“How’s that, Vee?” Lia moved out of the way to show me the flier she’d just stapled to the telephone pole at the corner of First Street and College Avenue.
“Looks good,” I said as a hot gust of wind whipped past, threatening to rip the flier loose.
Lia added a few more staples to the flier’s corners before dropping her stapler into my backpack and zipping it up. She turned and marched up the sidewalk and I struggled after her, sweating in the late summer heat and straining under the weight of the backpack.
A block up, we reached a brick building with the sun-bleached words “First Street Laundry” stenciled onto its glass door, and a hand-lettered piece of cardboard propped in the grimy picture window that read “LYNCH’S: COFFEE, SANDWICHES, LIVE MUSIC + LAUNDROMAT.” A bell jingled as we entered the building and a blessedly cool, air-conditioned breeze wafted by, carrying the mingled scents of fried food and detergent. Roy Connor waddled up to the order window beside the dining room door to greet us.
“See this, Roy?” Lia patted the backpack as we crossed to him, our shoes making sucking noises on the sticky tile floor. “Soon all your troubles’ll be over.”
“That the new issue?” he asked, wiping his stout fingers on a dishrag.
“And the fliers for the benefit,” nodded Lia. “We were just putting some up.”
Roy’s granddaughter, April, popped up beside him, her hot pink hair knotted into two buns that stuck out on either side of her head like Mickey Mouse ears. “Ooh, lemme see the flier,” she said, poking her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Lynch’s had originally been two separate spaces, a Laundromat and a coffee shop, but Roy had combined them. While Lia fidgeted with my backpack, I looked around at the familiar if bizarre jumble of objects crowding the laundry side, which I’d always thought of as Lynch’s “front room.” There were two lumpy, mismatched couches pushed against the wall beneath the picture window, two billiard tables sitting side by side in front of them, and a gumball machine and Mortal Kombat cabinet flanking either side of the door leading into the sandwich/coffee shop side, or “dining room.” Beyond the pool tables sat a bank of clothes dryers and a double row of yellow, coin-operated washing machines lined up back to back. A thin old man in thick glasses waited for his laundry, and apart from the thunder of his washing machine entering the spin cycle, the place was pretty quiet.
Lia passed a flier to April who took it and, smiling with approval, showed it to Roy. He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with his apron, and replaced them on his nose for a better look.
“Nice work, Veronica,” he declared.
I thanked him and hefted the backpack higher on my shoulder. “This is really heavy,” I complained to Lia. Telling Roy she’d be right back, she led me into the dimly lit dining room to a salvaged picnic table carved up with graffiti. With relief, I let the backpack slide down my arm and land on the bench with a thump.
“Ugh,” said Lia, gesturing into a corner as I collapsed onto the bench, “look who’s here.”
I looked and saw Paige Foster, her back to us, standing with a cluster of guys in t-shirts and baggy shorts. She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder and said something that made the guys all smile and chuckle in unison.
“Maybe she won’t see us,” I said, rubbing and stretching my tired shoulder.
“We wish,” said Lia, extracting a thick sheaf of pages from the backpack and handing it to me. It was still warm from the copy machine at Kopy Shak around the corner. I glanced at the top sheet on the stack before setting it on the table. “SAVE LYNCH’S!” shouted this month’s photocopied cover of Lia’s zine, The Blank Slate. Lia pulled the rest of the copies from the bag and passed them to me in neatly organized piles.
“I’m starved,” she announced when she’d emptied the backpack. “You want anything?” When I shook my head, she marched away to the lunch counter, leaving me to thumb through zine pages and randomly scan paragraphs for typos.
“Eat at Lynch’s: a Retrospective by Veronica Montez (continued from page 1)” I read. “…Retiree Roy Connor sat down and talked with us about establishing Lynch’s in honor of his youngest son, Scott, who’d been active in the Carreen, Texas music scene until his death in a car accident three years ago.
Connor had owned and operated the First Street Laundry for only a few months when Scott was killed. Soon after, the space next door became available. Roy said he knew right away he wanted to acquire the former coffee shop and promote it as a hangout for Carreen High students and other young people. ‘I liked having them around,’ he said. ‘They reminded me of Scotty.’
