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  Suddenly her deviously good mood seemed to change.

  "Please tell me this is not about Jackie Dalton. I don't care what happened, what kind of mixed signals you're getting, I don't want you having anything to do with her. I know I'm not mom, I know you're practically an adult, but I have a sisterly duty to protect you as long as I can."

  I was so relieved at the missed guess that it took all the nerves out of me, and I started laughing with relief.

  "Don't laugh at me, I'm serious!"

  "No, no, I know you are... It's just... Wow, you are so off base. Shae, look, Alphatwyn is coming to town on the night of my birthday and I have to go or I'll like lock myself up in my room and listen to old Cure CDs until I turn fifty".

  That's it, just get it out in one stupid breath.

  Shannon looked at me like I'd told her I'd just run over a kitten.

  "Oh, kiddo,” she sighed. "Oh Kyle, I'm so sorry. You don't know, huh?"

  What? What-what-what?

  "What? You mean that they go on sale tomorrow, like all at once, the whole damn tour, yes I know, and I know it's short notice, and that it's more than you think we should spend but dammit it's my birthday and I guess I'm selfish and..."

  "Shh. No. Look, that's why I was acting weird when you got home. I was on the phone with my friend Tommy who's a member of Alphatwyn's online fan club. He has been for a year in fact, so he has pre-order privileges. I was going to try and call in a friendly favor for you, ya know, as a surprise... But, and I mean just as you were walking up into the yard, he was telling me how the show in Bakersfield was in such a small venue that the pre-sale... Well. See, the show's been on sale for a week to Premium members like Tommy, and the band thought that the Bakersfield area was a weak market for them, so they authorized the fan group to keep opening up pre-sale tickets in this area, just to make sure they had a crowd. And, the jerks, they had all the pre-sale amounts "capped" at 1,000, but of course that's what the venue here holds. The show's sold out kid. The site will be announcing it before the official sale at ten, if you don't believe me. I guess the band won't be too broken up about it, because all the really hardcore fans, at least in their eyes, will be packed in there."

  "Why wouldn't I believe you?" It came out flat and mopey. What was that fantastic 'c' word Josh loved so much? Crestfallen. Yes, that was me. Among many other things.

  Then, in the most surreal turn the night could have taken, Shannon started to giggle. Was this for real? My always-sensitive, overprotective, sweet sister laughing at my pain? I guess she'd had it with the whole Emo thing too, just like all the norms at school, and everybody else who loved to hate on the scene. Still...

  "You don't have to be cruel and rub it in. I know they're 'just a band' and I'm overreacting and everything else you're about to tell me, but it still hurts. Music's always meant so much to me, Shannon, and no band more than this..."

  "Oh, I can't stand it I can't stand it!" her laughter had slowed to staggered breaths, but she was bright red and had a gigantic smile on her face.

  "Kyle,” she pulled herself up and feigned aloofness, putting on a haughty act, as if she were a queen about to address her subjects, all-the-while still having to stifle a small random chuckle. "I was on the phone with Tommy when you got home, and I ran inside so fast because I didn't want you to overhear our conversation. I know I didn't hide that very well, and that's my bad, but... trust me, it was for a good cause."

  "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. But I do know you're laughing, where I see nothing funny about any of this, and then you're talking about 'good causes' and none of this is making sense and I wish I knew what was..."

  "Okay, okay, Super Overreacting Boy, stop for two seconds! And listen. Jeez. I guess I'll just rush to the point."

  "Please!"

  "Fine. Look, I wanted more than anything for this to be a surprise, but... you have two pit tickets to see Alphatwyn at the Westridge Auditorium on October 20th!"

  My world tilted sideways. I felt drunk and disoriented. I had to remind myself to breathe.

  "...what?" my voice was small, timid, afraid of what I'd just heard being a lie, confused by the range of Emotions I'd been through today. All I could manage further was, "Well, what about Josh, I think he was going to sur-"

  "Josh is the one who tipped me off. I hung up with him and called Tommy right away... Well?!"

