at him, refusing to grace his best friend’s betrayal with even a smile or a nod of forgiveness. He could barely see Daniel anyway, blinded by the sudden flash of light that was his life going into supernova. It was all just a mass hallucination. Was it possible? Had everything around him been a fantasy, born from false hope and sustained by delusion? Emerson was saying something but Jeremy couldn’t hear him through the high-pitched ringing in his ears. He suddenly, desperately, missed his mother.
“Don’t ever compromise.” That’s what Jillian told him on the day, fifteen years ago, when he moved to New York. Jillian was driving him to the airport to catch the red-eye—he still remembered that stuttering old diesel Volvo, the backseat piled so high with Jillian’s patient files that no one had sat back there in years—and as they putted along Lincoln Boulevard in the dark it had struck Jeremy for the first time that he was leaving his mother all by herself. For years, it had been the just two of them: Jillian and Jeremy, the two J’s, an impregnable unit. Puberty had exposed the claustrophobia in that intimate equation: It wasn’t easy being the sole outlet for his mother’s endless outpouring of attention, especially when all he really wanted to do was hide in his room to play guitar and memorize the one tattered copy of Playboy he’d stolen from Daniel. He’d been desperately looking forward to college and New York, the chance to be Jeremy without the Jillian. But now that he was about to climb on a plane, it suddenly occurred to him that his mother might not survive without him. She’d never been on her own, didn’t have anyone but him! How could he leave her?
“Mom, are you going to be OK?” he’d asked her, examining the side of her face, where furrows had taken up permanent residence in the translucent skin around her eyes. Gray strands sprang free of the batik scarf that she used to fasten her ponytail. She looked drawn, frail. “On your own, I mean?”
“What kind of question is that?” She took her foot off the gas and the car slowed, choking, to a crawl. Behind them, a Mercedes honked and then swerved to pass.
“Just—I feel like I’m abandoning you. Maybe I shouldn’t go.”
Jillian yanked the wheel to the right, veering over to the side of the road. She pulled to a stop before a shuttered liquor store and sat there, the idling Volvo shuddering in protest.
“So if I said I needed you to stay here with me, you’d stay? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He hesitated, unsure. “Maybe.”
Jillian grabbed his hand, squeezing it so hard he thought she might crush his fingers. He wondered whether she was about to cry, to tell him that yes, he should stay, and in an instant he saw his life in New York vanishing. But then he saw the flinty, hot fury in his mother’s face.
“Don’t ever say that again,” she hissed.
He shrank away, his back pressing into handle of the passenger side door, but she tugged on his hand, reeling him in. With the other hand, she gripped his chin, pulling it toward her face.
“You are not to compromise your dreams. Ever. Do not give up on what you want just to please someone else. And by that I mean, do not take a job you hate just to pay the bills, do not stay with someone you don’t love just so they don’t feel bad, do not let anyone tell you what you should and shouldn’t do or what you are or are not capable of. That’s the only rule I’ve ever lived by. You’re empathetic, Jeremy—you want to please people, you don’t want to upset the balance, and if you’re not careful that will get in the way of the things you want. But I believe, Jeremy”—and here she paused, a hitch in her throat, the intimation of tears—“I believe you really can have it all. My beautiful, talented boy. You can. Anything your heart desires.”
He’d gotten on the plane, of course. And even though he’d never really bought into all his mother’s New Age mysticism—the energy healing, the chakra readings, the Ganeshes cluttering their coffee table—this lecture had stuck with him throughout his eleven years in New York, throughout the rise (and collapse) of This Invisible Spot and his relationship with Aoki. But now, with his disloyal bandmates sitting in front of him looking glum, having finally