by B. B. Easton
Knight’s smile faded to a smirk. “Can’t have you getting AIDS on me, now can I?”
Oh my God. Is he flirting with me?
Fuck, what do I do?
I can’t wear this. What will Lance think? What will Juliet think??
But I don’t want to piss Knight off and get murdered over a jacket.
UGH!
I took a deep breath and met his fading smile. “I don’t know what to say, Knight. This is really, really thoughtful, but I…I can’t wear it.”
“Why the fuck not?” And there he went. The beautiful golden boy was gone. Knight shoved his hands into his pockets and furrowed his brow. Skeletor was back.
“Knight…my best friend is black.”
“So?”
Gulp. “So…it’s a skinhead jacket.”
“No. It’s a flight jacket.”
“But it belongs to a skinhead.”
“Now it belongs to a punk.”
Running my eyes over his outfit I tried to look for some evidence of his racism to help my argument. A swastika or an Iron Cross, anything, but Knight was clean as a whistle. He had on a fitted red polo-style shirt that stretched across his defined chest and was tucked into a pair of tight Levi’s. His jeans were held up at the top by a pair of thin white braces and were rolled up at the bottom, showing off his signature black combat boots and red laces. No symbols. No logos. Nothin’.
I swallowed hard and asked the million-dollar question, bracing myself in case his response happened to be a fist to my face. “Knight, you’re a Neo-Nazi, right? I mean, I don’t know all the terms, but aren’t you, like, into white power and the KKK and all that?”
Because if you are we can’t be friends. And if we can’t be friends then I need to change lockers. And schools. And identities.
Knight looked over my shoulder as a few kids trickled in from the double doors behind me. Not wanting them to hear whatever he was about to say next, Knight leaned down and placed his mouth, the same mouth that was capable of producing that smile, within millimeters of my ear.
I waited for him to bite it off, or scream into it, or do something equally unpleasant to punish me for the ball-busting question I’d just asked, but instead he whispered, “I’m not a Nazi, okay? I don’t hate people because of their race. I hate people because I just fucking hate people.”
After his confession Knight pulled away and locked eyes with me. His features were sharp, but his impossibly pale blue eyes were soft and searching. There was an intimacy there I’d never felt with a boy before.
Skeletor the Skinhead had just told me a secret.
It was September seventeenth.
Knight’s birthday.
What the fuck do you get for the guy who hates everything?
I guess, technically, his birthday gift from me was the fact that he got to see another birthday—a privilege that I’d left most of my paycheck under a cinder block behind Pier 1 Imports for him to have—but he didn’t know about that.
He didn’t even know that I knew it was his birthday. I contemplated just keeping that information to myself. After all, my new post-extortion budget was pretty tight, thanks to him, so I didn’t say anything that morning at our lockers. I stayed mum in the church parking lot, as well. But by lunch it dawned on me that if I didn’t tell him happy birthday, it was possible that no one would, and that seemed like a fate worse than the death I was trying to save him from.
I only had about a buck forty-two in my wallet, but I knew one thing I could get pretty easily and for free—cafeteria food.
I’d noticed that Knight hadn’t been eating lunch lately—which seemed weird, especially for a dude his size—so I decided to grab him a chicken sandwich on my way to the table. Literally. As in I just walked by and grabbed it.
I never felt bad about stealing back then. When you and everybody you knew were hugging the poverty line, stealing wasn’t something kids did to impress each other or rebel against their parents. It was just something kids did.
At lunch I always sat sideways—facing Lance and Colton, but more importantly, facing away from Knight. At first it was because Knight scared me, but after the whole jacket thing I think I kept my back turned because seeing him down there all by himself made me feel like shit.
I was beginning to realize that I only spoke to Knight when we were one-on-one—at our lockers or in the cab of his truck on the way to Colton’s house (which was now an everyday thing)—but whenever someone else was around I ignored him.
Sure, I was afraid of his violent tendencies—terrified actually. And the fact that he put his hands on me whenever he wanted definitely made me nervous. But if I was being honest with myself, the main reason why I ignored Knight in public was because I didn’t want the stigma of being friends with Skeletor the Skinhead.
Knight was already at the table when I walked up, but instead of ducking my head and scooting past him like I typically would have done, I sat down in one of the permanently empty seats next to him, thrust out my little gift, and chirped, “Happy birthday!”
I expected Knight to at least take the damn sandwich. Maybe say thank you. I thought there might even be a chance that I’d get to see that big stained glass window smile again.
I thought wrong.
