by J. D. Brick
As if that bushy-haired maggot Corey would know a good song if it came up and bit him in the ass. I can’t figure out how he even got into the Ikana music program.
“Well, that’s what Bryson gets for making us call ourselves The Sweet Spot,” I'd snarled at Corey, not bothering to argue. “We’re gonna sing sappy sweet songs.”
I haven’t changed the tune out of spite, though. I really like what I've done to the song, and I just can’t resist trying it out. Gild the Lily sounds more soulful my way. It throbs with this delicate anguish that perfectly suits Bryson’s bittersweet lyrics. But I’m sweating bullets as I play it in front of him. I have no idea how he’ll react. It really is a ballsy thing to do, messing with his work.
I’m about halfway through the song when I see Hunter stumble in from the kitchen, his whole body draped around some blonde in a skintight Catwoman costume. No doubt he’ll be peeling that off her very soon. She’s not the uptight blonde from the last party. This one looks a lot classier, even in that costume.
“Soldier boy!” Hunter shouts, raising his hand in a sarcastic salute. He’s wearing this shit-faced grin. “How about something other than this stupid Sixties bullshit?”
I ignore him and keep singing, not quite daring yet to look over at Bryson again. And that’s when I see Catwoman untangle herself from Hunter and turn around.
“KeeKee,” she yells over the music. “KeeKee, show me around.” Then she laughs as Hunter tries to put his arm around her again. “And rescue me from your roommate. He’s a little too eager.” She pats Hunter on the cheek and tugs at his Tarzan loincloth, and damn if the boy doesn’t practically slobber all over her. The blonde is hot, no question. But Hunter usually plays it cool with girls. Not with this one, though.
I have no time to think about Hunter, though, because I notice the blonde’s talking to Keegan. She comes to a stop alongside Catwoman and stares at me with her mouth open. I don’t know if she’s heard the whole song. But she has such a yearning expression on her face, and she’s listening so intently, that I’m sure she understands where I’m trying to go with it. Or at least I want to believe she does. I'm going to sing that song to you again, bar girl, when it's just the two of us.
Already, in my head, it is Keegan's song. What a pathetic excuse for a soldier I am. Hell's Highway heroes don’t spend time mooning over sappy songs. Or over girls, for that matter. But I’m no hero.
The song is over. And it’s already 11:30.
“That's it, everybody,” Corey yells, holding up his hands as a bunch of people protest. “We gotta keep the cops happy.”
The guys immediately start breaking down the equipment, grumbling about having to get up early the next day for class. I whirl around, suddenly remembering Bryson. But he’s gone.
“Hey, did you see where Bryson went?” The other guys in the band shake their heads. I look around the living room, then walk through the crowd in the kitchen and stick my head out the back door to scan the deck. No sign of Bryson. I go back to the living room, unsure what his sudden departure means. I'll admit, I’m a little scared. It’s a dumbass move, daring to change his song. But then, I have a habit of making dumbass moves.
“KeeKee!” The blonde is still fending off Hunter with one hand while holding a cup full of beer in the other. Some of it splashes on the floor. “KeeKee, where’d Tyler go?”
Keegan points up the stairs. “He said he had to use the bathroom.” She’s staring at me again, her face tense. Then she turns to the blonde. “Megz, I don’t want to see Tyler again. I cannot believe he showed up here! I can't believe he followed you here! We ought to call the police. But he swore to me he's not the stalker. I just don't know what to think.” She puts her hands over her face. “Will you just get him out of here?”
Keegan runs her fingers through her hair and stands there with her hands on top of her head. She’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans that fit her well enough to almost give me a hard-on just looking at her. For a moment, I forget all about Bryson and my possibly messed-up future in the music program.
“Sure, Kee," the blonde says, stroking Keegan's face reassuringly and kissing her forehead, “sure I will.” Then she takes Hunter’s arm and smiles beguilingly at him. “My new friend Hunter will help me, won’t ya?”
Hunter stumbles, and she catches him. He grins and salutes her. “I’ll do anything for Catwoman,” he growls, trying to grab her. Boy is beyond wasted.
