And maybe that's why I sing here. Why I crawl into this shithole four nights a week and moan for the sixteen-year-olds in their too-baggy pants and too-tiny tops. I can't condemn them. I used to be them. But Los Angeles has become my city. Full of ravers, pimps, and goth whores. I fit in...my hair is blue, filled with glitter...last month it was ruby red. My arms are clean of needle tracks--only an idiot would ride the wild horse in this day and age--but I do have tattoos. A ring of ivy around my right bicep. A crashing spaceship on my left. When I stand up and my jeans ride low, people can see the tiny symbol in dark blue at the base of my spine. Lines that swirl but don't quite intersect. They don't understand it and I don't explain. And there's one more mark I had done when I moved here...a silver handprint that nobody gets to see. Nobody gets to touch.

The wild horse isn't the only thing I don't ride.

It's silly, really. Staying pure for him. Staying like a nun when I should have fucked the pain out of me years ago. But it's all I have left. My too-thin body is a temple to him. I can't desecrate it that way. I won't. Because maybe then I'll finally have to cry.

Sometimes one of the kids will walk up and tell me I had a great set. I usually grunt and just blow smoke in their faces. Other times, a pretty little girl with dark hair and big eyes...like Lizzie...will come up and admire the thick silver ring I wear on my thumb. "That's so cool! Where'd you get it, Luca?" I don't answer, of course. I don't tell her that there were two rings. I don't tell her that a friend in Roswell has the other one. That they were last worn by the boy I loved and ripped off his cold, dead, fingers before he was dissected. I just smoke and smoke until my lungs fill with coarse mint and I can't feel anything else.

Isabel understands why I left.

We exchange polite cards at Christmas. Sometimes I phone her and we just share the silence. I know she's happy. I can hear it in her voice. The man who I once dreaded dating my mother makes her laugh. He makes her shiver. He makes her live. It took them six years to get to a good place. To get from convenience to something like love. And I don't envy her that. She deserves it. And that's why I don't call home. I don't call Amy. I don't call her so I don't have to hear her questions..."Where are you? Are you eating? Why can't you come back home? Do you know I saw Isabel Valenti at the store today? I STILL can't believe Jim married that little girl! And I can't believe Kyle never came home! I guess I wouldn't either if my father did that!"

No, Mom...you can't believe it. Because you didn't see what we saw. You didn't feel what we felt. You didn't scream Michael's name over and over. You didn't watch Liz and Max fall to a grenade. A fucking grenade in the middle of town. You didn't have to sit through weeks of news reports that blathered about a gas leak and a freak explosion killing area teenagers and know that it was all a lie. All a cover-up. That your friends died and all that's left are lies and the illusion of safety.

I think that's why I came here. Because everything is an illusion. No one is real. No one wants to be. Here, I can be Luca, the club girl. I don't have to be who I was. I don't have to remember singing with Alex and the Whits...I don't have to remember trying to convince Max to come out of the closet...I don't have to remember serenading Michael as we worked late nights behind the grill at the CrashDown. I don't have to remember being innocent. I can just scream and scream and drown in the grinding sound of a band that sucks.

But it's not that easy.

Sometimes I blink and I see him. In the crowd of moshing bodies. He slides through, all muscle and floppy hair. He smiles at me. He whispers my name and I can hear it no matter how tight I grab the microphone and how tightly I wail unintelligible lyrics. Nobody has ever said my name like he did. Which is why they all call me something different now.

Sometimes I go to back to my apartment at two in the morning and my roommate Sheila has her girlfriend over...on my futon...so I climb out the window and sit on the fire escape. I stare up at the stars dotting the sky...and I can almost feel the tears. So I light a Newport, lean my head against the bricks, and I try to listen for his planet. I know their scream must be as loud as mine. Louder. Their heroes couldn't come to save them. Just like my hero, and my friends, couldn't be saved themselves.

Once in a while, I'll focus on the three stars in Orion's belt. Three in a row. Linked but not touching. Jim & Isabel. Kyle & Tess. And me. We're all linked by our past...but not touching. We can't bear to touch. It would be too dangerous. All touches are dangerous, ultimately.

I trail my fingers down the front of my jeans, touch the edges of a silver handprint, and I shiver. I draw back my hand.

I have to go up for the next set. And my throat is raw. My throat is full of murder. Of death. Of six years of self-imposed chastity. Of Liz Parker. Of Alex Whitman. Of Max Evans. Of Michael Guerin.

And no matter how hard I try, I can't choke them down. I can never swallow. And I can't breathe anything but smoke.

It's how I exist. How I choose to exist.

All the other choices are too painful.

Or not painful enough.

I grind out my cigarette, shove the pack and the lighter into my purse under the table, and stand up.

It's time to scream.

It's time to drown.

Time to hear him whisper my name.

Maria.