“D-Did you get a picture of it?” A good line, but there was no commitment in the delivery.

“Not this time.” She looked away as she climbed into her coat, suddenly pensive, mourning the missed shot.

I edged away, toward the front door, and rattled it open. “Yeah, okay, well, thanks again for coming, and um—”

“Do you want a ride or not?”

* * *

[2012 me: I wonder if this is another one of near infinite life-path-choosing moments. One that at the time seems the smallest, least impactful, most forgettable, but is in fact the opposite. The problem with those kinds of moments is they’re impossible to recognize in situ, and when excavating the self in retrospect, you pick at the lost and irreparable moments that might be false positives because you can’t be sure if this was a moment where everything changed, where everything to come after was written but for the minor details. Regardless, you keep digging. I have spent years digging into this moment in the foyer. Maybe if I told her I didn’t need a ride she would’ve quit the Pallbearers Club and I would’ve never seen her again and my life from that point would become someone else’s. This is not regret, as there’s not remorse, not exactly. A wish of foreknowledge, perhaps.]

* * *

[2017 me: In giving one last read-through before I abandon the manuscript, I continue mining the cavernous pit into which I was led, and I’m in so deep I no longer see any light and there’s only more digging.]

* * *

Mercy’s car was a beat-up early Datsun, standard transmission, an orange box on wheels, but it had a tape deck. Music clanged to life along with the car’s engine.

Dueling vocals screamed to be heard over a din of tinny, fuzzed-out guitar and a rolling, jackhammer drumbeat. Underneath the high-treble blast a pistoning bass was the groundwater, a low rumor of order. The overloaded speakers crackled and hissed.

Mercy turned left out of the parking lot, whacked me on the shoulder, and said, “What do you think?”

“Of what?”

“This band.”