Someone, probably Kendra, cranks up some Adele, loud enough to be heard but low enough to keep us out of trouble. The party will probably go on for a while, at least out back. But I’m done. I hear Max yelp from my bedroom and scratch on the door. Ever since the night some fool gave him several cups of beer to drink, I’ve locked Max in there during the parties.
“I’ll be right with you, baby.” Hunter can barely get the words out, blowing a kiss to Catwoman as he totters toward the kitchen. “But first, I have to get Kendra away from the music. Or the music away from Kendra. I’m not throwing a Halloween party with fucking Adele playing in the background.”
I pull the key to my room out of my pocket and am unlocking the door, holding my guitar in my other hand, when Keegan touches my shoulder. Fuck if it doesn’t make me shiver.
“Can I come in there with you for a while?” she asks, a plea in her voice. As if I’ll say no.
“Sure.” I almost choke on the word.
Max rears up excitedly when I open the door, first in my face and then in Keegan’s. She pets him, and he starts wiggling all over, the way he does when he’s happy. “I better get him outside to do his business,” I say, watching Max warily as I place my guitar in its usual spot on the chair. Max sometimes gets over-excited and pees on the floor. “Come on, Max, let’s go.” He follows me into the living room. “I’ll be back.”
Keegan kind of smiles in return, but she looks uncertain. I wonder if she already regrets asking to come into my room. Shit, this girl’s skittish. Like the deer my old man and I used to lie in wait for, sitting for hours like idiots up in a tree in the freezing cold. That was before I pissed him off by deciding I didn't want to hunt anything anymore.
“I’ll be here," Keegan says. But she looks ready to bolt.
I could just send Max outside on his own. But there are too many ways for him to get in trouble while the party’s still going on. Damn dog has become my responsibility. I push a pathway for Max through all the people still clogging the kitchen, then stand on the deck as the dog finds a spot in the yard. And I keep glancing at my bedroom window, hoping Keegan will still be in there when I get back.
I’ve stuck one of the cups of beer in my teeth to free up a hand, and I’m just turning the doorknob when I see Hunter and Catwoman hustling some short, dweeby-looking dude down the stairs and toward the front door. They’re gripping his arms like they mean business, and it’s obvious Dweeby isn’t happy about it. But even drunk, Hunter easily outmatches the kid in size and strength. And the blonde looks like she can hold her own against him as well.
“Don’t fight it, Tyler,” she’s saying. “You had no business following me here. You think I don’t know you’re the asshole sending KeeKee all those messages? You really think you’ve got me fooled? How about I let your Daddy know what you’ve been up to?”
Dweeby wrenches free of them. “He already knows,” he whines. “The cops came to our house and questioned me. That’s why I came up here to find Keegan. She won't answer my calls so I had to come up here. She’s got to believe it’s not me. Just let me talk to her!”
“No way,” the blonde sneers. “Just go home!” They push him out to the front porch.
I open the door to my room and take the cup out of my mouth. Keegan’s not standing where I left her. No denying the stab of disappointment in my chest. Then I see her, stretched out on my bed with her arm slung over her face. She sits up quickly as I hand her one of the cups. “I remembered on the way back that I owe you a beer and a story.”
Her hair’s sticking up in
a brown halo of static electricity. She looks puzzled for just a second, then gives me a soft smile as she takes the beer. “Oh, yeah. The story of the house. Why it’s called The Canadian Embassy.” She takes a sip and closes her eyes, releasing a long breath as if she’s been holding it.
“You okay? I just saw Hunter and this blonde throw some kid named Tyler out of the house. Sounded like he wanted to talk to you.” I say it casually, not sure I really want to hear about the dweeb. I have other things on my mind. But I do want to know about Keegan. I want to know everything about her, including how it would taste to lick off the drop of beer that’s glistening on her upper lip. Still standing by the bed, I take a big gulp of my beer.
