Bone Deep (3 page)

Ditty
leans over and yells in my ear, “Does it make me a pussy that I have no desire to try that?”

“You and me both,” I shout back.

Through the room devoid of tables or chairs or anything that’d resemble civilized comfort—aside from the old-fashioned popcorn machine near the stairs, we draw up to a corner and try to blend in with the wall. When the song finally ends, Green Mohawk yells, “And we are the Mustard Whores! The Gas Caps are up next!”

Cheering. Hooting. Hollering. Then it all settles to a low drone like someone put all of these shouting fucks into a gigantic po
t and put the lid on it. Zebra minions start grazing the floor, high-fiving one another, checking out each other’s stripes.

I let out a breath and rub my ears. “They’re good, right?” I say to Ditty. He raises his eyebrow clear up to his widow’s peak and points at my forehead.

“If you’re
trying
to get your face permanently set like that, then hell yeah. They’re freaking amazing!”

With a few minutes intermission, Ditty goes to fill a bowl of popcorn. I stay against the wall, watch as men in black scurry around the stage, disassembling the band equipment and
then set up an exact replica only with The Gas Caps logo stamped all over. The crowd starts to stir, and then several guys, not much older than me and dressed in exactly the same fashion as Green Mohawk—except for one who appears to be wearing red, plaid pajama pants—come out and start making random noise with their guitars. Another sits behind the drum set, spins his drumstick in his fingers then
tap, tap, tap BANG!

None of this sounds anything like what music should.

“Warm up,” Ditty says, and I nod like I knew that all along. The random notes eventually mesh together, and Plaid Pants starts jumping around and singing and summoning fist pumps from the audience who, for some reason, all know exactly when to throw their hands into the air and when not to.

The Gas Caps play for forty-five long minutes and their music is even more tortur
ous than the first band, and then Plaid Pants falls to his knees, chest heaving, sweating enough to fill Ditty’s empty popcorn bowl and says, “We’re The Gas Caps! See you next week in Redmond!” More hooting and hollering and fist pumping, and I wonder if the people in the audience ever tire of hooting, hollering, and fist pumping.

“That was rad,” I say to Ditty, forced, of course, because it was so
not
rad. He makes a face, and I nudge his elbow. “Let’s go get a closer look.”

Down on the floor, sweaty, grungy kids push against us, red faced and gasping as they head for
fresh air. Ditty, in his green-striped polo, stands out in the crowd like a dollar bill in the middle of the street, and I can’t help but laugh to myself. Seriously, who wears a polo to a concert?

As I approach the shoe-scuffed stage, Plaid Pants delicately sets his guitar in
to a molded, plastic case then closes the lid. His hands freeze on the shiny, metal latch when he catches my movement. Without all the black eyeliner, he’d probably be normal looking.

“
’Sup?” he says and gives me the you-must-be-new-because-people-aren’t-supposed-to-approach-me look. I smile.

“Great show.”

“Yeah, thanks.” The latch clicks into place. Then another. A few seconds pass, and it’s painfully obvious Plaid Pants isn’t really the social type—which I can totally relate to—but still, I need him to be right now.

“So…” I clear my throat, hold onto the edge of the stage because suddenly the room is starting to swirl like I’m drunk only I’m not drunk and I’m thinking this is a really stupid idea. But even though I’m thinking this, that I should probably turn around and leave, the words blurt out. “You knew Evan?”

It’s weird: the silence that follows, circling throughout the sweat-sticky air. The kind of weird that sends a zip of electricity to my gut, awareness yawning in my chest cavity, something sort of like fear buzzing throughout my tenuous limbs.

Or maybe that’s
the blood rushing into my ears.

The drummer glances down at me, then Ditty. Plaid Pants slowly extends his arm, traces his long, bony finger over four black
letters branded onto his skin.

E

V

A

N

I wonder if Dad saw him that day, boarding the train with a guitar case in his grip or bobbing his head to his iPod. Writ
ing song lyrics on a rumpled sheet of paper, or even the guitar chords that would coddle them. If he was dressed all punk rock like these guys or more classy and Sunset Heights-y like the mother he used to have. If he was smiling, content with a song in his head, as metal and wreckage and death ripped into his soul.