  "Well?... I think I might throw up...Are you really serious? You were able to do that? And you're okay with... however much it cost you, and..."

  "Kyle! We're talking about your eighteenth birthday here! I'm sure you had suspicions that I was going to throw you a party, and you were absolutely right to think so. But, this opportunity presented itself and I jumped on it. And don't worry about Josh. He says he has something else up his sleeve for you, since I kinda pulled this one out from under him."

  "Oh...my...God. Shannon, you are amazing! This is...Ha! I love you, Shae!"

  I threw my arms around my sister, and she laughed again. My overt displays of emotion were a thing of legend amongst my family and friends, and this may have just felt to her like one more in a long line, but this was honestly the happiest she had ever made me, the coolest thing she could have done.

  "Now, don't you need to get some sleep? I thought you said you need to crash early?" she teased, knowing full well I wouldn't sleep a wink.

  "I'm not sure when I'll sleep again, Shae. Probably sometime after the show. I can't believe I have to wait three weeks! Whatever. I don't care, this is so unbelievable!"

  "Alright spaz, satisfy my sisterly needs and at least go pretend to try to get some sleep, okay? And happy birthday kiddo... A little early, huh? But you did kind of force it out of me."

  "Sorry about that. Believe me, there's no way my knowing now could make this gift mean any less. Goodnight Shae."

  I felt like such a jerk for what I was about to ask.

  "Hey Shae...You said two pit tickets, right?"

  She smiled. "Josh is going with you, dork. Don't worry. I don't even like Alphatwyn, plus he made that part of the agreement for stealing the present from him. He was wicked mad at first, because he'd never joined the Premium Online Fan Club, and I think for more than a few seconds he resented my connections. But we're cool now. Something about him all of a sudden having a free ticket to the show seemed to smooth things over. Now go to bed. I love you."

  "Love you too, Shae. You're the best. Ever."

  "Yes, this much I know," she quipped at me, and winked. And with that, I was off to my room, my entire body abuzz with anticipation and excitement. I shut the door behind me and sat down in my computer chair. Again, I ran the mouse across the screen to my bookmarks and opened up the Alphatwyn site. Yep, there it was:

  "DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, BAKERSFIELD SHOW SOLD OUT. HANG TIGHT 'TWYNNERS', WE'RE ALREADY CONSIDERING A SECOND SHOW ON SUNDAY!"

  I felt smug, superior, lucky.

  Sure, announce a second show! It would suck to go on a Sunday night anyway. I was in the pit for the Saturday night show, and I'd share it with my best friend, and with a little extra luck the whole night would be Jackie and drama free. Perfect.

  My cell phone vibrated in my left pocket. I'd forgotten I even had the thing on me, I used it so rarely. Sometimes it just felt like a really expensive watch. My MP3 player was almost always plugged into my head, so I had to set the thing on vibrate for those rare times when one of my friends did actually call or text, instead of just leaving me a random email or comment on my online journal.

  It was Josh.

  "What's up?"

  "Hey Kyle." He sounded flat, melancholy.

  "Hey man... what's up?"

  "Well, if you sound this calm after I know you've been to the Alphatwyn site at least two or three times tonight, then I guess Shannon's told you, huh?"

  "Yeah. Yeah she, has, and of course I can't thank you enough dude, for telling her about it." I really wanted to conceal my excitement, but it was impossible. Besides,
he was going with me to the show! Come on!

  "Sure, yeah. Anyway, I guess it's plan B for me now. Not that it's lame or anything, but. Oh man, my options were limited, so... I hope you're not weirded out." He sounded heavy, his voice all breath and sighs.

  "Hey man, aren't you at least happy that you're coming with me?"

  "Yeah man, of course. But look. We need to talk about this. It's about Jackie."

  "What?" Of course, leave it to her to completely ruin what may have been one of the greatest days of my life.

  "Well, it has to do with Jackie... and the show..."

  "Oh, no. No, no, no way! Josh, are you serious? And how did she manage to get a ticket?"

  "Well, see, that's the thing..."

  "What?!"

