Deathskull Bombshell (12 page)

May 2002

Among a pile of shredded, bloody balls of
Kleenex, Parker sat in his room with his broken glasses on and his
boom box up loud. “Die, Die, Die My Darling” by the Misfits. Nick’s
punch broke everything sweet about their relationship. It was
over.

He was cursed.

At this rate, his nose would probably fall
off his face. He wondered what it would feel like, to be a bass
player with no nose. Like something out of a Nikolai Gogol story.
Or Copernicus.

All these Nick names. A constant refrain,
screaming through his head. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat. He
wanted to play bass, but every time he picked it up, he remembered
the concert.

Fuck music. Fuck everything.

He’d rather die than go back.

They could find another bassist.

Margot came in one time and sat on his bed,
looking worried. She asked what was wrong, and he chased her off by
shaking his head back and forth like a wet dog. His nose spattered
little blood drops everywhere, dotting everything dark-red.

It was pretty gross, he had to admit. Maybe
someday if he ever got in a real fight, he could just spit at the
other guy. Throw blood at him or something.

Being a girl, Margot ran away screaming.

Then his mom got mad and told him, hey, chill
out. Don’t be mean to your sister. What’s wrong? And he wouldn’t
answer, because some things were just too sensitive for moms, so
then she went back to work on supper. She knew when to ignore
him.

He should have just punched Nick back.

What a jerk. He hadn’t even called to
apologize. He didn’t even care that Parker was going to suffer and
die of an aneurysm in his sleep, twitching and dumb like all the
good musicians.

Except he wasn’t that good. Not really. He
was only fourteen. Nobody is good with music at that age, unless
they’re Mozart. Mozart was overrated, though, and not that
talented. To be honest, Parker sucked at everything. Music just
happened to be one of those things he liked despite his miserable
ineptitude.

Life was cruel.

He reasoned he’d probably find someone better
than Nick, maybe a nice guy, tall, with big shoulders. A military
soldier or a motorcyclist in a black leather jacket. Someone who
wore a Marines uniform and drank bourbons and let Parker have some
even though he wasn’t supposed to. There were plenty of guys out
there in the world.

But none of them were Nick O’Doole.

Screw him for punching me, he thought. That
hurt.

The Misfits were pretty loud. Angry. He liked
that the song said “die” over and over at the end, like “die” was
the only word left in the world so the only thing they could do was
scream “die” over and over.

He looked up at his bedroom, at the
Deathskull Bombshell band poster Brooke worked so hard on with the
Lomography Fisheye photos and the special computer font that she
paid for out-of-pocket. His posters of the Ramones and Green Day
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The comics he hung up, stick figure
comics Nick drew for a World History project, with all the swear
words written in French and Ojibwe so the World History teacher had
no idea what it said. He gave the comics to Parker later as a
birthday present. They always did birthdays together since their
birthdays were a week apart, June and July.

They never fought before. Not like that.

Maybe Nick wasn’t gay, Parker thought. Maybe
the kissing thing was just him being confused. A phase. Maybe he
was just bored, using Parker for a cheap experiment.

Nick was so secretive. His only real emotions
were “annoyed” and “obsessive-compulsive”. He was so stupid with
his lame shaggy haircut, his show-off Buddy Holly glasses with the
lenses that prevented light from reflecting off. Who did he think
he was, anyway?

The landline telephone rang, and Parker
picked it up without thinking. “Beloits,” he said.

The phone was quiet. “Hey.”

“I’m not talking to you right now,” Parker
said. He hung up in a very final way, being tough.

The phone rang again, and Parker picked it
up. “Go away, Nick,” he said.

“I have your Sex Pistols shirt,” Nick
said.

“Keep it,” Parker said. “Sex Pistols suck.
I’m switching to New Wave. Long live Morrissey. Morrissey
forever.”

Nick sighed into the phone, and it crackled
in his ear. “Look, I’m sorry I punched you.”

“Good. You hurt me. And my glasses are
wrecked.”

“I know,” Nick said. “I’m really sorry.”

Parker didn’t say anything.

“I can help pay for the glasses.”

Parker waited, considering this.