Plaid Pants leans forward, beads of sweat rolling down his face. “You knew him?” In another life, another time, another town, the tone of
his voice—the mixture of pissed off and curiousness laced with repugnance only the absence of a friend can bring—wouldn’t have been like this. Plaid Pants would have been dizzy and satisfied as the after-show adrenaline coursed through his veins, drew up his lips. Drummer Boy’s eyes would have been alight with pride, more concerned with the clutch of tittering fan girls postured near the edge of the stage instead of the pale-faced kid stooped below him asking about his dead bandmate.

“I didn’t know him,” I say through the wad of cotton on my tongue. I swallow a few times then open my mouth again with the intention of asking him about the letters, if he—or any of the other Gas Caps—beleaguered
Wrenn’s mailbox with them, and if so to please stop. Instead, the words “but my dad” fall out of my mouth.

Beside me
, Ditty stiffens. With those three words he understands: (1) why we’re here, and (2) who these guys—especially the one with
EVAN
tattooed on his arm—must be. He saw the article and Evan Bencich’s picture.

Ditty grabs my arm. “I think we should go.”

Outside, Ditty turns to me.

“Seriously,
Ledoux? You drag me all the way down here, make me stand in a fucking hotbox with a bunch of punk rockers just so you can shove your nose into some other person’s business who
happens
to know someone who was in the accident?”

I meet Ditty’s glare and open the car door, cold air seeping down my neckline. Numbly, I climb in and say, “Not an accident.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “What does it matter? It was a year ago!”

Chapter Four

Pulling away from Ditty’s house, the moon balances on the rounded treetops, splashing weak light over
Wrenn’s car like a dying nightlight. The drive back to Chanton was quiet. Ditty, face pinched and fingers tapping furiously on his phone; and me, running over every word from Plaid Pants, probing for signs that the letters had come from his death-wounded hands, but arriving at the conclusion that a musician would’ve written a song about his loss, not letters to the killer’s family.

It’s Monday,
Wrenn’s “girls’ night in,” which is code for carousing with two of her high school friends, both conveniently named Sarah, who grew tangled in the arms of Chanton and never moved away, never made anything for themselves. The night is still early. Most likely the three of them are singing along, glazed-eyed and lightheaded, to a lame-ass movie like
Pitch Perfect
. Being there, with a half-eaten carton of Rocky Road turning to soup on the table, yellow-stained walls, overflowing ashtrays, and the lingering cloud of musty, herb air will surely result in strangling Wrenn, and I don’t want to do that because she’s the only one I have left.

As an alternative, I text the only other person who hasn’t completely severed ties with me. Or I her, for a reason I don’t know.
U UP?

A minute passes. The phone flips over and over in m
y fingers as I cruise at stoner speed around the backside of Sylvan Park, the dim moonlight draping over the yellow, plastic slide Ditty and I used to climb up with dirt under our fingernails and holes in our jeans. And then:
WORKING ON ECON PROJ

I pull to the side of the road and idle in a buttery puddle of light because, well, just the thought of causing an accident like my father has my stomach churning and text her back.
PARENTS HOME?

Her:
WHAT DO U THINK?

      
WHY? U OK?

Me:
WAIT UP FOR ME?

I park down the street. Tall
, spindly trees loom over me, and I don’t want to think they look like jail cell bars, but I do and I hate that I do, and then I start jogging. Twenty-two steps up to the front door. I don’t count them now, but there was once a time I did. The black-painted front door, in all its enormity and carved complexity, is closed. I don’t walk in unannounced; that privilege vanished with the words “I can’t see you anymore.”

Obviously, I meant I couldn’t see her
every
day.

The door
swings open. Jess stands there, barefoot, in a jean skirt and wifebeater, and I try not to notice the way she’s got most of her weight on her right leg. Her hand is on the door, easing it wider and wider. I step in. Wrap my arms around her. Bury my face into her neck. Squeeze tighter, tighter.

“You didn’t answer my question,
Krister,” she says after a minute, tracing her fingers up my spine. She pulls away and looks at me. “You okay?”