  "Kyle, you know all too well that she's dating that guy Arthur Townsend. And that he's a music student at the community college. But see, what you don't know is that he has a night job to help save up for when he transfers. And, it just so happens that he works the front-of-house at the Westridge Center."

  Of course, that was her connection. If he worked front of house, he probably had all kinds of crazy privileged assignments. Anything from setting up to sound check to backstage security detail. At the smaller type venues, they had fewer staff to cover more jobs, so I'm sure landing a couple of tickets to a show for a band that hadn't really broken wide yet was nothing for him. Well, at least Jackie knew how to leave me for the right kind of guy. If you're gonna move on, make sure it's an upgrade. And there went my high.

  "Okay, so he's got my ex-girlfriend and a really sweet job. Is there good news involved, or did you just call to make sure I didn't have too much positivity in one day?"

  "Well. It's just that it's kind of odd. You know how Jackie can be with guys. I mean I know her inside and out, she's my blood, and I even understand a lot of what motivates her. But sometimes she does things that surprise even me."

  I had no idea where this was going, but I didn't like one thing about it.

  "Kyle, I called Jackie right after I got off the phone with your sister. I had called Shannon first, to conspire of course, and work out a deal. But she wanted to take care of the whole thing herself. So, I kind of decided to see if I could one-up her, but I didn't have any brilliant ideas. Jackie was my only thread, though I still didn't know if anything would pan out, especially considering you guys' past. But, I hadn't been on the phone with her for a minute before she squealed and said 'OH MY GOD! Hold on!"'

  "See, she was at Arthur's when I called, and I guess she had run to talk to him after she'd thrown the phone down. It took about five minutes of my waiting on the line, but when she picked back up, well, she had scored you and me backstage passes. She likes Alphatwyn, but she's not crazy about them, and she doesn't wanna bum you out on your birthday anyway, so... Yeah. You and me, dude, backstage, after the show."

  He finished almost on a down note. He was talking slowly and delivering the news with caution, all the while trying to gauge my reaction, second by second.

  "Josh... Josh please explain to me why you sound down about this! Man, you wanted to top my sister, you just did, in spades! And Jackie, I mean, yeah random act of kindness and completely weird of her, but how cool is it, really?!"

  "So, you're not weirded out by it?"

  "I'm going backstage to meet Alphatwyn! I don't care who arranged it, or how, and in fact it kind of restores my faith that there is still an amazing girl behind those cold black eyes. I mean, this is perfect. It's too perfect, really. That's the only thing that has me freaked. I'm so scared you or Jackie or Shannon are going to pop around a corner any second and tell me this is a joke or that I've totally been scammed."

  "Well, it's all real, I can assure you of that. I'm just happy that you're happy."

  "How, in all honesty, could you doubt that I'd be anything but psyched about this?"

  He took a long few seconds, then sighed.

  "Look, Kyle, I just... I don't want you going and assuming anything, that Jackie like..."

  "Josh, stop. I know. She's not in love with me anymore. She wants us to be friends. It's some kind of guilty peace offering. Fine. I'll take it. And I don't have any delusions about us getting back together. You and she and Shannon have actually just made my night, my week even."

  "Okay, and you made my night with that answer. I really don't ever want to see you hurt again. Watching you those first few days after Jackie broke it off was... ugly."

  "Hey, forget it. I almost have. Sort of. Anyway, think of what's happening in just a couple of weeks! Can you freakin' believe it?!"

  I could hear the smile form, even over our lousy cell connection.

  "It is pretty sweet, huh?"

  "Hell yes! Alright, look, I need to at least pretend to get some early shut-eye tonight, or Shannon's gonna go insane worrying about me being an insomniac lunatic. Can't wait to see you tomorrow man. We can start planning."

  "Planning what?"

  "Um, how not to completely geek out in front of Andy and Vicky! Goodnight, Josh."

  "Goodnight, drama boy!" He switched off.

