crashing pt.2
Marlene fumbled anxiously through the various pockets in her skirt, seemingly coming up empty.
“What are you looking for?” Remus asked curiously. Marlene could barely hear him over the sound of the crowd.
“I swear I had a bag somewhere…” was Marlene’s distracted reply as she rifled through her pockets again. A voice in her ear-monitor informed her she had two minutes until she had to step onstage, “...A-ha!”
She fished out a small plastic seal bag with white powder, grinning. She flicked it a few times just to hear the satisfying crunch.
“Can I sneak a bump?” the other boy asked as Marlene dipped her pinky finger in and balanced a small amount of coke on the tip.
“Sure.”
Passing the bag over to Remus, she caught sight of a pair of familiar dark eyes. Her heart rate picked up. Marlene sort of loved the way Dorcas made her feel fucking crazy just by looking at her.
“Here.” Remus passed the packet back, which Marlene grabbed absentmindedly as she watched Dorcas come closer. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Remus pick up his bass from its stand, “Come on Marls, we’re on now.”
“Yeah, I’m right behind you.” Marlene replied distractedly. Remus huffed a laugh as he walked on, but she honestly wasn’t paying attention.
Dorcas had come to a stop right in front of her, “Everything okay with Dumbledore?”
Marlene’s skin still felt tingly from her conversation with Dumbledore, and it fed into the tingle Marlene’s skin felt at being near Dorcas. All the anger and the grief bled into all her plain fucking longing for the girl in front of her and, suddenly, Marlene felt that if she stood still and did nothing she would burst.
So she lunged forward, pressing her body into Dorcas’. The other girl took a second to react, but soon she was grabbing Marlene by the waist, lips hot on hers. Dorcas’ mouth tasted like caramel and Marlene’s brain couldn’t seem to think about anything other than this simple fact. It was just stuck there, stuttering.
“Marlene, get the fuck over here.” James’ voice sounded out in her ear-monitor, fondly exasperated.
He must have said it into the microphone as well, judging by the way Dorcas laughed into her lips. Marlene wanted to bottle the sound - rich and deep and happy . She sounded happy. That thought was enough to send Marlene’s brain into overdrive again.
She pulled back reluctantly, dragging Dorcas with her a little bit. She could feel the stage lights on her, meaning that at least the left-hand side of the stadium and about a dozen photographers had a straight shot at what Marlene was doing. Perhaps even who she was doing it with. Whatever. Marlene didn’t care. Fuck Dumbledore. Fuck them all. Marlene was just over it. She wanted to set the world on fire and watch it burn.
“ Marlene! ”
“Coming!” she finally broke apart to say.
She was met with Dorcas’ quiet smirk and eyes filled with mirth. How did she do that? How did she remain so calm whilst Marlene felt like every synapse in her brain was exploding?
“I’ve got to go.” she whispered.
“I see that.”
Reluctantly, Marlene pulled backwards. She felt the loss immediately, everything coming back to her as the drugs began swirling her brain. It was like she had been left floating with nothing to tie her down, nothing to focus on.
She walked out on stage.
Marlene felt every atom in her body shake at the sound erupting from the crowd in front of her. The harsh stage lights washed out all the people so that they turned into a grey-ish brown-ish blur, but the sound was instantly recognisable - it was the sound of a stadium full of people who had paid to see them perform. It was the sound of people screaming until their lungs felt sore just because they managed to catch a glimpse of them. Marlene held a hand up to wave as she walked towards the microphone and, despite her not thinking it was possible, the crowd burst into even louder screams.
She walked up to the front of the stage and let the sound wash over her, smothering every anxious and angry thought like a blanket over popping candy. Every inch of her body felt ready to snap, untethered, but she pushed it to the back of her mind. She had made it this fucking far. She wasn’t going to let it all fall now.
“How is everyone tonight?” she grinned into the microphone.
From the abyss of the crowd in front of her, she was greeted with indecipherable screams from which a few stray ‘I love you Marlene!’s could be made out.
“You know,” she continued, smiling at Lily who was making sure her guitar strap was comfortable next to her, “I never get tired of hearing people scream my name.”
Lily smirked, “I think your dating roster proves that.”