Knight’s brow, which had been tightly furrowed, smoothed and lifted in surprise. His glacial eyes widened, and his lips parted in a soul-bearing silent gasp. It was a heartbreaking expression of gratitude and disbelief.
It was worse than I’d thought. It was as if Skeletor the Skinhead had never received a gift in his life. I could almost hear his armor clatter to the floor as I peered into the face of someone vulnerable, aching, and alone.
Of course, he snatched his scowl back up off the ground within milliseconds and shot me a glare that had me questioning my sanity.
Wait. Now he’s mad at me? What did I do this time?
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Knight said as he flicked his eyes from mine to the sandwich and back again. “You want to do this again?”
Do wha—Oh, right. The muffin thing.
I stammered, “I just, I noticed that you haven’t gotten lunch in a while, so, I…I just thought…”
“You don’t eat, I don’t eat. Remember?” Knight’s words were clipped and his jaw was clenched like he was holding something back. Something that would probably make me cry again.
“Is that why you haven’t been eating lunch?” I asked, my eyes welling up even without him screaming at me.
Knight stared at me with pure venom in his undead irises and nodded. Once.
Oh. My. God.
For weeks Knight had been sitting down there, all alone, trying to prove a point to a girl who wouldn’t so much as look in his direction.
“Knight, I…I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
I realized as his nostrils flared that Knight was very much like a pit bull. Vicious. Loyal. Misunderstood. And once he clamped that jaw of his shut, it was very hard for him to open it again.
It appeared to be taking all of Knight’s strength not to go psycho on me. The least I could do was meet him halfway.
“Do you…want to split it with me?”
Knight didn’t even nod. He just watched me as if I were trying to lure him into some kind of trap, jaw muscles tensed, suspicious.
I unwrapped his lukewarm gift and pinched and pulled the sandwich apart until it was two jagged semicircles. Handing one to him, I took a bite of the other and closed my eyes. It tasted fucking amazing. Then again, everything tasted fucking amazing when you never ate anything.
I was almost done with my half before Knight had relaxed enough to open his mouth and take a bite of his. Of course, he finished it about four seconds later. Evidently, eighteen-year-old weightlifting skinheads can fucking eat.
To break the tension, I nudged his knee under the table with mine and said, “Hey. Happy birthday.”
Knight nudged my knee back and gave me a gift in return.
That fucking smile
.
I needed to focus.
All this drama with Knight and Tony had pulled me away from my ultimate goal, which was to get Lance Hightower to ask me to marry him by the end of the school year. It had been almost a month since he’d kissed me in the bathroom, and the most I’d gotten out of him since then was holding hands at school and sitting on his lap at Colton’s house.
I was doing something wrong. Or not doing something enough.
Maybe my stomach still poked out too much. Or maybe I was too flat-chested. There wasn’t much I could do about those things though—other than starve and wear the most heavily padded bras I could get my hands on, which I was already doing—so I decided that my only course of action was to go edgier with my style.
After all, the one kiss I had gotten out of him came the day after I cut most of my hair off, so maybe if I cut more of my hair off, I’d get more than a kiss. Right? I mean, that’s just basic logic.
So, I shaved my head.
Well, not all of it. Just most of it.
I left my bangs.
And the two long pieces on either side of my face.
And guess who told me it looked “rad” the next morning but then put exactly zero of his body parts into zero of my orifices?
Yeah. Lance Motherfucking Hightower. That’s who.
Back to the fucking drawing board.
You know who did love my haircut? The only other person I knew with a shaved head. Yeah.
So, that plan backfired catastrophically. And it only made my reluctance to be seen with Knight at school stronger. You can’t just shave off most of your hair and then publicly befriend the town’s only skinhead. Everyone would assume we were some kind of white-power power couple. The image I was going for was cute little NON-RACIST punk girl who is betrothed to Lance Hightower, not bride of Skeletor.
Just to make sure nobody got it twisted, at lunch I sat even closer to Lance than ever. I sat about as close to him as you can get to another person without getting pregnant, but I did at least start stealing a sandwich for myself every day so that the skinhead at the end of the table would fucking eat something. I mostly just picked at it and gave Lance the rest, but it was enough to keep Knight off my back.
The Friday after Knight’s birthday he was in a surprisingly non-homicidal mood when I walked up to him at our lockers. I thought maybe his lack of scowling was because I was wearing his jacket. The mornings had started to cool off and I’d finally decided that I’d rather wear Knight’s admittedly kickass flight jacket than a frumpy old Peach State Elementary School cardigan with tempera paint stains on it.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said as I approached. “Who died?”
Knight shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled a little. Like he didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it.
“I…Can I show you something?” he asked.
