A line had already begun to form outside of Benji’s when Devi arrived an hour and a half before showtime. Based on her encounter with earlier, Devi had assumed that the band was local and had a small following. A misguided assumption she was realizing now. 

The people in line with her were rather young. Granted, everyone compared to Devi was really young. Sirens didn’t physically mature past young adulthood, and from the interactions she had with her comrades, Devi hadn’t gotten the impression that they matured mentally either.

“Hey, are you here for the upstairs bar?” the girl next to her in line asked after about a half hour of them standing in the sun.

Devi gave the girl her attention wordlessly.

“If you’re over 21 you can see the show from up there for free if you buy a drink, only minors have to wait in line for the downstairs section.”

The siren opened her mouth to thank the young woman, but she chose not to engage in conversation instead.

She shuffled out of the line and approached a tall, muscular gentleman at the door. He glanced at her and nodded to the stairs on the side. She stared at him just long enough for it to be awkward, and trotted up the stairs.

Upstairs, the bar made up the back wall of the venue. Patrons were chatting, drinking, and clearly not there for the event downstairs. The bar appeared to serve as the building’s primary function, so it was curious that it was on the second floor rather than the ground level. 

In the direction of the balcony, there were a couple of standing tables, and even a few seats that faced the stage. 

Devi went out of her way to sit down as far away from the bar as possible. The people didn’t seem to have any interest in what was happening below or Devi for that matter. She hoped it would stay that way, and that no one would talk to her for the rest of the night.

From her seat, she watched two young men say strange words into the microphones on stage. They meddled with some of the instruments, and nodded to each other a lot. 

Devi kept her eyes peeled for the boy from the beach. So far, neither of the people on stage looked like any of the people on the poster.

She tried not to look nervous, although her attempt was in vain. She nearly jumped out of her chair when a server asked her if she wanted a drink. 

Words, Devi, use fucking mortal words. 

She shook her head and smiled meekly.

To her disdain, the server—her tag read ‘Tia’—leaned closer to her and muttered under her breath, “Look, if you’re going to pretend you’re not a minor at least order a water, or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Water. I’ll have a water. Thank you.”

The outside crowd began to fill in the space downstairs. Even some of the patrons of the bar wound up wandering over to the standing tables. They remained far enough from Devi that she didn’t mind. Boppy music began to play through large blockish speakers while the crowd got settled. When it finally faded out, Devi sat up in her chair.

The lights went dark, and she fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. The audience began to cheer, and it stirred a feeling inside her, they were seeing something Devi couldn’t quite see yet.

A slow teal glow lit the wall at the back of the stage. The dark silhouettes of the performers made her heart flutter. Guitars were strummed, their sounds cut through the crowd’s cheers, growing louder and faster. The rhythm was repetitive but catchy; it eventually switched into a slower rhythm.

“Wind up, nothing’s gonna bring me down,”

The voice was dragging, coming up from the lower tones, the audience fell silent, and Devi felt a chill.

“They said I would never be that smart… but I wonder what they’re thinking now,”

The guitar picked up and the teal light faded into a brighter orange glow that brought life to the whole stage. The audience raved at the sight of the band, as did Devi internally.

The young man from the beach was standing center stage before a standing microphone with a slick blue guitar in his hands, and his wavy blond hair obscuring part of his face. The drums behind him kicked to life and the vibrations were intoxicating.

“I left before the country could consume me,”

The two young men on the sides began to harmonize with the main vocals. Both strummed guitars of their own and tapped their feet to the beat of the drum.

“For seven days, I walked away,”

The notes slipped into a sweeter tenor range, for a hot second Devi felt the singer’s anxiety in that set of notes. But it was brief, gone faster than Devi could deconstruct it.

“Hungry, raging, blistering.”

With his new-found confidence, the young man ripped the microphone off the stand and began to walk from one end of the stage to the other.

“It’s true we’re growing old,”

He held the microphone out towards the crowd, knowing they would respond.

“Soon we’re going to die,” the audience rang.

The singer pressed the microphone to his lips again, “We let the nature of our thoughts control our lives…”

The other young man with the six-string guitar swapped places with him, a spotlight draping over his shoulders as he leaned over the instrument. The notes he produced were fast, sharp, distorted. Devi had never heard music like this before. She knew she was probably smiling like an idiot, and that was embarrassing. At least the room was dark.

The spotlights shuffled through a variety of colors. Matching the music, it was as if each note was a paint stroke. The solo finished, and the singer stood in front of the microphone stand once again. His hands dropped to his guitar, where he picked up the rhythm from the intro to the song.

Living for hundreds of years in a place where music was everything, Devi had never experienced music the way she was experiencing it now. 

“I shouldn’t be this way.”

“I shouldn’t be this way…” the backup vocalists echoed.

“Singing, I run it into the ground.”

“Into the ground…”

“I have nothing to answer for….”

“Nothing to answer for…”

“Nothing to answer for.”

Something told her that this was the way music was always meant to be heard.