“But, like – okay,” Nick paused. He didn’t
say anything for about ten seconds. “I like you.”

“What?”

“I said I like you.”

Parker dropped the phone on the ground, and
it rolled under his bed. He reached under his bed, feeling through
the dust bunnies until his hand touched the cold hard plastic of
his telephone. He blew the dust off the phone and put it back to
his ear. Nick was still talking.

“I didn’t hear you,” Parker said. “Say it
again?”

“I said I like you,” Nick said. “God, are you
deaf? I like you. I just don’t want to have sex.”

“Oh,” Parker said. He flopped down on his
stomach, feeling the mattress under him. “Well, you could have said
that earlier. I just wanted to make out anyway.”

“I’m waiting until marriage,” Nick said.

“Seriously?” Parker said. “Good luck with
that.”

“Well, I mean, we can still hang out,” Nick
said. “If you want to. I won’t punch you again.”

“Yeah, you better not,” Parker said. “I’ll
punch you back. And then I’ll get my cousins to punch you.
Pow-pow.” He paused. “And then my dad, he’ll punch you too. Or
maybe he’ll just kill you, I dunno.”

“It won’t happen,” Nick said. “Never
again.”

“Okay, cool. You want to buy me strawberry
soy ice cream, though? I need it for the emotional trauma you put
me through.”

Nick sighed. “Fine. Next paycheck.”

“And it has to be soy.”

“Got it.”

Parker cackled. “Pushover.”

“Yeah, whatever, asshole. Why don’t you come
over so I can kick your ass at Nintendo.”

“Not if I kick your ass first.”

They hung up.

July 2003

Brooke was bored.

She sat on a plastic crate next to Trevor,
who was now calling himself Maverick, attempting to look sexy and
disinterested while he tuned his guitar in Mr. and Mrs. Ericksen’s
garage. Elizabeth and Parker were there, too, with their
instruments and a twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon in a wet
cardboard box.

Band practice was painful these days.

It was a muggy day out, sticky from the
morning’s rain, and the mosquito candle might as well have been an
IV bag of blood for all the good it was doing.

Trevor was really getting on her nerves
lately. At practice, he hardly spoke to her. Even at concerts, he
blew her off, always ditching her to go home with trashy punk
groupies. It didn’t used to bother her, but now it did. She
wondered if sex was supposed to make people feel possessive and
mean. He wasn’t even the first guy she’d ever been with. For some
reason, it annoyed her that other women kept noticing him. She
wished she could cover Trevor in a paper bag before each concert,
maybe stick the groupie girls’ eyes out with forks.

Maybe he wanted to teach her to perform under
pressure, to command attention, to be more flexible and less easily
rattled.

There had to be some sort of important lesson
to be learned in all of this.

Educational or not, all it did was annoy her.
There was enough bullshit on her plate. Music was supposed to be
her escape from all that.

A few weeks ago, she started work as a
receptionist at a dental clinic. She answered phones all day, took
identification cards, said hi to people, and generally did her best
to look and act as pleasing as possible. It was bullshit.

For once, her parents were in town, teaching
summer classes. Unfortunately they were so busy getting ready for
finals week they’d forgotten to send the rent payment. They
couldn’t ask Grandma Roche for an extension on the rent deadline
because she was way the fuck over in New Jersey. It wasn’t her job
to coddle them.

So Brooke became a receptionist. It
sucked.

Furthermore, the band was falling apart.

“So, like, that’s the end of the last verse,”
Trevor said, looking at his bandmates over the top of the spiral
notebook in front of him. “What do you think?”

“It sucks,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow, surprised, and blinked
a few times. “Well, what sucks about it?”

“The lyrics,” she said. She raked a hand
through her greasy hair. “They’re all wrong. I don’t see why we’re
writing this shit. It’s drivel. There’s been a hundred songs
written about vampire lesbians. I watched a movie with the same
exact plot last week.” She sighed.

“But it’s for the Halloweekend concert,”
Trevor protested.

“Halloweekend?” she asked. The beer was
getting to her. “It’s fucking July. Halloween is in October, or
haven’t you noticed? Don’t you ever think about things like… logic,
or timing? Or is that only when you’re getting laid?”

