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feverinfeveroutfic · 2 years

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chapter twenty-one: the spine of california

Ruben's house in Marin Heights overlooked the city of San Francisco, such that by the time Sam had spent her second night there, she woke up to an above view of the thick bank of the fog: it almost resembled to a literal sea, courtesy of the sea itself. Even though her father had already helped in the selection of Testament’s temporarily new guitarist—whom he had only referred to as merely “Glen”—she couldn’t feel happier to be there in the Bay Area, especially after the funeral and the quick flight back from New Orleans to San Diego with Scott and Aurora. She just sat there on the plane, all by herself and without any sort of desire to speak to either Sam or Scott: at least the two of them sat next to each other all the way back from Louisiana.

Scott had become a completely different person in the past few years, as if the completely bald head wasn’t indicative enough. But gone were the days in which he had a big joking smile on his face: he had gotten so serious in the wake of Joey’s dismissal and his move out to California.

The only thing that hadn’t gone away was his sense of humor, however.

A ninety-minute flight and Sam treated him to a bunch of little doodles on the free pad of paper in the back pocket of the seat behind them.

“You ever think of making a comic?” Scott asked her at one point.

“Every now and again, but not really,” she confessed, “I’d have to write up a story and whatnot.”

“I can see you making a comic in the future,” he said with a little nod and a knowing gesture to her. “Even though Charlie and I are kind of burnt out of the whole ‘book report’ song style, we still like comic books, though. If it happens, could you tell us about it?”

“Of course!” she declared.

It was just another possible iron in the fire as she took the next flight from San Diego and up to San Francisco. Alex had already gone back home to his parents’ house in Berkeley but he picked her up from the airport and then drove her up to Marin Heights; and thus, once she landed in the Bay Area, she ran their road trip idea by him and he was eager to do that. They planned on driving all the way up the rest of the Valley and into southern Oregon and up to Crater Lake. If they were willing, Sam promised to take him to the Willamette Valley. Given they had timed it right there in the middle of spring, she knew that everything there in the valley carried with it rich shades of green.

On that day, she closed the back door of Alex’s car and she gave her dark hair a tuck back behind her ear. She then set her hat upon her head and she turned to Ruben there at the front step: the fog had burned away down below and in its wake was a slight breeze from the ocean next to them. He showed her a smile and he opened his arms to her.

“Drive safe, you two,” he told her, and he held her close to him.

“We will—and I'll call you once we find a phone up there, too,” she vowed.

“And you behave,” he said with a wag of his finger to Alex there in the passenger seat, even though Sam had explained to him twice over that there was nothing between them when Ruben caught Alex in his underwear back at her apartment.

“Of course, of course, Mr. Shelley,” he assured him with a quick nod of his head.

Sam put on her sunglasses and she climbed into the driver’s seat. Alex adjusted the arm piece of his mirrored sunglasses and ran his fingers through his black hair. The dye was wearing away a great deal and Sam could tell that that light patch over his forehead was about to become a straight streak given the rest of his head was solid jet-black. His roots were starting to show their heads at her, a straight clear-cut cluster over his brow just like Marla’s dyed black streak. It helped that he was letting his bangs grow out around the sides of his head.

They gave Ruben one more honk before they rounded the corner up ahead; they then headed down the street and towards the main artery which meandered down the hill.

“How long do you think this is gonna be?” Sam asked him. “Just because you’re more familiar with NorCal than me.”

“Well, I just think of the times you and I have gone through Sacramento—that's like a couple of hours and then up to the state line, I'd say that’s a couple more hours.”

“So, it’d be like from my mom’s house on Catalina to Reno.”

“Nah, it’d be more like from your mom’s house to Bishop. There’s more to it, though. A lot more to it. And then we have Oregon in there, too.”

“We’ll find some ginger snaps along the way, too,” she cracked as they turned the next corner down the hill, and he laughed out loud at that.