That’s not why I came here, to talk about my
clusterfuck day. I take her face in my hands, tell her with my eyes not to ask and press my lips to hers. Sometimes kissing Jess reminds me of the times we had in high school. The skating rink, sledding in the mountains—all the ridiculous things she insisted we do while I called her my girlfriend. And sometimes it reminds me of nothing. Of the emptiness I feel inside.

My tongue slips into he
r mouth. Hand slides up her leg, under her skirt.

“Not out here,” she shakes her head and says against my lips. She pulls me through the maze of dim hallways and
art-covered walls to the back of her house, into her room, and I don’t know why it matters because her rich-ass parents will be out till at least midnight fraternizing with their rich-ass friends.

Wife
beater off, she flops onto her bed. She knows what I want, and I know what I want, so I climb on top of her, lose myself a little more with every inch of her I touch. With each article of clothing that decorates the floor. Her skirt. My shirt. Her bra. My jeans.

My lips trail her skin. The faint scent of cucumbers, the warmth of her arms wrapped around my neck, the metal barbell in her bellybutton that I kiss because it will make her giggle and squirm. She giggles and squirms and, God, it’s all so fucking familiar and easy
, and I don’t know why I let this go.

I pull the blanket over my head, disappear into a dark, soundless world. Under here, my thoughts don’t exist. Under here, fucked-up shit doesn’t happen. Under here, I can be
Krister Ledoux and not the son of Stephen Ledoux with the same blue-gray eyes and dimple in my chin. Under here, I feel good enough to smile.

“Okay, okay,” Jess says, breathless, and yanks on my arms. I emerge, the cool air even more of a rush than the lazy grin she gives me. I reach into her drawer because I’ve been here enough times to know that’s where she keeps the condoms and lose myself all over again in the knot of limbs and sweat and breath w
e become.

~*~

“You make me nervous when you look at me like that.”

Jess taps her pencil against her sketchbook, her blond hair falling over her cheek and coming to rest at her shoulder. “You’re not talking,” she says quietly, drawing line after line that looks like nothing now but will in a few minutes because that’s how good she is. At faces, anyway. “That usually means something’s wrong.”

They’re n
ot accusatory at all—her words—but still, I cross my legs and give her a look.

“I mean…” She bites her lip. “I know stuff’s wrong, like the normal stuff…but, like, something else.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” I stare across the room, at the picture on her dresser she still has up of the two of us at senior homecoming. The pre-accident Krister in the black tux. The pre-accident Jess in green silk that caressed her ankles. Framed in fancy silver with her dried corsage hanging dead from the corner.

“It’s because…well, you’re here and, I don’t know, it seems like…” Her words run out. She slides her fingers through her hair.

“Spit it out, Jess.”

She sighs, sets her notebook down
, and swings one leg over my lap. Dismal light from the lamp beside her bed gives her a jaundiced look from her straddled legs all the way up to her searching eyes. “Something more,” she whispers. “It’s here, in your face.” She traces the end of her pencil under my eye, down my cheek. “In the way I can’t really see you even when I’m looking right at you.”

I shrug and stare at where her skirt has ridden up her legs
, wondering if it’s too soon to go again just to avoid this conversation with her. She takes a deep breath, thinking.

“You never want to talk to me anymore.”

I roll my eyes, inch my hand up her thigh. “You gonna turn all drama queen on me today?”

She stops my hand with hers and frowns. “I’m serious,
Krister.”

“So am I.”

“I just wanna know why.” She slips her fingers between mine. “We used to talk all the time. And now—”

“God, Jess. Don’t take it personally.” I reclaim my hand and rub my face. Jess’s never been clingy, even when we were together. She was actually a pretty cool girlfriend. But when I look up, her eyes are glistening
, and I think:
Why does this always happen?
And then answer myself with:
As if you didn’t know sex is like the ultimate cause of bipolar-ness, turning even the coolest of chicks into sappy, crying, I-need-you-more-than-anything, why-don’t-we-ever-talk? girls.

“Hey,” I pull her down to me and say. My arms wrap around her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just, I’ve had a shitty day.” To say the least.

