Frannie and Tru (11 page)

“Oh my god!” Mary Beth said. “You should have come. It was crazy. There were girls from some fancy prep school who wore bikinis—it was so ridiculous.” She took her voice down to a whisper. “Everyone said they looked like sluts. And a bunch of guys who were seniors or something got kicked out
for drinking. We won our first match, then lost, but it doesn't matter. You know?”

“Totally,” I said and immediately wondered why I kept using that word.

There was a tense moment of silence while they all alternated between looking at me, looking at Tru, and looking at the ground. I realized I needed to hurry up and make an introduction, but too late. Tru was ready.

“Hi,” he said, with his most charming smile, “I'm Truman.”

He didn't tell them he was my cousin, and I could see in their faces that they had no idea. Since I never saw him, I never really talked about him. In a flash, he took out a cigarette, casually lit it, though I knew he almost never smoked unless he was in some sort of social setting with others who did. He repeated each of their names as they introduced themselves. Then he gave a little “Oh!” and pulled his cell out of his pocket. I hadn't heard it ring.

“Sorry, I know this is rude,” he said, putting the phone to his ear. “Hey, Sparrow. What's up? Yeah, yeah, I'll be there. What time does the band go onstage? Got it. What's that? YES. Goddamn. Frannie's coming. Tell the boys to keep their pants on.”

He hung up and looked at me, taking a very deliberate drag.

“Well,” he said. “We better get going, huh?”

“Was that . . . was that really Sparrow?”

He dropped the cigarette on the sidewalk, half-smoked. He gave a playful shrug.

“Can you seriously tell those three apart?” he asked. “Yeesh. What a mousy bunch.”

I looked the other way, embarrassed, mumbling something about how I wasn't even friends with them anymore. I glanced over to see if Tru had heard me, but he'd stopped walking and was now standing a few paces behind. Right in front of the tattoo parlor.

I'd passed this place a thousand times, had studied its bloodred awning, the shop's name in dripping black script:
Nice Ink
. There was an elaborate and beautiful mural painted on the front facade and door, devils and angels and dragons and butterflies, madly bright, all twisted together, climbing the building's brick walls.

Tru walked inside without waiting for me.

No.
That was my first thought, singular and sure.

No.

No.

No.

No.

I will not go into the tattoo parlor. I will wait outside on the sidewalk, in the sunshine. I'll wait for as long as it takes.

Thirty seconds later I followed him in.

A man built like Jabba the Hutt was seated at a desk just inside the door. My throat constricted at the sight of him, but he was reading some magazine called
High Times
and never even looked at me. I tried not to stare at the army of—what were those,
trolls
? They began at his shoulder and marched all the way down to his wrist with their ugly faces and battle-axes.

The inside of Nice Ink was a different world from the outside. Sunlight didn't penetrate. The air was cold and smelled like candles and incense. Over top of the peeling floral wallpaper were framed photos of tattooed arms, backs, necks, ankles. The building was once a row house, just about the size and shape of ours. In the first room, our living room, there were the front desk and two display cases, one for piercing jewelry and another one for bongs and pipes. In the second room, our dining room, there were three tables full of thick binders. Tru was there, flipping through one.

Finally, the back, where our kitchen would be, was closed off by a curtain. Heavy metal played at a low volume, and above it came a persistent buzzing. I'd heard the noise before on TV, some reality show that Jimmy and Kieran used to watch because the girls were hot. I knew it was the sound of needle on flesh.

I was still exactly two steps inside the doorway. I hadn't moved. Now Tru whistled at me, waving me over, and I rushed to his side, trying to hide behind him.

“I don't think I'm allowed to be in here.”

I said it so quietly that at first I was sure he hadn't heard me.

“It's not
a bar
, Frannie.” I looked down at the binder, which was a catalog full of designs. Chinese symbols. Fairies. Skulls. He stopped on a page full of unicorns.

“What do you think?” he asked, in a voice reminiscent of Jimmy's mocking tone at the dinner table. “On my lower back?”

He put the binder down and picked up another. He flew through the pages, then stopped and smiled.

His arm blocked my view. I had no idea what he was looking at.