Within time the road flattened and they caught the first light green, followed by the next one. A few cars loomed up ahead of them, but they were about to make good time once again to the highway up ahead. Sam put extra pressure on the pedal when they reached the next one up but it wasn’t enough.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

“By that much,” Alex said with a pinch of his fingers. They hung there for a few seconds and then Sam peered out the windshield to the little market on the other side of the block, right across the intersection from them. She recognized that long kinky dark hair with that long blonde hair: they looked so similar to Joey and Krista, but he stood a little bit taller than Joey, however. But they did have that Native American blood that ran through both of them, and it wasn’t until he turned to the side when Sam recognized the curvature of his nose as well as those bright eyes, even from across the intersection. He held hands with her as they checked out the display of flowers out front there.

“Hey, there’s Chuck and Tiffany,” she remarked. Alex peered over his sunglasses at the couple there on the sidewalk and he raised an eyebrow at them.

“Looks like Tiff is—kind of expecting?”

Sam peered over her sunglasses for a look herself: indeed, when she turned to the side herself, Tiffany had a slight curvature on her waist. It helped that the cool crisp sunlight over them made more of a glare all around her so the lower part of her waist stood out against the bright concrete behind them.

“She’s just kind of expecting,” Sam chuckled, and Alex shrugged his shoulders at that. “She’s just a little bit pregnant.”

The light turned green and they rolled forward to the next round of blocks up ahead. Sam kept on laughing at that, and Alex laughed along with her as well. He then tilted his head back against the top of the seat: she took a glimpse over at him and the prominent Adam’s apple right in the middle of his throat.

“You don’t want kids, do you?” he groaned.

“No way I'm having kids,” she said with a gesture of her hand towards him. “As if I need more things to take care of.”

“As if you need more things to worry about, too,” he pointed out.

“That, too,” she added.

“I don’t think I will, either,” he continued, “like I'd rather have string babies. Easier to take care of and I know them better, too. I would like to get married someday, though. I think that’d be pretty hot, to be honest. You know, spend the rest of your life with the one you love.”

“With the right person, too,” Sam added with a wag of her finger.

“Of course! Then again, that’s what I get for being a Libra.”

“You Libras and your love of love,” Sam teased him. “I’m on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius. We like the idea of eternity with the right person, too.”

“You guys are a little bit harder with it, though,” Alex pointed out, “especially if your wedding with Joey was anything to go by.”

She took a glimpse over at him and his slightly raised eyebrows: he had lowered his mirrored sunglasses down the bridge of his nose so all she could see was the tops of his eyes. She returned to the road for a few moments just to see where she drove them to: the next stoplight up and they were about a block from the freeway. Alex remained in silence as they headed towards the ramp for the northbound lane: all the while, Sam wondered what was going through his mind right then.

Not even a full lifelike drawing of him could give her a glimpse into that wandering, questioning mind of his. She still itched to feel him and to hear him all the way through. Her best guy friend and she still had yet to figure him out all the way. They headed out of the Bay Area and into the low rolling hills: she still had yet to visit that patch of land where Lars and James had scattered Cliff’s ashes again. When they came back from Oregon, she could perhaps do it herself and also if Alex was feeling up to par himself.

“By the way...” he started again, “seeing as you have a lot of time on your hands for the time being, is there anything else that interests you at all? Besides artistry and whatnot?”

“Well, I’m glad you ask, Alexander. Given all of the road trips that you and I take—and the ones I’ve taken with Eric, Chuck, Tiffany, Greg, and also Louie—throughout all of the windswept landscapes and everything, I'm taking a little fancy for geology. Well, earth science in general.”

“Cool! Oh, yeah, ‘cause of all the volcanoes and the mountains and everything that surrounds us. It's like, ‘why not try it out for yourself?’”

“Exactly, yeah! I've also been thinking about—and you’re going to have to forgive me on this, too—but this is what I get for looking at boys such as yourself and then drawing them. I've also been thinking about designing clothes.”

“Like, fashion?”

“Yeah. What kind of fashion is the big question, though.”

“I’m sure you’ll find the answer,” he assured her with a little nod of his head; he reclined the seat back a bit. She took a glimpse over at him and his body as if he lay on display for her.

“What you get for looking at me is what you said,” he echoed her in a low mutter.

“Yeah. It's a, uh—yeah. You and the boys from Testament and Anthrax.”

