by BB Easton
“I learned about love.”
I glanced at my parents and thought about them rotating shifts to stay by my side the entire time I was at the hospital. I glanced at Juliet’s bored face and pictured the way it would soften whenever she held Romeo. And I thought about Knight. Always.
“And I learned about people. I learned that sometimes the strongest, bravest members of our society are the ones who could crumble at any minute. And sometimes the tiniest and frailest among us…turn out to be tough as nails. I learned about humanity here—mine, and yours. I guess that’s why they call it the Humanities department. I finally figured that out, too.”
While the crowd cheered and laughed graciously at my stupid attempt at a joke, my gaze landed on a pair of pale gray eyes, off to the side of the gym by one of the exits. I realized immediately why I hadn’t recognized them sooner.
They were smiling.
I congratulated the graduating class of 1999, and with the dean’s nod of approval, my classmates and I tossed our caps into the air. Then we ducked for cover as their pointy corners rained down on us.
Diploma in hand, I smiled and hugged and nodded and thanked my way toward the door, desperate to catch the only person in that gym who didn’t want to talk to me. I thought I was home free as soon as that hot, humid late-May air blasted my face, but before I could sprint through the parking lot in search of a certain white monster truck, a familiar voice called out my name.
I turned and saw my parents standing with Juliet and Goth Girl against the brick wall of the gym. My mom was the only one in the group holding a tissue to her nose, which made me smile. That woman laughed when everyone else cried and cried when everyone else laughed.
By the time I accepted my mom’s hug, my dad’s pat on the back, and my friends’ monotone congratulations, I had also accepted the fact that Knight was gone. Again.
I plastered a fake smile onto my face and agreed to meet everyone at my favorite Italian restaurant right around the corner, then let it fall as I turned and walked toward my car.
Don’t think about him, I told myself. Don’t. Stop it. You just graduated from high school, bitch. You’re happy. Be happy. Hey, let’s see if you can make it all the way to the car without thinking about him. Ready? Go!
Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Honda, BMW, Chevy…
I named the make and sometimes model of every car I passed all the way to the little black Mustang hatchback parked in the center of the lot. Then I forgot what I was doing completely. Forgot to blink. Forgot to breathe. Because tucked underneath my windshield wiper was a delicate paper rose, folded from a mint-green graduation program.
I clutched the paper flower to my nose, trying to extract the last few hints of cigarette smoke and cinnamon from it, as I sat behind the wheel. I stared out the windshield, at war with myself and with the lump forming in my throat.
Just one more time, I finally decided. I’ll read the damn thing one more time, but that’s it.
MAY 21, 1999
DEAR PUNK,
I’M SORRY I HAVEN’T BEEN AROUND MUCH SINCE THE WRECK. I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING, AND I’VE BEEN TOO FUCKING CHICKENSHIT TO DO IT IN PERSON. I MEANT TO. I FUCKING TRIED. BUT EVERY TIME I CAME BY YOU ACTED SO FUCKING HAPPY TO SEE ME THAT I COULDN’T PULL THE TRIGGER. NOBODY’S EVER BEEN HAPPY TO SEE ME IN MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE. NOBODY BUT YOU.
HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT YOUR SMILING FACE AND YOUR BROKEN BODY AND TELL YOU THAT I’M THE ONE WHO DID IT TO YOU?
HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO HOLD YOUR HAND AND HELP YOU WALK, THEN TELL YOU THAT I BLACKED OUT AGAIN AFTER HARLEY TOOK YOU? THAT THE ONLY THING I REMEMBER IS RUNNING INTO THE WOODS AND SEEING HARLEY’S CAR PINNED AGAINST A TREE. THAT I SCREAMED AT YOU TO WAKE UP, BUT YOU WOULDN’T. THAT I WATCHED THE PARAMEDICS PRY YOUR LIFELESS BODY OUT OF THE CAR. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO LOOK YOU IN THE FACE AND TELL YOU THAT WHEN I WALKED BACK TO MY TRUCK IT HAD MATTE BLACK PAINT ALL OVER THE FRONT BUMPER?
I CAUSED THAT WRECK, PUNK. I FUCKING KNOW I DID.
JUST LIKE I ALMOST STABBED THAT GUY AT THE BAR.
JUST LIKE I DESTROYED BOBBI’S PHONE AND TATTOO CHAIR WITHOUT EVEN MEANING TO.
