It was a tragic story. She’d gone to their website, heard their songs and watched their videos. She thought they were very strong, very talented, especially Ariel Collier, and she thought Nomad’s voice was as good as Waylon’s. So when her mom had brought in a newspaper ad saying The Five was doing a last show at the Vista Futura, and all ages were welcome and you could get in free if you wore the T-shirt, well…
No, Mom, I can’t go. I just don’t feel like it.
Jenn stood up, returned the guitar to its stand, and looked at herself in the mirror.
That hateful mirror. That ugly, ugly mirror. It showed her that the crows will fly, even if you stay in your own room and stop going outside. They will fly if you stop eating. They will fly if you shun food, because at first the sight of it makes you think of your father throwing up his dinners and shrinking down to a sick, dying sack of bones, and you don’t want to eat, either, if he can’t. And then, later…you think…really… I want to be with him, and play guitars, and be a family like we used to be, and I love my mom with all my heart but I need my dad, and maybe if I get right to the edge…right to the very edge of slipping into a sweet sleep, he will come as a spirit, whole and well again, to tell me you better eat, girl, and I can let him know how much I miss him, and how since he’s been gone all the music is gone too.
But he never came. He never could get through.
They call it anorexia. The doctor said: anorexia nervosa.
Jenn looked at herself. She really was a twig, now. Half of a twig. A sprig. Her bones could be counted.
No, Mom, I can’t go.
Her mother had said she might enjoy it, if she let herself. Nobody was going to know her there, if that’s what she was worried about. I’ll pick you up when it’s over. Jenn, go.
That band had gone through so much. Had seen so much death and tragedy. Yet still they kept going. They were unstoppable. So maybe…okay, Mom, I’ll go.
She almost didn’t make it in. She’d been outside the club waiting with about eighteen thousand people, it seemed like, and had started talking to another girl her age whose mother had let her off. The girl, whose name was Diane, wore very thick glasses and had a kind smile. She was wearing a The Five T-shirt and she said she was their Number One Fan. She said her mother had brought her from Waco. Then the doors had opened up and the crowd had started rushing in, and everybody was moving forward in a mob and there stood a man counting people on a little metal clicker, and when Jenn got up to the door with Diane behind her some people had pushed Diane back to get in front of her, and Jenn heard the man call out to someone inside, “We’re about at the limit!”
So Jenn had reached a scrawny arm back through the surging crowd and caught Diane’s hand and at first pulled her through and then pushed her forward so she could enter the door first, because Waco was a lot further away than Cedar Park, and Jenn had a cellphone she could call her mother with and Diane had just been kind of let out on the street.
But they’d both gotten in. The doors had closed about six people after Jenn.
“Breakfast’s almost ready!” her mother called from the kitchen. “Orange juice? Milk?” It was a hopeful question.
Jenn stared at herself in the mirror.
She heard that song again.
The last song.
She heard the words I’m sitting here like a candle on the darkest night.
“Jenn, listen to me, now. Listen real close.” It was her father’s voice, speaking to her in the hospital room on one of the final days. “I don’t want you to get sick. Do you hear me? You have life ahead of you. Hear me? I want you to be somebody’s candle, Jenn. I want you to show somebody your light. I think, with your talent and your heart, that’s what you’re gonna do. But you can’t get sick. You can’t follow me. Do you understand that?”
She did understand, but it was something she couldn’t control now. The crows were flying, and they destroyed little birdies.
But that last song…
And the part Try and try, grow and thrive, because no one here gets out alive.
Her father’s voice once more, on maybe the very last day?
“Jenn,” he whispered. “My beautiful Birdy. Don’t cry, baby. Laurie, you don’t cry either. It’s all right. Do you think people get out of life alive? No, they don’t. That’s why you have to make every day…every minute…count. I love my girls. God bless you both.”
And hearing that line in the song, in the Vista Futura, had made tears bloom in Jenn’s eyes. Had made them trickle down her cheeks, until Diane had looked at her and said maybe Jenn ought to be the Number One Fan, if that song moved her so much.
Jenn had thought—had known—that at last, her father had found a way to get through.
It had been a good song. A really, really good song. It had deeply touched her. It had spoken to her in a way she thought it could speak to no other person in the audience.
But she thought she could do better.
She looked at her posters on the walls.
There was Gwen Stefani, who Jenn thought was one of the most beautiful and talented women in the world. Gwen Stefani had a sweet heart. Jenn could tell that about a person.
There was a woman named Joni Mitchell, standing on a stage before a huge crowd with her arms upraised. A vintage poster, bought off eBay. These two women, on the CDs she owned, were separate and distinct talents. Both had fire and passion in their voices. Joni Mitchell wanted to get things done. She wanted to give a voice to people who had none. She wanted to speak clearly, and to clearly be heard. And to do that, you also had to clearly hear.
Gwen Stefani used her talent as an entertainer. To enthrall and delight, to dance to a beat, to have fun, to laugh and help people shrug off the worries of the world for a little while. To help them find strength when the crows came flying.
Jenn enjoyed them equally, as she enjoyed listening to all the many different musicians in her collection. But these two…these two separate and distinct talents, were the ones she went back to again and again.
She thought…if someone could merge them together, could meld them into one talent, one voice, a single personality. The seeker of truth and the joyful entertainer.
And both of them, the combination, writing songs from the heart.
What music that would be.
Jenn thought she maybe should eat some breakfast today. At least try it.
You couldn’t sing on an empty stomach.
You sure couldn’t dance on one, either.
“Milk,” she answered her mother.
“Alright, angel,” her mother said, and her voice was husky.
That last song, Jenn thought. It had spoken to her, in about as clear a voice as anybody could wish to hear.
Some things don’t change, they never do.
Some things do change, they change with you.
She looked again at the pictures of herself and her father, thinking about how much courage he’d shown when he was getting ready for his journey.
She thought she needed some too, for her own.
“Orange juice, too,” she said toward the kitchen. And added, “Please, ma’am.”
At breakfast, Jenn ate sparingly, like a bird, but at least Laurie thought it was a start. Just so long as she didn’t go into the bathroom and throw it up. Laurie asked her what she planned to do today, it would be another clear hot day, and Jenn said she thought she was going to mess around on the guitar, and she might call Noreen Velasco and Anna Cope and ask them if they wanted to bring their guitars over. It had been a while since they’d done that.