Skin (44 Chapters #1)

by B. B. Easton

  “Whatever. I’ll see you next month, sucker.” I folded my arms over my chest in victory, but the silence made me realize just how fucked up I actually was.

  Shut up, BB. Shut. Up. Knight was right. You are so wasted.

  The room felt like it was beginning to tilt to the right as my stomach threatened to heave again. And this time it was fully loaded.

  Oh, God. Please don’t let me throw up right here!

  “I have to go!” I tried to slide off the chair gracefully, but my denim-covered thighs were stuck to the vinyl upholstery. Knight stood up as if he were going to help me up, but stopped short when I held my hand up in his direction and peeled myself off.

  “Juliet is going to wonder where I am. I have to go!” I grabbed my bag off the floor and sprinted down the hall and out the door that I assumed led to the fire escape. I held my breath before the night air hit my face, not wanting to barf again. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get back inside the club without Tony, I ran through the alley that separated the two buildings and out into the parking lot. Thankfully, Tony’s car was still there.

  I collapsed onto the hood, welcoming the cool metal against my cheek, and gripped the sides for dear life as the world spun out from under me.

  What the fuck did Tony give me? I hope I puke in his car on the way home. He deserves it.

  I reached into my purse and fished around for my cell phone, but when I went to dial Juliet’s number it didn’t beep or light up or anything.

  Awesome. Guess I’ll just wait here.

  I had just turned my face to give the other cheek a ride on the cool metal when I felt a shadow fall over me.

  Tony.

  “Thank fucking God,” I said, rolling over and squinting into the street light. “I thought you guys were never…”

  Shit. Not Tony.

  “Get the fuck up. You are not riding home with that piece of shit.”

  I curled myself up into a sitting position on the hood, but was too dizzy to stand. I tried to look at Knight’s face, but the streetlight behind him was too bright. I stared at his boots instead. The ones that had kicked Skater Boy in the kidney not even three weeks ago.

  Pull yourself together, girl, my mind warned. You are in danger.

  “Jesus, you’re fucked up. I know drunk, and drunk bitches don’t grind their teeth like that.”

  Was I grinding my teeth?

  “You’re fucking rolling.”

  Rolling. The word took a minute to sink in. Rolling. That meant I was on ecstasy, right?

  I held my head in my hands and spoke to Knight’s knees because his boots were too scary. “Hypothetically, if I were rolling,” I said, “would that make me feel like I want to throw up and knit the world’s longest scarf and give somebody a back massage all at the same time?”

  “You don’t even know what you took?!” Knight slammed his palms down on either side of my thighs, making me jump and cover my face with my hands. Peeking through my fingers, all I could see were his spectral eyes, glowing in the dark. His face was a mere three inches away from mine. I snapped my fingers back together, both to protect myself and to hide the tears that always came whenever someone yelled at me.

  “I, I just took a pill that Tony gave me to help me stay awake.”

  “That motherfucker. Tony’s gonna fucking die tonight, Punk. Stay here.”

  Knight pushed off the car and stalked toward the building.

  Oh, fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

  I pulled my hands away from my face and called after him, “Knight! Stop! Please! I’m fine! It’s fine! I just need to wait here because I’m supposed to be staying with Juliet tonight and she’s going to be looking for me and my phone is dead and...”

  Knight turned around and stomped back toward me, pulling something long and black out of his pocket. He whipped it back and forth through the air with a flourish of flips and twists. I should have run away, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me move until I figured out what the fuck Knight was doing. With one last flick of his wrist, the streetlight glinted off something silver extending out of Knight’s hand—a six-inch long blade.

  I froze, blinking and swallowing (and probably grinding my teeth) trying to clear the drug-induced fog from my head so that I could respond to the fact that there was a fucking skinhead standing over me with a knife.

  Think, BB. Think! Move! Speak! Fucking run!

  I watched from deep inside my immobilized body as Knight brought the knife up over his head and jammed it down into the hood of Tony’s car, right next to my thigh. That got me moving. I jumped up and tried to run, but Knight reached out and grabbed my hand before I could get away.