‘It was April’s idea to let the bands play next door, though. She reminded me Scotty always complained there weren’t enough good venues around,’ he continued, explaining why at his granddaughter’s urging, he’d installed a tiny stage behind the coffee shop’s tables and chairs and begun hosting rock shows.
‘Scotty loved movies almost as much as music,’ Roy said when asked about the business’s name. According to Roy, Scott, who worked at the Maribel Theater on 14th and Coker, particularly appreciated art and foreign films, ‘the more bizarre the better,’ and greatly admired director David Lynch’s work.
Responding to the needs and wishes of his new clientele, Roy put a few games in the laundry and started serving sandwiches along with his coffee. For simplicity’s sake, he eventually opened up the doors and installed an order window between the two businesses. He changed the building’s name to Lynch’s and asked his eldest son (April’s artist father, Brendan) to paint a portrait of Jack Nance as ‘Henry’ from Lynch’s Eraserhead on an interior wall…”
“You know, Montez, if you guys really wanted to help Roy, you’d focus on the band.”
I looked up to see Paige putting one leg at a time over the picnic bench across from mine. She plunked a coffee mug down on the table and eyed the photocopies spread out between us with contempt. “The show’ll pull in way more money than that crappy zine.”
“Okay,” I said, folding a photocopy in half. I didn’t want to argue with her, but it was a stretch at this point for Paige, Lia, and I to call ourselves a band. We’d only written four songs and hadn’t come up with a name yet, much less played any gigs.
“I’ll grant you we don’t sound so good yet,” she said. “Mostly because of you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“But Lia’s decent,” she went on. “And with a lot of practice, you could probably get up to speed. It’s just too bad we lost Sierra.”
I had to agree with that last bit. Her most recent fight had prompted our guitarist, Sierra’s, parents to send her away for a while. For now they weren’t letting her out of the house and when the new semester started in a week, she’d be shipped off to some rebellious-teen boot camp. Finding a replacement for her would probably take time. Time we didn’t have.
I glanced back, hoping to see Lia on her way back to the table so I wouldn’t have to deal with Paige on my own. But she’d settled in at the lunch counter, balancing on a duct-taped vinyl barstool with one Doc Marten boot resting on a chrome rung and the toe of the other grazing the floor. Roy had let her use his phone while she waited for her order, and she cradled the bright red receiver between her shoulder and ear, completely engrossed in conversation. I turned back to my folding.
“Have you talked to anyone?” I asked Paige. “I mean anyone who might be able to take Sierra’s place?” But she wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. The front doorbell had jingled and she was smiling at whoever’d just come in.
“Hey Dustin,” she called past me, waving.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and sat up straighter just as Dustin Tran strode up, stopping beside the table and jutting his chin at us in greeting. “What’s up?” The wind had whipped his black, stick-straight hair into a snarled mess and he worked to disentangle it with his fingers. He glanced down at the zine, lowering his dark lashes and worrying his lip ring with his tongue.
“We were just discussing the zine’s crapitude,” I said dryly. “Wanna help me put it together?” I drew the stapler out of the backpack.
He slid in beside me, resting his knee against mine under the table. “What’s so bad about the zine?” he asked, squeezing my thigh once before picking up the stapler.
“Every issue’s the same,” answered Paige before I could say anything. “Blank Fiction this, Blank Fiction that. ‘Blank Fiction is the best band in the whole world,’” she mocked.
I pushed folded pages in Dustin’s direction. “Not every issue,” I murmured, at the same time trying to recall one that hadn’t mentioned Lia’s favorite band at least once. Even the zine’s title referred to them.
“Who even cares about Blank Fiction anymore?” she went on, looking sourly at a frame mounted on the wall beside us. A 7” vinyl copy of Blank Fiction’s first single shone blackly behind the glass. “Sure, they were hot shit for a while. But they haven’t put an album out in what, three years?”
“And the last two kinda sucked,” added Dustin, stapling.
I stopped in mid-fold to give him a Look.
“Well, they did.”
“Maybe you guys should branch out a little with your material,” said Paige, “cover something relevant for a change.” She scooted to the end of the bench and stood, saying she needed a refill.
