somewhere in neverland

There was a certain beauty to the way that your legs gave out during concert life.

When you could barely stand and you’re in the middle of a wriggling mass of strangers, people you've never met in your life, all singing the same words, somehow.  You don’t know who’s sweat is keeping you cool, or who the shoulders you’re ramming into belong to.  There’s long hair choking you and you’re pounding your fists into the air, the lights glowing off the crowd are the only brief glimpses you get of the spirits cradling you.  Massive venue or shoddy club, it’s always beautiful.

So when her boyfriend told her only weeks into them dating to come see him play, Wendy nothing short of lost her shit.  

If the local teen wanted to see a show near Gravity Falls, it’d take a drive to Portland and her whole month’s paycheck of gas money.  And then someone to actually drive, god forbid 3 hours in a car with her dad, the possibilities of him smashing the steering wheel, etc..

In short, too much work, even for a night of temporary ecstasy.

And even though she’s in a crappy club--surrounded by the same people she’s been forced to associate with for the last eight years of her life--with shit lighting, the smell of angsty teens in ten gallons of body spray, and a stage that looks like it’s about to fall apart, she’s happier than she’s been all summer.  The tension in the air swirled with humid summer nights and the undying scent of pine trees and mountains and woodsmoke, and when she exhaled, girls started screaming.

Honestly, Robbie V and The Tombstones had initially not been given enough credit when she first heard of them.  She had dated plenty of musicians before, but they were always introverted artsy types who never got anywhere with their passion, as they’d still been rather young.  Robbie was nothing short of the stereotype, a boy who carried his guitar on his back almost constantly just to remind people that yeah, I can totally play that, you know, no big deal.  The kind of boy that, when you asked them why, would tell you “Well, what if I get inspired randomly, huh?” and never admit it was all for an ego boost and--if they were lucky--chance to promote and brag; “Yeah, I’m in a band.”

As much as she liked the guy, she was too busy comparing him to every other boy she dated to realize that he was actually trying to make a living off his music and ignoring the fact that he was barely a Junior in High School.  When the town, all packed into the club, starting cheering for a 17-year-old who sang music about his teenage angst, she was not only surprised, but a little confused.

And then they came on.

It was like the world fell into place before her.  The way he looked on stage wasn’t the boy she knew.  He wasn’t a geeky, awkward kid when he strummed those first few notes in the dark of the stage.  He was suddenly a celebrity, like any other big show she’d ever seen.  It was completely unrealistic, but when the lights hit him, there was an undying passion in his painted eyes that was unlike any side of Robbie she’d ever seen.  He was a completely different person standing up there, and suddenly she wondered why she’d never seen this before.  All traces of his teenage apathy were washed away, and he breathed into the microphone with that ashen rasp he so fittingly wore.

“S’been a while, Gravity.”

There were suddenly hands in the air, there were more shouts, and it hit Wendy all at once that this boy was hers.  People were screaming and wetting themselves over his dumb band, and he was hers.

“So, uh, yeah... We’re gonna play some music?  I think that’s what you showed up for.”  More screams of compliance.  “Cool.”

He picked up his strums, carrying the riff he’d been playing along, and the girl on drums joined in, and then his other guitarists.  It was a sound fitting of the person Wendy knew him to be, a hearse-like droll, the soundtrack to a zombie movie or something completely horrific.  But after about a minute of this long, building intro, people started moving and bodies started ramming into her and she could feel the bruises and scrapes of jewelry and the feeling of having her feet stepped on and it hurt so good.  The audience became what she was so used to--a force--one that was unstoppable, and as Robbie stood on stage, eyeliner dripping down his face and greasy hair stuck to his blemished forehead, she realized that this unattractive boy was the most gorgeous when he actually gave a few fucks about the world.

It wasn’t the pleasure of dating someone who could rock like that on stage.  It was the thrill of knowing he was so driven by something so simple. With every song he played, as the crowd would cheer, he would look down to her like she was the reason he could even breathe.  For a smile or a nod, almost for approval.  Wendy realized then that Robbie spoke with his eyes.  She’d looked at them plenty of times, but never realized that it was almost nigh impossible to tell what he was feeling without doing so.  

And when they closed to the end of the set, and the whole room was panting hard, he cast her one last glance.  Her heart skipped a beat, because it was evident at that moment that the only thing he loved more than his music was her.

“Tonight’s actually kinda special,” He announced.  “Probably because we’re gonna play a cover right now, actually, but also because it’s been a month since my life got significantly better.”

He didn’t elaborate.  She put it in the back of her mind and kept listening to him.

“This is a song by a band I was unironically obsessed with during my 7th grade emo phase.”