Marlene could barely focus on the other girl’s reply, instead drowning it out with the sound of her own irregular breathing. This was the first time in six years she had performed during the month of August.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You can call me a whore another time.” she dismissed, with a tight smile she hoped to god looked natural, “Now, as you all know, we have an album coming out soon.”
She was forced to stop talking as the wall of cheering got louder. She waited until they had calmed down.
“Some people in our management want us to play one of our songs now, but we’ve told them time and time again that we’re not ready, so you know what? We’re not gonna fucking play it.”
In that moment, although she wasn’t able to see it, Marlene would have given anything to be able to watch Dumbledore’s stupid fucking face then, scrambling a plan on how to appease the critics he had sent to the concert for that very reason.
Marlene Mckinnon was many things - a bitch certainly, dramatic, messy - but one thing she never was was a pushover. She had spent years not doing what her father told her or her mother told her or what creepy old men in clubs told her, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to do what that old fuck told her to.
With a smug smile, she continued, “Instead, we’re gonna play what we wanna play, and so we’re going to start with one of our favourites.”
Every breath felt like fire, but Marlene kept going.
“For the fans that have been with us a long time.” she added with a wink.
Just as she had finished speaking, Lily dived in with the opening of the song. It was almost as if she knew that all Marlene needed was noise right now - just pure, chaotic distraction.
As the crowd began screaming in recognition, Marlene leaned close into the microphone, ready to lose herself in all the feelings she had felt when she first wrote the song five years ago.
“ Oh, make me over ”
James and Remus entered with harsh melodies of their own, adding to the layer of noise that was blanketing Marlene’s brain.
“ I’m all I wanna be ”
She walked right up to the edge of the stage, crouching low to be eye to eye with some starry-eyed girls at the front who were clearly freaking out.
“ A walking study
In demonology ”
This was what she was good at. She let it fill her veins as she turned around and made her way to the centre of the stage. She let the anger course through her - everything she had felt for years. There came a point where you simply got sick of being a product for label execs to sell.
“ Oh look at my face
My name is might’ve been ”
She put the microphone back into its stand and leant close, almost whispering.
“ My name is never was ”
Then she grabbed the mic back, moving to the front of the stage as purple and green lights flashed around her.
“ My name’s forgotten
Hey, so glad you could make it
Yeah, now you really made it
Hey, there’s only us left now ”
From the corner of her eye she spotted one of the large amps set up on the edge of the stage. Hopping up on it, she crossed her legs and lay down flat on the speaker.
“ When I wake up, in my makeup
It’s too early for that dress ”
The song just reminded her of the deep exhaustion she seemed to carry everywhere.
“ Wilted and faded
Somewhere in Hollywood… ”
She swallowed down bile as the memories of who she wrote the next line about came back to her.
“ I’m glad I came here with your pound of flesh ”
She pushed herself off the amp, shoving every thought about Emmeline to the very depths of her mind where they had been for weeks - locked behind bars, the key thrown away.
“ No second billing ‘cause you’re a star now
Oh, Cinderella, they aren’t sluts like you
Beautiful garbage, beautiful dresses… ”
Marlene didn’t even really know what she was doing at this point - she might have been spinning? Her baby hairs were stuck to her forehead in sweat and very little was in focus. All she could concentrate on was the burning feeling in her chest.
“ Can you stand up or will you just fall down? ”
The guitars played their heavy chords again and Marlene held the microphone with both hands.
“ You better watch out
For what you wish for
It better be worth it
So much to die for
Hey, so glad you could make it… ”
Despite all of it - all of the messiness, all of the hollowness - a small part of Marlene felt that she was meant for this. She was made to stand on a stage, to have people scream her name. Marlene wasn’t small. She could never be small. Sometimes, she thought, she was just too big. Sometimes, she wondered whether she was going to burst at the seams.
“ When I wake up in my makeup
Have you ever felt so used up as this? ”
She’d written the song after their first album came out, when she realised that fame was both exactly and completely different to how she had imagined it.
“ It’s all so sugarless
Hooker, waitress, model, actress
Oh, just go nameless ”
Marlene was always full of contradictions, though. She wanted everything at once. Kneeling down at the front of the stage, she wondered how her body didn’t just rip into a million different pieces.
