Clementine didn’t look away like Jake, sneer in disgust like Kid, or lace her hands in prayer like her mother might have done. Death and decay and all the macabre happenings of the world didn’t disturb her much, and in situations like these she often forced herself to be an onlooker, because to witness meant to cement it to memory—and there, perhaps at a portioned cost of her being, was, at the very least, proof of its happening. Although she was okay with losing pieces of herself in attempts to better understand the world and its absurd cruelties, the reality is that she was no closer to the truth—and in some regards further away—than when she was a mostly ignorant homeschooled girl working on her parent’s farm.
A year away from home and she had seen the world in all its unfiltered glory—its pain, its suffering, its abject impartiality to happiness—and she had come to one conclusion about humankind: at some point, sooner or later, we are cracked like an egg into a searing pan, and we can either fry into a pretty little thing, or we can spill out never to be whole again.
Jake shook his head, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “So it’s as bad as they say.”
“Can’t be,” said Noah in shocked horror. “It was s’posed to be better here.”
Kid kicked his boots up on the seat between Clem’s and Jake’s head. “I think I’ll lose my lunch if I stare a second longer.” Jake slapped his boots down.
“Look at how many of them have lost their limbs to those tumors,” she said sorrowfully. “What do you think it was like? When those people looked up and saw the red light, what do you think they thought about in their final moments?”
Noah grew quiet and immediately she realized, with a flush of shame, what she had said.
“Christ, Clem,” Jake said, tapping the wheel harder now. “Why does your mind have to go there all the time?”
“Dirty Japs’ fault,” Kid said matter of factly. “We should drop the sun on those motherfuckers for what–”
Noah smacked Kid’s arm. “We did, you idiot. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Not that that surprises anyone.”
Kid rubbed his arm. “Careful, you hit me too hard I might piss.” Kid had been thrashing in his seat the whole ride, trying to hold back a ‘dam-load’ of piss, as he put it. “And I do, too. For your information my great grandpappy was a general around then. He saw things. Heard things!”
Jake, failing to mitigate their constant bickering, tried to get Clem back on navigating them. She took one final glance at the refugee camp, and then brought her mind to the map in her hands, turning it this way and that way like the wheel of a ship. “Uh, where are we again?”
At that hopeless comment, Noah tried getting Kid to take a deep breath, but he did no such thing, never intended to do a constructive thing in his life; he vowed that once. Noah leaned between Clem and Jake up front and asked about Pink Polo. She couldn’t tell if it was her own nerves clouding her perception, but it almost seemed like Noah was uncharacteristically nervous about the prospect of meeting this stranger. Though maybe he was simply nervous to run into Madison tonight. When he asked Kid if Madison said she would be there, he protested, claiming that his letters with his girlfriend were private! Private, damn you!
The closer they got to Whiteaker, the more the murky buildings, misplaced shopping carts, and tattered clothes were replaced with tidy streets, joggers, and murals, and the more she and Noah raised questions about the legitimacy of this event.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Jake clicked his tongue. “Look, let’s just worry about getting there first, ‘kay? We can burn those bridges when some bridges need burnt. For now, we’re still sitting on a hot product, and I want it gone so we can relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor. It’s about time we enjoy something, don’t y’all think?” No disagreements there, but... “In case you all are forgetting how much the van cost to repair?” Silence. “Fine, by all means, we can sleep in the van for another forty fuckin’ years for all I care.”
Noah started to further voice his concerns when Kid shouted “There!” right in his ear, dramatically pointing and crawling over him to look out the window. The van screeched to a halt, and everyone peered at the large white sheet tacked to a towering tree a street away. Clementine read the message aloud boldly stated on its front in glowing, rainbow paint: Whiteaker Block Party Starts Here Bitches.
“Finally!” Kid breathed with relief, his leg still twitching uncontrollably. “Just hurry up and park Agatha, man!”
She asked Kid why he didn’t pee when he had showered, but it turned out that Noah was the one who was showering and wouldn’t let him in to tinkle which started a fight where the two of them argued about what constitutes courtesy, and how one time he allowed Kid in and he dropped a ‘deuce the size of Kentucky’, and she plugged her ears seeing Jake’s forehead vein bulging.