He walked over to Troll Man, who put down the magazine. Tru pointed to whatever he'd found, then glanced at the time on his phone.

“Any chance I can have this done in an hour or so?”

“That?” Troll Man asked. “Sure. That's easy. PAULA!”

There was a rustle in the back room and Paula appeared from behind the curtain. She was scrawny, pale, with hair the color of wheat. A ring hung from the center of her nose like a bull and her eyes were ringed in thick black, but her dress was delicate and lacy, like a doily. She had flowers inked everywhere. Daises circled her wrist like a bracelet; another strand looped her ankle. Ivy curled up her neck. Something pink and petaled peeked out from her neckline. She looked barely old enough to drink.

“Got half an hour or so?” Troll Man asked, inclining his head toward Tru and going back to his magazine.

“I got half an hour,” she said, still holding on to the curtain. “You check this kid's ID?”

Troll Man didn't look up, just turned a page and sighed. “I don't know—did you? I'm sure one of us did.”

She looked at Tru, her mouth screwed in a smile. Then she noticed me.

“Oh, honey. No way. I'm not doing you.”

“Not her,” Tru said, laughing. “Just me.”

Paula paused and considered. “You're not getting her name, are you? I don't do names on young people. Will. Not. Do it.”

Tru laughed harder. “Um, no.” He turned to me. “Frannie, you're great and all, but, well . . . that's quite a commitment.”

I tried to shrug with some measure of coolness, but it was more of an awkward squirm. Paula looked back and forth between us a few more times, and then she took a step back and opened the curtain farther. Without hesitating, Tru disappeared into the back room with the binder. She started to follow him, then looked back at me.

“You coming?” she asked.

Again, my first thought was strong and sure.
No.
I should say no, and I should go back outside or go home or at least suffer through the coming minutes awkwardly with Troll Man.

Instead, I scurried like a mouse through the curtain.

There were four black leather loungers that reclined like dentist chairs. Only one was occupied, in the far back corner. It was pushed down in a full horizontal position, and a man with a Mohawk was bent over a tiny woman whose face I couldn't see. Her back was becoming a landscape. I glimpsed a bit of it. A waterfall, a parrot in a tree. The bird was just an outline, and then I watched as the first touch of green came, bright and brilliant.

Tru was handing Paula the binder, pointing. She gave a quick nod, snapped it closed, and set it aside.

“Where do you want the damage?”

In a single fluid movement, Tru pulled off his shirt and tapped the top of his left pec, just above his heart.

He had no chest hair at all. He suddenly looked much younger.

“How big?” Paula asked.

He shrugged, and showed her with his fingers, holding them about four inches apart.

“It'll be seventy-five,” she said. “Okay, sixty 'cause you're cute.
You have cash? I don't particularly want a paper trail on this one.”

“I have cash.”

Tru tossed me the shirt, which I fumbled and dropped, then grabbed from the floor. He got in the chair.

“I can load this into a machine that spits out a stencil,” Paula said. “But I've got amazing hands. I can draw this out perfectly with a pen, a special one that doesn't smudge. Then I do the permanent ink on top of it.”

“Let's go with option two,” Tru said.

Paula's face lit up a bit, and she went to a small sink and methodically scrubbed her hands. She came back, opened a drawer, and began to arrange her instruments, her demeanor now a surgeon's. With everything prepped, she sat down on a rolling stool, dug in her heels, and, legs spread wide, she pulled herself as close as possible to his chair. She sprayed the area with soap and water, rinsed it, gave it a wipe of alcohol. She took out a disposable razor and went over the spot, laughing as she did, saying that it wasn't really necessary.

Tru watched the whole process with a detached curiosity. In the corner of the room I clutched his shirt like a lifeline, staring on feverishly as she pressed the pen into his skin and began to draw.

At first she leaned on him and I couldn't see, but then she pulled back and adjusted the overhead light. She leaned over again, but this time carefully, one hand in her lap, the other perfectly steady as it traced a soft, sensual curve that looped around and in on itself. A simple black shape came clear.

The sign for infinity.

When she picked up the needle, it buzzed like an angry insect against him, darkening the black shape and causing the flesh around to flush red. Troll Man was right—it didn't take long. At first Tru watched the whole process, calm and unflinching, but after a few minutes he turned away. He smiled briefly, then gazed at the ceiling, getting lost and dreamy.

