Deathskull Bombshell (7 page)

I remembered that girl. Daniela. She started
a rumor about me freshman year, saying I was retarded. Everyone
believed her. The only girls that spoke to me were the church-going
volunteer types, which would have been fine except they treated me
as some sort of project, like if they invited the retarded guy to
prom somebody would put in a good word to Saint Peter. To most
girls, I was invisible at best, pond scum at worst.

I didn’t know it then, but everything was
about to change.

I strode into the gas station, trying to
appear confident, even though my trench coat didn’t fit and one of
my shoes was untied. Life was filled with hardships. You had to
step up to the challenge and prove yourself worthy in order to be
counted. No doubt about it, this was one of those times. I needed
to fix this car like a man.

There was no one behind the counter. It
seemed eerie, an abandoned gas station so late at night.
Ominous.

I walked around the empty gas station, past
shelves of bubble gum and cattle feed and trail mix and Tic-Tacs.
After some time, I found the travel guides over by the coffee
dispenser and paged through the pamphlets, looking for an
auto-repair number. The paper smelled like coffee, and I breathed
it in.

“Ahem,” somebody said.

I turned around. It was Daniela, now wearing
a cheap polo shirt and a name tag. She must work here, I thought.
Maybe she didn’t remember me from school. Maybe she could help me
figure out the car thing.

“Hey,” I said, walking up to the counter. My
shoelace slapped against the ground, and I stumbled. How uncool.
Keeping my focus, I smiled boldly. Attitude is everything.

Daniela glared at me. She popped her gum.

I leaned toward her, hushing my voice to a
whisper. “You know anyone that does car repairs?”

“Uh, yeah, about that,” she said. “We saw
your car out there. You’re fucked.”

Great. “Seriously?”

“I can give you a phone number,” she said,
“but I can’t do anything else. It’s kind of trashed. I don’t know
what you did, but you’d be better off scrapping it for parts. Use
the cash to buy a new one or something.” She popped her gum again
and scribbled a number on a Post-it note. “This is the number for
the scrapyard. They open every morning at ten.”

I sighed, taking the Post-it. “Thank
you.”

She rolled her eyes.

I looked out at the parking lot, where the
dead Buick slept. Well, damn. The Rob Zombie tribute band concert
was two hours from here. No way I’d make it now. I’d have to call
the insurance guys and the scrap guys in the morning and skip the
concert and work extra hours at Meat Hut to cover what my father
wouldn’t help with. And I’d even cut my hair. What crap.

Might as well grab some grub for the walk
back to my house.

I scanned the aisles for something besides
granola bars. Granola bars sucked. All that extra sugar. They were
always adding honey and cinnamon and chocolate, like everyone was
too much of a pussy for just raisins and granola. Fuck that.
Granola bars and I were through. Instead I found trail mix,
carrots, and onion-flavored potato chips, but nothing I wanted.

Part of me felt like I was being followed,
but I couldn’t name why, nor could I see anyone following me. Did I
really want onion-flavored potato chips? Maybe I wanted the
barbeque ones. And what of popcorn?

I stared at the chip rack, thinking about the
Buick.

By some divine mistake, I spotted someone
through the bars of the chip rack. Skinny and pasty, Irish-looking,
about sixteen, with black-framed emo glasses and way too many
freckles. He appeared to be considering the pretzels.

Our eyes locked.

He shouted out, stumbling backward. Flailing
his arms, he knocked several bags of pretzels off the chip rack
before falling on his ass. His glasses tumbled off his face, and he
knelt on the gas station floor, trying to find them with little
success. I grabbed his glasses fast so he wouldn’t crush them with
his knobby knee.

“Sorry,” I said, handing him his glasses.

He nodded, putting them back on. His face was
bright pink. Obviously he had a panic disorder, or some kind of
heart condition. Suicide Commandos, it said on his striped t-shirt.
He wore lots of bracelets – a spiky leather cuff, and beaded
bracelets, some rubber bracelets that said LIVESTRONG and
STRAIGHTEDGE XX, a woven red cord on his right wrist. His baggy
pants were covered in zippers and pockets.

“Thanks,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s cool,” I said, trying to seem
non-threatening. “Pretzels freak me out too.”

He laughed. “Oh, it’s not that. Just… your
hair.” He leaned in close. “You look like you have a beaver on your
head.”

“It’s a mullet,” I said tersely. “Mullets are
punk rock.”

