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When she woke up in the doorway, the rusting metal felt cold against her cheek, like an ice pack against a slowly puffing bruise. It almost made her miss her mother, for a second. 

Sometimes she slept on couches, and she was starting to see someone, another musician of course, a drummer this time, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who fucked for a clean pillowcase, a milk crate full of vinyl and a wobbly Ikea bookshelf full of Scandinavian philosophers. 

She shook out her long thick hair, registered the dust on her olive-green cargo pants, the smell of sweat barely covered by her amber roll-on perfume. The extra rips, the dirt, the hand-sown patches of punk bands, the extra streak of dust above her right eyebrow were all good for her image. She ran two fingers through her bangs. 

She took out a small compact from her pocket. It was slightly cracked and the corners had the white, chalky residue of leftover coke. So did the keys she’d accidentally kept from her parents’ front door. 

The thought of having keys but spending endless nights sleeping in dirty bandos or on random friend of friends couches and occasionally, in the doorway of the store she worked in made her laugh. It came out a little hoarse, but it was there. 

She took out the bright red lipstick from her pocket. 

She had big, floppy lips, everyone always said so, and at first she was convinced that the glossy, ruby shade made her look like she was starring in a clown porn, but everyone convinced her that it looked badass and now she hardly recognized herself without it. 

She heard the manager, Stuart, shuffling in awkwardly behind her, his red lumberjacket brushing up against her hand. She took out her pack of cigarettes and offered him one. At least twice a day they stood outside in the alleyway, smoking together. He smelled like hair gel and the Kiehl’s moisturizer his girlfriend used, mixed with weed. 

He put his arm around her. 

“Moll, I’m worried about you. It’s going to start snowing soon…”

He looked down awkwardly at his callused hands. 

They were all musicians working at a second-hand clothing store that sold band t shirts to people who were born thirty or forty years after the bands’ heyday. 

He dropped his voice lower. “You can always stay with us if you need to.” 

She laughed the gap between her front teeth snagging the bottom of her lips. 

 “I’m okay, Stu,” she said. She hadn’t been planning to tell him, but it came out.  

“I just signed a deal. They’re going to pay my rent and pay for studio time.

His brown eyes bulged like a lemur’s but he didn’t say anything. His sweet silence reminded her of her little brother’s. She steadied herself on his arm, took out her cheap burner phone and showed him the photo of the contract, her signature looping but messy, like she hadn’t been practicing it for years. 

He stared at her and looked away. 

“Do you ever think about why these creepy old men give you these once in a lifetime chances, while the rest of us who’ve been at it longer than you are still struggling?” 

She gave him a shove.

“No,” she answered. But sometimes late night she did wonder.  

She knew they signed her because of her killer live presence. Days before, she’d played them some songs, jumped from guitar to keys to drums. Later, when her band showed up, she shook out her hair, screamed out certain lines, the drug ones, the fuck you ones, her fingers shredding on her borrowed electric guitar. She jumped on the table, knocked Suit Jacket’s glass of Jack onto the floor. The glass broke in perfect rhythm, like it was planned.

   *

The first thing she did in her new apartment was soak in a bath. She showered when she crashed on friend’s couches, but she was never alone, never free to use all the hot water, as many products as she wanted. 

They gave her money, the man in the blue jeans and soft suit jacket, who reminded her of one of her uncles, and the female VP, who was fine-boned with long, sharp red nails that she told her were almond shaped. 

They didn’t want her living so rough. They believed in her. 
The thought made her giddy. 

She took the money they gave her bought bath bombs, shampoo and conditioner. She tried to decide what to listen to. She settled on a mix of Metallica and Hole, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur  Jr. The drummer brought over the good stuff, Spanish red wine, and some black tar, shiny like onyx, sticky as honey. “That must have been expensive,” she said after she kissed him. 

“What are you talking about?” He answered too slowly, too loudly. “We’re celebrating.” 

It wasn’t boys who got her into drugs. It was about going all out, about being as big and as loud and as flashy and as much of a legend as you dreamed you could be. When she heard that Marianne Faithfull got into heroin after reading Naked Lunch, it made total sense. 

If from the time you’re little, tons of people tell you you’re a weirdo, you believe it, and it’s only when you reach adulthood that you realize it might be okay. She was luckier than most, she knew. The things that people ridiculed her for were what her audience celebrated her for now. 

Her band’s name, Blasting Molly Rockets came from the rich little girls who wouldn’t let her play with their Polly Pockets. 

When you’re thirteen you start getting into Oxys, and Percs and eventually Fentanyl, when you lose your virginity when your parents find you watching porn with and kissing your female best friend when you’re fourteen, and they make you get rid of all your music and tear the door torn off your bedroom so they can watch you at all times, you decide to lean in.  

She loved being on stage, her long, full hair framing her face like a lioness, dancing on bars, trashing stages, while people danced and screamed and touched a little bit of freedom for the first time. 

The other day, she was taking the subway, and a girl who looked fourteen, in a ripped t shirt full of punk buttons and safety pins and clumpy knotted brown hair told her she saw her play at an all age’s show two weeks before. She was from the suburbs too, and she was learning how to play guitar. The girl’s hands shook as they took a selfie. 

They say when you get what you want it never feels as good as you imagined, but sometimes it does. For a moment, it felt okay that her parents never called. It felt okay that she’d never be the person they wanted her to be. In that moment everything she was doing felt like enough. She’d spend the rest of her life trying to hold on to that feeling. 

.

THE END


BIO

Danila Botha is a fiction writer based in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, the Trillium and Vine finalist For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, and the forthcoming Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (Guernica Editions, 2024) She is also the author of the novel Too Much on the Inside, and the forthcoming A Place For People Like Us (Guernica 2025)

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