“Alright, everybody shut up!” he erupted. “Noah, I get it, his shit stinks, blah blah blah, whatever. Great story, real good laughs! But I need you—” he pointed to Kid— “to look that way and check for traffic ‘cause your dumbass hat is blocking my view!”
“It’s called a Stetson,” Kid muttered, firming his hat down, but he did as asked and checked for oncoming cars. “Alright, yur clear–”
Jake inched forward just as a slick pink race car blared past at high speed; he slammed the brakes, narrowly missing it. He looked back and glared at Kid.
“We were clear!” Kid cried out anxiously. “The guy was speedin’ and I ain’t seen ‘em! How’z it my fault?” Jake’s daggers pierced through Kid, but he resumed driving after a disappointed shake of his head. Kid looked at Noah and Clementine and repeated the question. They both simply shrugged—defeated by the lack of support, he sullenly stared out the window with crossed arms. Normally, Noah might have said or done something to revive the atmosphere, but not this time. He was staring at the mass of angered people, same as she was, blocking the street like a herd of frenzied animals under a stormy sky.
“Hang on to your hat!” Jake shouted as he swerved past an oncoming car and veered towards a parking spot, nearly tipping the van over in the process. At least that’s what it felt like in her mind, as she tried pinning up her hair with clips. The racecar was blaring its horn. “I’m the drift king, asshole!” Jacob boasted as he shut off the vehicle, flipping the bird at the race car as it passed ominously slow with tinted windows. “Ten minutes early, too.” The wind was taken from him when she reminded him the dashboard clock was twenty minutes behind. “Shit,” he said.
As the others began to scramble and gather their gear, she climbed into the back, grabbed her keyboard and its stand, and opened the door wide. Sunlight cascaded through the leaves of the mighty trees towering over the identical townhouses and bathed her with a muted warmth.
This was the extent of their comforts.
An undulating sea of people entering the party blurred by in oppressive streaks of primary colors, endless droves of smiling teeth and laughing giants towering on stilts. Some appeared dressed in a fashion sense leagues above her own; with frilled collars, topless women with nipple tassels or piercings, electric eyeshadows with glitter, brightly-colored latex, tight tight tights, and dangling jewelry that laid over the forehead and hands and every other place imaginable. And not far past that, the protestors loomed with gritted teeth, stomping their feet like veiny bulls.
“Babe.” Jake snapped his fingers in front of Clementine’s face, extending a bundle of cables to her. “What’s wrong with you—you deaf? I said your name, like, three damn times. Here. I’m not carrying your stuff again, alright? And hurry the hell up, we gotta be on soon.”
She grumbled, struggling to grab the bundle while carrying everything else. With their respective gear gathered (Kid would have to make two trips for his drums), the group began to wade through the people. She, slowest of all, was somehow pushed to lead.
“Now listen,” Jake continued, “when it comes to Pink Shirt or whatever this jackass’ name is, you let me do the talking. I’m big. He won’t try to push me around.” Nobody had any objections, but that could have been because they were nearing the protestors. Cops were maintaining the peace with their batons, but they weren’t using them to enforce as much as keeping the appearance of force.
The picket signs read: “Slaves To Magic! Rot In Hell Cronies! Magic Is Turning Children Gay! TongKats - The Devil’s Pitchforks! The End Times Happened; This Is Hell! Ike Lancaster Died So We Could Live!”
She hoped they would allow them to pass, but when she attempted sneaking through a gap, a man with a tight ponytail and a lazy eye cut her off. He had a religious cross around his neck and a sign that yelled: God Is Dead!
God is dead? It was a concept she had been struggling with since leaving home. Never before had she questioned the idea of God even through all her mother’s rants about how witches were heathens destined for hell—the limbless, limping, perishing children she had seen today—was that just another pitfall of humanity? Did God have a hand, or more terrifying, did He do nothing but watch? There seemed a wicked coldness in either of these answers, and yet, it happened all the same. Maybe that’s the solution. It’s not that God allowed it to happen—it’s that He died.
Clementine tried getting through but it had no effect on the man; he just continued to stare into her with beady, black eyes. She swiped a line of perspiration budding on her forehead. Noah encouraged her through, then looked at the red-faced protestor and goaded: “They’re pushovers. Ain’t that right?”