“ Honeysuckle, she’s full of poison
She obliterated everything she kissed
Now she’s fading somewhere in Hollywood
I’m glad I came here with your pound of flesh ”
The next harsh guitar sounds did little to move her mind forward.
“ You want a part of me?
Well I’m not selling cheap… ”
She sang the words like a mantra, like a plea for some sort of fucking dignity.
The irony being, of course, that when it came to Marlene, she gave it out for fucking free. All you had to do was ask Emmeline. Every lyric written down about her was another piece of her she auctioned up.
“ No, I’m not selling cheap ”
The guitar sounded out with an electric buzz as it ended the song. Marlene’s breath came in irregular stutters as she tried to calm it down. The sound of her heart thumping drowned out all of the noise from the crowd.
Fuck, I need a drink she thought as she used the break between songs to go backstage and get another bump.
***
Marlene’s entire vision was spinning, which meant that when she bumped into Frank, she didn’t realise it was him until a few seconds after he had spoken.
“Woah, you alright?”
“Sure, Frankster.” Marlene replied eventually.
“Maybe you should go home…” he gestured towards the door, which was barely visible through the thick crowd of people that had shown up to the concert afterparty.
“I’m fine,” Marlene waved, “I’m just blitzed is all.”
“Hmm…” Frank still didn’t look too pleased.
“I’m fine.” she repeated.
When the other boy didn’t reply, she threw in another “I’m fine !” as well as a finger gun for good measure.
“Well I was on the fence but that finger gun really pushed me over the edge.” the other boy replied dryly.
Marlene glared in mock offense, “You know, women don’t find rude sarcasm attractive.”
“Well, luckily, I already have a wife-”
“Yeah… for now .” Marlene interjected.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well,” Marlene began sagely, trying to fight the drugs in her system enough to come up with a coherent argument, “I mean, you’re at these Hollywood-type parties all the time. What’s to say Alice’s head won’t get turned by some actor or actress or artist or whatever?”
“You make a good point.” Frank nodded in a way Marlene wasn’t sure was mocking or not, before patting her on the back, “Well hey, if women don’t find rude sarcasm attractive, then at least I’m not going to run into any competition from you, huh?”
With a cruel and merciless finger gun in return, Frank smiled and walked away, ignoring Marlene’s offended demands for him to ‘get back here!’
Eventually she realised he wasn’t going to return, so she scanned the room for any of her friends. All party-long people had started showing up from every corner to congratulate her, or offer her a shot or something. In the state she was in, it was getting quite disorienting. Luckily, she was in a lot calmer a mood now than she had been at the concert, or else she was sure she would have exploded.
She stumbled through various packed rooms with her head down. After a while she realised that if she closed her eyes whilst she walked she felt like she was floating. She stopped doing that after she walked into a door frame.
She was just about to walk past the kitchen, when she caught sight of a head of black curls that gave her pause.
“Mary!” she grinned as she walked over, “Finally I catch you without your ginger shadow.”
She was joined by James and Barty.
“Oh please,” the girl in question rolled her eyes with a smile of her own. She was wearing a short black dress and faux-fur coat, despite it being Summer, “Lily and I aren’t together all the time.”
“Please,” James quipped, “If I had a dollar for every time I have heard the line ‘but James, girls always go to the bathroom together’ from you two the past few weeks, I would be able to buy this fucking mansion.”
“You should hear Pandora and Xeno.” Barty interjected with bitterness, “It’s all ‘Don’t hurt yourself snowboarding’ or ‘Don’t worry, they’ll love your DJ set’ I literally want to die every time Pandora calls them.”
“Like you and Evan are any better.” Mary shivered.
Barty sighed, “Oh come on-”
Mary held a hand up, “No! I have a right to feel this way!”
“When are you going to let go of this?” the other boy rolled his eyes.
“When supercomputers that erase memories are invented and I can use one to forget the things I heard.”
“What happened?” Marlene asked, wildly intrigued.
“Don’t-”
“All I’m going to say is that I went into the men’s toilets at the studio and walked into some… unsavoury business.” Mary pretended to gag.
“It’s your fault! Why were you even going into the men’s toilets?”
“Uh, equality .” Mary replied in much the same way you would say ‘duh’. Barty just sputtered in response.
