Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Take the Power / Fuck the Man / Take the Power / and Fuck the Man.Dev is taking the song somewhere it's never been before: a fourth minute. I'm rutting now, waiting for the wind-down. Thom looks like he's on the verge of a solo, which is never a good place for Thom to be. I move my feet, turn away from her, try to pretend she's not there, which is the biggest fucking joke I've ever not laughed at. I try to get Dev's attention from the periphery, but he's too busy wiping the sweat on his chest to notice. Finally, though, he gets a burst of energy strong enough to end the thing on. So he throws out his arm and howls and I run us into the ground with a final lurch. The crowd sends us a burst of their own noise. I try to hear her voice, try to separate that single pitch from the shouts and applause. But she's as lost to me as she was the night I cried and she didn't turn back to see if I was okay. Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago. And she's already with someone else.

The next band is at the side of the stage. The owner of the club is motioning that our time is up. I am not so gone that I'm not gratified by the calls for more, by that little sound of letdown when the lights go up to show the crowd a clearer path back to the bar. I am the equipment bitch for this gig, so while Dev jumps into the crowd to find his most willing admirer and Thom blushingly retreats to his understanding-but-emo boyfriend, I have to immediately detox so I can pack up our gear. I go from chords to cords, amped to amps. One of the guys from the next band is cool and helps me recover the cases from the back corner of the stage. But I'm the only one who can touch the instruments, putting them carefully to bed for the night. Then I offer to help the new band set up, and am glad when they say yes so I can be connecting them to the soundboard instead of spending all my energy resisting her.

My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance-anything short of contact-is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It's over can't kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can't stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I'm tired, she'd said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she'd said, No, I'm tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn't over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.

I keep my back to the crowd as I store the equipment and instruments somewhere safe. Then comes the moment when I can't keep my back to it anymore, since there's only so long that you can stare at a wall before you feel like an idiot. I am saved by the next band, which cranks the volume even higher and soon engulfs us all in beautiful chaos. They're called Are You Randy? and the lead singer is actually singing instead of moaning and Ramoning. I dare a glance into the crowd and I don't see her anymore. I don't see very many her s at all-it's a sea of hims pressing and crashing against one another as the lead singer tells them the state of things, breaking into bits and pieces of "I Want You to Want Me" and "Blue Moon" and "All Apologies" as he dances through his own seven veils.

I think Tris will like this band, and the fact that I know this stabs me again, because all the knowledge of what she likes is perfectly useless now. I wonder who the guy is. I wonder if the two of them knew each other three weeks and three days ago. I'm glad I didn't really see him because then I'd think of them naked. Now I just think of her naked, and it's such a vivid touch memory that my fingers actually move to take it in. I turn my head, as if I've been actually seeing her, and see Thom and his boyfriend Scot making out to the music in a corner-of-the-universe way. Dev, I figure, is still at the bar, still performing. We're underage, but that doesn't matter here. The crowd is mostly older than us-college or should-be-in-college-and I'm aware of not really fitting in. Some of the older guys in the crowd check me out, give me a nod. It's not like I wear a Badge of Straight or anything. I nod back sometimes, when I think it's a musical acknowledgment and not an invitation. I always keep moving.