  Fuck!

  I yanked against Knight’s grip, which was about as productive as trying to budge a Buick, as I frantically scanned the parking lot for any sign of Tony. I glanced back at Knight over my shoulder. His left arm was stretched out behind him holding onto my hand like a vise, while he lifted and pulled and dragged his blade across the hood of Tony’s car with his right.

  No!

  The word must not have come out, because Knight didn’t seem to hear me. Or maybe he was just too focused on whatever the fuck he was carving into Tony’s hood to respond. I pulled on Knight’s hand again, and noticed the way the muscles bulged in his arm and upper back when he tightened his grip.

  I must be on ecstasy, I thought. Tony gave me fucking ecstasy. There is no other reason why I would be thinking about Knight’s back muscles right now. Or the tattoo covering them. Or the fact that he is holding my hand. Tattooed skinhead = scary. Dark parking lot = scary. Knife = scary. So why does scary + scary + scary + back muscles + hand holding = ten thousand fuzzy tingly goosebumpy thingies all over my body?

  When he was done, Knight flipped and twirled the knife again, shoving it back into his pocket before turning the full force of his attention back to me. The expression on his face reminded me exactly why I shouldn’t be thinking about those things. He looked positively possessed.

  “There. Now everybody will know where the fuck you are. Let’s go.” As he dragged me away by the hand, I walked backwards so that I could get a look at what Knight had been working on. There, on Tony’s hood, scrawled in giant, pointy, capital letters, were the words,

  BB IS WITH KNIGHT

  MOTHERFUCKER

  Away from the car, back into the alley, up the fire escape stairs, and back into the tattoo parlor I was pulled. Knight slammed the door behind me and paced back and forth in the dimly lit dark hallway, running both hands over his almost bald head. I liked it better when he was holding my hand. This standing in the doorway watching him pace thing was freaking me out.

  I should have been freaked out about the fact that my best friend’s boyfriend’s car had just been carved up like a prize fucking turkey, but…my brain was broken. I was too busy grinding my teeth and fighting the urge to give Knight’s uber-tense body a massage to worry about silly things like vintage Corvettes.

  I guess Knight figured out whatever he’d been working on because he suddenly stopped pacing, fished his keys out of his pocket and said, “C’mon. I’m taking you home.”

  “I can’t go home,” I said, surprising myself with how calm I sounded. How resolute. I guess because it was a fact. I couldn’t go home. It was the middle of the night and evidently, I was rolling my balls off. Icksnay on the oinghomesgay.

  I thought he was going to argue with me, but Knight simply shoved his keys back in his pocket and said, “I guess that makes two of us.”

  Neither of us asked any follow up questions. We just stared at each other. I remember thinking that his eyelashes were pretty. With the little bit of light provided by the emergency exit signs I could tell that—even though they were blond—they were really long and full. I wanted to touch them.

  “So, I guess you’re staying here then,” he said. I couldn’t help but pick up on a tiny bit of hopefulness at the end of that sentence. Like his voice went up when it usually would have gone down. But
maybe not. I was pretty fucked up.

  I shrugged and said, “I guess so.”

  Knight’s whole body visibly relaxed. “Wanna smoke?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  We went back out onto the fire escape where I sat on the top step with my head against the building just to keep the world right side up. Knight sat down next to me and lit one of his Marlboro Reds. He offered it to me, but I made a face at him, so he popped it in his mouth and dug around in my purse until he found my box of Camel Lights. He lit one of those and handed it to me. That time I accepted.

  “Why don’t you want to go home?” I asked, no longer giving any fucks about what came out of my mouth. My filter, as well as my depth perception and inner gyroscope, were completely shot to hell.

  “Another time,” he said, exhaling in the direction of the parking lot, directly in front of us.

  Another time, I thought, happy little floaty bubbles dancing through my veins. That would be fun. We should do this another time. Only without the whole scratching up Tony’s hood thing. Like a slumber party.