“Oh, bullshit,” the kid said. “Punk’s not
about hair.”

“Well, no, of course not,” I snapped.

The truth? I had no idea how to debate this
with a total stranger. Punk theory was complicated, and I’d skipped
the majority of my homework. “You like music?”

He laughed, wheezing a bit. “Like it? I
breathe it. My band’s outside.”

“What?” I said.

He grinned, grabbing a bag of pretzels off
the floor. He put it back on the rack, and then bent to pick up the
other ones. “Okay, not my band,” he said. “But I’m, like… an
honorary member.” He flipped his hair back in that way
shaggy-haired guys do.

I felt a pang of annoyance at him for showing
off like that.

“They’re having a concert tonight. You can
come with, if you’re bored.”

“My car broke down,” I said lamely. “I have
to walk home.”

“Okay,” Nick said.

He headed to the cash register with his
pretzels, leaving me alone.

I followed him. “Wait, can you give me a
ride?” I paused. “To the concert?” I wished I could stop ending my
sentences with question marks. In conversation, women usually asked
the questions. Men gave answers, to display dominance and
intelligence. I read that once in a college textbook that my friend
had.

“Probably. You’ll have to run it by…” and
then he winced, as if uttering the word pained him, “Bjorn… first.
He’s the driver.”

I pictured a beefy Norwegian metal-head with
biker tattoos and a mean face. “Okay,” I said. I could look at it
like a video game. Bjorn was the Big Boss of the evening. He had to
be defeated, coerced into driving me. For truth. For justice. For
rock and roll.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Nick,” he said. “Yours?”

“Austin.”

He nodded. “Well, let’s go.”

Daniela, who’d been silently watching us,
snapped her gum. “You’re gonna have to move your car,” she told
me.

“Ay-ay, captain,” I said, trying to be
funny.

She frowned at me. “Whatever.” She looked at
Nick. “Two fifty-nine,” she said.

“Highway robbery!” Nick shouted. “This
pretzel bag is way too small to be worth that much.”

Daniela sighed heavily, exasperated. “I’m the
cashier girl. I don’t set prices. Got a problem, call my
manager.”

Nick dug in his pants pockets. He had a lot
of pockets, so it took a while to find a pocket that actually had
money in it. He produced two crumpled bills and some change,
counting each coin out one-by-one before putting it back in his
hand and handing it over. He left the paper money on the
counter.

I had a feeling he was very exact about
things, which made me forgive him a bit for making fun of my
hair.

I thought my mullet looked quite nice,
actually.

She picked up the bills by the corner, like
they were smelly socks, wrinkling her nose. “Thanks.”

We abandoned Daniela and the gas station in
favor of the open breeze. I wasn’t sure where to move the Buick, so
I parked it underneath a tree near some decorative shrubbery.
Daniela probably worked past dark. Maybe she wouldn’t notice the
car when she left.

One could only hope.

May 2002

Bjorn, as it turned out, was not a beefy
Norwegian. His real name was Trevor Ericksen. He was a tall guy,
broad shoulders, college-aged with a serious face and a five
o’clock shadow. He didn’t move from the driver’s seat when Nick
pulled me into the Toyota Camry, just sat there, checking us out
through the driver mirror.

“I brought food,” Nick announced, holding up
a pretzel bag.

Bjorn made a thin line with his lips. “Hm.”
He looked at me, then turned his gaze out the window. “Looks kind
of gamey.”

An empty beer can rolled under my feet, and I
resisted the urge to kick at it.

The girl in the front seat swatted at him.
“Oh, shut up.” She smiled at me, one of those electric sorts of
future-waitress smiles. One of her front teeth was chipped. “Don’t
mind my brother here, he’s just fussy. You need a ride?” She tucked
a strand of honey-blonde hair behind her ear. Her earrings were
silver and shaped like zippers.

“He’s going to the concert with us,” Nick
said for me.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” screeched the guy on the other
side of the backseat, as if a giant fire-breathing outer space
pig-bear had woken him from a deep slumber. He was chubby, maybe
fourteen, Native American, with thick glasses and messy chin-length
black hair.

“What?” Nick asked him, letting the pretzel
bag fall to the floor. It cluttered against another empty beer
can.

His friend sighed. “I forgot to water
Fred.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Cactuses retain water,
dummy.” He reached a hand to the ground, to grab the pretzel
bag.

