We were so into our music in a way not very many black kids are. So a few years ago, when we started going to shows and seeing how outnumbered we were, Sasha wanted kids like us to have a place where they could unabashedly love the music they love and not feel weird about it. BAMF was born, and the blog was how we met Rohan: he recruited Sasha and me to manage his old band, and managing Unraveling Lovely made us blow up.
Obviously, anyone who loves music is welcome in the BAMF community, but with our faces front and center on the “About” page as the creators—and Deedee as the photographer—we’ve always hoped to help other brown and black kids with our taste in music feel a little less alone.
Despite Unraveling Lovely’s upset at Battle of the Bands, people still trust what we have to say about music. So I’ve always done show coverage. Deedee takes all the pictures. Callie does a pretty low-budget, biweekly podcast where she interviews aspiring musicians. Sasha used to do pretty much everything else, including writing demo and album reviews, so now we’re going to have to find someone else to help us out.
I mostly try not to think about it.
“So, thanks so much for coming out tonight,” Rohan says into the mike after the song ends and the audience quiets down. He pushes his dark hair away from his even darker eyes, and he’s grinning, all dimples and whiskers. I’m pretty bummed I almost missed the whole set, and Ro won’t be happy about it either. Still, I let out a long, loud “Wooooo!” before he says anything else, and he grins.
“This is the last song we’re gonna play tonight. It’s a cover of one of my favorites. Today is a pretty rough day…so I want to dedicate it to someone.”
His voice sounds pinched, like it’s too big for his throat, and my stomach clenches because I’m almost positive I know what’s coming. Today marks three months since…And it looks like he might be scanning the crowd for me.
“This one’s for you, Sasha,” he finishes.
I just got back, and I want so desperately to hear the rest of his set, but her name rips me wide open again when I’d only just managed to put myself back together. I look at Deedee, and she’s biting her bottom lip, already untangling her arm from mine because she knows what’s coming.
Callie tries to stop me. She says, “Shay, just wait,” but I can’t. I shove my way through the crowd, back toward the exit, before he sings the first note.
* * *
—
In the parking lot, it takes me three tries to unlock my bike because everything about me is shaking. But when I push my headphones on over my hair and press play, the perfect song spills into my ears. I turn it up, focusing on the singer’s desperate voice and pedaling to the bass line. I let the steady drums and the clearest notes from the guitar flow through me like a current.
The last time I heard the song Rohan was about to play, we were in Sasha’s hospital room. His voice mixed with mine as we sang it to her. I was holding her hand, and when I looked around the room, Mom was shaking and the nurses were sniffling. There was Rohan, who I couldn’t bear to watch, and a priest who I abruptly decided to hate.
Sasha looked at me when the song ended and said, “Fucking Luke,” and we both smiled even as tears spilled onto our cheeks. When her eyes closed, and the nurses confirmed she was in a coma, Mom looked at me, and I knew her face mirrored my own expression. It was official: Sasha wouldn’t wake up.
I couldn’t watch. I didn’t want to know which organ would fail my sister first. I kissed her chilly fingers and wiped my tears away with my thumbs. I pushed my way out of the room because I knew Mom was too distraught to stop me, and I could feel the tension building in my limbs.
That hadn’t been the first time my body betrayed me—my heart squeezing, sweat breaking out across my upper lip—but it was the first time I didn’t have Sasha to bring me back from the edge, to tell me that I’d be okay. Ever since that night, whatever goes haywire inside me has been showing itself a lot more often.
“Fucking Luke” and sometimes “Motherfucking Luke” is what Sasha and I always said in unison whenever something new went wrong for her, as if the cancer were a crappy boyfriend she couldn’t shake instead of leukemia.
The music is helping (it always does). I can breathe again, and I feel a little more in control. Even though I’m all alone, pedaling like mad down a darkened back road, when the song ends, I tilt my head up to the sky. I scream at the stars.
“MOTHERFUCKING LUKE!”
I’m only about a half mile away from home when Rohan catches up to me in the Band Wagon, aka his crappy black minivan. The side of it is still spray-painted with a huge “Unraveling Lovely” from when the band went on their mini-tour, so there’s no mistaking him for anyone else.
When I look over, I see my reflection in his window, and I wish it weren’t an image of phantom me. I wish I were seeing Sasha, healthy Sasha, sitting in Rohan’s truck. We were identical, so if I squint in this kind of dark, I can almost believe it’s true.
We used to have the same wild, dark hair, precisely the same shade of honey-brown skin, round cheeks, and baby faces. But by the time she died, right before our sixteenth birthday, Sasha had wasted away so much that she only looked like an unfinished sketch of me—a half-drawn picture that hadn’t yet been colored or filled in. I didn’t even know it was possible for black people to be pale. Until there was no other word for what my sister’s skin had become.
Rohan rolls down his window and then points to my headphones. I pull the cup off the ear closest to him, but I keep pedaling.
He says, “Shay, slow down” and then “Don’t be like this.” He drives slow to keep up with me, but I keep up my silence.
He tries “Stop” and then “Let me drive you the rest of the way.” But I scrub at my face, in case there are still tears on my cheeks, and I stand up to pedal when we come to the base of a hill. I don’t want his comfort. I want my twin sister. No one else, not even one of my best friends, will do.
“How much of my set did you even hear?” he asks, the hurt spilling into his voice.
I look over at him then. One of his arms is hanging out of his window, and he has to be cold because he’s not wearing his jacket. He must have run out of the club to chase me as soon as he finished the last song.
I shake my head, and the tears bubble up and over again. I barely manage it, but I whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he replies, but we both know it isn’t. I just hope he sees the BAMF post later and forgives me.
I’m huffing and puffing and still kind of crying, and it is so cold. I say the only thing I think I can without completely falling apart again.