He didn’t look like a pushover. He looked unhinged, low on sleep as he flipped the sign: “Cut The Heathens Open And See If They Bleed Like Us!” A slimy smile pulled at the corners of the protestor’s thin cracked lips. His face was still as swamp water, below the surface an infestation of leeches.
Kid was shouting about peeing his pants, dancing where he stood. She realized she hadn’t been breathing for some time, now taking in excess breaths. Kid sighed and set down his drum set, and walked up to this particularly vicious man; with a quick inhale, he called the wind to his lungs, pointed towards the man with his ringed fingers and let out an unguided blast—it was too much, the man rolled and rolled across the lawn, chunks of dirt and grass arcing in the air. Kid shouldn’t have done it, not with cops nearby.
“You little shit,” the toppled man gasped at Kid as he stumbled to his feet, only to fall again. “I always knew your kind was evil! The moon cracked open and out came the blood of the devils! Devil! Cronie! Devil!” Now all the protestors were pointing at Kid, yelling: “Cronie! Devil!” Tongues of fire, wrath. “DEVILS! GYPSIES!” But the cops were too busy dealing with the surge of angry protesters to get to Kid.
Noah threw his sleeved bass on his back, picked up Kid’s drum set and handed it off to him with a congratulatory cheer.
“You shouldn’ta done that,” Clem later said to Kid once they were away from the crowd. “You ain’t fixing nothing with the violence, y’know. I don’t believe so at least. Besides, they may get them cops on us now.”
“What do you believe in Clemmy?” Kid snapped. “Huh? God? Ain’t that a peach. God’s dead, ain’t you heard?”
“Yeah,” she said, “you go on and make fun of me for having faith in something bigger than myself. What do you believe in then?”
“Psh. Believe in– I’m a nihilist.” The word was said with a prideful thumb to his chest.
“You even know what a nihilist is, Kid?” Jake asked. “I’ll give you a hint, it ain’t somebody who studies the Nile.”
Kid scowled. “Would you shut up? I said it in a sentence, ain’t I? It means you don’t believe in nothin’. See? I know a thing or two. So quit makin’ me out to look dumb all the time.”
“Yeah, you know a thing or two.” Jacob chuckled, wiped a fake tear from his eye. “Pinned the nail on the donkey’s tail with that one.”
“I’m warnin’ you, you lippy bastard. I’ll knock you on yur ass so quick you’ll be pissin’ shit from your mouth for weeks.”
Jacob waved him away with a hand, then broke into a self-satisfied smile. “I’m just playing, man. Relax.”
“You’ve an awfully strange way of playing,” pouted Kid. “Yur downright mean sometimes…”
“Don’t be so sensitive, you little girl. We’re at Whiteaker. I mean look at this place, and we get to play a show here! What’s to be sad about?” Jake hiked his guitar case over one shoulder and wrapped his arm around Kid as best he could considering the drum. She realized Jake was carrying the least gear. “Y’know, Mega-Ball, he–”
“Always wondered why they call him Mega-Ball,” Noah said. “He win the lottery or something?”
“Oh, the Diggery Boys started that because ol’ Kenneth Grimshaw only has one testicle, and it rests like an oversized meatball on a plate of spaghetti. Messy down there like that too.”
“Dear God almighty, Jake,” Clementine said with a scrunched lip, ducking under a man on stilts, the tip of her keyboard case nearly touching the man’s crotch. “Do you have to get so graphic with it?” She was trying to get her mind back on track, to join into the conversation, but they were still in earshot of those boorish protestors. What if one of them lost their mind and did something crazy tonight?
“My love, I will not censor myself.”
“I know, but I wish you would sometimes,” she replied with soft earnestness.
Jacob took on his lecturing tone. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that history ain’t pretty. Y’all saw those refugees for yourselves. We’re living history right now, and with the way things are brewing another Civil War could be aiming their barrels for tomorrow. Who knows, that’s all I’m saying. This may come as a shock to some considering the things I’ve done working for the Diggerys, but if I were to be conscripted I’d consider myself nothing shy of a conchy. I’d just, y’know, claim I was a Buddhist if I had to.”
“Conch– What the hell’s that?” Kid asked.
