always and totally forever
Well, Charlotte thinks it’s stupid that the Distancers believe dead people’s souls get stuck in doves. But the morning after Pierce gets in his car crash, she still looks up at the mourning dove that’s sitting on the wire, doesn’t she?
Her eyes linger.
And I think she knows Woodruff is a dove. He’s the bleeding-heart dove, brilliant in the sun with that splash of crimson red across its chest, that follows Ashton around town. So close, just a few paces behind. So close and always there.
Woodruff saw her as his one purpose. He put the feather into his arm because he knew what he wanted. Charlotte’s life and love and Sebastian Steele are all running on the tear-streaked, muddy promise of some indie kid from Hazel Drive that she would never get her heart broken again. Then he blew his head out on the attic wall, so he couldn’t get his broken, either. Sweet Woodruff. Never was a quitter. She can still smell his flowers, his cologne, his letterman’s jacket and his old cassettes and the sunshine slick of his hair.
“I hate you. I love you. God damn you! I need you. You’re unbearable. You’re irresistible. You’re only a good man when you’re angry. It’s the only time you have a heart. I love it when the birds sing because they drown out your voice and I only hear your black guitar.”
Oh, Sweet Woodruff.
This is where the summer ends.
He always said he liked music ‘cause it was so open ended. You could make it as loud and aggressive and soft and sensitive as you wanted, call it whatever you wanted, put whatever on the album cover. You could give yourself any old dumb hair cut and wear whatever too small clothes and people would think it was still cool.
I think he liked the birds, too. Birds always come for a song. The doves like hard-core but the shrikes fly away when the tape starts. They stay for the soft stuff, though, if it’s sad. They only like it when it bleeds, all over the record like street graffiti, dripping all red from the speakers.
Baby, you’re so pretty when you wear that. You’re just like a car crash. They never see it coming. I know you’re clean because I saw you running. I know you got sober because you won’t shut up about Ian MacKaye. I don’t think you’re crazy, but I know why they say you are.
Your new favourite movie is a satire but you’re still just as stupid as you’ve always been, and you like Thursday but you don’t understand it when Geoff Rickly sings about war. Why would you?
You’ve never had a violent thought in your life; save, of course, all the times you’ve wanted to kill me.
By the time it “peaked” they’d already been doing it for ten years, and now they can barely do it at all. We missed the boat. Better luck next time! I was born to miss the boat just like you were born to rock it. Rock on, my man, rock on. Rock on and on into the night.
We lost! They put up the mall and we lost, so we all went home, but your home was nowhere. So you just went back to nothing, and now you’re a star.
I miss you.
I miss you.