“All the black leather and dark denim... we’re totally fashionable, baby!”

She giggled at him.

“The other thing is that’s a vast range of interest, too,” he said. “If there’s one other thing that I’ve been noticing with this whole alternative thing it’s a lot of osmosis. A lot of metal guys turning to that lighter, more experimental music and vice versa. I've been hearing the words ‘college kid music’ thrown around a lot, too. It's all pertaining to that music, no less.”

“College kid music,” she chuckled.

“Yeah, that’s just wild to me. Just from hanging out with you and Marla and Belinda. The college kid music I know about is absolutely nothing like that! Anyways, I mention that because that tells me that we’re now in an era where we all can transcend labels. I can be the metal guy who does other things and you can be the artist who does other things as well and no one will question it.”

“I can see us stagnating a bit with it, though,” she pointed out.

“Oh, yeah. That’s just the one problem. We're almost expected to pick one thing and that includes you and me both. It doesn’t feel fair to me and I know it wouldn’t fair to you, either.” He then shook his head. “You know, I just thought about Louie’s whole idea of a commune where we can all be artists together. I kind of wish he could go through with that because everything I just said.”

Sam thought about the conversation she had had with John the week before, where Anthrax was in it to make money and that meant ridding of their heart and soul that was Joey. She hoped that she and Alex would keep their heads and hearts intact, wherever they both chose to run off together as they rolled further into those low hills and towards the northern side of the Central Valley.

He had dozed off right at the end of the canyon there, about thirty minutes outside of Vacaville. Joey burst into her mind right then. Even though she could not marry him, he often came to her in quick flashes of memory. It was also right then she realized that she hadn’t seen the mysterious man in her dreams for a time at that point. She began to wonder if it was in fact Alex who kept coming to her in her sleep, especially since he vanished into thin air whenever he entered the picture for anything.

Alex let out a soft groan from within his throat and shifted his weight in the passenger seat. He shuffled his feet and brought his knees closer to his body. He leaned his head back towards the top of the seat once again and then he groaned again, that time from discomfort.

“You alright?” she asked him.

“Stomach’s kind of upset,” he replied with a gentle massage from his hand. “And it’s making me uncomfortable. I thought I’d take a nap until we reached the valley because I didn’t sleep very good last night—I was just excited for our little trip is all. So, I woke up this morning with the sore belly.”

“Aw, okay, we’ll stop in Vacaville,” she told him. “We’ve got to stop there anyway—I have to use the bathroom. We'll grab a cup of coffee while we’re there, too.”

“Sounds good by me,” he declared as he took off his sunglasses and then brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. He put them back on and he nestled down in the seat next to her.

They rounded the next bend in the road and they reached the outside of Vacaville: despite it being the middle of spring, the grasses all around had already turned to sickly shades of pale yellow and brown.

“We did not do well with rain,” Alex said aloud.

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Sam added as she let go of the wheel for a second in order to shake her hands about.

“Your hands are already tired?” he asked her, slightly concerned.

“Nah, I was just holding onto the wheel a little bit too hard,” she assured him. “That’s been happening to me a little bit lately.”

The highway widened out a lane further once they reached the outskirts of town. Another thirty or so minutes and they would be over in Sacramento, and then they would make that long, tedious straight shot into the northern half of the state, all the way to Red Bluff and then Redding. Sam took the next exit to the nearest gas station right off of the side of the road: she flashed back on when he picked her up from the side of the road, a hundred miles down the valley, especially with all of the dried out grass that surrounded them.

Alex was quick to climb out of the car: no sooner had she switched it off when he ducked out of there and into the back side of the minimart. Sam shook her head and she climbed out herself. With her bag slung over her shoulder, she strolled inside for a couple of cups of coffee. By the time she stepped back outside with a paper cup in either hand, he stood right outside of the passenger door with his mirrored sunglasses in one hand and the hem of his shirt in the other. He breathed on one of the lenses and wiped it off with his shirt once she approached him.