“Still,” Marlene crossed her arms, “none of this detracts from my original point.”
“You of all people should not be talking.” Mary glared at her in mock-hostility.
Marlene replied nonchalantly, “Whatever do you mean?”
“You’re a terrible liar, Mckinnon.”
“Actually, I have it on good authority from a couple ex-girlfriends that I’m a fantastic liar.”
“Hey, me too!” Barty jumped in with a smile, toasting his cup with Marlene’s in camaraderie.
“What are you two idiots excited about now?” A voice interrupted their conversation.
“Wow, I guess I spoke too soon.” Marlene grinned, recognising Lily’s voice as the girl in question slipped in next to Mary.
At the girl’s confused expression, Mary explained, “They’re making fun of us for being happy and enjoying each other’s company.”
“ Enjoying each other’s company how old-fashioned of you.” a warm voice mocked to the left - Dorcas, “Nowadays we just call that sex.”
Marlene turned to look at her. She was wearing a silky green slip dress with some of her locs twisted up. When she caught her eyes Marlene felt her entire nervous system paralyse - she really needed to learn to keep her chill around the other girl. Dorcas smirked in response, like she could read Marlene’s thoughts. At the sight, Marlene blushed - honest to god, fucking blushed .
She had to look away. Unfortunately, this was an instantly regrettable action as she turned to see four pairs of eyes staring at her knowingly.
“Oh shut up.” she mumbled into her drink.
“I didn’t say anything.” Lily shrugged with a smug smile.
Marlene rolled her eyes, “Look, despite everything, you have to admit that you guys have been joined at the hip lately. Honestly, I’m scared that if you are seperate for too long you’ll start feeling separation anxiety.”
“Oh please,” Lily laughed, “Do you even remember how you and James were? You guys would get all stroppy if you hadn’t seen each other in too long! You would call each other every night before bed if you were apart!”
“We still call each other almost every night before bed, thank you very much.” James defended himself.
“I can attest to that.” Mary added.
“You have no room to talk, either.” Lily pointed a finger at Mary with a smile, “It honestly took me years to figure out you and Marls didn’t have a crush on each other.”
“What? Why?” Mary looked shocked, “You know our theory about what would happen if we got married.”
“Yeah, any serious relationship between us would have ended in one of us dying under mysterious circumstances.” Marlene supplied to Dorcas.
“Not that we would kill each other.” Mary was quick to correct, “But rather that we’d end up in weird shit and one of us would pay the price. Obviously it would be so mysterious that it would end up looking like the other did it.”
“And they’d get to wear that cute flowy nightgown women who are accused of murdering their husbands in the movies wear.” Marlene began.
Mary nodded, “I would have looked super cute in one.”
“You know, I would have let myself take the fall for you to wear the nightgown.” Marlene offered.
“Really?”
the other girl shrugged, “You would have looked cuter in it.”
Mary waved a hand, “Don’t be dumb, Marls, you would have looked way cuter in it.”
“Not as good as you.”
“Stop-“
“Do you see what I mean?” Lily asked with an eyebrow raised to Dorcas.
“Yeah. Freaky.” Dorcas agreed with a smile, “Hey, I’m going to go grab another drink. Do you want anything?” She directed at Marlene.
“Yeah. Water, please?”
“Sure.”
As Marlene turned back around, the sight of a familiar head of blonde hair gave her pause. She looked at James, who was standing next to her, to see if he had spotted it too, but James was smiling into his drink as he talked to Barty.
Marlene chalked it all up to the drugs - maybe they had been cut with something weird - but as the man started walking forward and coming closer and closer in view, Marlene could tell that she wasn’t hallucinating this.
“What the fuck…” she began as the man spotted her.
“Mckinnon? Potter?” his voice booked, just as loud and grating as she had remembered it.
All of their heads turned towards the sound, confused, except for James who visibly froze.
“What, you guys got all famous and forgot about me?” the man asked as he pushed next to Lily and Barty.
His face had some wrinkles etched into it and his blonde hair was not cut to just below his ears rather than his shoulders, but it was still unmistakably him with his blinding California smile and tanned skin.
“Levi?” James asked, clearly shaken but putting on a smile, “God, how long has it been?”
