The Unstoppable Bridget Bloom by Allison L. Bitz

Author:Allison L. Bitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

nineteen

The smell of tarnished silver and yellowed pages has never been so welcome.

I collapse into a chair behind the counter, not even waiting for Hans to invite me back.

His head comes poking out of the back room door, white hair as floofy as ever. “Athena! You’re early.”

Which is a funny thing to say, because it’s not like I have a set schedule here. Yet, I think I know what he means. Usually I roll in on weekend afternoons, after a nice sleep-in those mornings. It’s nine a.m., currently.

I am early, indeed.

“Yeah,” I say, and I want to say more, but I can’t get any more words to come.

Hans furrows his brow at me. “I’ll be out in one minute.”

I stay put and stare off into space. I might not be quite awake. I couldn’t sleep at all over the past two nights, thoughts racing, memories playing out over and over in front of my eyes, like movie shorts. Duke and Liza at the dinner table on Thursday night, making disgusting bashful faces at each other. Which escalated to Duke asking Liza if she wanted to “hang out” after dinner on Friday night. Max and I looked on as they left the Rot hand in hand, probably headed to a practice room, because many types of “practice” are known to happen in those rooms. My stomach turned as my mind played out the imagined scene of Liza and Duke, alone, his hands all tangled in her silky hair, their movie star faces all mashed together.

I tried everything to stop the repulsive, intrusive thoughts. On Thursday night I pumped too-loud music through headphones, an attempt to drown out the noise in my head. When that didn’t work, I got up and paced the room. And when it all failed, I yanked out my journal and wrote shitty hate poems: one for Liza and Duke, one for Ruby (for good measure, and because I know she could hear me up and struggling but didn’t even bother to check on me). But it’s hard to write hate poetry for people you don’t actually hate.

By last night my patience was worn even thinner. Four sweat-drenched, mostly sleepless hours in bed were all I could handle before I yanked myself up and out, exhausted but also wound tight with nervous energy. Autopilot dragged me to Triton 212. I needed that hum of my vocal cords, the pleasure of my voice’s bend and pitch along the top of my comfort songs. I needed to sing my way out.

I sang for the loss of everything. Duke. My hopes and dreams that involved him. My missing, uncertain identity. Could I sustain a friendship with Liza, now that she had everything I always wanted? Without Duke and without performance, what was I even doing here? The notes, the words, poured forth from a trembling mouth and shaking shoulders.

I stopped singing and resorted to just plain piano by seven fifteen, as the overly ambitious weekend practice crowd started trickling into the other practice rooms.

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