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Remy snorted despite his best efforts to hold it back, which made Vivi smile harder. They sat in comfortable, sunshiny silence for a moment. Remy finally tapped the table lightly and said, “Hey, can I say something without getting fired?” Vivi nodded, and Remy went on: “I don’t think he’s all that dark. He’s like Fisher-Price dark. Dark Ken doll.”
Vivi grinned. “He does work too hard at the whole emo kid thing, doesn’t he? He’s from Beverly Hills. His backstory isn’t nearly as dark and broody as he wants it to be.”
“Here’s the real test: Does he eat kale?” Remy pressed.
“I do believe he’s ordered a kale wrap before.”
“Yep. No one who eats kale can authentically brood,” Remy said.
Vivi laughed brightly then reached into one of the galley drawers. She slid him a crisp, fresh legal pad. “Alright. Better get your paper ready.Untitled Vivi Swan Song, aka: Kale Me Phony.”
“That was a terrible pun,” he said, shaking his head in faux shame.
“You laughed anyway. Besides, we’ll work on it. We have to, now.”
“Right,” Remy said and pulled a pen from his bag then scrawledUntitled Vivi Swan Songat the top. Vivi rose and vanished to the back bedroom, returning a few moments later with her guitar.
“Ready?” Vivi asked.
“Sure.”
Vivi nodded, grabbed her phone, and texted someone. A moment later, there was a thunderous knock on the door. “That’s security. Go on out,” she said. Remy rose, and she followed him a few steps to the door.
“Hey,” she said, just as he reached for the handle. He turned, and she smiled again, and her voice changed a bit. “I’m excited to work with you, Remy Young.”
“Likewise,” Remy said through a somewhat unexpected breath then opened the door and walked toward his own bus—trying desperately to avoid looking for prying eyes. It truly wasn’t until he was back on the band bus that he realized he’d just gotten the career boost he’d hoped for when signing on for this tour.
And rather than being ecstatic aboutthat, he was hanging on her words—or rather, on the way she’d said them. The way her voice was a little soft, a little gentle, a little nervous, almost. The way she’d paused for a millisecond before the wordwork.
I’m excited to work with you, Remy Young.
Then
Val was getting better at guitar.
Remy was getting better at percussion.
But Mercy wasn’t getting any better.
They spent every Sunday afternoon and evening praying—the boys, their father, their grandparents and neighbors and Pastor Ryan. It wasn’t the quiet, contemplative sort of prayer. It was the shouting kind, the angry kind, where their father spoke in tongues and the lady who babysat them sometimes convulsed on the floor. They sweated and shook and felt delusional and feverish, and around sunset, when the frenzy tapered, the pastor would look proud.
“That was God’s presence,” he said. “That was God visiting us. God telling us about his great and mighty plans to heal baby Mercy.”
After prayers were over, Val and Remy slipped outside in the bustle of people gathering hats and purses and toddlers. Even in Florida, the evening air was cool, and the humidity pressed against their skin like a damp cloth. This part of the state was ridiculously flat and grassy, and seemed quiet and still until you realized you weren’t hearing silence—you were hearing the calls of a thousand crickets trilling. Remy had always been particularly intrigued by how crickets could be so loud and so quiet at once.
Val took his shirt off—he hated wearing button-up shirts—revealing the crudely drawn tattoos he’d put on his chest in marker. Remy looked nervously back at the house, far more afraid of his brother getting caught than Val himself was. The fake tattoos were supposed to look like the ones on a rock star whose CD cover they’d seen at their music teacher’s house. They made the rock star look tough. They made Val look skinny.
“You know something?” Val said, slumping into the grass and stretching out like a star. “I don’t think that was God.”
“What was?”
“All of that. I don’t think that was God.”
Remy dug his toes into the grass. Val said things like this; Remy never did, even if he thought them. Thinking them was sinful enough but at least deniable. Saying them meant it was real.
“Who do you think it was, then? The Devil?” Remy asked.
“No,” Val said and plucked a long blade of grass from the ground. He stuck it between his teeth. “I think it was Pastor Ryan.”
