Deathskull Bombshell

by Bethny Ebert

  “I do,” Nick said.

  “But you have his book?”

  “I’m trying to reconcile my hatred.”

  Parker laughed. “Is it going well?”

  Nick rolled his eyes, grinning. “Nope. You want to go to bed? I’m fucking tired.”

  “Me too.”

  They crawled into the queen-size bed, which was a bit too luxurious but totally comfortable after such a long day, and fell asleep, exhausted.

  Austin and Alex moved out of the house the previous year, not wanting to intrude on honeymoon life. Well, they said they didn’t want to intrude, but then they came over for pizza and video games all the time, and sometimes they’d fall asleep on the floor, so it was kind of like they were still roommates.

  When Grandma Roche died, she left Nick and Parker the Wisconsin house, along with a decent amount of money. Brooke got the same amount, plus all the smelly old-woman perfumes and jewelry she could ever want. She was about to graduate with an art degree, and a certification in vocal training, whatever that meant.

  Parker was in his first year of community college, taking his general requirement classes and shelving books at the library for cash. Nick quit Lardé’s Bistro in favor of a custodial position at the local post office, but Frasquita still phoned him up every few weeks to complain about Polly.

  A few hours later, a loud crash sounded from the kitchen. The neon digital alarm clock read 4:12 AM.

  Damn.

  Nick tumbled out of bed, heart racing, stomach twisted in his gut. He grabbed the baseball bat to investigate the noise, prepared to defend his family and property. He was gonna fuck them up. Whoever they were. Oh, they’d be sorry for messing with him and Parker and Kylie.

  He gripped the baseball bat, wondering when it had been washed last. What if he had to kill someone? Imagine the mess from a bludgeoned corpse.

  Gross.

  Nick stalked-ran-tripped into the kitchen, baseball bat in hand, ready to kill. His feet felt clumsy, and he almost fell over from nerves. He was stunned to see Kylie at the stove, in her pajama pants and t-shirt and fuzzy pink slippers, crumbling up a block of feta cheese to put in her vegan macaroni noodles.

  Thank God.

  She looked up at him, screwing up her face, then shoved some feta cheese in her mouth. “Man, what’s with you? You look like you just ran a marathon or something. Damn weirdo.” She paused, looking at her giant bowl of health food. It looked like a salad, except with ice cream added. From the looks of the empty ice cream container, it was vegan pistachio mint pecan.

  Well, he had to commend her for her creativity in flavor combinations, but it was so damn early in the morning. Did she have to be awake right now? God.

  “Did you know they make pills for lactose-intolerant people?” Kylie asked, biting off another corner of feta cheese. “I could eat this shit all day.”

  Nick sighed, annoyed. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “What?” Kylie asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”

  He went back to bed.

  Chapter twenty-five

  March 2003

  “I don’t get why you hang out with him,” Nick said one night while he and Brooke ate dinner. It was well past 8:00 PM, but it didn’t really matter. Work and school meant they had to be flexible with their schedules if they ever wanted to hang out. Brooke was adamant on them eating dinner at the same time. She said it made her feel like a freak standing in the kitchen eating by herself. It annoyed him, but he understood.

  Pepperoni pizza night for the third day in a row. Lardé’s Bistro hired on two new dishwashers. Since Nick lacked the longevity and experience to train in new guys, they cut his hours. It was only temporary, his boss Newt Larson said. Nick didn’t believe him.

  Food was the first expense to go, since they couldn’t do without the payments on the house. When he had spare time, Nick picked up boxes of food from the local food pantry. He hated receiving charity, but there weren’t many options. It wasn’t like the parental units were going to come back home for a while.

  Assholes.

  Nick and Brooke both started picking up job applications, and Brooke took up odd jobs cutting hair in study hall, but she didn’t get that many customers. Most of her classmates hated her.

  Brooke looked up from her pizza. Lately she liked to cut her pizza into little squares with a knife and dip it into mayonnaise. It was a new habit with her, mayonnaise. She ate way too much calcium lately, Nick thought, and her stomach looked big.

  “What? Hang out with who?” she asked.

  “Trevor,” Nick said. “Lars.”

  Brooke smiled, lifting the fork to her mouth. “Oh, don’t mind him. He’s okay.”

  “Okay?” Nick said. “He’s a total sleazebag. Do you know what he did to Emmalee the other day?” He grabbed his cup of water.

  “Who?” Brooke asked.

  “You know,” Nick said. He tried to describe her, but couldn’t. She was just Emmalee to him. “That girl, you know. Um.” He drank his water. “He took her on a date to the Jade Rose China Dragon, you know, the Chinese restaurant that does the fried sesame chicken thing, and then he just, like… left her there while he went and got the waitress’s phone number.”

  He paused, looking to see her reaction. She was still eating.

  “I mean, he literally left her in the restaurant all by herself so he could go hit on someone else.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Brooke said. “Trevor would never do such a thing.”

  “Well, he did. I saw it.”

  “I think he’s nice,” she said. “It’s his business what he does with his dating life, not mine.”

  She looked out the window, watching the rain fall, and Nick followed her gaze. Later, all that rain would turn to dirt and slush, another disgusting thing to mop off the floors at work.

  He frowned at his pizza. “You’re retarded.”

  Chapter twenty-six

  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.
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  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.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  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-Ki
nney’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.”