I DIDN'T SLEEP SATURDAY NIGHT. Sunday around 8:00 P.M. I crashed on the sofa. At some point I stumbled to bed, still in the clothes I'd worn for two days. They smelled like smoke and bad coffee and meringue pies.
I dreamed about my dad again, the way he was before the accident. Jeans, a baseball cap, sturdy work boots, handlebar mustache. And the smirk. Oh god, the smirk. He was always a sanctimonious prick, even in real life. Why should he be any better in my nightmares?
In this one, he was standing at the top of the stairs, looking at me as I lay crumpled and helpless on the landing below. And even though his boots were on his feet, seven steps above me, I could feel those waffle-patterned soles stomping on my chest, crushing the air out of my lungs.
Daddy, no! Please! I'm sorry!
You think you're smart, do ya, punk ass? Lemme tell you something. You don't got brain one.
I woke to my clock radio. Or what would've been my radio if we got decent reception in my cul-de-sac. So it was more like I woke to static.
I opened one eye. It was dark out. That didn't mean anything. It was always dark when I got up for school. Whoever invented zero-hour classes should be shot.
I whacked the snooze button. Nothing happened, except the static got louder. Kershshshsh…
I whacked it again and again.
Finally I got a radio announcer voice.
Noah, it said. Then came the whirs and clicks, like it was tuning into a station.
"Go away," I groaned, jamming a pillow over my head.
Noah, it said. Wake up. We've got work to do.
My eyes snapped open. I knew that voice.
"Ziggy?" I said. I turned over. My clock read 3:15. My alarm was set, as usual, for 5:45. There was no more static. The house was silent. The night was silent. Which meant either I'd dreamed his voice or Ziggy had found a way to talk to me over the airwaves.
Had to be a dream.
Still, that didn't mean he wasn't right. I got up and sniffed my armpits. Ripe. Plus I was pretty sure one of my piercings was infected, 'cause I felt hot all over.
Whatever. I was awake now. Might as well get a head start on the original songs we'd need if we were serious about joining the cannibal brewery lineup.
It was time for me to do what I'd been putting off since Sonia left.
I had to go back to the basement.
I tried hard not to let the basement freak me out. It was just a regular basement, right? Leaky fridge. Ugly plaid sofa. Mildew smell from when it flooded last year. Walls painted jaundice yellow, with a waterline marring the walls a foot off the floor.
The problem with the basement was that if you knew where to look (and I did), you could see a spot on the south wall where the yellow paint was peeling off. And under that, a splatter of brown that could've been anything. Mold. Bean dip. But it was neither of those things. It was a stain left over from Dad's "accident." The one everyone in town whispered about, but never to my face.
In daylight, I could spend the whole day in the basement and not even know the old blood was there. But at night? Even with all the lights on, I could feel it spread until it infected me. I even half expected Dad himself to leap out from behind the sofa. No matter how often I told myself I was being silly, that Dad was gone, some little piece of me was convinced that I hadn't been punished enough for what had happened, and he was going to make me pay, only this time he wouldn't stop. This time he'd go too far, and then everything would turn dark.
I tried not to think about it as I flipped on a light. See? No ghosts. Just my Fender on its stand by the sofa. I picked it up, plugged it in, put on my headphones so I wouldn't wake Mom and Cilla, and tuned up.
Now I could get down to the business of composing-but I couldn't shake my father's voice in my head.
Brain one. Punk ass.
I got up and flicked on more lights. I didn't want to think about my dad. I wanted to think about anything else.
I splayed the fingers on my right hand. The splints had been off for a month now, but my fingers had healed crooked. I hadn't played any serious licks or riffs since before the splints came off, and I didn't know if I still could.
If I really needed to write about something, I knew I should start with Sonia.
Right. About my fingers. And Sonia.
She and Jaime Deleuze were the two Old Girls. I don't think they even knew everyone called them the Old Girls. That name came from this freshman Elizabeth Kruk (never ever call her Liz or Lizzie).
Lizzie was a freshman I'd lip-locked with one night at a party in January. When I didn't call her the next day, or the day after that, and when she realized I wasn't going to call her at all, she cornered me by my locker and threw a very public hissy fit. "You don't want me," she'd said. "You only want the old girls."