I was about to point out that, for her information, most of the stories in the latest issue weren’t about Blank Fiction at all, but about Lynch’s – including a very up-to-the-minute piece on the place’s current financial woes – when Paige knocked over her mug.
Cursing, I half-stood and lunged across the table, just managing to whisk the most endangered pages out of the way of her spilled coffee dregs. I sat back, hugging the salvaged pages to my chest, and Dustin reached across me to pluck a handful of napkins from the dispenser at the end of the table.
“Oops,” said Paige, her wide mouth spreading in a smile as she watched the small pool of coffee ooze toward me. Then she grabbed up her cup and swished away.
“I’ll bet she did that on purpose,” I murmured. “What a jerk.”
Dustin mopped half-heartedly at the spill, straining his neck to watch Paige go. “I dunno. I kinda like her. She’s feisty.”
“That what you call it?” I squinted at him, not liking the way his eyes lingered on Paige’s retreating figure.
Lia’d ended her phone call and finally headed back to the table, a soda cup in one hand and a red plastic basket overflowing with grilled cheese and French fries in the other.
“Man, that wind’s really picking up.” She put the basket down and sipped the soda through a straw just as a violent gust rattled the window behind the lunch counter. Through the glass, I watched the sky begin to turn brown as the air filled with dirt. I pictured the fliers we’d put up earlier hurtling away down the street.
“What happened here?” Lia picked up a zine I hadn’t been able to rescue. Light brown stains spattered the cover, puckering the paper and smearing the photo copy ink.
“Paige,” I huffed.
“It’s just a little coffee,” said Dustin. “It was an accident.” He smiled charmingly and told Lia not to worry, the stains only made the zine look “more punk rock.” But she wasn’t having it. When Paige reappeared with her refilled mug, Lia waved the damaged zine in her face.
“You’ll have to pay for this,” she told her.
Paige didn’t answer, only snatched a fry from Lia’s basket and leisurely ate it, the whole time giving Lia an icy glare.
“I mean it,” said Lia as Paige licked salt from her fingers. “We’re out a buck for this.” She tossed the zine back to me. “And you know every dollar counts.”
Two weeks ago we’d learned that although Roy owned the building, a new owner had raised rent on the land Lynch’s occupied. Roy’d been falling behind on the payments for a while. If he couldn’t come up with the money to cover what he owed, the place would close in a matter of months, maybe sooner. Lia’d rushed to organize a “Save Lynch’s” benefit show and dedicate The Blank Slate’s profits to the cause, but the unspoken worry among all of us was it was too little too late.
Paige sat down and blew into her coffee. “So send me the bill,” she smirked.
Lia didn’t reply. My best friend usually didn’t back down from anyone, but I knew Paige scared her a little. We’d heard she’d stabbed someone back in Dallas and done a stint in juvie. All Paige had told us was her parents had moved her here a few weeks ago, hoping she wouldn’t get in as much trouble in her mother’s hometown as she had in the city, so we didn’t know if the stabbing story was true. But sometimes Paige acted mean enough to make it seem plausible.
The guys Paige had been talking to earlier had cleared out, leaving the room empty except for us. As our table fell silent, every other sound seemed too loud to me: the wind whipping faster and faster past the windows; Roy and April cleaning up the kitchen; Dustin stapling another zine together. “Um, who were you talking to on the phone?” I asked Lia.
Like the front room, Lynch’s dining room was entirely outfitted from flea market and garage sale leftovers, so nothing matched. Lia took one of a variety of chairs away from a nearby dining table that’d probably represented the height of home furnishings in 1974, dragged it up beside mine and Dustin’s picnic bench and sat in it backwards. Between bites of her sandwich she explained that she’d called her mother. “I knew she had a meeting at the museum this morning. I wanted to know what she found out. They still haven’t heard from Clyde.” She paused, chewing.