“Hey, chill out,” Parker said.

“No,” Brooke said, more loudly than she
intended, and Parker shut up. “This is bullshit. I’m sick of being
the only person who carries my weight around here. I work my ass
off, day after day, and you’re here writing cheap gimmicky songs
about lesbian vampires? I’ve heard better shit from fucking
Sleater-Kinney.”

“Oh, would you come off it? We’re never going
to be Sleater-Kinney,” Trevor said. “Jesus.” He ran a hand through
his hair. He’d got stuck in the rain earlier, and his cheap hair
dye bled through, painting his hand strawberry red. He frowned,
then rubbed his hand off on his pants.

“No, you asshole, Sleater-Kinney’s a
woman-only band,” Brooke said. She rolled her eyes, crossing her
arms. “As long as you’re here, we’ll never be Sleater-Kinney.”

“What?” Parker asked, looking wounded. “What
about me? Am I not a man?”

Elizabeth nudged him. “Shh.”

Trevor stood up from his chair, setting his
guitar down. “Dude. Brooke. What the hell is your problem? Is it
that I’m a man or is it that I’m better than you?”

“Better? Screw you. I can best you in guitar
any day of the week, and you know it.” She leaned into his face,
narrowing her eyes. “I think you’re just mad that I’m not walking
around in skimpy underwear like those weirdo girls who hang around
after concerts.” She jabbed her pointer finger at his chest. “I
knew it. You think I’m ugly, don’t you? You think I’m fat.”

Trevor opened his mouth, and then closed
it.

“Oh, you thought I didn’t notice. My
bad.”

Trevor looked up at the sky. “Was there
anything else?” he asked.

“Nope, I think I’m going to take my fat ugly
ass and go home so you can be alone with your stupid… stupid-ness,”
she said. “Asshole.” She grabbed her guitar from the ground and
staggered past everyone, tipsy, out of the garage and toward the
paved driveway. It was a nice driveway. She would miss it.

After a few paces, she flung her guitar into
the ground, all the arm force she could give, then stepped on it a
few times for good measure. It smashed, a sound she’d never heard,
like something dying, something dead.

A few pieces of guitar skittered out into the
grass.

“Oh, Jesus, Brooke,” Trevor muttered. He
pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

She was still walking away. Her bike was
right where she left it, a little orange beacon in the muggy thick
green of spring. She grabbed her helmet from the handlebars.

Elizabeth ran out of the garage, short of
breath. She bent at the waist, wheezing heavily. “Brooke, hey.”

Brooke fastened her helmet below her chin.
“What’s up?” she asked.

“Is everything okay?”

Brooke cleared her throat, then looked at the
sky where the clouds were gathering, threatening rain. “I’m fine.
Just drunk. Don’t worry.”

Elizabeth looked up at her. “I can’t help it.
You’re, like… really angry lately.”

Brooke kicked at her bike’s kickstand. “Don’t
sweat it. I’ll be just fine.”

“Okay.” She looked disappointed, hurt, but
she put on a bright smile and walked back to the garage, to Parker
and Trevor and the box of beer.

Brooke understood then how different they
were. Elizabeth knew there was something going on, and she wanted
to ask questions, but she didn’t want to be too pushy or
opinionated. She didn’t want to risk losing her best friend.

Well, that was her problem, not Brooke’s.

Tasting the alcohol on her own breath, she
slowly rode her bike away, into the wet and muggy air, the
beginnings of the sunset.

It would be a long time before she came
back.

July 2003

Brooke rode her bike to the O’Doole house.
Every day it felt more and more empty, less like the decorated cage
in which her parents resided, cherry-picking art pieces and foreign
souvenirs like favorite arguments, a monument to their neglect and
abandonment, and more like a cube, a plain box you sleep and eat
and shit in while you wait for time to pass. Then you redirect
yourself to a different cube, one containing money and arbitrary
smiles and good customer service skills.

She wondered if that was all life was, box
after box. A childhood home box, a job box, a college box, a
marriage box, and then babies, diapered screaming anchors
necessitating a full-stop, near-death, settling for whatever man
impregnated you, never to search or fuck or love again. A quiet
coffin, motherhood and marriage.