“You never fuckin’ grew out of that!”

“Eat shit, Derek.” He grinned at the bassist, and back to the crowd.  “If you know the words you can sing along, and sing damn loud, ‘cause this is the last thing we’re playing you guys tonight.”

His eyes fell back to Wendy, and as he sang, he didn’t for a second take them off her.  

“Say goodbye to the halls and the classes,

Say hello to a job and the taxes.

The weekends with old friends

spilling into 9 to 5 routines...”

A couple girls screamed.  Some people actually sang.  The rest of the crowd nodded their heads to the subtle beat and gleamed up at the band.  Wendy peered at her boyfriend with a thoughtful look, because this song sounded so familiar, and she didn’t recall why.

“Tell me how you feel over and done with,

like your life is a map with no compass to guide

At the bar, drinkin’ way too much,

We sing along to Forever Young...”

The tempo picked up and the room was completely dark except for the single middle-school-drama-class-grade spotlight shining on Robbie and his guitar.  

“So here we go again,

wishing we could start again.”

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and sang the next verse, the next word, with every ounce of unbridled intensity and devotion he had in his pathetically scrawny body.

“Wendy, run away with me

I know I sound crazy,

Don’t you see what you do to me?”

There’s a beautiful gift that comes along with the concept of being a teenager--the curse of memory.  Triggered usually by senses, teenage memory is a very powerful thing.  At a young age, memories are foggy and irrelevant, almost.  At an older age, the memory of a human being only worsens as time goes on.  But a teenager holds memories much more dear to them than the average human because they feel absolutely every second of those memories in them.  You can smell dew on the grass in the morning and remember that time you walked to the store with your best friend at 4 am to get microwavable pizzas.  Or see the sunset and fall to your knees crying because it was the backdrop of a time in your life when you were happier.  Maybe the taste of 7-11 slurpees reminds you of the manic pixie dream girl who knew they were your favourite and brought you one every morning before a day of mind-rotting school, and maybe the chairs in your new house make you angry because they remind you of that same school with the professor who had the manky bad breath from always drinking that cheap Shell Station coffee.  Maybe all those things make you sick because you don’t have them anymore, and the bitter nostalgia eats away at your heart.

Wendy was currently undergoing an out of body experience because she remembered her best friend who she left behind in Olympia, one of the only girls who she ever really bonded with.  Wendy remembered posters of a currently-faceless-in-her-mind’s-eye man named Alex, and another named Jack, and the sharpie hearts drawn all around them and the soundtrack always playing in her room... Wendy remembered begging and pleading her Dad not to make her move because this girl was the only friend the freakishly tall, braces-clad, pigtailed-girl had, and the face she wore and the way she playfully chased alongside the car as they drove away for the last time.  Wendy was suddenly back in the club, with tears streaming down her face because the last thing she ever heard in that city she grew up in was her best friend singing this song to her as they both laid in the grass, glowing orange in the sunset's embrace--jokingly urging her to run away and never grow up.

“I wanna be your lost boy,

your last chance,

a better reality, yeah...”

She hadn’t cried in years.  In fact, she’d done her best to forget--to go against that pesky burden that was the teenage memory.  And now here was this boy, who she’d initially paid almost no mind to, singing the words that so long ago kept her from giving up.  Her smile broke through the rainclouds and she tucked the memory she’d worked so hard to repress into the warmest confines of her heart.  She didn’t know the words, but they were still inside her, and it was almost as if Robbie had peered into the girl and snatched them up so he could make her feel at home all over again.

“Wendy, we can get away

I promise if you’re with me,

say the word, and we’ll find a way,

and I can be your lost boy, your last chance...

Your ‘everything better’ plan, ohh~

Somewhere in Neverland.”

Wendy was stricken with a pang she’d never been struck with before as she saw how Robbie looked at her.  He’d looked at her that way ever since they met in the 8th grade, but she’d never paid it any mind as it’d been a common look guys (and even girls) gave her.  She didn’t always understand it--nor did she acknowledge it--and eventually, she’d started just declaring it as normal.  But her heart was near-trembling loudly in her chest, and even though there were faces all around, Wendy felt as if only her and Robbie shared the room.  There was an electrical current figuratively passing between them, and she came to a conclusion that she’d never really consented to with anyone else--she really liked it when Robbie looked at her that way, and she was glad she’d never seen him gaze at anyone else that way.

“We’ll start a life of the plain and the simple,

of great times with far better people

and weekends with our friends,

laughing ‘bout the wine that stains their teeth.

We’ll talk about how your parents separated

and how you don’t wanna make the same mistakes as them.