Clyde Kameron sang for Blank Fiction. He wasn’t the biggest name in rock music or anything, but he was Carreen, Texas’s principal claim to fame. Eight years ago, he’d gone to Carreen High, like we did now. But he’d dropped out half way through the tenth grade, when his band had gotten signed. He’d left town, and although he’d dumped the other two original members of Blank Fiction pretty soon after that, the band’s new incarnation had earned Clyde two gold records – forcing my mom to stop telling me high school drop outs never amounted to anything. His brush with national fame might’ve fizzled out a few years back, but most everyone in Carreen under age thirty still loved Clyde at least a little because of what he represented: the hometown kid made good.
Lia, though, was crazy for him.
Late last year, the Carreen College Museum had announced a planned exhibit honoring area musicians and Lia’d led an aggressive campaign to get Clyde in. The museum hadn’t wanted to feature anyone “contemporary” (read: cool) but, due to a considerable show of public support, had grudgingly agreed to include Clyde and invited him to appear at the exhibit’s dedication. So far he hadn’t accepted. Lia’d been hounding her mother, who was on one of the museum’s fundraising committees, for word about his possible appearance for months.
“I figure they’ve gotta hear from him really soon,” Lia said. “I mean, the dedication’s set for September fourth.”
“That’s the day of the benefit,” remarked Dustin.
“Duh,” said Lia. “Why do you think I scheduled the show for then?” When Dustin just stared at her blankly, she went on, as though talking to a four year old. “If Clyde’s gonna be in town for the dedication anyway, there’s no reason he can’t stop by the benefit, too…”
Paige made a derisive sound. “That seriously your plan?”
“What if it is?” Lia challenged.
“Please. You’re deluded if you think Clyde Kameron is ever coming back to Carreen, much less playing here.”
“This is his hometown,” said Lia.
Paige ran a fingertip around the rim of her mug. “Yeah, so? He doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass what goes on here anymore.”
She had a point. Clyde hadn’t been back once since he’d left, and had never so much as mentioned his hometown in any interview I’d seen. It was as if he’d forgotten all about Carreen the minute he’d gotten out. Not that I could say I blamed him.
“And why should he?” Paige continued, voicing my thought. She wouldn’t, either, she informed us, once she got the hell out of Carreen and escaped back to Dallas.
Lia’s gray eyes flashed and I could tell she wanted to rip into our bassist, maybe tell her she’d gladly help Paige’s cause by kicking her ass out of town right now. But she held her tongue, instead tearing a French fry into little bits, angrily mashing the pieces to a greasy pulp between her fingers. I caught her eye and gave her a weak smile, trying to be supportive. I’d never had the heart to tell her even I didn’t think it was likely Clyde would ever be back, no matter how many accolades the town offered him.
Bored with Lia and me and the subject of Clyde, Paige turned her attention to flirting with Dustin, eventually asking if what she’d heard was true, that he was a mean pool player. When he answered he was, she stood up, came around the table, and challenged him to prove it.
April had emerged from behind the counter to refill sugar containers and stood close enough to hear this. “Use the back table,” she instructed Paige, popping her bubble gum. “The front one’s jammed. It keeps taking everyone’s money.”
Dustin dropped the stapler without even glancing at me, and jumped to his feet. I watched him splay his fingers against Paige’s lower back, just above the curve of her behind, and eagerly steer her into the game room.
“No way,” said Lia. “You don’t think they’re gonna…you know?” Of course I did. A girl playing pool with Dustin Tran only ever led to one thing. I should know.
“Whatever,” I said, a knot forming in my stomach.
I glanced over to where April stood with a half-empty sugar shaker in her hand, looking disapproving but unsurprised. Even “Henry” from Eraserhead, peering wide-eyed over her shoulder, seemed to say he told me so. I looked away again.
“See the way she looked at you when you told her she’d have to pay for that zine?” I asked Lia, scratching the side of my nose.
“I know. She’s such a psycho. If she weren’t, like, the only decent bass player we could get on short notice…” Biting a fry in half, she gestured at the zine pages. “C’mon. Let’s finish this and get out of here.”
I nodded sullenly, picked up the stapler, and got to work finishing what Dustin had begun.
***
Half an hour later, Lia and I dropped a stack of fliers and twenty-four copies of the zine at the lunch counter. As usual, we kept the twenty-fifth issue of the Slate to mail off to Clyde Kameron himself, along with a handwritten note from Lia taped to the inside cover. Borrowing a felt tip pen from April, Lia scratched Clyde’s address, care of his management company, onto the back of the zine and stuck a stamp in its corner.