“Tell you what,” Alex started, and he put on his sunglasses once again and took the cup in Sam’s left hand; the late morning sun washed over the crown of his head and made his incoming gray hairs all the more prominent. “If in five years' time—five years from today, April 27, 1997—and you and I aren’t going anywhere career-wise, we both go back to school together. I major in music and you go into earth science.”

“How ‘bout a double major?” she suggested to him. “Earth science and fashion and have the best of both worlds? I don’t really want to do a general fine art major again.”

“Ooh, hot!” he joked. “But—” And he stopped himself in his tracks and showed her a little lopsided smile. “You know what? I agree with you on that. You've got your own style and so that’d be a little bit silly to go through with the art major again. But yeah, how ‘bout that, though? How does that sound?”

“Deal.” She extended her pinky finger to him to which they looped them together. They then took sips from their coffee in unison.

“The twenty-seventh, too,” she echoed him. “It’s Greg’s birthday, isn’t it?”

“The twenty-ninth,” he corrected.

“We ought to get him something while we’re in Oregon,” she noted. Without another word, they climbed back into the car and they returned to the road for the short drive to the heart of Sacramento.

“You remember Chuck’s cousin?” Alex asked aloud as they spotted signs for the Interstate to take them north up to Redding.

“Yeah... what was his name again?”

“Stephen.”

“Stephen, that was it! What about him? What's going with him?”

“I guess his band’s trying to do things,” he told her. “That’s just what I’ve heard all from looking around for people who need a lead guitarist. They actually compiled a demo tape and circulated it around, kind of like what we did and what Metallica did, too. Last I heard they're actually talking to labels now.”

“I hope they can do it,” she declared.

“I know right? That'd be fantastic if they were able to make some serious headway like Metallica are doing right now.”

They took the next exit onto the Interstate, and within mere seconds, they were on their way up the other side of the spine of California. Alex downed the rest of his coffee and gave his stomach another gentle massage with his free hand.

“How’s your tummy?” she asked him.

“Feels a little better. Kind of want something to eat now.”

“Well, can it wait? There's not really any place to get off here. We're also making good time to boot.”

“I think I can wait.”

Sam soon realized that Alex had spoken too soon as they left Sacramento and they were met with miles upon miles of desolate farm land. To the right stood the Sierra Nevada Mountains while the Coastal Range loomed off to the left side of the valley.

“Aw, man,” he groaned.

“Yeah, and it’s forty miles to Red Bluff, too!” she declared with a gesture out the windshield to the sign on the side of the road. “Hang on, Alex.”

Indeed, he gripped onto the handle over his head and he bowed his chin down towards his chest.

“Did you eat breakfast this morning?” Sam asked him.

“Not really. Just a piece of toast with some butter on it. My parents weren’t up yet, believe it or not, so I had to make do with what I had available at my disposal. A little piece of sourdough toast with a little spread of butter on top.”

“You didn’t have anything else? Just the piece of toast?”

“Just the piece of toast, yeah.” He chuckled right then.

“What?”

“Surprised you didn’t ask me if I had anything fried with it.”

“I wish you did,” she scoffed, and he chuckled again.

Forty miles up to Red Bluff and then another thirty up to Redding. Miles upon miles of nothing all around them: but as they neared Red Bluff and the northern end of the valley, the trees began to spring up against the grassland. The tops reached up to the sky in a rich shade of dark green, a mere taste of what awaited them off to the north. At the north, right behind the hills at the north end of the valley, stood a small snowy point, to which Alex himself noticed.

“Samantha, do you know the volcanoes up here?”

“I know we’re near Mount Lassen,” she told him. “Like it’s over there in that direction.” She pointed out his side of the windshield.

“We’ll have to come closer to Redding but I think I see Mount Shasta right in front of us here.” He nudged his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and then he set his hand back down on his stomach.

“Poor boy has a sensitive tummy,” she noted.

“I really do!” he declared. “And I didn’t tell you this because it’s gross, but on this last tour with Testament, I had the literal worst pains you can possibly imagine. I wasn’t sick or anything but it was like no matter what I ate up, it didn’t sit too well with me and the guys were like, ‘dude, Alex, take something for that’ because it was getting bad right before we came home.” He paused for a second. “Maybe that’s why Aurora went out of her way to get rid of me...”

