After Minneapolis, we go to Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto. Gavin never says anything about Darcy and me, and no one else shows me her tits.

And I think, for a little while at least, that life might be almost perfect. I’m touring with my band, playing shows every night, my best friend and I are some kind of together, and nothing really changed. As far as everyone else knows, we’re still the same Trent and Darcy as always.

Except I wake up with her naked in my bed. That’s an important difference.

About a week after the tour bus, we’re at the Broad Street Theater in Boston, doing sound check at five in the afternoon, and we’re stuck there because when I strum my guitar in open tuning, one of the notes is hitting exactly the frequency that makes a light fixture in the ceiling rattle.

“Okay!” one of the theater’s employees calls from a catwalk, where he’s doing something that involves a lot of clanking to the light. Try it again?”

I strum each string one by one, until the high E makes something buzz.

“Fuckin’ ancient lights,” the guy in the catwalk mutters.

“At least we know which note it is,” Gavin says.

“Just don’t play that one,” Joan jokes. “How hard can it be?”

“Again?” the guy calls. I pluck the string.

“Fuck!” he shouts.

“Try wrapping some tape around it or something, mate,” Gavin calls. “If you stick something to the fixture it ought to change the frequency just enough so it’ll stop doing that.”

There’s a clatter above. Some creaking.

“Huh?” the guy calls.

“Have you got any tape?” Gavin shouts.

“Yeah?”

“Try wrapping some of it...”

My phone buzzes, and I reach into my pocket to silence it.

“But I need to secure it tighter!” the guy in the ceiling calls. “It’s buzzing.”

“It’s not buzzing because it’s loose, it’s buzzing because of the way sound works,” Darcy calls, and I can tell she wants to add you dipshit to the end of her sentence but doesn’t.

“Can we just send Gavin up?” Joan asks, her voice low enough that the guy can’t hear her.

I have a bad feeling this is going to take a while, just as my phone buzzes again. I frown.

“It doesn’t matter, anywhere that the light won’t melt it!” Gavin calls.

I think we’ll be here a minute, so I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at the screen.

NORTH DELANO STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY.

Well, at least he’s calling me from the proper prison phone this time, not from a cell phone that someone probably stuck up his ass to smuggle in.

“Guys, I gotta take this,” I say. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”

“We’ll be here,” Joan says grimly, and Darcy flashes me a thumbs up. Gavin’s got his arms crossed in front of his chest, futilely trying to explain resonance frequencies to the guy in the ceiling.

“Hey,” I say, walking off stage. “What’s up?”

There’s a pause, then the person on the other end clears his throat.

“Is this Trent Ryder?” says someone who is definitely not Eli.

“It is.”

He’s in the fucking infirmary again, in a coma or something which is why he’s not calling me himself...

“I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Eli Ryder was killed yesterday,” the man says.

I stop short, right in front of a brick wall, and I fucking stare at it, mind blank. I stand there for a long, long time, because suddenly the words are just a collection of sounds and it’s all fucking nonsense.

“Eli?” I finally ask.

“Yes.”

My ears are ringing. I feel like I’ve been hit in the gut, like I can’t get a breath, like I can’t even see.

“Killed?” I hear myself say.

“He was stabbed in an altercation,” the man answers carefully.

“No, he wasn’t.”

Silence.

“I’m afraid he was.”

“No, he fucking wasn’t because he’s an idiot and an asshole but he didn’t get fucking stabbed in fucking prison,” I tell him, though I’ve got no fucking clue what I’m saying. “Eli is goddamn fine and probably jerking off in his cell to some porno mag so it’s in your best fucking interest right now to figure out who the jackass who got stabbed really is and tell that poor bastard’s family.”

“Sir, I’m afraid that—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” I growl. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and unless you find out you’d best hang this phone up and tell Eli to call me now.”

A brief pause. I’m shaking with fury, my mind swirling, a deep thunderstorm.

How could they do this? How could they fucking do this?

“I’ll have the morgue call you later to arrange the details,” he says, his voice all forced calm. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

I just drop the phone on the ground and walk away, feeling like there’s a layer between me and the world, like I’m walking through water, blind and dumb.

Eli’s not dead. He can’t be dead. He’s Eli. He can be a lot of things but he can’t be fucking dead.

I’m not going anywhere. There’s no destination, besides someone else, besides through a door, besides away from people who’ll fucking look at me.

I shove a door open. Broom closet, too small. I shove another one. Women’s bathroom.

One more. Couch, table, lamp, looks familiar.

I slam the door behind me.