I’ll say it’s all about stickin’ it out, and try to feel forever young--

so here we go again,

wishin’ we could start again.”

With spots of tears still wetting the corners of dark green eyes, she threw some horns up and started jumping in sync with the crowd, every last one of them drenched in sweat moving as a single entity.  Robbie closed his eyes, smacked his guitar back awake, and left planet earth when the chorus kicked back in.  “We-eeen-dyyy, run away with me...”

He sang through the chorus, her name cutting through the thick air and teenage angst like cooling morphine.  He sang it like it healed every wound he’d undergone his entire life, like with everything he’d been through and everything he had to face--it wasn’t the music he was playing that was keeping him saner than he’d been in years, it was her.  It hit her at once what he’d meant earlier; they’d been dating for a month now.  Robbie was an extremely over-exaggerated kindred spirit, and he had honestly believed that she somehow fixed him.

He pulled the mic in close, to where his wet, jet-black hair shagged over the metal, so that his lips pressed up against the bumpy texture and somehow, his uncharacteristically crystal blue eyes broke through the heavy darkness.  And here was this kid who maybe was scared of having to grow up, and this music was the closest thing he had to keeping his youthful spirit in-tact while still being able to look like he was some badass on stage, like he was to be feared and respected as an artist.  He breathed those last words into the mic.

“Somewhere in Neverland...”

Someone from the back threw a water bottle to the crowd.  Robbie locked his eyes with the girl he was far too in love with--the way she was falling out of her tank top and how that long, flaming red hair stuck to her shoulders like some kind of bloody coffin, how her eyeshadow was smeared and how her pale skin was near luminescent in the blackness--and then she opened her eyes and looked straight at him, and something about that new glint in her stare made him almost giggle. He panicked for a second, hit the wrong note, and presently decided he really didn’t care.  The lights went off, the song ended, Lee screamed “I KNOW HIM!  I KNOW HIM!” from the back of the crowd, and the room emptied.  All that remained was one (1) Wendy Corduroy, an empty set of instruments, and an extremely anxious feeling making itself very obviously known deep inside of her.

The redhead parkoured her way up one of the speakers, onto the stage, and behind the curtain to 3 sweaty teenagers, where she lightly raised her hand and laughed out a “‘Sup?”

The band’s drummer pointed to the door.  “He’s out there.”

“Radical.”

***

“You fuckin’ nerd!  I can’t believe you did that!”

“Shut up, you loved it.”

Wendy couldn’t deny it.  She’d been smiling as soon as she hit the cold Oregon air and saw Robbie’s face, the same awkward, apathetic boy he’d been before the show, lounging against the brick walls of the club.

“I just wish I could’ve actually, you know, wrote something myself,” He lamented.  “It probably would’ve been a lot more meaningful or something.”

He was about to open his mouth again to say something in the same vein, but she stopped him.  “No, dude, you have no idea, shut up right now.  You could not have picked a better song.”

“Yeah?  So... you liked it, right?”

“Hell yes I liked it!  Robbie, I loved every second of it.”

He adored how confidently she always spoke, like she never had to stop for a second to contemplate the words she needed to use.  “Does that mean... you know... you wanna stay a thing?  This thing we’re doing, me and you, together?  That’s still all good?”

“Oh my god, Robbie, yes,” She laughed.  “Dude, trust me, if I wanted to break up with you, I’d have done it by now.”

“Sometimes I... worry,” He nervously rubbed his free arm.  “You’re just, like, really pretty and smart, and people used to always tell me that they were gonna date you, and... I never really thought... I had a chance, or that you’d find someone... better, you know?”

“Man,” She punched him.  “Those guys don’t dedicate whole songs to me.”

“I guess...” He looked down, kicked a rock, pulled his hood against his neck and peered back into her.  “But you really like me.  And I like you, a lot... like, you’re the kind of girl I actually get happy over.  And you don’t even have to do anything, you just gotta like, exist... and... just... don’t go, okay, Wendy?”

“Robbie.”

“Yeah?"

“Dude, shut up.”

She pulled on the strings of his hoodie until her clenched fists were up against his chest, their hair stuck together from sweat and humidity, foreheads touching, noses turned, makeup running.  Their chapped lips meshed and Robbie took a second to exhale through his nose before he closed his eyes, wrapped his shaking hands around the curve of her back, and made a mental note of how perfectly their bodies somehow fit together.  

“You need to fucking shave,” She whispered when they broke apart, her lips curled into a smile and freckled cheeks tinted pink.

He smirked that fake-asshole grin, gathered up the courage to grab her hand, and opened the door back inside.  

“Maybe.”