I'd never thought of them that way, but Lizzie was right. Sonia and Jaime were the first girls in a school of two thousand who'd started trading their platform sandals for Doc Martens and changed their "schoolmarm of the prairie" dresses for ripped jeans and T-shirts.
Lizzie had some style, but she was a wannabe. There were exactly two cool girls in Gresham-and I'd pissed one of them off by making out with Lizzie at Todd Rathman's party.
Sonia and I were supposed to go together to Todd's party, but at the last minute her parents took her skiing at Mount Bachelor that weekend, so she wasn't around.
That was no excuse. Neither were the three or four PfefferBrau Pale Ales I'd slammed in a half hour. I knew what I was doing. Lizzie Kruk had a rack. And she was willing to let me touch it right there in Todd Rathman's living room. Over her shirt.
It was a good rack.
That shouldn't have mattered, but it did after a couple of PfefferBrau Porters. The point is, I'd been crushing on Sonia since the seventh grade, and after years of flirting and rides home and putting together the Gallivanters mostly to be with her-I'd even learned guitar 'cause I knew she was a drummer-she finally went out with me at the beginning of senior year. And once, when her parents were away, I even let her hook her cocker spaniel's leash to the studded dog collar around my neck and yank me where she wanted to go. That was how into her I was.
But wait! There's more! I locked lips with Lizzie on Todd's couch in front of about fifty people. At least twenty of them told Sonia the instant she got back.
She nailed me on a chilly morning when I was getting out of my car in the Gresham High parking lot. Her look was colder than the January rain. I made the mistake of saying, "It was just the one night. You can't really be mad at me for that." And she slammed the door on my fingers. My beloved Gremlin Ginny, used as a weapon.
For all you guys out there, take my word for it: Never tell a girl what they can't feel. Especially if that girl is a twitchy drummer. They like to pound stuff.
Here's my secret about the finger breakage: I liked it. I've always liked pain, especially if it came with something my teachers could see, like a black eye or a broken arm. When my dad was still living with us it meant he brought presents, like a new basketball or even my first electric guitar.
Not from Sonia. She kept punishing me. For weeks I drifted through the school halls with three fingers the size and color of bratwurst, strapped to metal splints, but Sonia pretended she didn't see me, like I was some kind of ghost.
Now, in my mildewed basement, I looked down at my guitar and realized I was strumming, and the sound that came out was so mournful you could hear the wail in another galaxy. I started humming the tune to what became "Gremlin Breakup." And yes, my fingers hurt, but the pain was delicious.
For the first time in months, I felt alive.
Bone breakage was one thing, dismemberment another. Since I wanted to keep the rest of my fingers attached to my hand, I figured that if I really wanted to get the Old Girls back in the band, I should talk to Jaime first. She wasn't twitchy. I'd never cheated on her. And the best time to catch her was after zero-hour class.
Only the real diehards were at school at 6:30 A.M., which meant stage band (me and Ev) and the Overtones Vocal Jazz (Jaime). Jaime didn't sing with the Overtones. She played keys, content to fade in the orchestra pit and let others have the spotlight.
As we spilled out of the band room that early Monday morning, Ev poked his head into the choir room next door. It was the same size as the band room, only cleaner, and the white walls were neatly painted with scores of treble and bass clefs. Even the choir kids, as they came trooping past, looked cleaner and brighter than the band geeks next door.
Inside, Jaime was being held back by Mr. Lehman, the director, who wanted to give her last-minute coaching. You came in late, Jay. Less pedal. Crisper runs.
And she stood there and took it, a weak smile on her face. That totally pissed me off. I mean, why did God invent punk if punks had to blindly suck up to authority?
Jaime was probably also the only girl in Gresham to be protected by the Gresham PD, because her mother was on the city council and had a public record of getting her way. Even though our 'burb was huge and sprawling, it was really a small town. There was a blanket order for Jaime not to hang out with punks like us. So of course she hung out with punks like us.
Once, after Jaime and I had been talking, smoking clove cigarettes on Main Street, Idiot Willy walked across the street and said, "Listen, man. I think you're all right. But that woman thinks you're a bad influence on her daughter. I'm supposed to invite you to go fuck yourself. Not in those words." He breathed out. He picked the earwax out of his ear. "Eh, screw it. Just be careful, Noah. I'll look the other way."