  I shut my phone and plopped onto my bed. I slid my shoes off, propped two pillows under my head, and grabbed the magazine on the bedside table. It was an indie 'zine type of rag, called Synthroticka, and I'd only picked up a copy because Alphatwyn were featured on the cover. There was a whole article about how they were taking the Goth and Darkwave scene by storm, and how they might even start breaking into the pop charts, "if they weren't careful". I didn't read the article, though. I'd read it five times already. I just stared at the cover. Andy and Vicky in the foreground, the other three vinyl-clad members slightly behind them, all poised and posed to kill. They would have been horrifying if something about them wasn't so completely beautiful, in an almost ethereal way.

  When I felt I had indulged in enough fan-boy fantasizing for one night, I put the earbuds back in, and flipped to the first random track on my MP3 player. It was some jangle-indie sad song, and I skipped past. The next few tracks were Emo, which was fine, but I knew what I was searching for. When my player finally landed on something by Alphatwyn, I closed my eyes and drifted off.

  ~ * ~

  I woke up fast, not from a dream, but to the sound of a song playing too loudly in my head. I'd never put my player away, and now some song I hadn't liked in years had screamed me awake. Better it than a nightmare, but still not cool. I put the player in the drawer under the bedside table, and looked around, absorbing the darkness and silence. I took a few deep breaths, looked around, and felt something odd. Those too familiar and often comforting elements, darkness and silence though, now seemed foreign, otherworldly. I had never been afraid of the dark, but this was the second time today that darkness had brought with it a definite sense of foreboding.

  My room became a foreign land, my breathing odd, everything felt off, and the room seemed to tilt to the side. Then the sound came, again:

  whoosh!

  And with that came what seemed like a very localized, but strong gust of wind, from within my room.

  This time there was no guessing about the visual. It was no anomaly or trick of the eye. I saw a small, slithery shadow at the far left corner of my field of vision, at the base of the wall of my room. With preternatural swiftness, it slid the length of the perimeter of my room, then up and out through the tiny crack at the bottom of my window.

  The world righted itself again, and after a few seconds of holding my breath in a near-paralyzed trance, I righted myself as well. I felt my entire body unwind from the center outward, and my breathing return to normal. And I knew that on the light side of morning it would be too easy to blow all of this off as some edge-of-sleep nightmare, so I had to make a mental note to think of this exact incident the second I woke up. I had to make sure it stuck in my mind.

  I wanted to do something ritualistic, something tangible, to make the reality of this very surreal moment stick. I got out of bed, and began to walk the perimeter of my room, s
tarting right where I had seen the odd shadow begin its journey. I feared finding something, though I had no idea what something like that would have left behind. My fleeting belief in the supernatural left me dumbfounded when actually confronted with strange events. Of course this was the strangest, most palpable thing that had ever happened that I could truly call other-worldly or inexplicable, and still my imagination failed me. After all, how does a shadow leave traces? Still, I followed the pattern. I had to do this. It was a way for me to imprint the entire thing, to bring it out of the land of skepticism and doubt, and into the light of day. I'd had too many nightmares lately to risk the notion that my brain would be fully willing to accept anything such as this, once the sun was up.

  I continued around the perimeter, feeling dirty and weird, following in the thing's path. If I ever got the nerve up to tell Josh about this, I'm sure he'd want to sage my room. I wouldn't object. I kept going though, following the exact path to the section of wall right below the window, then up, all the way to the small crack I'd left at the bottom to let in the fresh air of fall.

  Okay. Nothing. No residue, no traces, no footprints (paw prints), no bloodstains, nothing. I could sleep.

  And I did. I dreamed of Andy Vein, Vicky Vickson and Alphatwyn all night.

  When I woke at 5:45 am, it was to the sound of my window locking shut.

  CHAPTER FOUR: HAPPY BIRTHDAY

  "What the hell, Shannon, I have like..." I looked at the clock, "fifteen minutes to sleep."

  "Yeah, guess I blew that for you because I didn't want you freezing to death. Sorry."

  I was groggy, annoyed, confused.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about I woke up to go to the bathroom a few minutes ago and stopped at your door, and you'd left it open and it was freaking cold in your room! You'd left your window wide open and it was really chilly. I was just trying to look out for your immune system."