“None of your business, Kid,” he said spitefully, pushing him out from under his arm. “May the adults talk? Can we? Can we do that?”
Kid briefly set down the drum, took off his hat, and rubbed his hand through his sweaty, brown hair before slamming it back onto his head. Whiteaker was sprawling all around them now, trees and sweat and cheer and savory foods, intoxicating like poison.
“Be nice,” she said to Jake. All he did was wink back.
“Means he’s a coward,” Noah explained to Kid while waiting for him to pick the drum up.
“Coward? Yeah, right,” Jake said. “I don’t want to take a life under some fat white man’s bidding so that makes me a coward? If anything that makes me a revolutionary. A hero! You can’t solve nothing without spilling blood. Horrible as it is.”
Kid cheered at that. “Yeah! Look what I did back there to that pansy. I guess that makes me a war hero in some kinda way, don’t it?”
“I’ve just decided that I’m sick of you, Kid,” Jake said with a curled lip. “You’re like a damn parasite. Everything you say or do annoys me on a visceral level. Like when you’re in public and a baby won’t stop crying. It’s this heat in my gut, and that’s you.”
Kid grimaced at this when Noah, trying to change the subject, said, “Kid, you think Madison’s really gonna be here?”
“I guess it’s a possibility,” said Kid, then he bumped Noah’s elbow and smirked knowingly. “Is that why you took a shower this mornin’? Oh you old dog, it’s all comin’ together now! I may be slow with puzzles but I always figure ‘em out with enough time!”
“Truthfully,” Noah replied, ignoring all that. “I just find it strange she had to set up this meeting through some guy we don't even know. What did the letter say again? Word for word this time.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Kid went to answer just as a young woman glided by on waterblades, the crowd ooing and gasping as a rainbow appeared in the sweet mist that cooled those she passed; her skates had been modified to spew water behind her without anything on it resembling a tank. As Kid wiped the condensation off his slack-jawed face, he followed the arcing trail of water until she was lost in the crowd. The elegance of it all made Clem briefly rethink her long-sleeve floral button-up and the ugly, tattered jeans.
She did not belong here with these magical people.
She asked Noah then, who loved all things mechanical, if he had seen the skates. He was brimming with child-like wonder, so excited at the prospect of asking the water-blader a million questions. She liked to see him so passionate, and truth be told, the girl had also left an impression on her, of a different kind—where Kid was enamored, and Noah venerated, she felt hope. Admittedly it was the first time in her life she had seen magic being used in public without fear of persecution of fellow man, and although there were ‘No Magic’ signs plastered about with the image of a wand shooting sparks and a slash through it (which was an antiquated, offensive symbol at best) it was clear that nobody was worried about the law. In fact, there were no officers she could see besides with the protestors, and it made her realize that this was likely a festival to celebrate magic and maybe, God willing, this could be a city where she and her friends could fit in and release those shackles of fear burdening their tired souls.
She thought then: What’s the hold up? Why am I not having a nice time? And why does none of this make me feel at ease? And then her nightmare from last night bubbled up from the memory cauldron like a severed hand.
Already most aspects of the dream were fading, burned away by the daylight, but the image was still all too vivid, and it tainted this event, giving everything a layer of abject horror and faux-reality. It started the same as her train dream with Mr. Sh?fer. She was creeping through the hall, entering his cabin with bloody moonlight spilling in from the opened window. Unlike reality where the curtains were battered by wind, these were unnaturally floaty like the ethereal-white dress of a ghostly bride. And as she crept closer to the bunk she realized, just as before, Mr. Sh?fer was dead. Then the sticky sweet blood came back, threatening to drown her, and as she tried to scream, Sh?fer’s face morphed into her own. There was a dying fire in her eyes, the smell of sulfur and brimstone in the air, and scathing scratches down her arms. Her soul had been eaten up from the inside by flame. And she reached out for herself right before she was dragged, submerged into nothing. Then as the hands, deathly and pale, intended to take her real self next, she woke this morning in the motel room with a jolt; heart pounding like a hammer to nail.
A feeling not unfamiliar to her. From the dawn of her consciousness there lay a preternatural dread, like being the sole witness of a murder of crows shadowing a decrepit farmhouse at dusk. Confounded with premonitory dreams, some that came true, some that never did—but with an unease she admitted to herself still could—she felt a walking contradiction. A corpse who, now dead, finally understood that they never had fun, not once in their life.