“I know, doofus. I was just testing you.” He
looked at me, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “Hey, new guy,” he
said. “I’m Parker. Bassist for Deathskull Bombshell.”

“That name is weird as hell,” I said, then
kicked myself for sounding so obtuse. I was really on a roll
tonight. “I mean, um, I’m Austin. Austin Dillard.” I didn’t know
what to call myself by way of introduction. Music enthusiast? Man
with a car? Wandering goth?

“Dillard sounds like the name of a pickle,”
Parker said. He grinned. “Are you a pickle?”

“No, I meant the name of your band, not your
name,” I said.

Parker cracked up. “Oh, okay.”

“I’m Elizabeth,” the fat girl in the front
seat said, saving what was left of my dignity. She extended her
hand to me in an exaggeratedly feminine gesture. Her hair was sort
of curly and tied back in a sloppy ponytail. Playing along, I
kissed her hand, stealing a quick glance at her eyes, which were a
dark blue-grey sort of color, framed by blonde eyelashes.

Her vanilla perfume caught my nose by
surprise, and I sneezed, spewing a thick spray of boogers onto her
hand.

The moment was ruined.

Parker and Nick howled with laughter.

She let go of my hand, wiping the boogers on
the car’s interior. Well, at least she wasn’t mean about it. “I
play drums,” she said.

Austin Dillard, groupie-in-training.

Bjorn hit the gas, gunning the engine, and we
lurched forward. Elizabeth hit him again, and he slowed down. I
fastened my seatbelt. “Bjorn,” he said gruffly. “Guitar.”

“Oh my god, dude, come off it,” Elizabeth
snapped. “Everyone knows your real name isn’t Bjorn.”

Bjorn-Trevor narrowed his eyes. “I beg to
differ, sis. Perception is reality. If I say my name is Bjorn, my
name becomes Bjorn. Therefore, Bjorn becomes me. I am no longer
Trevor, handsome-but-mild-mannered intellectual, but Bjorn, rock
star du jour.”

“Uh-huh,” Elizabeth said.

Parker shook his head at me. “Trevor,” he
mouthed, and I nodded.

“Buy me cigarettes?” Elizabeth asked.

Trevor eyed her. “No.”

“Please?”

He glared at the road, gripping the steering
wheel. “I don’t buy cigarettes for children.”

The car fell quiet.

I felt Nick’s elbow jab me in the side. That
kid had some sharp-ass elbows. It was the first of many bruises I
would receive from Nick O’Doole – mostly accidental but sometimes
pointed. Actually, usually pointed.

Elizabeth turned around in her seat, hair
spilling over her shoulder. “Hey,” she said, addressing me. “You
smoke?”

I mumbled something that sort of meant I
didn’t.

She sighed and faced the road.

Trevor narrowed his eyes. “You’ll have to
ignore my sibling,” he said. “She was dropped on her cranium as a
child.”

“Oh,” I said, flustered. “I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth snickered, as did Nick and Parker.
Even Trevor sort of half-smirked into the mirror.

“You’re so serious,” she said, and I
blushed.

Trevor flipped the Toyota’s CD player on.
Ramones. We drove for a while, not saying much of anything, just
listening. The music was pretty loud. Nick and Parker asked me a
few questions about myself, to be polite I think. Gradually I
calmed down. I kind of wanted a cigarette though. I wanted
Elizabeth to look at me like that again.

“What songs are we doing tonight?” Parker
asked.

Trevor frowned, tapping on the steering
wheel.

Elizabeth looked out the window at the
sky.

Nick stared at the ceiling.

None of them said anything.

“Shit,” Parker said. “You guys have no idea
either, huh.”

“Well, I think the exact thing is—“Trevor
started to say.

At the same time, Elizabeth began laughing
uncontrollably. She laughed so hard, her body shook, and everybody
stared at her, confused.

“What?” Trevor asked her. He looked annoyed
at being interrupted.

“That was Brooke’s job, to do the set-list,”
she said, laughing harder. “Fuck. She’s been working like a nut on
that fucking Sylvia Plath essay for Advanced Lit. I bet she never
even thought about the concert all week.”

“Did anyone bring any paper?” Trevor asked
the group.

“I’ve got a napkin,” I said, holding it up
with a sense of relief. Finally, something to contribute. “Maybe
you guys could, like… make up a set-list and write it down.”