We said goodbye to the Connors and went into the game room, where Dustin and Paige stood together beside the back pool table, their game, if they’d ever started one, abandoned. Smoke snaked away from the end of a lit cigarette in Dustin’s hand and I focused on the patterns it made as it drifted to the ceiling. So I wouldn’t have to watch him put his tongue in Paige’s mouth.
Outside the storm was dying down but hadn’t completely abated. We crossed the street so Lia could drop Clyde’s copy of The Blank Slate into the battered mailbox on the corner and then hurried back to Lynch’s parking lot. I shielded my face against the wind but wound up with stinging eyes and a mouthful of dirt anyway.
When we were safely in Lia’s Dodge Dart, she asked if I was okay. The wind howled and buffeted the car. Knowing what she wanted to hear, I said I was fine and pretended my eyes were just watering because of the dirt in them.
***
My mother was at work and I was home alone when Lia called the next day. I told her I didn’t feel like hanging out. When she insisted on coming over, I relented and told her I’d leave the front door unlocked so she could let herself in.
I lay in bed watching Friday the 13th when she showed up and knocked on my bedroom door. I muted the television, calling at her to come in.
“The fetal position? Seriously?” she said when she saw me lying on my side with my knees drawn up. Her car didn’t have air conditioning and she was clearly suffering the effects of the hot drive over, her face ruddy and the neck of her tank-top dark with sweat. A wide headband held her coppery brown hair back from her damp forehead, and she had a black and white composition book tucked under one arm. When I didn’t answer her, she closed the door, sending one of my stuffed penguins tumbling off a shelf to disappear into a heap of dirty laundry.
“C’mon,” she said, carefully picking her way across the cluttered floor. “What’re you even going to miss about him?”
“Gotta admit he’s pretty,” I said.
“Pretty dumb,” she countered.
I had to give her that.
“And you hated that he smokes,” she reminded me, shoving my feet out of her way so she could sit.
“I know.”
“You’re better off.”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted.
“Course I am. You need a boyfriend, Vee. A real one. Dustin likes to mess around, but he’s not exactly a relationship type of guy. You know?”
“Believe me, I know.” I rolled onto my back and stared at the Freddy Krueger poster tacked to the ceiling.
Lia was quiet for a few seconds, but I could feel her staring at me. I imagined she was trying to generate some sympathy. And failing. “So, what?” she finally asked. “You just gonna lie here sucking your thumb, you big baby?”
I stuck my thumb in my mouth. “Yeth.”
“Get up. We have stuff to do.”
I took out my thumb and tried to wipe spit on Lia’s arm, but she just knocked my hand away without even flinching. What, I wondered aloud, could possibly be important enough to interrupt my pity party?
“You know we need to find a fill-in guitarist. We can’t let Sierra’s stint in rehab-camp sideline us.” The show, she said, must go on.
Could we also, I wanted to know, get a new bassist while we were at it?
“What for?”
I hated Paige, I told her, and decided I couldn’t stand being in a band with that boyfriend stealer.
“Didn’t we just settle this? Dustin wasn’t your boyfriend,” sighed Lia. He was just another example of my very poor judgment. “And I hate Paige, too. But we’re kind of on a time crunch here. So I’m gonna need you to, you know, suck it up.”
Just what guitarist were we supposed to get? I asked hopelessly. “All the decent, non-psycho musicians are already in other bands.” Or had she forgotten why we’d ended up with Paige in the first place?
“I wrote down some possibilities.” She opened her composition book, all business, and scanned a scribbled list. “There’s…Lana Philbin.”
I gave her a thumb down.
“Tessa Rodriguez?”
“Ugh.”
“Nalin Khapur.”
“What is this? Your inventory of the crappiest musicians in Carreen?”
“Okay, Ms. Expert,” Lia admonished, reminding me I’d only started learning drums a couple of weeks ago myself. I knew she was right, but felt too petulant to cooperate.
“Can we do this later?” I pleaded.