And she saw while holding a dim torch to the sarcophagus of her thoughts, her friends partaking in jovial conversation and the event without her, as if she didn’t exist or never had; she felt insignificant in that moment—a shrinking, forgettable thing. At the expense of everything, she had to get the weight of uncertainty off her mind, so with a dour tone, she interrupted them with: “What if this is a trap? What if Madison is setting us up and Pink Polo is really an undercover cop?”
Jacob swung his head, astonished. “What?”
“Say the deal goes good, right, and they are so ecstatic about the product that they… Well, what then? How do we explain we didn’t make it? The simple, undeniable fact being we ain’t likely to get our hands on more. Never. Never–”
“Clementine,” Jacob laughed, trying to soothe but only adding to her frustration. “Calm down, ‘kay? You’re ten miles away right now. We need you here, right here, for this show.”
“I don’t know, y’know. She’s got good points, man,” Noah said. “Maybe it’s best to think these things all the way through.”
“Good poi–?” Jacob stopped and sighed. “Think things through? Am I speaking to the same Noah who once stuck a firecracker in a hotel toilet because you were curious if it would explode?” He allowed his point to sink in.
Noah, who had admitted to Clem long ago that Kid was the firecracker-toilet culprit, forced to hide the truth from Jake to save his skin, frowned at Kid. “Well, maybe I’ve matured since,” Noah said, taking his eyes off Kid who, unaware, was desperately scanning the crowd for the water-blader. “And, c’mon man, you gotta admit it was pretty rad.”
“Sure it was. I’m not an idiot. Look, Madison never said anything about needing a constant supply. Never did. Now I have run all this through. Multiple times, I have. I don’t know what to say, my brain is like a damn money counter, it just goes. And let me tell you all something, we have nothing to worry about. Have I ever steered you guys wrong? No, seriously I’m asking you all. This is an open space for your thoughts and feelings. How many successful jobs have we done together? And how much did they pay out?”
Noah went to say something, but Clementine interrupted him with, “Not to dwell on the subject but just how long has it been since you two have seen Madison? Couldn’t it be possible she’s a different person now from when you knew her?”
Jacob stopped in front of her. He would have held her chin if he had free hands, he liked to do that. “Love, love, love. Calm down. Okay? Cool your jets. I can hear the panic rising in your voice. You speak three octaves higher anytime you’re nervous. Don’t look at me like that, you do. Sounds like a dog whistle. If you bring that panic in when we meet Polo, he’s going to pick up on it and think we’re narcs. Everything’s going to be okay. It will, I promise you.”
She wanted to tell them all about the dream. To let it explode out of her here. But she knew that in her frantic state it wouldn’t be believed. Noah might. Kid would play it off as a joke, but even he might believe it deep down. But Jake, he would claim as he did sometimes, it was the over-intuition of a woman; that a woman’s intuition could never be trusted because it was clouded by emotion. Arguing this would only start a fight, and it would end with Noah saying, “let’s just try to have a good time” to soothe the tensions. So all Clementine said was: “I see.” Then she weaved through an incoming group and far away from Jacob who was yelling after her to wait up. But she lost them.
Away from everybody she finally was able to calm enough to look around. There were octopus kites fluttering in the wind, backlit by a reddening evening sky lofty with clouds that gave the world a deep impression. A boy stood in a boat bolted atop a bus, and he was waving down to her, a fishing pole in his other hand. Her fingers caught at first, then she waved back. She saw a vagrant growing mushrooms to sell in planters, and his partner in the affair used his heat arcana to suck just enough life out of them to eat on the spot (but she didn’t understand why anybody would be craving a dried mushroom right now).
Pearls of laughter rang out into the early evening from those who were stumbling and those whose eyes were like saucers, and a bitter residue could be smelled from the crushed glass decanters on the grass. They weren’t something she would see every day in Texas, as they were illegal there. Typically they were filled with dosages of Zand—the granular, often adulterated version of pure zuechronium—marketed mostly to those without arcana as a surefire way to unlock it within themselves, but she never heard of anybody being gifted magic that way and assumed it was mostly a scam, like those saddles that claimed zero rear pain.