  Despite having the spins, I was starting to feel pretty damn good. The nausea was gone, and it took everything I had not to grind my teeth and let my eyeballs roll up inside my head in sheer bliss. My cigarette tasted amazing, and all I wanted to do was hold this boy’s hand and look into his pretty eyes and ask him a million and one questions about his childhood.

  I felt like I knew him somehow.

  And I guess, in a way, I did. I knew something that other people didn’t know. I knew that he liked to draw.

  “Will you show me some of your tattoo designs?” I asked, turning to face him but not quite ready to pick my head up off the wall.

  Knight tilted his head to the side as he looked back at me, then nodded once. There was a vulnerability about him that was really sweet. I made a mental note to ask him about his art more often.

  We flicked our cigarettes into the alley and Knight helped me stand up. Once we were inside he flipped on some of the lights in the main room, and they helped to ease my dizziness. Knight walked up to the front desk and pulled a three-inch-thick binder out from one of the drawers. I followed and stood next to him behind the counter as he set the binder down on the desk. For a moment we both just stared at it, wordless.

  There was an electric charge in the air between us that caused my hairless arms to erupt in gooseflesh. Skeletor the Skinhead was shrugging off his armor. He was going to let me gaze upon his soft, pink underbelly, and he was trusting me not to gut him.

  I slowly opened the notebook and began to flip. With each passing page I felt more and more insecure about my skills as an artist, and more and more honored to have been allowed a glimpse into Knight’s mind. His drawings were intricate, dark, and detailed. His themes revolved mostly around old English and medieval iconography. Dragons, castles, coats of arms, shields, swords, and my favorite, knights.

  One particular knight drawing caught my eye. It was a solid black silhouette of a jousting knight on a galloping horse.

  “This,” I said, pointing to it. “This is your next tattoo.”

  Knight’s face paled, if that was even possible, and he asked quietly, “How the fuck did you know that?”

  “It’s a knight. You’re a Knight. It just makes sense,” I said, beaming with pride over my Nancy Drew skills.

  “I’m actually getting that one done as soon as my back piece is finished. I just have to figure out where to put it.”

  “You should put it on the side of your neck!” I exclaimed. “That would look fucking badass!”

  “I thought about that,” Knight said, “but if I put it there I won’t ever be able to join the military. They don’t allow visible tattoos.”

  “Pssh! You? Join the military?” I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. “You might as well stick that tattoo on your forehead, honey, because you’re more likely to end up in prison than the fucking military.”

  The next morning was kind of a blur. I don’t really remember falling asleep or waking up, but I do remember Knight giving me a ride back to Juliet’s house in a very large, very loud truck. I remember worrying about whether or not Tony’s car would be there, and I remember sighing in relief when we pulled up and it wasn’t. I also remember giving Knight the most awkward wave goodbye as I leapt out of his monster truck and stumbled, still wasted, up the stairs to Juliet’s porch.

  Once Knight’s truck was out of sight and the coast was clear I stumbled right back down the stairs, through Juliet’s neighbor’s backyard, and into the shopping center on the other side of the woods. I wandered into the grocery store in my silver tube top and smeared eye makeup, looking like more a cracked mirror than a disco ball, and took two hundred dollars out of the ATM inside.

  It was almost all the money I had. I just hoped it was enough.

  When I got back to Juliet’s house I let myself in using the key her mom kept hidden under a dead fern. I tiptoed through the living room and down the hall to Juliet’s bedroom unseen. Her mom was probably still in bed, and the sounds coming from the basement suggested that her unsupervised little brother was indulging in a little Ren & Stimpy downstairs.

  I left the cash on Juliet’s pillow, along with a note.

  Dear Juliet,

  I’m soooooooo sorry about Tony’s car. It’s a long, fucked up story. Call me and I’ll tell you about it later. Here’s some money to fix the damage. Tell Tony if it’s not enough I’ll pay him the rest later. And tell him I’m really, really sorry.