She made a face, but shut the notebook. “Fine. What do you want to do instead?”
I wanted to lie there and sulk in peace, I said. Maybe watch all of the Friday the 13th sequels back to back.
“You’ve got a messed up way of comforting yourself,” she told me for the umpteenth time. She glanced at the muted television screen, where Kevin Bacon was getting it in the neck with a harpoon. If it were her, she said, shuddering and turning back to me, she’d watch Pretty in Pink and suck down a vat of ice cream. Like a normal person. Or better yet, she wouldn’t bother being upset at all. Not over Dustin Tran. Not that she’d have ever touched him to begin with.
“I thought you were coming over here to make me feel better?” I pulled a pillow over my face.
Wrong, she said. She was here to bring me back to reality.
I lifted a corner of the pillow just high enough so she could hear me, telling her I didn’t want to come back. I was perfectly fine wallowing here in my cocoon of cathartic, staged violence, thanks. “Go away,” I groaned.
She ripped the pillow from my hands and tossed it aside, telling me I couldn’t brood forever. It was unhealthy and she forbade it.
“It’s been twenty four hours,” I said.
I should at least come over to her house and mope there for a while, she told me. “My idiot brother showed up out of nowhere last night and he’s already driving me insane.”
“Jake? What’s he doing here?” Other than briefly at Christmas breaks, I hadn’t seen Lia’s brother in almost two years. Hardly an “idiot,” he’d graduated early and left for college the year Lia and I were sophomores. He was pre-med at UT Austin and his junior year should be starting any day now. I couldn’t imagine why he’d suddenly return.
“He’s decided to ‘take some time off’ from school…or something.” She gazed around the room. “Honestly, Vee, I don’t know how you can sleep in here. And I don’t just mean because of all your scary-ass posters.” She booted aside a pile of my stuff, clearing a space to stand up in. She was, she said, talking about the nightmarishly messy living conditions. “Just being in here for five minutes makes me…itch,” she said, scratching both arms.
I ignored her attempt to change the subject. “Time off?” I repeated, sitting up. “You mean he’s dropping out?”
Lia exhaled. “I don’t know details. All I know is my parents are pretty pissed this morning. Something about ‘flushing away a full scholarship.’” She made air-quotes with her fingers. “Or maybe they said it was his future he was pissing away? I dunno. Something was definitely going down a toilet.”
“That sounds serious, Lia. Didn’t you ask him what’s going on?”
She looked appalled by the idea. “You know I try to talk to him as little as possible.”
“He’s not so bad,” I said. She gave me a skeptical look. “Well, he’s nice to me,” I said, patting the bed clothes in search of the remote.
“So I’ve noticed. That’s why you have to come over. Run interference before he lands me in an asylum.”
I stopped the movie and switched off the television. “So you think he’s back for a while?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and touched my striped socks to the only other patch of bare floor, kicking crap around in an effort to find my shoes.
“Probably,” she said miserably.
I put my feet into a beat up pair of Cons I’d uncovered and double-knotted the laces. “Maybe we could convince him to play with us?” Before he’d moved away, Jake played guitar in one of my favorite local bands, Burro Bruto. He could really shred.
“No way,” said Lia. “It’s bad enough I have to live with him again. I’m not letting him infiltrate my band, too.”
***
The previous day’s dirt blizzard had passed through town quickly and the wind had reverted to its standard level of blusteriness. I watched the neighborhoods progressively improve as we rode to Lia’s place in the green Dodge Dart she’d gotten for her sixteenth birthday last year, the windows open, Blank Fiction blasting from the speakers at full volume and our hair whipping around our heads.
Lia switched off the music just as we reached her parents’ house, a brick single-story ranch with bright white trim that the Mlinarichs had moved into when Lia was just a baby, right when her dad’s grocery store business had begun to take off. With the later success of Paper or Plastic, they could easily have afforded someplace bigger and nicer, but by then the Mlinarichs liked the neighborhood too much to move.
Lia’s parents normally parked their cars in the driveway, reserving the sound-proofed two-car garage as our rehearsal space. But just then neither John nor Elyse Mlinarich was home. Jake’s blue van, however, sat against the curb, the roughly 400 miles from Austin showing all over its bug-splattered windshield and dirty tires. Lia pulled in nose to nose with it.
