finished for me, “And Becca. Yeah.”

“Why can’t we go back to all those places?” I begged. All the places we’d been retarded, but had fun. All the places where we did nothing, but it was everything to us. All the places we laughed, and joked, and kissed. All the places we said, “I love you.”

“You mean the places you two got… er… caught in the act?” Kenny asked with a smirk. I went crimson in the face.

Ignoring his comment, I stammered, “I… I just… I’m not ready to lose her. I’m just nineteen, guys!” I shouted.

“She was just eighteen when her heart burst from an over-dose, Garrett. Eighteen. You say you’re not ready to lose her? I’ll bet she wasn’t ready to die!” Kennedy shouted at me. “Garrett, she’s been dead for four months! It’s nearly the summer, man. We’re getting ready for the goddamn Vans Warped Tour!”

I started bawling. I couldn’t stop myself. I’d been keeping the guys on thin ice for months now, ever since Becca died. It was my fault, all of it. My fault she died. My fault the guys were so tense. My fault we we’re going to bomb the Warped tour. “I… I was eighteen, too,” I sniffled. “I was eighteen when she died, Kennedy.”

“I get it,” he said, trying not to yell. “You two screwed each other. But you can’t regret something you couldn’t control, Garrett! Life rolls by once, man. One chance. You, my friend, you’re alive. Act like it.”

“Kennedy!” John shouted. “Enough. How would you feel if Gabi’s heart burst from an over-dose?”

That shut the guitarist up pretty quickly.

“Garrett, come on,” Pat told me. “We’ve got to get ready. Ties on, shirts buttoned. We’re like, fifteen minutes away.”

I nodded, looking out the window. We were winding our way to the center of a cemetery. Becca’s funeral was today. It made me sick to my stomach, that we were all so healthy and alive, that we were all breathing air, and she was about to be put underground. I knew it had been sixteen long weeks since that Saturday at Eighty-One Twenty-Three, but I still had a hard time believing she was dead.

“This can’t be it,” I muttered.

“No, this is the place. See?” Pat replied, pointing to the crowd that had already arrived.

I shook my head. “No, no. I meant… I meant that this can’t be the last time I see her. It just can’t.”

Pat’s eyes fell to the floor of the van. “Well… We all go eventually. We all die sometime, Garrett. It’s just… It’s so horrible that she died at eighteen. But we all move on. It’s nothing new,” he told me.

That did not settle my stomach at all. But regardless, I nodded and grabbed my button-up and my tie, and I started to get ready.

The last time I put on a tie, I was going out with Becca. It was out in California, and we were going out to dinner. Remembering it made my fingers fumble at the knot of the tie. I swore under my breath. I remember her showing up in black skinny jeans, and pristine converse, and this red blouse-like top. Those baby-doll things, the shirts that look like dresses. And she took my tie off of me and wore it herself. That night was the first night I told her I loved her.

It hurt to remember. But I knew it would hurt more to forget.

Jared parked the van. Kennedy opened the doors, and then we all filed out. And we ran directly into the hometown heroes, Seattle Silver.

“Oh, uh… Sorry,” Joel muttered, his ginger head facing his shoes. There was something different about him, but I couldn’t place it.

“Joel?” I said. The bassist looked up. That was when I noticed, he’d cut his hair. Like, by a lot. The ginger-blonde locks had scraped his shoulders the last time I’d seen him. Now, they barely covered his ears. “Hey, man,” I greeted.

We exchanged sad, forced smiles. He’d lost his sister. I’d lost half of myself. And we were both here to bury her.

“Garrett,” he replied. “Good to see you. How you… How are you holding up?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’m alive,” I replied. That was about all I could say about it. I was breathing. But as Pat pointed out, we only breathe for so long.

Joel chuckled. “Yeah. Me too. Only half way, though. I’m turning eighteen in a week, and my parents keep asking what my plans are. I keep thinking of all the plans she and I had. You know?”

I nodded. I did. “And the nightmares,” I added. “I keep having the nightmares.”

“Of that night?” he asked. I nodded. “Me too,” Joel whispered. Like it was a secret. Like we were the only ones who knew.

“I keep… I keep thinking it’s my fault. That if I’d run out there, she could still be alive. That if I pushed her out of the way of that car, she’d be alive,” I admitted. It was the first time I’d said it out loud.

Joel put his hands on my shoulders. “Garrett,” he started, but Nick came up beside him.

“There was nothing any of us could do,” Nick said. “Her heart burst. Even if we’d gotten her out of the way of the car, she still would be dead.” I nodded. I knew that, but it didn’t help my guilty conscience.

I looked the guitarist up and down. He’d changed, too. Nick’s brown eyes had darkened. He’d dyed out the blonde in his hair, so it was all black, and had cut it up so that his hair never reached his face. I remember him having a resemblance to Jack Barakat, but now… He didn’t even look like Nick. I realized he would be nineteen now. His hair was shorter, and sticking up in a sort of wanna-be faux-hawk. I wondered what had ever happened to their drummer, Matt.

As if reading my mind, Joel said, “Matt moved to Maryland, by the way. He said he couldn’t handle being around Seattle anymore. He said that the city just reminded him or drugs and of Becca, and that he couldn’t handle it. So he left.”

