Oli lies down in the grass next to Lark. It’s easier to talk to him without looking at him. Lark’s expression is desperate; he needs a better answer, something Oli can’t give him.

Above them, the stars turn impersonally, imperceptibly.

“I think there are lots of ways to be happy,” Oli says.

Lark thinks there are more ways to be unhappy, but he keeps his mouth shut on his pessimism until he can justify it. “I guess, just so much of my life was oriented in one direction for so long that I find it hard that I haven’t arrived at that destination. Like, maybe I’ve practiced the piano for, I don’t know, let’s say 15,000 hours? A crazy amount of time. But I’ve made more money as a sales assistant at thrift stores, probably.”

“So it’s about money?” Oli asks. “You think you have to make money doing something to, you know, be it?”

“No,” Lark says, quick and certain that he’s not been understood. “No, I think—I think that you have to be recognized, though. I guess it’s usually with money. But it matters. How others see you.”

“I guess it does,” Oli concedes. “It matters how you see yourself too, though. You know yourself better than anyone else can, anyway.”

Lark doesn’t say anything. His sense of self is slippery and unflattering at the best of times. He believed, once, that there was a life tailor-made for him—a perfect expression of himself.

He doesn’t believe that anymore.

Lark used to get everything he owned second-hand, combing through thrift stores for strange finds. Of course, he was always broke, so it made sense for him to thrift, but it was more than that. He liked the unique, the odd, the ironic. Things that other people didn’t have, and things that had a history. Things with personality.

The idea of it now makes him sad. When he was younger, he could take a picture of oddball cast-offs and laugh. Not meanly—he just enjoyed the weirdness of other people’s things, the possibilities of the lives behind them. He can’t help but think about the circumstances of their donation now. Death and down-sizing. To him, the abandonment of a wardrobe or a collection or an interest seems like a loss. Something ended, or someone gave up. Pain everywhere he looked: evidence of lives that didn’t quite fit, identities that had to be discarded.

Next to him, Oli laughs. He has the photos out, still. “What even?” he asks, still laughing.

He holds the Polaroid out to Lark, who recognizes the Maine sheets he’d bought for $2 from his Salvation Army. “I don’t know. I thought they were funny.”

Though Lark thinks he could be embarrassed about it, how ironic he was just a few years ago, but he pushes that away. He’s sincere now.

The Maine sheets are still funny. He looks for some pain in the memory and can’t find it.

I got a job at the Salvation Army, a fifteen-minute drive towards the suburbs.

Max had gotten me an interview at the vintage shop where he and Dana worked, but I didn’t get the job. Their hip boss had apparently thought I was too shy. She told Max I was cute, but she didn’t think I could push a sale.

That’s fair, I said, feeling less disappointed than Max and Dana seemed to be. I started dropping my CV to bigger thrift stores the next day.

The Salvy suited me well, anyway. I folded and priced new donations, hardly speaking to anyone all day. The older women who worked there—heavyset evangelical types who carried their humble joy with them—made much of me, brought me homemade cookies, and called me a sweet boy like I was back in elementary school. There was a white-shirt-and-black-slacks uniform that made me feel like someone else. Comfortably bland. If I shaved and brushed my hair, I didn’t have to give any more thought to the way I looked.

It wasn’t a very cool thrift store, as these things go, but it was very cheap, and I pulled a few interesting things for myself: a blue t-shirt with a belt-printed portrait of the president of Iceland, a Windows 98 sweatshirt, a neon windbreaker in Arizona iced tea teals and pinks. I could take pictures of all the ugliest ceramics and assorted knick-knacks, too, and I’d share them with Max and Dana when we all crammed into the living room to eat dinner, plates of rice and beans balanced on our knees.

Max drove me to work on his days off and took my car to run errands or visit friends. He came to pick me up afterward, pressing up to the store’s picture windows, sticking out his tongue. I pretended I didn’t know him as I said goodbye to Lorna, cashing up at the till.

I took the keys from Max and listened to him talk about Rich, whose cabin he drove out to, and how he was curing salmons he caught in the Willamette. Real outdoorsy stuff that wasn’t really Max’s scene, but Rich sold him weed and had a good stereo and a cool girlfriend.

We made a brief stop at our apartment, so I could change out of my work clothes and pick up our instruments, then we drove over to the practice studio we shared with five other bands. Max listened to the sequencing and arranging I did during the week, and we shared new ideas, trying to polish and select tracks to record with Jules.

I started to find my voice then, trying to coach Max through harmony lines that didn’t sit in the comfortable thirds Max could pick up. I only ever sang to share melodic ideas, which I did in fragile snatches. My voice was high and thin, but pitch-perfect from years of solfege. It got lost in electronic textures. I considered it a utility rather than an instrument.

Max had a sneering nasal singing voice. It reminded me of Britpop singers, its dryness contrasting heavily with the ringing reverb layers of my synth arrangements. A safe sound, easily understood and parsed.

It was Jules, coming in to listen in rehearsals, who suggested I start singing on our albums. Max barked a laugh at the idea. He was edgy and rude whenever Jules was in the room, whenever he felt judged.

You don’t always need to sound like something that’s already cool, Jules told us, perched on a bass amp, taking notes on their phone. Don’t be so afraid.