Somewhere in the room of a run down home in London, with cobwebs crowded into the unreachable corners of a high ceiling, an echo from the blasting of melancholy music was still slowly resonating.

Now, there was just the feeling of inky black vowels hanging in the air, sharp s’ and c’s still floating through two pairs of ears, and other than that, the air carried nothing but the occasional gravelled murmur of a lanky boy and the clipped, curt tone of a coltish girl.

“You know I can’t, Ree,” Miles muttered, slumping against cream wallpaper, dull and aging into grey.

His best friend paused, and then she turned to sit, perfectly poised on Miles’ bed, making no sounds other than the creak of bedsprings.

Ree was never the type to make much noise, unless, of course, she was with friends and  babbled about everything. Miles noticed, though, that however much she spilled when she burst out of her shell, she never said anything that wasn’t courteous--so, she was certainly much too nice to comment on the income of a family that couldn’t afford concert tickets.

Miles waited for a response. He wondered for a split second if she was holding a comment to try and push him to say more, but when your friend since Year Five begs you to go to a concert with her and you’re completely and fully broke, what do you say? What does she say, for that matter? Apparently, not much.

“We could…” Ree’s voice barely came out a broken whisper from crimson red lips.

Miles waited. He tilted his head back and blinked up at the tiny corners of the ceiling of his tiny room.  It made his head hurt. “We could what?” he asked sharply. “You know you can’t help me here, Ree,” he said, this time in a softer tone, his fingers fumbling at the leg of the desk by his head absentmindedly.

“I know.” He turned his head to see her, black hair feathered into wisps, bangs floating above her knitted eyebrows. She pressed her red lips together. “It would be fun.”

“It would.”

ॱॱॱ

Later, Miles lay on pale flowered bed sheets in the dark, his heart rate still and his mind floating.

He wasn’t annoyed that he couldn’t afford tickets, or sad, although he did feel bad for Ree. He couldn’t do anything-- it was just the same at it had always been, the few dozen pounds a week earned working at the bakery going straight to the electricity bill. She had really wanted to go to this show. The Smiths, live in concert….

At least now that they weren’t, Miles didn’t have to worry about some creep eyeing Ree from the other side of the mosh pit, or, worse, someone else taking her. Like, on a date. Her parents would never let her, of course, they were overprotective like him-- but he could imagine her easily getting away with sneaking out of her bedroom window to hop into someone’s car.

It was what it was.

ॱॱॱ

It was too early.

Ree ran in, knobby knees bouncing under an ugly green and grey plaid skirt. Her wide eyes shone, pale and bright and as if 6am agreed with the teenage body clock.

“Hello-” started Miles, sitting slouched on his bed, his voice still asleep.

“Tickets!” she burst out, her red lips pulling into a smile. She held up two small red stubs, printed thickly in blue-black ink.

Miles stood up quickly. “How?” he shot back, grinning. He watched the firm shoulder pads on her thin frame heave.

“Oh,” she laughed, shining bright white teeth, and slumped down onto his dull wood chair. “You won’t believe-- Oh, God,” she giggled. “I kissed Beau Sloane.”

“What?” He nearly shouted, his eyebrows raising.

“I did! He was at study group yesterday, that idiot, just to see me,” she rambled, her hands throwing up around her. “And he started chatting with me, all nicely, and let it out that he had tickets to Morrissey this weekend.

“Told him I couldn’t go, put on a pout, and said,” she put on her best pleading eyes, “You’re so lucky, and like that, I did him a favor, and he handed them over.”

Miles was gaping.

“He doesn’t even like them,” she gushed, her eyebrows knitting.

“He does like you, though.”

“Obviously.”

ॱॱॱ

“No, listen to me,” urged Ree. This was later, as she crouched sitting on her pristinely white windowsill. Miles stood a few metres away, frustrated, and a little light on his feet, although he always was when he was in a wealthy home on a wealthy carpet.

“I won’t look like a complete idiot tomorrow!” she said in a reasoning tone, whisper-yelling to him across the room.

The concert was tomorrow, and Miles had prepared by laying his best jeans over the fire escape railing to straighten out. Ree had planned to prepare by stealing.

In context, Beau Sloane had crossed her path once again. This time he revealed that his sister, now at Uni, had a full closet of the best of the best designers that she had left behind. He could be lying, but he was spoiled and because of that, it wasn’t hard to believe. Ree surprisingly accepted without hesitation, and was blinded by promises of faux velvet and the best denim on the market.

Miles hated it. He tried to reason with her, maybe even get an answer out for himself. This was so… unlike her. He thought he had been invited over to help her organize her cassette tapes alphabetically or something, like always, but learned after three minutes of arriving that he was simply there to hoist up her heavy bedroom window.

“You never look like an idiot!” Miles exclaimed in true disbelief. “Morrissey doesn’t care what you look like!” She disappeared from the glowing white frame.

There was a crunch as her Mary Jane’s crushed the bushes below. He leaned over the window, clearing the curtains, and peered at her. Her eyes glowed in the dark like moonstones. “Well, maybe Johnny does!” she hissed.

ॱॱॱ

There was tension the night of the concert. Everything was going fine-- Miles even tried to make respectul sense of her outfit of choice. It was hard and not effective. His attempt at a lens of dignity for his best friend soon ended when Ree said, I want us to have the greatest time ever, and that wouldn’t happen unless I looked decent.

Miles had hit back immediately with a joke-- his coping mechanism. “What, are you hanging out with Sloane and his groupies now?”

She fell silent, and he followed suit.

ॱॱॱ

The silence lasted longer than it should have.

The concert seemed something like the end, or the breaking point-- the storm before the calm, except the calm held only the sense of quiet and not of peace. The show that September night was the opposite of serenity. Hundreds of screams melded into an ear trembling roar, strobe lights left spots in their vision after the lights went out, and the wild thrumming of pent up tension of every sort thrusted into the hard ground.

They had a falling-out.

It was now two years later, and still silent. On a night in December, Miles strolled past an empty parking lot of the very same concert venue. It was dark now, and raining, so weak streetlights cast a hazy glow that seeped through the thick air. He only glanced over for a second before averting his gaze back to the pavement, where his Chuck Taylors missed a puddle by an inch. Still, he wouldn’t walk past the venue with such ease-- he slowed his steps and pulled out a crisp envelope, not yet sealed shut. He pulled out two small ticket stubs, wrinkled and a bit faded, and just stood and ran the smooth paper through his fingers. Ree flashed through his mind, more than the vague figures on stage, more than the infectious hum of the bass, more than anything.

He hadn’t grown any into any sort of mainstream jock while they were apart. It wasn’t like him. Leaning against a counter in his destination, a grimy post office with yellowing walls, he was still himself. His trench coat and boots bristled like the trees in the rain outside, and he scribbled on paper with black ink, signed formally, slipped in two red slips, and licked it closed.