Keegan sighs. “The blonde is Megz—Megan Morgan—my roommate. . .uh. . .she used to be my roommate. Tyler is this guy from high school that I never wanted to see again.” She looks down at the bed. “Megz thinks he’s the one who’s been sending me these horrible messages, calling me and making all these threats. It’s the reason I moved in here, the reason I thought I had to get out of the dorm.” She takes another sip of beer, then gets off the bed and picks up her backpack. She pulls out a phone and stands there pushing buttons, then thrusts the phone toward me. “You should probably know about it, I mean, I should tell you about it now that I’m living in the same house as you. I guess I should have told you guys about it before I moved in.”
Another heavy sigh. “I got a couple more texts today. I try not to even read them, but it's hard not to. The police told me not to delete them.” Her lips—those perfect, pillowy lips—are trembling. I take the phone, my fingers brushing her hand. She flinches, and once again, Aziza's face flashes before my eyes. Aziza, who's been hovering at the edge of my memory ever since I met Keegan. They’re worlds apart, born into different cultures, with radically different futures. They have nothing in common except for their eyes. But for some reason, one reminds me so much of the other.
I squeeze my eyes shut for an instant. That same old need to protect, to rescue, to be the hero, crawls over me. I've learned to hate that feeling. But I can’t stop it. I open my eyes and start reading what Keegan has pulled up on her phone.
And rage absolutely fucking floods me, popping out on my forehead in beads of sweat, running like hot lava down my arms, turning each scar on my back into a smoldering ember. Sometimes, when I’m angry or scared—and I’m angry or scared a lot lately—the scars on my back burn almost as bad as they did when they were fresh.
I sit on the bed, staring at the dozens of ugly text messages, all from Unknown. Each one is addressed either to Keegan or Ms. Crenshaw or Hey Bitch or You Cunt. You can track the guy’s moods, figure out what the tone of each message is going to be, just by those first words. They’re all insulting and threatening, but in some, he seems to be trying to sound sophisticated, while the others are just the lowest, most foul crap. Except for about a dozen of them that are addressed to Screaming Bad Girl or The Famous Screaming Bad Girl or The Girl Who Thinks She’s Benjamin Franklin. Those are kind of a mixture of both, and I can’t figure them out.
Keegan sits next to me, and I look up at her. Her lips are still quivering.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask. She puts her face in her hands and starts to cry. Nice, Blue, very comforting. I put my arm around her shoulders, feeling a little awkward. Panic squeezes my chest. Get out of this now, before you get in any deeper. Get away from her right now. It’s the same warning some voice in my head gave me a few of years ago, when I sat in a village in Afghanistan, clenching my fists as Aziza cried her eyes out. I hadn't listened to that voice then, and I already know I’m not going to listen this time.
I grind my teeth trying to silence the voice, then force myself to speak calmly. “I’m sorry. What I mean is, it’s going to be okay. It’s. . .Have you gone to the police about this? What are they doing about it?” I wave the phone around, then drop it on the bed like it has scorched my hand.
Keegan nods, her face still buried. “They’re supposed to be trying to track the guy down,” she sniffles. “But I sometimes get the feeling they don’t want to be bothered with it. Or with me.”
“Well, they’re sure as hell going to be bothered with it!” I get up and start pacing, then whirl toward the door. “So you guys think that pasty little guy named Tyler is doing this? And he has the nerve to show up here? I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch right now!”
Keegan lifts her face and puts her hands up. “No! Blue, I don’t think it’s him. I know Megz thinks it is, but. . .” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t have it in him to do this. He’s weird and pathetic, yes, but he’s not like that.” She nods at the phone on the bed. “It’s somebody else.”
There’s a long pause. I stand there, not sure what to do next.
“This is so embarrassing,” Keegan finally says, wiping her eyes. “I shouldn’t be crying all the time. I’m tougher than this. Or at least I thought I was.” She runs her hands down her face, then pats the bed next to her. “I don’t want to think about it right now. I'm not going to think about it right now. Come on. You still owe me a story. And I’m going to finish this beer.” She tilts the cup and drains it, then wipes her mouth and smiles at me.
It takes me a fraction of a second to forget about the dweeby dude and the terrible texts and let my hard-on lead me right back to the bed. Maybe I’m not such a hero after all. Before I can sit next to her, though, Max jumps up in my place. I’ve forgotten about him. Keegan laughs as Max tries to fit his 80-pound body in her lap.