I HAVE NO FUCKING CONTROL ANYMORE. I USED TO KNOW HOW TO CONTROL IT, BUT FOR THE LAST NINE MONTHS I’VE BEEN TRAINED TO DO THE OPPOSITE. NOW I CAN’T FUCKING TURN IT OFF.
SO, I SIGNED UP FOR ANOTHER TOUR IN IRAQ.
I’M SO SORRY, PUNK. I’M SO FUCKING SORRY. BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THAT I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO STAY HERE AND PLAY FUCKING HOUSE WITH YOU AND WAKE UP WITH YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ARMS AND LEGS WRAPPED AROUND ME AND PRETEND LIKE I DON’T DESTROY EVERY FUCKING THING I TOUCH. BUT I CAN’T.
BECAUSE THIS TIME, I ALMOST DESTROYED YOU.
I CAN’T BE A CIVILIAN ANYMORE. I WAS FUCKING MISERABLE IN IRAQ, BUT AT LEAST THERE I HAD A PURPOSE. I COULD CHANNEL ALL MY HATE AND RAGE INTO SOMETHING USEFUL. HERE IT HAS NOWHERE TO GO. IT JUST BUILDS UP AND BUILDS UP UNTIL I SNAP OR BLACK OUT. THERE I COULD HELP PROTECT OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY. HERE I CAN’T EVEN PROTECT THE ONE PERSON I LOVE FROM MYSELF. AS MUCH AS I FUCKING HATE TO ADMIT IT, I KNOW THAT’S WHERE I BELONG.
AND THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG.
I’M SO FUCKING PROUD OF YOU FOR GRADUATING EARLY. YOU’RE GOING TO BE AN AMAZING PSYCHOLOGIST, PUNK. YOU ALREADY ARE. I KNOW IT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE IT, BUT YOU HELPED ME WORK SOME SHIT OUT THAT I’D BEEN CARRYING AROUND WITH ME SINCE I WAS A KID. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO MADE ME WANT TO DO SOMETHING GOOD WITH MY LIFE. AND YOU’RE THE ONE I’LL BE FIGHTING FOR WHEN I GO BACK OVERSEAS.
I LOVE YOU. PLEASE DON’T HATE ME.
KNIGHT
I allowed myself to read his letter one more time, then I neatly refolded it, sliding my bony fingers along the seams that Knight’s thick fingers had made. I could feel his remorse and resignation radiating off the page. I tried to pull those feelings in through my pores. Take them on as my own.
I pulled a cigarette from my pack and placed it between my lips, then sparked the flint of my lighter. Staring at the flame, I felt the resignation work its way into my chest and blanket my heart like a quilt too heavy for the summer heat. Even though the weight of it is stifling, throwing it off would leave you vulnerable to monsters.
For too long I’d left my heart vulnerable to monsters. I’d let them take and take and take. My innocence, my devotion, my freedom, my control. I would have given one of them my whole future, if he’d asked. But he didn’t. He left instead. He was always leaving. For a year I’d been mourning him, even when he was right in front of me. I’d worked my way from the pits of despair, to the highs of false hope, through the battlefields of anger, and had finally arrived at acceptance. I was resigned to our fates.
But the remorse never came.
Not even when I held the flame under Knight’s confession and lit my cigarette with his blazing apology.
The summer of 1999 looked a lot like the summer of 1998. I celebrated my seventeenth birthday by blowing out a match instead of a candle on a lopsided, overcooked cake. I spent my days sleeping and smoking and watching daytime TV. Knight was gone. And, once again, I was dying.
Only this time it was from sheer fucking boredom.
Other than graduation, my parents had basically kept me under house arrest for six weeks after the accident because that’s how long the doctors had estimated it would take for me to fully heal. I’d wanted to start taking classes at Georgia State that summer, but noooo. No school. No work. No fucking life.
So when Goth Girl called and invited me to a Fourth of July kegger at her new boyfriend’s house, I sprinted to the calendar to do the math.
“Seven weeks, motherfucker! I’m there!”
Goth Girl had met—and made out with—this guy at a Marilyn Manson concert about two months before, and they’d been inseparable ever since. His name was Steven, but I called him Goth Guy—in my head at least. I hadn’t met him yet, but the fact that he owned his own house and used it to throw keg parties for teenagers made me like him instantly. It was going to be a total rager too, with a band
and everything. I mean, not a band anyone had actually heard of—just some local act called Phantom Limb—but still, a band!
Shit.