“See?” The word stretches out into a high-pitched whine. She presses her forehead into my neck and hot breath dribbles down my chest. “This is what I mean. I don’t even know what you did today.”

I stare at the fan, the beaded chain beneath it swinging back and forth. Skipped class—not really anything new; stood on the front porch of Evan
Bencich’s house talking to Evan Bencich’s mom all the while thinking Evan Bencich is dead; was likely seconds away from getting my ass kicked by Evan Bencich’s former bandmates but didn’t because one good thing about my best friend is that he runs like a fucking gazelle…

Ditty didn’t understand what I was doing. I doubt Jess will
, either. Which now, on the fluffiness of her pillow-top mattress cocooned by Jess’s legs, is a tad disappointing. Could supporting me on this be all that trying? That I want to find out who’s writing me, ask them to stop? Maybe even apologize for my dad’s despicable decisions, his utter lack of sympathy or empathy and every single other word that ends with -
pathy
.

Jess sniffs. “I take it you’re not going to tell me.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it? Please,
Krister, talk to me.”

E
very time she asks, it’s like dipping me in molten glass, swirling me around on the end of a punty, suffocating me with more and more layers. She must understand this—every empty second I am further and further from telling her. So instead she says this, whispering the words to make them hurt even more.

“I love you.”

Confession: Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I think about her. How she used to bring homemade cookies to school for me, wrapped in colorful cellophane and tied with curly ribbon. How she used to wait for me as I closed up Alessi’s in the evenings and the smile she gave when I presented her beads from my day’s creations. How she’d add them to her “Krister Collection” which she used to claim would become famous one day. The way we would lie in the warm grass at the park and she would draw and I would flip through magazines from the studio and sometimes we would talk or make fun of the random people passing by and other times we would say nothing and that was okay, too.

But
things change. People die. And, with the blink of an eye—or send of a text—everything disappears. Feelings included.

“Why do you let me come over here?” I say, gesturing to her body lying on top of mine. “Do
this
with me?”

“Because.” She sits up, combs her finger
s through her hair, and stares into my eyes. “I miss you. And I guess…” Swallow, shrug, swallow. “I’ll take what I can get.”

And here it is:
the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.

I leave Jess’s, and
Wrenn’s sitting Indian style on the couch when I walk in the door. She’s got a sheet of white paper in one hand, cigarette in the other, and a grimy bong standing tall and proud on the table in front of her. She looks up and frowns.

“One of your teachers called
this afternoon.”

“Oh.” Yeah, guess I
forgot about Agudelo’s threat to “call home” if I didn’t start making it to class.

“Third
absence this week, K?”

Hm. What can I say to that?

“Just because you’re in college now,” Wrenn continues, sucking on her cigarette and blowing a swirling cloud of smoke around her head, “doesn’t mean they don’t keep track of their students. You know CCC has the Freshman Watch program. On top of that, your classes count. More than high school. You need to—”

My brain can’t endure this. A twenty-four-year-old
Chanton Community College dropout spouting on about what’s good for me? When she sits around all day getting higher than a kite and playing with clay?

“—you understand me?” Motherly tone and all. She sure has me fooled. I wonder how much she looks like the twenty-something who
actually
left me when I was like…zero. The one who apparently couldn’t
handle
me. The one who’s never once called in my eighteen years of existence.

Across the room,
Wrenn’s still waiting. Mother or not, I should answer her so she doesn’t tell the loser she’s in love with that I’m being disrespectful or whatever.

“Sure thing,
Wrenn,” I say with a smile because, regardless of how glazed her eyes are, what else can I say to the one person who’s cared enough to stick around and make sure there’s food on the table for me each night? Not pushed me out onto the street when I turned eighteen even though I have no blood ties to her?

Wrenn
gets up and gives my arm a squeeze then heads into the kitchen, leaving the slip of paper behind. It’s no secret what it is. And my mind starts to play this stupid little game, trying to guess what it’ll say this time. Tell me to kill myself? I don’t deserve to live?

When mindless bodies screw tortured souls,

will
somebody be there to catch me when I fall?

Funny. I’ve wondered that, too.