When she opened the front door, her cat, Clyde 2, tried to make a run for it. But before he could set a paw across the threshold, Lia scooped him up with a practiced move.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She tucked the cat under her arm like a football and buried her nose against him, nuzzling the black fur at his neck. The bell on his studded collar jingled as he squirmed in her grip, furry legs cycling in vain.
In the entryway just inside the door hung a memorial to every bad haircut and ugly outfit the Mlinarichs had ever donned. Lia called it the “Wall of Shame.” As we passed a Sears portrait featuring a three-year-old Lia dangling, red-faced and bawling, from her mother’s lap, we heard the television squawking from the living room. Lia poked her head in there, turned and yelled Jake’s name. There was no answer.
Lia released the cat and stomped through a doorway behind her, down another corridor to what’d been her brother’s bedroom before he’d moved away. I followed, but stopped just inside the bathroom at the end of the hall, not eager to get caught up in their sibling rivalry crossfire just yet. Peeking out, I saw the door to Jake’s old room standing slightly ajar. Lia pushed it fully open and yelled at him again.
“What?” I heard him call back. Music played in the background but I didn’t recognize it.
“TV’s on,” she informed him.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, turn it off if you’re not gonna watch it.”
He said something I couldn’t make out. The music died away and a minor crash sounded as something toppled over.
“Just go turn it off.” Lia pointed in the direction of the living room, her other hand on her hip.
“You turn it off,” he said. There was more crashing, followed by muffled cursing.
“You’re the one who left it on. I’m not your mother.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Jake’s voice sounded closer, and in a moment he was in the hall. I took a step back as he swept by but he didn’t notice me, or even look up as he headed for the living room.
I poked my head back out into the hall, where Lia stood waiting, gesturing at me to follow her into Jake’s room. “Come on.”
I hesitated.
“Just come on,” she insisted.
In Jake’s old room, a flowered comforter and sheets had been ripped from the brass bed against the wall. The matching curtains had been pulled down, too, and sunlight streamed in the windows, illuminating an overwhelming mess. Boxes stood piled just about everywhere. A few cartons lay on their sides amid an avalanche of CDs in the middle of the floor, and I guessed these were the sources of the crashes I’d heard.
“Jesus. Will you look at all this crap?” Lia climbed onto the bed, surveying more of the wreckage. I looked around, too, and saw the foot of the bare mattress lying buried beneath a tangle of t-shirts, a television and VCR with the cord wrapped around it sitting on a dresser, two beat-up guitar cases, one electric and one acoustic, leaning in a corner, and a little black dorm fridge covered over with band and bumper stickers squatting beside a bedside table.
In the living room, the television fell silent.
“It’s almost as bad as your room,” Lia clucked at me.
“Get outta there.” I heard Jake’s voice in the hall. “Now,” he said, coming into the room.
He looked thinner than I remembered. His longish hair looked unwashed and he hadn’t shaved in a while. He wore a wrinkled Alice in Chains t-shirt with a hole in it.
“Wow, you look awful,” Lia told him, bouncing up and down on the mattress.
“Get down.” He tried to grab her arm but she whisked it out of the way, bouncing higher and out of his reach.
“Make me,” she mistakenly dared him.
He swiped at her again, this time catching her shirt in his fist, but she twisted free and hopped over the pile of shirts, scampering down the opposite side of the bed to safety. It wasn’t until he lunged after her he caught sight of me standing against the wall. Our eyes met just before he lost his balance and fell across the mattress.
“Smooth,” Lia laughed, skirting around the bed while he recovered.
“Shut up.” He rolled onto his back and looked up at me. His hair was lighter brown than Lia’s, and while she had a small, pert nose, his was a little too big for his face. They had the same gray eyes. Though right then, his looked tired and bloodshot. “Hey, Nic,” he said. He was the only person who’d ever called me that. I introduced and thought of myself as Veronica. Aside from Lia’s use of “Vee,” when people tried a nickname out on me, they usually went with “Ronnie,” which I didn’t like.
“Hi.”