Arcana, as cruel as it was, wasn’t something that could be forced to awaken. It was purely genetics. You either had the dormant gene that reacted with Zand or you didn’t. This didn’t stop the majority population without arcana to try and bridge this gap. Those without the gene flock to these miracle solutions in an almost fugue state, not caring about the potential side effects of snake oil tonics or sly words. She wondered if she or her friends were any different, steering their lives towards anything that resembled a promise.
Escorted to the backyard party, she wandered up to the stage, doing her best to avoid the gaze of the curious party-goers. Thankfully there was music playing on a subsystem so she didn’t have to endure both the gaze and an awkward silence. She hoped the rest of the band would arrive soon—there was a reason Noah did most of the vocals (though the band had few overall, more leaning towards a jam band). It was true, she had an okay voice, but was far more than content playing the keyboard on the sidelines.
Just as her keyboard was nearly set up, a man stumbled towards her. His eyes were bleary and his drink was spilling over his knuckles. She averted her gaze and continued to set up, hoping that he would go away if she didn’t acknowledge him, but ignoring him only made it worse. He wouldn’t stop asking questions about her and her dinky keyboard.
Before she could find the courage to shoo him away, the man stumbled over his own foot and spilled his drink all across her shirt and instrument. There was one loud static pop and it was done. The man then took a complete nosedive through it as if he was scared the drink wasn’t enough to finish the job. She gaped at the scene with sunken shoulders; the man on her keyboard, splattered on the stage like a skydiver with a parachute malfunction. Some of his friends, she supposed, saw what happened after the crash and rushed over, profusely apologizing to her. She wanted to run away, but instead she just stood there, frozen and red-faced, as she watched the man be carried away. At that point, the rest of the band sauntered in and she let out a brief sigh of relief, before Jacob blew the entire thing out of proportion, that is, yelling at the friends of the drunk that somebody was responsible for the damages, that if he didn’t get some compensation immediately…!
The second Kid set down his drums, he bolted to find that restroom and get the rest of his gear. Noah offered her a cigarette and when she rejected it, lit it for himself with a ‘don’t-mind-if-I-do’ smile.
Pink Polo was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if he was undercover as a partygoer but couldn’t find a reason as to why that made sense. To be fair, she was mainly looking for somebody wearing a pink polo as that was the only clue they had.
Jacob was rubbing her arm, trying to snap her to attention, but the blue lights swimming in the trees were putting her in a trance, making his aimless consoling agitating. They were on in twenty-five minutes, the stage manager said! Leaving to get some air, everything too much right now, she felt herself spiraling. Something was trying to prevent them from playing this show tonight, trying to tell them to turn back. Jacob called after her but didn’t follow, deciding instead to continue harassing the group responsible for the piano. “Make sure she’s alright,” she had heard Jacob say to Noah. “I’m getting these bastards to pay.”
Kid was ‘relieving’ himself in a Porta Potty. He did have to pee, but not as badly as he had acted—he was having minor withdrawals, and he only had a teensy amount of High Cherry left. Blast it all, I gotta get more. No matter what it costs me, he thought, going on to contemplate what he was willing to give up. One of my nuts? Sure thing, no big deal. Two of my nuts? No, he said aloud to himself, shaking his head. Need at least one, I think. The last time he got some Cherry was way back in Texas before the whole briefcase event went down, and he was only able to do another minuscule amount since. Enough to keep his edge. That’s all this was, yeah, but tonight was a night for partying. Drumming and partying. So, he would do the rest of what’s in the bag to make sure he could party hard enough!
He held the bag up to the grated vents where blue party light was emerging from and saw, beyond the plastic, shadows of party goers drifting by. Shit! Two bumps maybe, three max. Three ain’t much. Looks barely like a pinch in whatcha-macallits. But enough to get daddy high, sure. As the nearby bass shook him to the core, the filtered light shone through the vents and across the jumping red sand, glittering, dancing, like a naked siren with her legs spread wide. He could smell the fishy pussy from here, or was that just the Porta Potty? He wiped some saliva from the corner of his mouth. Then came a frown. The Cherry was hard as a rock. Some moisture must have entered the bag during one of the days they camped out in Oregon’s wet forests—they had tents, of course, but Kid’s and Noah’s was haggard as hell. Noah used whatever he could find to keep it patched, but it failed miserably against the rain in a corner or two.