Sam took a concerned glimpse over at him, especially once his voice trailed off after that.

“You think that’s what Aurora meant when she said you were holding them back?” she asked him. “All because of the way your body was reacting to the food you were being served?”

“That’s just a guess but—not a bad one if I do say so myself,” he confessed. “Well, and I've also brought up to her that I wanted to do something else than heavy metal, hence why we went in the direction we did with this last record.”

“Wow,” Sam proclaimed in a hushed voice. He shifted his weight in the seat again and that time the trees were collecting closer and closer together; she knew that they were coming close to the outside of Red Bluff.

A sign emerged out of the trees, followed by a series of low buildings and small houses. They saw nothing more than a gas station.

“What the hell,” Alex blurted out.

“I know, right?”

“I also forgot to add—on the aforementioned last tour with Testament, and we were with Megadeth, believe it or not, their guitarist Marty—Marty Friedman, another Jew boy guitarist and with hair a lot like mine, and when I had just dyed my hair, too, so people were constantly confusing us with each other—we were driving through a bunch of small towns in the south and I really had to use the bathroom. Dave was driving the van believe it or not, and I was riding with them just because their van had air conditioning, and he was looking around for a bathroom for me. At one point, Marty said something and Dave turns his head a bit—like he’s the dad of the group, you know—and he goes, ‘Alex, you better not gripe to me about taking a shit again or you’ll be going out there in the woods!’ And without missing a beat, Marty who’s right next to me goes, ‘what, you want me to do that in the woods? Do I look like a bear to you at all, Dave?’ And Dave goes, ‘you better bear the bears for us all, Alex, you little scoundrel.’ And Marty said, ‘I’m the bearer of bears, Dave?’ And he goes, ‘you are a bear, Alex! A dirty rotten bear!’ And Marty goes, ‘you do realize who you’re talking to, right?’ Dave finally turns around and he’s face to face with Marty and he goes, ‘oh, shit’ and I finally chimed in with ‘you’re telling me!’”

Sam burst out laughing at that.

“One of the few times where I actually got a laugh out of that sort of thing, too,” he chuckled and he gently massaged his stomach some more. “Because it was more about playing around with words and me and Marty looking similar to each other. Marty—and Nick, drummer Nick Menza, was with us, too—the two of them were in tears; they were laughing so hard. Dave turned about as red as his hair, but he got a pretty good laugh out of it, too.”

“Come to think of it, that’s actually one of the reasons why I like hanging out with you, Alex,” she confessed. “Your sense of humor is vulgar but it’s nothing like that, though. It's quite refreshing actually.”

“Vulgar and dry as a bone,” he added with a slight raise of his eyebrow. He then turned to the road before them. “How long ‘til Redding?”

“Thirty miles and—I see Mount Shasta!” Indeed, once they reached the northern side of Red Bluff, the cold stony top point of the volcano rose up from behind the pale-yellow hills. “Yeah, I'm definitely going into earth science as a second major.”

“And fashion designing as the first,” Alex recalled; he then leaned forward in the seat next to her and he set his hands on his knees. Even in a single seat, he had a nice straight shape to his spine. Every so often, Sam took a glimpse over at him and his nice posture. His slender shoulders held back from his chest as if they warranted a brand-new jacket of some sort. Something designed by her and for him and only him. His chest stuck out a bit and his waist still carried that slender shape to it. She had seen him in the buff, and he needed something new to run with that beautiful body of his.

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to do that,” she told him in a low voice. He kept that pose all the way up to Redding and the next stop for a bite to eat. At that point, it was in fact getting close to lunch time, and a quick stop in Redding led to a full lunch break and a fill up of the gas tank before they headed back on the road.

“Feel better?” she asked him, and he leaned back in the seat once more, that time with his hands folded over his slender little stomach.

“Oh, yeah. That definitely hit the spot.” He was so delicate and so strong at the same time: Sam knew that there was no way she couldn’t go into fashion design at some point in the future.

North of Redding turned into even more hills and dense forest: Mount Shasta loomed larger and larger all the way up to the turn off for Highway 97 and the town of Weed, the name of which made Alex shake his head.