When she was done, Paula bandaged him up and gave him explicit instructions for how to care for it—the cleaning, keeping it out of the sun, the signs of infection to watch for. She must have seen the carelessness, the utter disregard in his face, because she shifted her focus to me. In me, she must have seen something else. Something sturdy and reliable.

“You'll remember, right? You'll make sure he takes care of himself?”

I had nodded gravely and whispered, “
Yes
,” already repeating the instructions in my head, committing them to memory. But even as I did, I suspected it was futile.

I was sure that Tru would never listen to me.

I dressed for the battle of the bands in a tiny red sundress that my mom had given me last week. She'd found it in a box in the basement. Years ago, the dress was hers, and the cotton was soft and thin from lots of washings.

“Redheads are afraid of wearing red, but it can look great on them,” she told me.

I put it on and she was right. I was sure she hadn't thought about how short it would be on me, and so I had rushed out the door behind Tru, a jean jacket wrapped around my waist. Now, seated in the passenger seat of our minivan, I kept pulling at the hem, stretching it down an extra inch over my thighs. Next to me, Tru was tapping his fingers on the wheel. He was in an extraordinary mood, even happier than this morning. He wore a white T-shirt, and in the right light, the outline of his bandage
was visible. As we drove to the South City Rec Center, I kept glancing over at him, looking for blood.

Eventually I stopped tugging at my dress, deciding it looked just fine. I pulled down the sun visor for a second to check my makeup and was happy to see everything was still in place. At first I was kind of annoyed that Tru had the windows down, because the wind was tangling up my hair, but as I looked in the mirror and saw it flying, I thought that I actually looked pretty great.

Tru was blaring The Rolling Stones. As usual he drove fast and smooth.

The auditorium was roiling with high school students. They were black and white and Asian and Latino. Preppy and gothy and indie and sporty. They were lowerclassmen and upperclassmen, tall, short, skinny, fat. Some of them listened quietly in corners and some of them jumped and hollered by the front of the stage. Dozens were hiding behind the shields of cell phones, pretending to be occupied, popular, needed. I looked and looked but saw no one I knew.

Sparrow had told us where to find her—she had a spot staked out not too far from the front. Tru held my wrist and pushed shamelessly through the crowd while I watched my feet and tried to ignore the irritated looks and angry shouts. When we got close enough, we could see her hair peeking above the other heads, and we followed it until we reached her. She was wearing skinny black pants, shiny flats, and an oversized white button-down shirt that I was pretty sure was meant for a guy.
She looked amazing. When she saw me, she made a little
ooohh
sound, fingering the strap of my dress.

“Vintage?” she asked, having to shout a bit over the noise.

I thought about just saying yes, but then told her it was my mom's. She nodded in approval.

A hundred different conversations were reverberating off the high ceilings. Tru and Sparrow leaned in to talk. I heard her mention the “groupies,” as she pointed somewhere back and to the right. Again, I felt a rush of disappointment that they were here, jealous and nervous without even seeing them yet. Meanwhile, Tru was bouncing up and down on his heels, laughing loudly, occasionally giving a fast, light touch to his bandage. When he took off for the bathroom, Sparrow turned to me with a questioning look.

“He seems . . . very amped up,” she said.

First I froze. Then I couldn't hold it in.

“He got a tattoo.”

For a full five seconds, she only blinked.

“He got
a tattoo
? When?”

For some reason I began to feel that this was my fault.

“This afternoon?” I swallowed hard.

“Oh good lord. Don't look scared, honey, I'm just—my god. That kid. Where in the world did he do this?”

“On his chest.”

She threw back her head and gave a deep-throated laugh, uncoiling the knot of tension in my stomach.

“No, not where on his body. Like, where did he get it done?”

I told her all of it in a rush—the shop, Paula, how I'd watched the whole thing. Sparrow just listened, shaking her head.

“How does it look?” she asked me finally, her face skeptical.

I longed to roll my eyes, to laugh at him, to say it was ridiculous. But I couldn't help telling the truth.