That woman was Jaime's mom, who was always harping on Jaime to give up the Gallivanters, to study harder and learn French and go to a good college on the East Coast and become a CEO, so she (Jaime) would never have to rely on a man to support her.
I personally thought that was unfair to Mr. Deleuze, who seemed like an okay guy. He was always on the cover of the Gresham Outlook, wearing a hard hat, pointing with blueprints to a new strip mall he was constructing.
True, we already had enough of them, but being a real estate developer didn't make Mr. Deleuze some useless trophy.
· · ·
Ev and I stood at the threshold of the choir room. Jaime was backing away. She had permed, asymmetrical hair. The short side was pointed toward us. It made her neck look impossibly long, like a ballerina's. A ballerina in neon. She wore a dress of checks and stripes and acid tones. She may have been smiling politely, but she wore rage.
Good for her.
"Are you sure you don't want help talking to her?" Ev said. "She doesn't hate me."
"She doesn't hate anyone," I said. "I'll be fine."
Jaime was a famous pushover. I sometimes thought Sonia led her around on a leash. Sure, Sonia. No prob, Sonia. Gee, I don't know if I should. I haven't asked Sonia yet…
Finally Evan said, "Whatever. See you in personal finance." He took my guitar case and my car keys to drop our instruments in the Gremlin.
In the choir room, Jaime finally freed herself from Mr. Lehman.
She turned, saw me, and blushed brighter than her Day-Glo dress.
"Hey, Noah," she finally said. As she came closer, I read the button on her collar.
"'My karma ran over my dogma.' I like it," I said.
Jaime flashed a tired smile and muttered something about being late.
"I'll walk with you," I said. "I need to ask you something."
As we walked, I brought a finger up to the short side of her hair and set her plastic doll earring swinging back and forth from her earlobe. "Cool. Are those real dead babies?"
She flinched away from me. "Look, Noah, I think you're an okay guy and everything, but I don't want to be your go-between anymore," she said.
So sue me: It wasn't the first time I'd tried to use Jay to get to Sonia.
We were walking through the auditorium lobby, which had this run-down splendor. The foyer was carpeted in red velvet, the holes held together with silver duct tape. And there was that funky musty smell, the kind that came from layers of old paint and mildew and props that hadn't been used in fifty years.
"It's okay. I've given up trying to get her back. But…"
"Here it comes," she said.
"…there's this thing at the PfefferBrau Haus…"
"What kind of thing?" I could almost see her cycle through a list, each item worse than the last: a party thing, a beer thing, a human-remains thing.
"The musical kind," I said.
I pulled the flyer from my pocket and handed it to her. She read it until after the second bell had rung and we were definitely late.
She ran her fingers over the paper, outlining the drops of fake black blood. "I take it you want to pull Sonia and me in on this."
"Strictly business," I said. "I've given up on the personal stuff."
"Sure you have," she said.
I didn't say anything.
Jaime looked up. "I won't kid you. I think it'd be good for us. Sonia's parents won't let her practice in their garage, so she hangs out at my house all the time and we make cookies. Cookies, Noah. Always underdone, 'cause she's so twitchy she can't wait. She eats them raw. Raw."
I chose to ignore that last part, because it was dangerous to remember what Sonia was like raw.
Jay shook her head. "She's been trying to convince me to find another band. Any band but yours."
And despite the Day-Glo colors, I could've sworn that Jaime was slowly fading, blending in with the red velvet wallpaper.
"What about you? What do you want?" I said.
She considered, staring at nothing. She looked tired-as though someone had kept her awake all night, whispering commands in her ear.
"Out," she said.
I couldn't help sneering. It was what we all wanted. Only Jaime was getting it handed to her. Maybe not in the way she wanted-the scholarship, the poetry, the Republican-Nazi boyfriend-but she wouldn't be living in the suburbs for long.
She handed the flyer back to me. "I want this. Really I do. You've got vision, Noah. It's just that Sonia says…"
"What," I said. "Tell me what Sonia says."
Didn't matter. I'd heard it all before anyway.
"That you're not serious."