  Love,

  BB

  I washed my face, changed back into my T-shirt from the day before, and dashed outside at ten a.m. on the dot when my mom showed up in her Band-Aid colored Ford Taurus station wagon.

  I pretty much spent the entire half hour car ride home lying to my mom about how much fun Juliet and I’d had watching scary movies and eating pizza the night before. Then, during the last five minutes or so, I finally mustered the balls to ask my mom if she remembered the boy we made that basket of art supplies for when I was a kid.

  “Of course I do!” She said. “Ronald McKnight. I’ll never forget that name. That boy was psychotic. He stabbed a kid with a pair of scissors on his first day in my class.”

  Well, he was liquefying a kid’s spleen with his boot the first time I met him, so I guess some things never change.

  “Thank God they were just those little kid scissors with the rounded ends,” my mom continued, “but he still managed to break the skin. After that I let him sit in the back by himself and just draw whatever the hell he wanted.” She laughed. “I didn’t teach that boy a damn thing, but at least nobody else got stabbed.”

  “Well, you must have made some kind of an impression,” I said, “because I saw him at school yesterday and he said you inspired him to become a tattoo artist.”

  “Really?” my mom asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “I just assumed he’d be in prison by now. A tattoo artist, huh?” She thought about it for a minute and then laughed. “Well, he was artistic and he did like to stab people, so that sounds about right.”

  I laughed nervously.

  Ronald McKnight. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me his first name. Poor bastard. I’d be pissed off too.

  Once we got home I said a quick, “Hey,” to my dad, avoided the whole “Have you eaten?” conversation entirely, and ran upstairs to my room where I tore off my boots, plugged in my phone, and passed the fuck out.

  When I woke up, disoriented as hell, I glanced at my phone to see what time it was and noticed that I had about a hundred missed calls. They were all from Juliet, and all from that morning and the night before. I listened to most of them. Or tried to. It was hard to understand what she was saying over the sound of Tony yelling in the background.

  Shit.

  I called Juliet back while I was getting ready for work and apologized profusely. She said Tony calmed down once he got the money I left. He was already at his buddy’s shop getting his hood fixed, but she wa
s pretty sure that he still wanted to kill Knight.

  Juliet then unloaded a million and one questions about what happened the night before and if Knight had hurt me and why he was at the club and was he stalking me, but all I said was that I didn’t really remember. I gave her a few details, but said the rest was really hazy.

  I left out the part about where Knight worked.

  And about me spending the night with him there.

  I left out the part about what kind of vehicle he drove.

  And how he had a tattoo that covered his whole muscular back.

  I left out what an incredibly talented artist he was.

  And how he held my hand while he carved up her boyfriend’s hood.

  I’d never kept anything from Juliet before, but something deep down told me to keep this one a secret. Maybe it was because I was afraid Juliet would tell Tony and somebody would get hurt. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to admit to my half-black, half-Asian best friend that I’d spent the night with a skinhead.

  Who I kind of, sort of, might be friends with now.

  On Monday morning I chewed my fingernails to the quick as I stared out the passenger window of my mom’s car. I was going to see Knight again. How should I act? Should I just keep avoiding him? Even if I never went to my locker again I’d still have to see him in the church parking lot and at lunch.

  What if he thinks we’re, like, friends now? I know he took care of me when I was super fucking wasted and all, but I can’t be friends with a skinhead. With the skinhead. That’s basically like being bros with Hitler. Everybody will think I’m down with the fucking KKK, or whatever, when I am the least racist person in this whole goddamn redneck state.

  To distract myself, I started doing that weird thing I used to do in the car where I would tap a beat with my thumb and try to time it just perfectly so that it missed every telephone pole and street sign that passed by my window.

  It didn’t work.

  Maybe if I go by my locker this morning and talk to him there, then he won’t feel the need to talk to me out in the parking lot where everybody will hear us. Or at lunch. Oh, God! Lunch! Juliet will be there and he fucking carved up her boyfriend’s car! I hope she doesn’t say anything. She’s pretty scared of him, so maybe she won’t. And I paid to fix it, so…