I wet a cotton swab in my mouth and tried to fix my fuckup. Again.
How does someone just forget how to put on liquid eyeliner?
Shut up. I haven’t had to do it in, like, a month.
Excuses, excuses.
Great, now the line on the right is thicker.
Here we go again.
Maybe I’ll just go heavier on the left to even it out.
That’s what you said about the right side.
Applying one more swoop of black, I forced myself to put down the eyeliner pen and look for something else to obsess about. It wasn’t hard. I hadn’t been out of the house in weeks, and it showed. My jeans were all too tight to button, my makeup application skills were rusty as hell, and my hair…
Oh God, my hair.
It had been over a year since I shaved it last. My bangs grazed my jawline, my two longer side pieces dusted my collarbones, and my buzz cut had grown into a riot of shaggy, bushy, unkempt waves. I hadn’t even noticed how long it had gotten. I’d just been sweeping it to the side and shoving handfuls of barrettes into it.
I couldn’t walk outside with that mess on my head. Once the humidity got to it, it might literally suffocate me. Or someone else.
The voice inside my head—the one that didn’t give a fuck what anybody thought, the one that had been utterly mute ever since Lance Hightower told me I looked like a little boy—whispered to me again for the first time in ages. It said, “Get your scissors, bitch.”
I could hear the band a block before Goth Guy’s house was even in view. With my windows rolled up. And my stereo on. The noise was coming from inside a cute little yellow one-story in a family-friendly neighborhood out in the suburbs. Not exactly what I’d expected for a single twenty-something-year-old Marilyn Manson fan. Maybe he needed the extra space to hide all the bodies.
“Your hair looks rad!” Goth Girl yelled as soon as she opened the door. “I love that pixie cut! You look like Drew Barrymore back when she chopped all her hair off!”
She was decked out in full gothy glory—black baby doll dress, chunky black platform Mary Janes, makeup that looked like a creepy porcelain doll. I suddenly questioned my cut-up, safety-pinned Black Flag crop top, but hey, at least my pants were pleather. Glancing around the room, that seemed to be part of the uniform.
I walked through the open door and into a darkened living room full of trippy, pulsing lights and blaring heavy metal. The furniture had all been pushed against the walls, and dozens of silhouettes bounced and headbanged in front of a four-piece band playing in the corner of the room. As my eyes adjusted, Goth Girl waved someone over.
“Steven!” she yelled.
A thin man with shoulder-length black hair and a pointy black goatee emerged from the crowd, wearing a black mesh shirt and vinyl pants that were too baggy. He reminded me of Lord Licorice from Candyland.
Once he was within earshot, Goth Girl leaned toward him and shouted, “This is BB! Doesn’t she look just like Drew Barrymore?” Then she smiled at me and tugged on a lock of my inch-and-a-half-long, bottle-blonde DIY pixie cut.
Goth Guy looked me up and down in a way that made me feel small and shouted back, “Maybe if she had some tits.”
Yeah, so Goth Guy could go eat a bag of dicks. Asshole.
Goth Girl pretended to slap him across the face, then giggled and linked arms with him, disappeared back into the crowd.
Awesome.
I needed a drink. And I needed to go hide some perishables around Goth Guy’s house. Maybe he had some eggs in the fridge. Those would rot nicely in a few days.
As I made my way through the sweaty, unfamiliar crowd and toward what I assumed was the entrance to the kitchen, the thrashing subsided and morphed into a sultry, whispery song that I recognized. And actually liked. I turned and watched the lead singer of Phantom Limb—a wiry little thing with a black bowl cut parted right down the middle—growl the lyrics to “Sanctified” by Nine Inch Nails into the microphone. For such a tiny guy, he exuded a disconcerting amount of confidence.
The lead guitar player was a short, stocky guy who tried to hide behind both the lead singer and his own greasy chin-length hair. The drummer all but disappeared behind his elaborate set of drums and symbols and electronic pads. But the bass player was a goddamn giant. The fact that his band consisted of wee folk only made him seem taller.
I found myself watching him instead of the lead singer even though he didn’t call any attention to himself whatsoever. The song had a heavy bass riff, and he seemed completely adrift on it. I liked watching people who didn’t know they were being watched, and this guy acted like he didn’t even know other people were in the room.