Jesus Christ. Fucking wannabe. Always doing whatever Sonia told her. It sucked that Jaime was a genius on the keys. Whether it was Beethoven or the Who, she put everything she had into those long fingers, the same ones that were handing me back my flyer.
"Forget it, Noah. It won't work."
"Yes it will," I said.
"How? What's changed? It's going to take more than one sick flyer to convince Sonia that this time you can keep us together. All of us."
We stood between two giant stairways winging up to the balcony. There was the sound of a match striking, then a small red glow. From the darkness of one of the stairways, a shape detached itself from the shadows and strutted forward.
I hadn't been expecting him, but I was glad he was here.
He led with the teeth, which weren't his best feature, all yellow and crooked. They made him look like a skull. The collar on his trench was flipped up, and he wore that confident Bowie sneer. His whole silhouette was wreathed in cigarette smoke, so his outline seemed to waver when you looked directly at him.
"Hello," Ziggy said in that suave musical lilt. "You must be Jaime."
Jaime looked as though she was about to jump out of her flat shoes. "There's no smoking in here," she said.
Ziggy kept puffing. He walked around her slowly, checking out the side view and the rear view and the front view.
When he'd made a full circuit, he brought a hand up to her earlobe. "Intriguing," he said. "Kewpie doll earrings. Pity 'bout your dress, though. Does nothing for you."
Jaime looked at her watch. "This is all very fun, but we're late."
And she started walking away.
Looking at her disappearing back, I got light-headed. I couldn't let her go, the way I did that day she and Sonia moved their stuff out of my basement.
It was time to care.
"Ziggy's our lead singer," I blurted. Which I didn't know. I just assumed that if he looked like the real Bowie, he must sound like him too.
And then a miracle happened.
Jaime came back to me. She wasn't as important to me as Sonia was, but for the moment, she was enough.
"What was that?"
"That's how you know we're serious. We've brought him in as a front."
Ziggy reached for her left hand, and she let him take it.
He turned it over in his palm, inspecting. I could almost feel the ridges of her bitten fingernails, the smoothness of her wrists, smell the citrus scent of her hand lotion. "Such clever fingers," he said to her, his voice low and seductive. "Your greatest gift and your greatest curse." He brought her palm up to his chest and massaged it, staring deep into her eyes. "You know what you need, don't you?"
"Enlighten me," she said.
"A voice," he whispered, loud enough for me to hear.
"Got a voice, thanks," she said. But it wasn't strong. He was weakening her.
She tried to pull away. He took a step forward, until she was smashed against the wall and he was leaning into her in a way that said, I own you. You are mine.
"You have many voices," he said with a half laugh. "I heard them just now. The Overtones, is it? They drown you out. Don't you want to be heard?"
"I'm not the genius," she said, but her voice wavered.
"Neither are the Overtones," Ziggy said.
At first I thought she was falling for it. She seemed completely lost in his face. Who could blame her? He was trotting out her deepest desire, stroking her hand, looking deep into her eyes. (Good work, man.)
But then she broke away. "Oh-ho. Nice try. But there's a reason the Gallivanters broke up. What makes you think this time will be different?"
He leaned in close and whispered something in her ear. I really didn't like him treating her like, you know, a girl. If he was going to be in the band, the rule was hands off the Old Girls. I'd learned my lesson. We couldn't afford any more breakages.
He pulled away and shot me a look that said, It's in the bag.
Jaime turned to me, and I looked past her Day-Glo dress and poodle hair and saw how she used to be: the second-to-last girl I would kill in Mafia, the first of the Old Girls Evan would save.
"How sick?" she said.
Ziggy had told her about Evan. I wanted to say, "No worse than usual," but held back, because it wasn't true. Ev's headaches were getting worse. A lot worse.
I must've been really tired from the night before, because my vision blurred, and then everything went double. There were two Jaimes, two entrances to the auditorium-but only one Ziggy, who faded in and out, like noise from a radio station not properly tuned.
I felt dizzy, as though I were about to fall over.
"Noah?" she said. "How sick?"
At first I thought she was talking about me, weaving on my feet, seeing everything double. In the end, all I could do was shut my eyes and listen for the deeper truth.
"He needs this," I said. "We all do."