“Actually,” I said, “it looks pretty cool.”

There were twelve bands playing two songs each, and Suck It, Sparrow went on third. They opened with “Heatwave,” and I thought they sounded bigger and better than when we'd heard them in the basement, although Tru whispered down to me that they were nervous and playing a beat too fast.

He'd reappeared right before their set, drinking a can of Coke. Sparrow had said nothing, only given him a stern look. He'd turned to me in mock offense.

“Frannie!” he said. “You really didn't strike me as someone with a big mouth.”

All through the first song, I could hear the pack of groupies behind us, though I couldn't see them when I looked back and scanned the crowd. They screamed for Devon and P.J. and every once in a while for Winston, with a kind of condescending sweetness the way you would cheer for a child. In that moment I hated them. Hated them completely.

There was a small break between songs, when Devon leaned into the mike and reminded everyone of their name. Sparrow began to jump up and down, fist-pumping, giving low, manly whoops.

“Very classy,” Tru told her.

Winston clacked his drumsticks together four times, and then they launched into their second song. “Lola.” Directly in my sight line was P.J., his hair gelled out in crazy directions, skinny arms gripping his low-slung bass, fingers moving surely over the strings. He started his mad tour of the stage, hopping, running, sliding on his knees to the very edge. For a moment I was mortified, sure people were going to make fun of him, but they didn't. Kids were screaming and clapping and laughing in a way that was amused, not mocking. I laughed, too, relieved.

P.J. leaped up and jogged over to the drum set to commune with Winston. I lost sight of him and began to maneuver around, trying to peek between the heads in front of me. That's when I realized if I leaned just the right way, I could see Devon.

There he was, Devon Jewell, planted at the very center of the stage, leaning up and into the microphone, teeth shining. His voice was deep and honeyed. He had that same ability that Tru did to wear a T-shirt better than everyone else. I shifted and stretched, struggling to see him, to see all of him, as he belted his way through the song.

Next to me, Tru made his hands into a megaphone and shouted a verse along with him.

                           
“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls,

                           
It's a mixed-up, muddled-up shook-up world . . .”

I giggled. Tru looked over at me and winked.

When Suck It, Sparrow was done, we made our way back through the crowd and waited by the door where the bands emerged from backstage. I was hot from standing in the middle of the mob and nervous that I was about to see the boys. To see P.J. I asked Tru for a sip of his Coke.

“Of course,” he said, handing it over with a smile.

I raised it to my mouth, poured it down—and almost spit it out. I tried to swallow the medicinal burn of whatever it was without Sparrow noticing, but it was too late.

She looked at me. Then she looked at Tru.

“Excuse me? Aren't you driving tonight?”

Looking confused, Tru turned to me. “Aren't
you
driving?”

For a moment I thought he was serious. The words
I'm not old enough
were rising to my lips, but then I saw that, of course, he was joking.

“One drink, Sparrow. I swear,” he said. “It was, like, one drink. And look,
I'm sharing it
.”

“Frannie,” Sparrow said, “could you do me a big favor and throw that out?”

I looked at Tru, and he shrugged. I saw a trash can across the room and started walking. When I'd made it halfway, I took a quick glance behind me. Sparrow was on her phone, distracted. Tru, however, was watching my progress. He pointed at me and then raised his hand to his mouth, making a drinking motion with thumb and his pinky.

I arrived at the trash can and raised the can high, ready to drop it in.

But in that moment, I thought of the night ahead—of the band and groupies and who knew what else. Close quarters and talking and partying, maybe.

I brought the can back from the brink and swallowed what was left.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. WHOA. Your brothers are
the Little twins
?”

We were in the back corner of the room, as far as possible from the crowd and the speakers, gathered in a clump: Tru, Sparrow, the band, and the six groupies. They were not a clan of beautiful, perfect snobs as I had, for some reason, suspected. They were just girls. White girls and black girls, my age or a year or two older, some of them pretty and some of them not, although all of them went to the performing arts school. That meant all were exquisite at singing or dancing or playing an instrument.

