Death of a Dream

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Why won’t the door give?” someone screamed, waking me up.

I jolted upright, grabbed my knife from the nightstand, and crept toward the door.

The doorknob was rattling violently. Whoever it was couldn’t get it open.

I looked through the peephole.

It was Kenny.

“Stop leaning on the door,” I shouted. “I’ll open it.”

The rattling stopped.

I cracked the door and Kenny burst in, eyes wide with panic.

I flipped on the light.

He looked awful: sweaty, disheveled, eyes bloodshot.

I stared at him. “What the hell happened to you?”

“It’s bad… it’s really bad.” He was hyperventilating, trying to find air between words.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Start with why you look like that.”

He sank to the floor.

“I jumped out of a second-floor window…”

I stared, but didn’t ask why. I already knew.

He swallowed hard. “We were upstairs, partying hard. I’d been drinking. Scott and the X-Mass guys were smoking and shooting up.”

He paused.

“One of their groupies OD’d… and everything went to shit. Her friend called an ambulance. I bailed before the cops showed.”

“I’ll call Doug,” was all I could say.

The phone call with Doug was brief.

Jim had already called him when the cops arrived, so he was up to speed. The label was working overtime to clean up the mess.

Scott and Jim were both spending the night in jail, but they’d be out on bail by morning. Jim would probably avoid a hearing; he was just guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Scott… would be more complicated.

***

By 9 a.m., Doug and Stan had posted bail, freeing Scott and Jim to complete the tour. Kenny and I met them in the hotel lobby. Scott looked ashamed, but Doug was calmer than he’d been after Dallas. Jim pulled Stan aside before they even entered the building.

“It’s alright, Scott. These things happen,” Doug said gently. “Our legal team will prepare your case for the hearing at the end of the month. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but my mugshot’s already making the rounds.”

“It’s fine. It adds to your lore. It’ll win over the older crowds.”

Scott didn’t reply. He just smirked, covering the pain.

“I’m just glad you’re alright,” I offered quietly.

He handed his phone to Kenny on the way upstairs, to avoid the headlines, and disappeared toward his room to sleep off the night.

Kenny and Doug debriefed briefly about what went down. It hadn’t seemed that wild from Kenny’s vantage point. He hadn’t been around Scott at any point during the night. Even if he’d been caught, the worst he’d face was a charge for underage drinking.

Twenty minutes later, Stan and Jim finally emerged. Both of them looked pissed about whatever conversation had just happened.

“Well, that went about how I expected,” Stan muttered. Then he looked at me. “Wes, I’m surprised you didn’t have any fun.”

I smirked. “You’re the one who taught me when to nope out of a bad situation.”

“Shame your drummer didn’t listen.”

Kenny turned to me. “You tried to get Jim to leave with you?”

I nodded.

He looked surprised. “I’m shocked he didn’t.”

“He didn’t grow up like we did,” I said, my voice flat. “He didn’t understand that it wasn't a normal party.”

Jim didn’t stop to talk on his way past us, but he nodded for me to follow. Doug clocked it and gave me an out from the conversation. Stan eagerly took my place.

***

Upon entering the room, I saw Jim sitting on his bed, staring out the window at the busy LA street.

“This was fun, Wes. Thanks for keeping me along for the ride,” his voice was defeated.

I was confused, “Of course… you’ve always been great to work with.”

“I just told Stan, but after the tour, I’m leaving the band.”

The silence was immense.

I didn’t know how to process what he said.

“Last July, Dallas, I started having my doubts…I saw the narratives about us. How we were just burnout kids who got lucky.”

His voice was crisp, “I thought that they were right, but I wanted to prove that we were more than that… that once you came back, and we moved forward—we would be so much more.”

He paused, fighting back new tears.

“And we are so much more, we’re the best goddamn band in the world sometimes. We put out three top-10 singles this year. We’re playing at sold out arenas every night,” he stopped to wipe his tears and collect himself. “But it’s not worth it anymore.”

I sat next to him.

“Jim, why is now the time?”

He turned to me, making eye contact, “You wouldn’t understand this because of how you grew up, but my family has expectations for me… I have two younger brothers. I’m supposed to be the example.”

“When shit fell apart last summer, they wanted me to come home—I lied and said you’d been in a freak accident, that this life was perfectly fine. They didn’t want me to go this time, even after the success of Chasing Ghosts…”

“They didn’t praise me. They wanted me to give up on this dream and go to college,” his intensity was increasing. “I told them I would make them proud and do better, we’d have a great tour and drop a number one album in 2014…”

“And all I gave them was my mugshot in the local papers.”

If it was Scott or Kenny, I would have pushed back… I would have lied and manipulated him to stay. But I couldn’t do that to Jim.

“If that’s what you want to do, I’m not going to try to stop you,” my voice hung in the room.

We sat in silence, watching the world pass by below. Just another ordinary Friday morning.

“If you’re done with this… it would be a shame for you to leave the industry completely—” I stopped, debating if I should finish. “If I put out a solo album, would you ever want to feature?”

He laughed to himself.

“So, Kenny was right… you were always planning on moving on.”

I leaned back on the bed, “It was never about moving on, or anything like that,” I paused. “Right now, you know how I feel. That the dream is supposed to be better than this.”

We didn’t need to talk any further.

Before the show that night, he told Kenny and Scott that he was done after August. They didn’t push back. If anything, the guilt was crushing them. Kenny made an offhand comment about how only I did my part in the end, and how they could only blame themselves.

***

The last three weeks of the tour were tough. Every night felt like a grind. Jim wasn’t playing well, his heart wasn’t in it, and anyone watching could tell.

It reminded us of the early years. Back when he used to stumble through sets and we had to mask his mistakes with noise and energy. Somehow, we still remembered how to do it: cranking up the chaos to cover the cracks.

Critics noticed the drop-off. They blamed LA. Said we’d lost our edge. Maybe we had. But we didn’t care. Stan didn’t either. And judging by the crowds, neither did anyone else.

Scott’s mugshot had gone viral, catapulting all three singles back into the top ten. The controversy only made us bigger. And if we weren’t perfect on stage, at least we weren’t falling apart like X-Mass. Their decline made our bad nights look heroic.

The last show of the tour, Chicago, was our best.

After Chasing Ghosts, Jim stayed behind his kit for a while, letting the noise wash over him. You could see him soaking it in, maybe second-guessing his decision.

The rest of us waited in the hallway outside the dressing room, quiet. No one wanted to walk in without him. No one wanted to cross that invisible line into the next version of this band.

When he finally joined us, he smiled.

“Man, can you believe our last show together was at a sold-out arena in Chicago? Shame we were too early to see the new Blackhawks Stanley Cup banner.”

After everything, after drugs and jail and everything that almost tore us apart, he still had the presence of mind to joke about hockey.

I didn’t know how I was going to do this without him.