When the song was over, they switched to another thrashy number that I didn’t recognize, effectively breaking the spell. I wandered into the kitchen and stood in line at the keg, behind some chick with blonde pigtails wearing an oversize Korn T-shirt. Unfortunately for me, Korn Girl wanted to do a keg stand. People trickled in to watch the spectacle, and suddenly, I wasn’t next in line anymore.
Fantastic.
By the time I fought my way back to the keg, the live music had been replaced with prerecorded techno, and the entire crowd seemed to have pushed its way into the kitchen. I filled my Solo cup with piss-colored beer and spun around, careening face-first into an unyielding wall of hot muscle and sweat.
Stumbling backward, I watched in horror as half of my beer landed with a dramatic splash on the floor, just missing one of the human barricade’s massive black Adidas. Luckily, the giant grabbed my upper arms to steady me before I completely busted my ass on the linoleum.
As my eyes made the long journey from his boatlike shoes up to his face, I took a quick mental appraisal. Baggy black pin-striped slacks, chain wallet, slightly damp wifebeater plastered to a seriously bulbous set of six-pack abs, obviously tall as shit, seeing as how I haven’t even made it up to his face yet—
Oh my God! The fucking bass player!
Hoping he was a friendly giant, I donned my best please-don’t-hurt-me-mister smile as I continued to crane my neck the rest of the way back, finally taking in his looming face. This dude could have gotten a walk-on role as one of the German bad guys in a Die Hard movie, no problem. His features were severe—jet-black hair violently headbanged into a mop of stabby, sweaty little spears, heavy brow impaled with a silver barbell on one side, prominent nose. But his playful gray-blue eyes and kind mouth, which was upturned into an adorably dimpled smile, fought hard to betray his otherwise villainous appearance.
Just looking at him made me feel as though I were standing under a streetlight on a hot summer night. While he was imposingly tall and slender and dark and hard, the glow he cast down on me was nothing short of sunshine.
“Hey, Tinker Bell. Going somewhere?”
I managed to squeak out an apology, but when I went to scoot around him to get out of his way, the giant simply snickered and tucked me under his arm. Holding me firmly to his side, he wrapped his long, strong, callused fingers around my shoulder and steered me back into the living room. It was a bizarre move, but for some reason, I was helpless to stop the forward progression of my steel-covered toes. It was as if I had been sucked into his cool, unassuming aura, suspended in a magical fairyland where strange men don’t take advantage of drunk teenage girls at parties. Plus, with our height difference, my head fit perfectly under his big tattooed arm.
Mmm…
The raven-haired rocker guided me toward Goth Guy’s black leather sofa, but rather than release me to sit, he effortlessly flopped onto the couch, twisting me on the way down so that we both landed side by side, his arm never leaving my shoulders. During our descent, he also managed to maneuver me so that my legs landed across his lap, his free hand coming to rest on my thigh.
Holy shit. This fucker is good.
“So, what’s y
our name, Tinker Bell?”
As the dimple-cheeked devil beamed at me, I became aware that he was also nonchalantly rubbing a slow circle on my thigh with his thumb. All I could process was heat and rhythm—heat in my face, heat where his massive hand was absentmindedly kneading my body, stoking a virtual fire in my belly, and the tempo of his fingers strumming my thigh, which seemed to be in perfect concert with the blood thrumming between my legs just inches away.
When my brain finally registered that the expectant look on his face meant I was supposed to be answering a question, I frantically searched my recent memory for whatever the fuck it was that he’d asked me.
Something, something, Tinker Bell. Something…
Shit.
Taking a lucky guess, I blurted out, “BB.” I swallowed and tried again, forcing myself to meet his gunmetal-blue gaze. “I’m BB…hi.”
Jesus, real smooth.
“So, Bumblebee, why were you in there getting your own beer? Don’t you know pretty girls aren’t allowed to get their own drinks? You’re lucky I found you.”
He could say that again.
It was a cheesy pick-up line, but the tattooed mystery man had delivered it with such a flirty playfulness that I felt myself relax.
I smiled and rolled my eyes. “Well, who else was gonna get it for—”
“Me,” he interrupted with a grin. “I think I’m gonna be getting all your drinks from now on, Bumblebee.”
He wasn’t being arrogant, and I didn’t get the sense that he thought I was a sure thing. It was more like he was just stating a fact. Like we were a sure thing.
I scoffed, trying to keep my cool, and said, “I don’t even know who you are.”
Mr. Tall, Dark, and Tattooed beamed at me. White teeth glistened. Dimples deepened. My heart rate skyrocketed, and my palms got sweaty.