P.J. and I just had realized that we once went to rival K–8 Catholic schools, back when he went to Catholic school. Mine had been the oldest, most run-down of them all, while his was one of the most expensive, positioned right over the city line and into the suburbs. He only went there up until fifth grade, he explained, because he was “truly, madly, deeply ADHD, and the public schools will do way more shit to help with the spaz cases.”

Since he was a year older than me, that made him a year behind the twins, and he remembered them from the Catholic schools' junior basketball league. He found a stray folding chair leaning against the wall and dragged it over, climbing on the seat
and raising his arms to demonstrate how enormous they seemed to him when he was nine and they were ten. The groupies were giggling, yelling at him to get down, saying his name with sweetness and familiarity. It was clear that with P.J. there was an initial hump to get over, an overwhelming introductory period, after which he became rather lovable. Or lovable like a little brother at least. Lovable but exasperating.

“Were you there?” he asked, jumping down to the floor. “When the two of them scored, like, fifty points between them? Against my school? I was there riding the bench.”

I was conscious of what Tru's can of Coke had done—creating a fuzz, a fizzle that spread through my head, making me think a beat slower. I spoke carefully, blushing as everyone's eyes turned in my direction.

“I was there,” I said. “But I'm clueless about basketball. I was probably in the back row somewhere. Being a dork and doing my homework.”

Some people laughed—Sparrow and Devon and P.J., I noticed—but most of the girls just kind of looked at me, and Tru was busy peering down his shirt and fiddling with his bandage. Someone asked P.J. if he'd been any good at basketball, and he was off on another story about dribbling and suicides and how he was pretty fast but always dropping the ball.

While he waved his hands and told his story, I was floating backward, thinking about Jimmy and Kieran all those years ago. I did bring books and homework to games, and it was a family joke, how bored I was by sports. Partly it was true, but not when
the twins were playing—that's what no one really knew. I used to sit in the bleachers, looking down on them with a kind of reverence. I made up rhymes about making or missing baskets and would sing them to myself, trying to bring them luck. I remembered the day that P.J. was talking about, how at first it was just a good game, and then it became something extraordinary, and the whole room buzzed. My parents were so happy. I was so happy.

A little whistle sounded to my right, and I jumped. It was Devon.

“You still with us?” he asked with that smile, his unreal teeth. There were still some beads of sweat on his forehead, the aftermath of the stage with its glowing lights.

Smiling back at him, I felt my gentle buzz receding like a tide. There really hadn't been much left in the can when Tru had given it to me. The initial flash of bravery it brought was almost gone. I clung to that last crest of courage, angry and awed at how fleeting the power of a drink was. I rode the end of the wave while I still could.

“So,” I asked Devon, “what are we doing next?”

The battle of the bands was not actually a battle at all, no judging or winner or prizes, so we stayed for half the groups, then headed to the park by Devon's house. Sparrow had caught a ride with Devon and now she wanted to drive the van, but Tru convinced her he was fine, so he took the wheel, with just Sparrow and me as passengers. He drove particularly slowly and was overly cautious to stop at yellow lights, while pointing out to Sparrow how
responsible he was. She gave him the finger, told him he was an ass. We parked on a different street from everybody else, so we didn't see them until we got to the playground. Tru was leading us by a flashlight he'd dug out of an old emergency kit in the back of the van. Other people had little lights on their key chains or were guided only by the glow of their cell phones. The groupies had come, too, so we were an even dozen, a crew of shadows overtaking the swings and slides.

I sat down on the dolphin with the broken handle, and Devon and P.J. followed me. Devon took the whale. P.J. hopped on the sea horse and started rocking.

The boys had come to the show polished and pristine, but they'd been hauling their equipment around all evening and taking cigarettes on the sly. Now they smelled like soap and sweat and smoke. The richness of it made my skin tingle. I felt too nervous to even look at them, staring down at my lap and pulling on the hem of my dress while they talked to one another. One of the girls had brought a plastic bag that strained with beer cans. Tru took charge of passing them out, bringing the first three cans to Devon, P.J., and me. He moved away from us then, toward a couple of girls who were chatting nearby, and started talking to them immediately about music. But he was standing in a spot where he could see me and the boys, and I could tell he had an eye on us, like he was waiting for something to happen. I tried to ignore him, popping my beer and taking a sip.