“Nice shirt,” he said.
I tugged reflexively at my Night of the Living Dead t-shirt. “Thanks.”
“What’ve you been doing all day?” Lia pulled back the flaps of a cardboard box nearest her and began rifling through the contents. “Obviously not unpacking.” She held up a raggedy teddy bear she’d found, waving its paw at me.
He sprang up to pluck the bear from her hands and stuff it back into the box. Turning her around by her shoulders, he gave his sister a light shove.
“Aren’t you embarrassed for Vee to see what a pig you are?” she scolded, moving back to the bed and sitting cross-legged on it.
He looked at me. “Most of this isn’t even mine,” he said.
“I know,” I said. After Jake moved out, Lia’s mom had redecorated his room, intending to convert it into a guest area. But his parents had ended up using it as an extra storage space instead, nearly filling it with their own junk. Easily two thirds of the boxes were theirs. “Don’t feel bad, my room’s worse,” I admitted.
He smiled a little, one corner of his mouth just lifting higher than the other. He rested his elbow on a stack of boxes, rubbing absently at a scrape on his forearm. “Lia tells me that’s your drum kit out in the garage,” he said. “Finally get bitten by the rock star bug?”
Lia and Jake had always made music. They hopped continually from one band to another, sometimes playing with more than one at a time. Despite Lia’s periodic offers to teach me to play something – and assurances it’d be “so fun” if we were in a band together – I’d remained content to sit on the sidelines and write about shows for her zine. I didn’t exactly love the idea of being on stage, the center of attention.
“It’s Sierra’s kit,” I demurred. “Our guitarist.”
When he looked confused, I explained I’d been playing it, but only because Lia’d talked me into it. She’d been between bands when the news about Lynch’s broke (Lia chimed in here, explaining Roy’s situation and what she was doing about it) and had had to scramble to pull a group together to headline the benefit. She and Sierra, who knew how to play just about every instrument, had taught me some drum basics but I hadn’t really taken to it yet.
“She’s getting really good, though,” Lia declared of me.
“I’m not,” I assured him.
“You guys playing anytime before this benefit thing?” He asked. He’d like to come see us.
Probably not, I told him, explaining about Sierra. The way things were going, we’d be lucky to find someone to replace her and be halfway ready to play by the benefit.
“Chill out, Vee. It’s rock n’ roll. Doesn’t have to be perfect,” Lia tried to console me.
“So you need someone to play with you,” Jake said impassively. I couldn’t tell if he was interested in helping us or just making an observation.
“Well, actually…” I began as Jake moved over to the window and kicked at the hideous curtains pooled on the floor. While he was looking down, Lia shook her head furiously at me and pulled her hand across her throat, but I ignored her. “We were thinking of asking you if you’d be interested.”
“Yeah?” He looked up at me.
Lia dropped her face into her hand.
“Yeah. I mean, if you’re going to stick around for a while.” I watched his face for any hint about why he’d have suddenly come back like this, or what it might mean. But he gave nothing away.
“I’ll be home for a while,” he shrugged. “I can do it. I mean, I can play with you guys if you want.” He’d always liked Roy, he said. It’d be a shame if Lynch’s folded. He paused, and then murmured something about having plenty of time on his hands now, too.
“Heaven forbid your lazy ass look for a job,” said Lia.
“I will if you will,” he said, unruffled. “But I’m guessing you’ll just let Mom and Dad go on coddling you.”
“Me?” She barked a laugh. “That’s rich!”
“Guys,” I said.
“Look,” said Jake, “It doesn’t matter to me one way or another. Just figured I’d offer.” He gave the curtains another kick. Then he crouched on one knee to gather spilled CDs.
“Well, thanks.” Lia stood up. “But no thanks. C’mon, Vee.”
I looked hard at her.
“C’mon.” She came over, steering me toward the door. “We’ve got stuff to do.” When we reached the hall, she marched ahead to her room, but I hung back, glancing at Jake again. Still hunkered by the mess on the floor, he looked up at me and held his hand to his forehead in mock salute. I wanted to stay behind and ask him what he was doing back, if it was true he’d dropped out of school. But Lia called my name.
***
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