He looked around trying to find a place to break it up. The toilet paper rack had been broken and stolen at some point so the only option was the stained toilet seat. Kid, without further thought, placed down the rock along the crusted rim, the shit aroma wafting from below. Now what to break it with? He tapped his chin with his fingers. He glanced at his rings; a dim light bulb went off. He cupped his hands around the sand and, using his wind, broke the Cherry into a less solid state.
“Fuck. I coulda just done that in my hand to begin with,” he said aloud. Kid scratched his head, his balls, lined the Cherry into a snortable strip, and railed it off the seat, flying up with an ecstatic hoot and holler as he braced against that comforting sting. He fell back on the toilet seat, the Cherry dripping down his throat; how they managed to make it taste as delicious as cherries Kid Black would never know; it didn’t matter, a numb softening to the world soon took over, and all his pains dissipated to his stomach. His entire being felt contained in a comfortable bubble that drowned out the noise.
Mostly.
There was, he just noticed, a loud banging at the door.
“Ocupado, senorita,” he slurred, but he wasn’t sure his vocal cords still worked. Whoever or whatever was outside didn’t care. The banging continued, and it pulled Kid from his high just enough to handle the situation. He hated that!
“I said it’s fuckin’ occupied!” Kid yelled, then under his breath said, “Asshole.”
“Help!” The voice cried like a damsel in distress, a woman tied to the train tracks. To action! “I need help! Please! Something– There’s something wrong! Let me in!”
Then there was a loud pop like a gunshot! Kid stumbled back, catching himself by gripping the sides of the walls. He cautiously stood and opened the door wide with his ringed fingers shaped into guns. There was no one around, a typical alleyway, trash, moths orbiting street lamps. Suddenly Kid was hit in the stomach with something. Hard. How did he not see his assailants? He looked down slowly, fearing the worst.
A small rock.
Then something exploded at Kid’s feet, and he accidentally fired his finger weapon and blew away a bird home into shrapnel and feathers. There was giggling and nefarious twirl-the-stache laughter and some fear. It was just a bunch of masked children that snuck into the party, now running for their lives. They had those little Bang-pops! you throw on the ground for a Bang-pop! effect. He let out a hoot of relief, rubbed his face, flipped the kids off, and continued on.
“Little shitheads gonna get yourself killed playin’ games like that!” he yelled after them, but they were long gone.
Clementine found a payphone at a corner store not far from the party. She could still feel its hectic energy reverberating her body. Or maybe that was the nerves. What she was about to do was the most fear-inducing thing she could imagine doing, but it was essential in starting to right her wrongs, and to steer her life back into the right direction. With much hesitation she slipped in the quarters, stopping on the final one. Right as she was about to decide against it and pull the quarter away, George Washington sank with a thud and the machine sprang into action. “Shoot,” she cried. The phone was ringing. It was too late now. On the fifth ring, she was nearing hanging up but stopped just as a small, weary voice on the other end said: “Hello?”
It was Matty. Away from the phone, she took a deep breath in from the shock of it. She had expected him to pick up, of course, this would be the time he finished with the chores, but it had been over four months since she last called. Since running away, she had called him once every week or so, but never had the courage to say anything once he picked up, and before long he would always end the call, not wasting the precious time he had on a ghost. As time went on she called less. Every two weeks. Every month. Every three. None. Hearing his voice, in whatever small capacity she could, was enough. Or she had told herself it was enough, but knew it never was, and now she couldn’t go another single minute without hearing him.
“Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”
She did everything in her power to not place the phone on the receiver. Hi, she wanted to say. Hi, it’s been so long, and I love you. I love you and I’m sorry. Could you ever forgive what I did?
There was silence on the other end of the line for a time and then he said, “Clem? Is that you? Don’t hang up, ‘kay? There’s somethin’ I’ve been wishin’ to say to you—if that’s really you. Or– um– maybe I just keep gettin these calls with nobody on the other end, but– No, I get to thinkin’ it’s you at the very least.” His meanings were unclear but his voice was resolute, and that frightened her.
She stood stock still, like a deer looking down the barrel of a rifle.
