Page 169 of These Secret Years

Interestingly, I’ve reconnected with one of my freshman year friends in the workshop. Led by a female composer who’s worked on some Netflix shows out in Hollywood, the workshop is half about music and half about film. It’s eight hours a day, and on the first day, I run into a friend of mine from the dorm freshman year. He was part of the small group of us not on the football team, and I vaguely remember he was a fine arts major, too, although, until now, I couldn’t have told anyone which art it was. Far too much THC was consumed by us that year.

Shannon has grown up a lot, though, and he’s readying himself for graduating with a BFA in film. We reconnect instantly, and I learn within days that he’s amassed a strong YouTube following from the short films he’s been producing—mostly horror.

I watch them in my spare time, decently creeped out but also very impressed by what he’s put out there. The production quality is much better than what I’d expect from a student film, and the actors he uses—all recruited from the theater department—are excellent.

“You have to write something for me,” he says one day over coffee on a workshop break. “I’ve got this idea for a possessed house, and how cool would it be to collaborate?”

Shannon is cute and charismatic. A smaller, slightly more femme man who talks with his hands and bleaches the crap out of his hair. He’s funny, and he’s easy to talk to, but he’s also really smart with a lot of talent.

“Very,” I tell him. It’d be very cool. Also, the more I’ve been paying attention in this workshop, the more it’s occurred to me how nice it would be not to have to transcribe the thoughts and feelings from my own head, instead feeling out someone else’s vision and putting my understanding of music to work without any emotional attachment to it whatsoever.

I watch the bits and pieces and sometimes full films the guest lecturer shows with the kind of attention I’ve rarely been able to pay to anything on a screen. I notice the swells and the tension, the purposeful silences, and too often, I wonder if I could have done it differently. Better even.

“Maybe first, you let me try to rescore something you’ve already done. It’s the only way I’ll have a clue whether I’m actually capable of it or not without messing something up.”

He shakes his head, his perfectly styled hair not moving at all. “First step in all this is gonna be making your ego at least half as big as your talent.”

Because Shannon’s assessment of my talent is based only on some sheet music I showed him and not any pieces I’ve played, recorded, or otherwise, I remind him not to get his hopes up.

With this project and the new semester approaching, for the first time since Knight got us the apartment, I feel like my life is beginning to move on. It has the feel of an old, beaten-up engine coming to life and finally turning over.

I’m not sure if I can say the same thing about Knight’s life, though. My first love, the boy who was so afraid and yet always so optimistic, has faded into the background. This newer version of him has left some of the best parts in full working order, but the interface is different, and, in my opinion harder to navigate.

I never expected him to bounce back from the sudden loss of his father fully intact, but I also didn’t think he would try so hard to. That he would be so damn determined to show other people that it wasn’t eating him alive inside and hurting him in strange new ways on a near daily basis. By the time school starts, he’s not crying all that much, if ever, but he’s glassy when it’s not just him and me. When it’s just us, I’ll mention how distant he seems, and he snaps out of it quickly. Still, he’ll go blank for long periods of time, his jaw tense, and his expression weighed down and heavy, his dark eyes morose and jaded.

Before he leaves for the first game of the new season—my senior year—he’s shaving his face, and I’m sitting on the edge of the tub, keeping him company when he says, “I don’t know what all this is for.”

“What?”

“Like what the fuck am I trying to prove anymore? That I can do it? That I’m the best? Why?”

“You have a whole team counting on you to be the best.”

“They have their own shit to prove. They don’t need me. I just call the plays and try to make them look good.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“It’s a game, Sullivan. It’s meaningless.”

Football has never been meaningless to Knight. It’s been his world. The vehicle he uses to prove things to himself, to his family, the thing that’s given him confidence and incredible friendships. It’s also, if everything ends up the way he originally wanted it, going to give him a very comfortable and exciting life where he gets to do what he loves and give something back. His heart is too big and full to keep all his wealth and fame to himself. He wants to give it away. He needs to, or I’m positive he’ll burst, even if he can’t see that now through the cloud of grief still hovering around him.

“So, what?” I ask. “You want to quit? Just no show tonight, and then what?”

“Then people will say my dad died. Poor thing. It’s no wonder he couldn’t go on.”

“But the real truth would be what?” I ask.

“That I don’t see the point in going on anymore.”

I take a deep breath and ask the question I’ve been avoiding asking all summer. “Are you still angry with your dad?”

He puts the razor down and hangs his head between his shoulders, his massive hands gripping the edge of the countertop. “No,” he whispers.

“You sure about that?”

“I’m a little pissed off at my uncle still, but not my dad. He was just doing what he thought would help me. Everybody makes mistakes.”

“What was his mistake?”