“Max!” I snap my fingers at him. “Get off her! You have no idea what size you are. Get off.” He ignores me and snuggles his head right under Keegan’s breasts.
“Aw, Max, you’re so cute.” I roll my eyes as she scratches his ears. Yeah, I’m jealous. “You know just how to make me feel better,” she says in baby talk to the dog. Why do girls always talk to dogs like that?
“Hey,” I say, “you only get one chance to hear the story.” I try not to think about how pathetic it is that I am competing with a cowardly—not to mention smelly—German Shepherd. And that I’m probably losing. “Max!” I don’t mean to sound as sharp as I do, but it gets the dog’s attention. I point at the bathroom, and he jumps off the bed and slinks in there, settling down next to the toilet. I close the door on him.
“Aw. . .” Keegan says again.
“He’ll be fine. It’s story time.” I kneel on the bed and tell Keegan to turn around.
“Huh?”
“Turn around. I’m going to give you a massage while I tell you the story. I give good massages. And you could use one.” She lets out this tiny beer belch and giggles kind of nervously as she turns to face the headboard. She’s sitting cross-legged with her head tilted back a little. I quickly take off my boots. When I put my hands on her shoulders, a low moan escapes her lips that does nothing to ease the swelling in the front of my fatigues. Easy, Blue. To distract myself, I ask the question that’s stayed in my mind since I read the text messages.
“So, before I tell you the story of the Canadian Embassy, I just gotta ask something.”
She opens her eyes and turns her head to one side. “Yeah?”
“Who’s Screaming Bad Girl?” I squeeze her trapezius muscle, wishing I could yank her T-shirt off. “And what the hell does Benjamin Franklin have to do with any of this?”
Her shoulders slump under my hands. “Screaming Bad Girl is the name of my blog.” She says it with another sigh. “Or was the name of my blog until I shut it down.” She turns to look at me. “You haven’t heard of it? It was all over the news about a year ago.”
“Stop moving.” I gently turn her back around. “I told you, I try to avoid the news.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, so I started this Screaming Bad Girl blog while I was still in high school to comment on Oklahoma politics. The tagline for it was A 21st-Century Silence DoGood.” She lets that hang in the air, obviously expecting me to pick up on something.
“Um. . .” I’m drawing a blan
k and still thinking about what’s under her shirt.
“You know, Benjamin Franklin’s pen name, Mrs. Silence DoGood? They talk about it in the first National Treasure movie? Franklin wrote letters to the newspaper, pretending to be this woman named Silence DoGood?”
“Oh yeah! Now I get it, I think.”
“My idea was that in the 21st century, a woman wouldn’t be a silent do-gooder, she’d be a…”
We say it at the same time: “Screaming Bad Girl.”
“Exactly.” She’s rolling her head back against my hands, clearly enjoying the massage. “I got to 100,000 subscribers before some reporter figured out who I was.”
“Wow! But why did you shut it down?”
Another sigh. “It caused a huge uproar ‘cause of who my grandmother is. Everyone assumed she was behind the blog, when she actually didn’t know anything about it. She’s the last person I’d tell. We don’t agree on anything.”
“Um. . .you lost me again.”
“My grandmother is Virginia Hudson, President Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma State Senate. Virginia Cooke Hudson. You know, Cooke Ranch and all that. Have you heard of the Cooke Ranch?”
My hands stop moving. “Oh. Oh. Yeah, yeah, of course I've heard of the Cooke Ranch. One of the biggest ranches in the country, very powerful family. Huh. . .wow. I’m kind of speechless.” I move my hands to her neck. “So, Keegan Crenshaw, you’re part of Oklahoma royalty. I guess I should be thanking you for allowing me to touch you.”
She snorts. “No, I’m not anything of the kind,” she says firmly. “Especially not now. Virginia was really, really unhappy with me. I didn’t hold back in the blog, and I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to politicians. Or some politicians, anyway. But I ended up shutting down the blog. Virginia said it might make Ikana change their mind about admitting me, but I think she was just trying to scare me. If anything, the journalism board seemed to like the whole blog thing.”