Matty took a quivering breath, and there was a weighty silence for who knows how long. “Ma keeps sayin’ I need to forget you,” he said, now steely and callous and slow. He no longer sounded a boy but a young man, with a man’s conviction and weight. “Prolly she’s right. Ma’s right most of the time, but I need to say this first… I hate you... I hate you.” It wasn’t explosive, but determined. Not a fleeting feeling but something he knew for fact. She could tell by the statement’s raw throatiness that he meant it. “I’ve waited so long,” he chuckled, “for you to call again so I can– I don’t know. So I can mourn you, I guess. Goodbye now. Bye.” Then he hung up.
She closed her mouth, tightened her grip around the phone, slinked forward onto the booth. The phone fell and swayed back and forth, fluorescent light glinting off its cheap plastic. Before she had any time to process what had occurred, Noah rounded the corner.
“Hey Clemmy,” he said and his expression deepened when he saw her face. “Oh, damn. Hey, everything alright?”
“What’s your deal?” she bellowed. “Why you following me around like a puppy dog!?”
Noah’s eyes widened. “What the hell?”
“Just leave me alone, Noah. I don’t know why you’re so concerned about what’s going on in my life!”
“Woah, I don’t know what’s going on but I’m sorry if–”
“Yeah, you’re sorry, you’re just wondering, you’re hoping. You’re always wanting something! And always from me, always checking on me.”
“Ain’t that what friends do?”
“Yeah, that’s what friends do, but what you do goes beyond that. And I need you to back off. Okay?” Visualizing where she stood looking at the boy on the boat, she teleported herself back into the street party, almost crashing upon reentry with another person, now deep in a packed crowd that wasn’t moving much. There was a fire witch showcasing their skills nearby but she barely felt the heat on her face as she waded through the crowd.
When she composed herself—as much as possible—she approached Jacob who was helping Kid finish setting up his drums. She imagined he would stop what he was doing and ask how she was feeling. “Where’s Noah?” was what he asked. “We need Noah. We start in ten.”
She sat on the stage, pushing her sweaty hair back from her forehead. “How do you expect to do the set without my instrument?”
“Hey!” somebody yelled in the crowd. “Hey! I heard somebody needs a new keyboard! Hell yeah!” The man was shirtless with a keyboard in his hands, being carried by three of his friends on their shoulders. The crowd that gathered around cheered on the hero. Turns out it was another band playing tonight, The Dripping Whitneys, that heard about the incident and wanted to come help. Even better, they had also been stuck behind the protestors and watched Kid ‘heroically’ clear the path. The Nomads couldn’t thank them enough, offering to pay them for the usage, but they declined, saying that all they wanted in return was a rad show.
It was rad, as the locals said. Some of them described their music as a slow, twangy jam that one could get lost in. “Like smoking heroin in the desert,” somebody had remarked. Whatever that meant. At the end of the set, the crowd cheered for an encore. A woman even tossed her panties at Noah which Kid intercepted and promptly jammed in his pocket. They played one more song, ending on a slower piece Clementine wrote called ‘Somewhere Far From Here.”
“… And though it happens every year,
And though the cold won’t tumble these walls,
I still want to be somewhere far from here
When that first leaf falls…”
Beyond an initial hiccup of Kid’s overzealousness on the drums, everything went smoothly. There was an honest applause and she was overwhelmed by the generosity of Eugene, Oregon. The truth is they never got much of a reaction back home, yet here, they were being treated like minor-celebrities, like they were important. Like they could do this as a career and only this. Like they could drop the briefcase, screw the briefcase, and their dangerous thieving. Let’s throw it in the river and play music till the sun comes up.
She saw the beauty of the Oregonian people, briefly flickering before her eyes like a candle. They were an expressive people, they were a free people, and unlike those in the South, under the deep slumber of religion and fear of magic, these people were awake—ready to turn the cosmic clock into a new age.
One of the lead members of The Dripping Whitneys, which turned out to be a pretty popular local band, gave them a card with their number and said they needed an opener for next Saturday. Jacob took it with a handshake and a smile.
Then a big man appeared not long after they finished soaking in the spotlight. She knew, for a reason beyond words, that this man was here with Pink Polo. And she also knew something terrible was about to begin.