The end.

Before anyone can applaud, scream, clap, anything, Patrick and Jezz jump into the next song. It’s “Breakdown.” Driving and hard and deafening. The audience, set free, loses its mind.

I finally pull my eyes from the stage.

It doesn’t take long to find Frankie in the crowd.

It’s only because Anders is onstage that everyone in the room isn’t staring at her. Frankie has a force like gravity. Wherever she stands becomes the center of everything else. Elements arrange themselves around her. She’s the opposite of everything I am.

Frankie has dark brown hair and full lips. She doesn’t wear makeup. She looks like the heroine of a romantic French movie. I watch her watch Anders, which she only does part of the time. Now she’s whispering to a friend. Getting another drink. Doodling something on a napkin, which she passes to someone else. Not what you would expect from the lead singer’s girlfriend. Or maybe you would.

The band plays three more songs. The air in the room gets thicker. The woods creep closer. The sky is blackening like something scorched.

They end with “Superhero.” Everybody—everybody—knows the words to this one.

They came down from another world

bigger than ours, stronger than ours

Beautiful strangers

under a sun where there’s nothing new at all

Look around at the mess we’ve made

bigger than us, better than us

Opportunities we waste

in a place that starts to seem too small

We need a caped crusader

We need a savior

It comes down to this

Red leather gloves and a long black list

We know we asked for this

X-ray vision and an iron fist

Someone to rescue us

bigger than us, smarter than us

Decide and think for us

when all we build is doomed to fall

Someone who’ll protect us

bigger than us, stronger than us

Close and lock the doors on us

keep us safe behind the walls

Now bow down

I said GET DOWN

It comes down to this

Red leather gloves and a long black list

You know we asked for this

X-ray vision and an iron fist

Anders breaks into a guitar solo.

Watching the show, no one would have thought he was holding back. But it’s suddenly clear that he was.

His fingers on the neck of the guitar are a blur. The other hand, like a claw, tears at its strings. Fast. Fast. Impossibly fast.

No one should be able to play this fast.

Not so flawlessly. Not so young.

Outside, just beyond the wall of sound, the woods roar.

The crowd is too deep in the frenzy to notice.

Sometimes I think Ike catches it, leaning one big elbow on the counter, behind his gleaming espresso machine. He owns the place. He’s got thick skin and sharp gray eyes. There’s not much that slips past him. But his face never gives anything away.

The solo tears to an end. The chorus blasts back one last time.

You know we asked for this