“I’m really sorry,” I replied.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nick shrugged. “Not like we were going to try and keep the band together. Without Becca… It wouldn’t be the same. And it would have felt awful to try and replace her. She was like our sister. You can’t replace family. You know?”

I nodded. I did know. That was exactly how I felt right now. “I remember the first time I saw her. I’d been trying to convince the guys,” I gestured to Pat, John, Jared, and Kenny, “that I would find a girl that was right for me when I’d find her. And then I started reading AP, and I saw you guys in the 100 bands to look out for section.”

“Really?” asked Joel.

“Yeah,” I said. “And I remember thinking that I just wanted to leave. I wanted to get out of Arizona and go see new places and meet new people. I wanted to play music,and hear new kinds of music, and be different. You know?”

“Totally,” replied Nick.

“It was a distraction, you know? Like, it was a way to make wasted time seem like I was being productive. But I went and I ruined it.”

Joel tensed. He knew what had happened. He knew about the fiasco in the middle of that tour, with the one-night-stands, and the way I cheated on Becca, the way I made her heart break. I had hurt her so much. I never even said I was sorry.

He took a deep breath, biting his toungue. “Yeah, you did ruin it, Garrett,” Joel told me. “But she loved you. She loved you so much, that she wanted to believe that it was an accident and took you back. And we all knew you were sorry, so we didn’t mind it. You two were happier when you were together.”

I smiled. He’d never told me any of that. “Some things don’t change, Joel,” I replied. “I’m still so sorry. And I still love her.”

He smiled, too. “We all do.”

Nick put his arms around our shoulders. “Come on, fellas,” he said, “we should get over there. Funeral’s going to start soon.”

We nodded, and the three of us made our way to the black casket that lay beside a gaping hole in the ground. Becca’s hole. I felt my eyes begin to burn from the tears starting to form. “God, why can’t we get just one more day with her?” I asked.

“I hear that,” Joel replied. “I wish we could go back. To that tour. Just go back, and re-live those nights we all partied and had fun, and those sleepless nights?”

I smiled. I had more than one kind of sleepless night. I knew Joel was talking about the late night phone calls. But I couldn’t help but think of the nights Becca and I had sex.

“As weird as it sounds, I want to re-live the fights.”

Nick stopped walking to give me a confused look. “Those stupid fights you and her had? Why? You both got so worked up over some little stupid thing!”

I laughed. “But we didn’t care who won. It never mattered. There was no wrong, no right, just us. And as weird as it is, I think we both loved those fights,” I explained.

“Never mattered?” Joel laughed. “Wow. Those fights really were stupid. Why’d you two even bother fighting?”

My response shot out of me before I could think about the words I was saying. “The make-up-sex.”

Nick and Joel couldn’t help it. They laughed. I laughed too. And it was then, when the three of us just stood there by Becca’s casket and talked about the times we had with her, that I realized these guys had become some of my best friends. They were a part of me, just like Becca was.

We had stood together, sharing stories together, until everyone else had left. It was dark out, and the only lights we had we the headlights of our respective vans. John, Jared, Pat, Kennedy, Joel, Nick and I were all sitting around Becca’s grave, talking about that tour, and laughing at the fun memories.

“It’s so awful, though,” John said, after we all calmed down. “That we’re alive. If you think about it.”

I nodded. “It’s horrible. That we can sit here and be fine, that we can all have played the same games she did that night, but she’s the one who died. I can’t believe that this is how it ends. You know? I just feel like this can’t be it. There has to be something more.”

“A reason,” Nick commented.

“What?” asked Jared.

“There has to be a reason Becca died like that,” Nick explained.

“I feel like we’re missing something,” Joel added. “Like there’s some sort of clue to something. But we’re all missing it.”

“Maybe she was just… unlucky,” Pat said. “There doesn’t have to be a reason for anything.”

“Life’s just unfair,” Kenny agreed. “Life takes no prisoners. It just takes lives.”

“Well,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes and standing up. My knees ached from kneeling on the ground for so long, but it was nothing compared to the pain I was dealing with every day for the past four months. “Well,” I repeated. “I guess tonight’s it. This is where we end it. This is the last night with her, where we’re all together like this.”

“We could come back. On the anniversary,” Nick said.

I shook my head. “We’re all going to grow up. Slowly, we’re going to get jobs, or tour more often. Things are going to take off for all of us,” I said. “We won’t be able to do this again. We’ve said it all. All the feelings, everything that was left to say, we said.”

Kennedy picked up on my train of thought, saying, “It’s not like we’ll have new stories, or new memories to talk about. We’ve said it all. And it’ll just hurt more to try and hold on. Garrett’s right, tonight’s the night.”

Joel looked heartbroken, but he knew we were right. “Well. I guess this is it. And so we say our goodbyes.”

“Keep in touch,” Nick prompted.

“We’ll call if we’re ever in Seattle,” John promised.

“And we’ll call if we’re in Arizona,” Nick agreed.

Everyone stood. In a huge group hug, we all agreed, “We all roll along.”