Go away, go away, was all Marlene thought. Not now . She couldn’t deal with this now. Now was not the time for a visit from the fucking ghost of Christmas past.
“It’s been years ,” Levi grinned. He had black sunglasses propped up on his head, “You guys were, what, seventeen when I last saw you?”
From her other side, she could feel Lily tense up.
“Yeah…” James smiled, looking around at all the visibly confused faces, “Oh, sorry guys, this is Levi. He used to be in the scene when Marls and I were younger.”
The others smiled placidly, but they could tell something was wrong - not least in the way James kept nervously tapping his foot and Marlene had gone silent.
“God, I remember you two. You know,” he put his arm on Barty’s shoulder as he spoke. In return, Barty looked at his arm as if it was physically burning him to have it there, “The first time I met Mckinnon, she was fourteen and trying to flirt with the bouncer to let her in the club!”
His roaring laughter was met with silence.
“And James!…”
Marlene tuned out the conversation as she tried to let her breathing calm down. She was not going to do this. She had promised herself she was not going to do this.
Fourteen. She was fourteen .
Oh god oh god oh god let this be over please
“Hey, I was sorry to hear about the Vance girl.”
That caught Marlene’s attention.
“Emmeline?” James asked, “You knew her?”
Levi nodded, “I’d seen her around. I mean, it was bound to happen - you know, the way she was and that - but still. Shame.”
Marlene wanted the ground to swallow her whole.
“I’m just gonna go to the bathroom.” she excused herself, “Nice seeing you Levi.”
She turned around and left before anyone could even process that she had gone.
Wading through the crowds of people, she kept her head down to avoid being stopped by anyone. She made it to the second floor of the house, searching for a spare room.
She wasn’t going to think about it. She wasn’t going to let it all come crashing down on her. She could fix this. She was just going to find a room and calm down.
On the third try, she found an unoccupied bedroom. It was sparsely decorated - clearly a guest bedroom - with a large double bed with light blue pillows.
Marlene walked around it and sat on the floor with her back to the side of the bed. It always calmed her down to sit as close to the ground as possible.
She was not going to think about it. She was not going to even begin to process what she was feeling.
Her mind searched desperately for a distraction. She had more coke in her pocket, but at this point it could go very downhill if she took it too far. She looked around the room. On the bedside, an old-fashioned radio the same color blue as the pillows caught her eye. She picked it up and put it on her lap, fiddling with the dials and eventually turning it on.
“I mean, do you guys remember the first time you saw Madonna? I swear, my teenage body didn’t quite know what to do with itself. She was really quite groundbreaking…”
Marlene smiled at the soothing voice. She had always loved the radio as a child; they’d always listen to an Argentinian or, more often, Mexican channel and Marlene would listen in the kitchen as her mom cooked, or even sometimes on her own when her brothers sequestered the TV and put something she didn’t like on.
“Now, this next song has always been one of my favourites, it’s so soulful and melancholy and - you know what? I could wax lyrical about it forever, so I’m just going to play it since it needs no introduction…”
Marlene closed her eyes and took deep breaths, stomach turning sick when she heard the familiar opening chords.
“ Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, the city of angels
Lonely as I am, together we cry… ”
no no no. Not this song. Anything but this song. Marlene couldn’t deal with this song. She couldn’t let it take her back to where she was when she wrote it.
You know, it always seemed like Marlene’s life was haunted by ghosts, but now it seemed that they were out to get her. Now it seemed that they didn’t want to let her rest.
And maybe she shouldn’t rest.
She needed to get out of here.
Fuck.
She needed to go .
She needed to not feel suffocated by the four walls around her. Why was everything always suffocating? Why was everything always out to get her.
Why could she fucking rest? Why couldn’t they just leave her alone .
She didn’t even remember leaving the room, or leaving the house for that matter. It was like she had blinked and now she was walking down the road, going wherever her legs would take her, song still in her fucking head.
The radio was gone but the song was still in her fucking head.
And I don’t ever wanna feel
like I did that day
So take me to the place I love
take me all the way
And she’d tried so hard to keep it all in. She was so fucking sure she could do it.
Well, the higher they climb, the harder they fall, as they said.
This was falling, alright.