“Where the hell is Greg and Eric,” he muttered to himself.

“Why is that?” she asked him.

“They’d get a total kick out of this town name,” he replied, and he brought his pinched fingers to his lips as if to imitate a blow from a joint. Sam giggled at that as well; she flicked on the turn signal and they merged onto that narrow two-lane highway up to the state line and southern Oregon.

It would be another hour through the vast, desolate landscape, and one where they both pictured dinosaurs roaming about from the stray clusters of forest and the cold mountains off in the distance. Sam turned to him with a beaming smile on her face.

“Thank you for hailing from NorCal, Alex,” she told him, to which he shrugged.

“I do what I can,” he assured her. The road dipped down into a bowl-shaped valley at one point and they wound their way around the side of it: Sam then spotted a small cluster of houses nestled in the rise up ahead of them.

“Wonder what this place is next,” she wondered aloud.

“No idea,” he confessed. Once the words left his lips and they had passed an abandoned, rusted building on the side of the road that looked like an old factory, she spotted a sign that told them they had entered Oregon.

“Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, Alejandro,” she told him.

“The majestic Pacific Northwest!” he declared, and he held out his arms as if he beheld a masterpiece. “Something else I've heard about this place in particular?”

“What’s that?”

He turned his attention to her.

“The coast especially is a mecca for glass artists.”

“Oh, really?”

“That’s what I’ve heard, yeah. Again, I was looking around for auditions from people back down south in the Bay Area and I was having drinks with a drummer and a bass player, and the former hailed from Portland. And he was telling us about the utter microcosm of music and art that way, and he added that the coast is filled with these little towns comprised of people from all manner of artistry, but glass in particular. So—a little something to run by Marla and Belinda when you see them again.”

“I don’t know how they would react up here, though,” Sam confessed. “It’s awful desolate. You know, we think upstate is remote. Upstate is like hustling and bustling compared to Oregon.”

She then took another glimpse at Alex, and then she returned to the road before them as it made a gentle curve around the base of the hills. The town up ahead came into view and it was only a matter of minutes before they had a name.

“I can see Louie’s artist commune coming to life up here, though,” she told him. “You know, where everybody is fixated on Seattle at the moment, he can undertake it here. In the state below.”

“Yeah, I can see that happening, too,” Alex said with a nod. “As long as he stays away from the Dalles, that’s fine. The guy also mentioned the Dalles, up by Mount Hood, it’s near the river up there. It's not very good.”

“I would think with a name like ‘the Dalles’, it’s not going to be the best place in the world.”

“Right? It'd be like The Hague, over in the Netherlands. Not much to do but go to High Court.”

Sam then took a glimpse at the clock on the dashboard as it read a quarter to three in the afternoon.

“Are you sure you want to keep going to Crater Lake today or do we wanna stop for the night? I've got plenty of money so we can have dinner and chill until the morning. I did promise my dad I was going to call him, too.”

“Yeah. As long as you don’t draw me while I’m sleeping.”

“Nah. Although I have thought about it.”

“You’ve thought about drawing me while I’m sleeping?” He raised his eyebrows at her.

“I have, yes.”

“What else have you thought about doing with me?”

“I don’t really wanna talk about it,” she admitted, especially since she knew that some of it, she couldn’t say to him yet.

“Taking a page out of your book—I won’t force you to do it if you don’t want to.”

“You know who else would’ve loved it up here?”

“Who?”

“Cliff. He would’ve just relished in every part of this, from the volcanoes to the vast stretches of land as far as the eye can see. He would’ve been all over this place.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he was kind of a cowboy,” Alex recalled in a soft voice. “Cowboy paired with a classical musician.”

The mere mention of Cliff brought on a wave of tears to Sam’s eyes, and at that point, she was glad they decided to stop for the night because there was no way she could continue on up the road like that.

#fanfic #fanfiction #chapter 21 #book five #veritas #fever in fever out #fever in fever out fanfic #testament #testament band #testament fanfic #alex skolnick #oc tag #slice of life #long reads #writing #also on ao3 #text

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