“It’s not a severed head, is it?” I replied, enjoying the ounce of vulnerability he was showing me a little too much.
Knight set his plain black backpack on the ground, unzipped it, and handed me a piece of paper. He stood back up and looked at me expectantly as I read it. The first three lines were typed in bold and told me all I needed to know.
GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
FULTON COUNTY
BODY ARTIST LICENSE
“Knight!” I screamed. “You fucking did it! You passed the exam!”
He couldn’t hold back anymore. Knight smiled, for the third time in a week, as I jumped up and down clutching his certificate—his future—in my hands.
“Can I be your first customer?” I asked with a grin.
“No,” Knight said, snatching the piece of paper back. “You’re only fifteen, remember.”
“And I have a note from my mom, remember.”
Knight eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want done? You know I can’t tattoo you with a note. It can only be a piercing.”
“Um…gulp…what about two piercings?” I blushed instantly. Hard. I could feel the prickly pink spread all the way to my fucking toes.
Knight’s eyebrow quirked up as he considered my request.
I can’t believe I just asked this psycho to touch my tits. Not that I have any. All I have are nipples, which is exactly why I need to get them pierced. Because when Lance finally sees them—and he will, goddamn it—I need him to be so distracted by how badass they are that he doesn’t notice how not there they are.
“How about tonight?” Knight asked in a surprisingly professional tone for a dude who’d just been propositioned to touch somebody’s boobies. It put me at ease, a little. “But it has to be after-hours,” he added.
I was suddenly feeling a lot less at ease.
“Why does the shop need to be empty if I have a note?”
So that you can hack me to little pieces and eat my brains?
Knight leveled me with a no-bullshit glare and said, “Because if I bring a minor into the shop the day after I get licensed Bobby will beat my fucking ass, note or no note.”
Did I want my nipples pierced badly enough to risk being alone in the shop with Knight again?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
“I get off work at nine thirty,” I said.
“I’ll pick you up.”
That afternoon Knight gave me a ride from Colton’s house to work and it was awkward. I was nervous as shit and Knight was…Knight. He pretty much just smoked and scowled at the road the whole way there.
My five-hour shift felt more like five days as I struggled to keep myself distracted. Thank God we’d just gotten a new candle fragrance in that day. I took the entire project over, shoving my well-meaning coworkers out of the way, and made the display for Autumn Splendor my bitch. I really liked the scent too. It smelled like cinnamon, and for some reason I found that comforting.
At nine thirty sharp I heard it—the screaming bat-out-of-hell roar of Knight’s monster truck pulling into the employee parking lot. I gave my manager a little salute, grabbed my stuff, and dashed out the back door.
I expected Knight to do what a normal person would do when they pick someone up from work—park with the engine running and wait for you to hop in. Instead Knight had lurched one tire up on the curb, walked around to the passenger side door, opened it, and was standing there waiting for me. He was wearing the Lonsdale hoodie he’d tried to give me, and I had to resist the urge to sniff it when he gave me a boost into the truck.
Not that I would have been able to smell it over the mouth-watering fragrance of hot food that was wafting out of the truck. When Knight climbed into the driver’s seat he tossed me a paper sack with Chick-Fil-A stamped on the side of it.
“Eat,” he said. I pulled out the aluminum pouch inside and it was still warm. “Can’t have you passing out on me.”
“You got me a chicken sandwich?” I asked, trying to sound more appreciative than I felt. The whole force feeding me thing was really getting old.
“You need to eat something before getting a piercing, and that’s one of the only things I’ve ever seen you eat, so…eat.”
I did as he instructed, welcoming the excuse not to talk, and Knight shoved a CD into the stereo to fill the silence. It wasn’t country this time. It was some kind of punk-ska hybrid, and I fucking loved it.
I bounced in my seat, enjoying the music and—as much as I hated to admit it—my dinner.
“Who is this?” I asked after swallowing my last bite.
“Operation Ivy,” Knight yelled over the growl of his engine. He took his eyes off the road just long enough to cast me a smug look. “I knew you’d like it.”
“Well, I hope you like it too, because from now on this shit is all we’re listening to.”
Knight smiled as I reached over and turned it up.
The song “Sound System” was my favorite, and I made him play it at least four times in a row until I knew it word for word. I’m sure he wanted to punch me in the face, but he hid it well because every time I said, “Again! Again!” Kni
ght just chuckled and hit the back button. The music was so fast and upbeat that by the time the suburbs melted into the city and the lights of Little Five Points were in view my anxiety had morphed into full-blown mania.
I was fucking amped. As soon as Knight parked, I hopped out of the truck and practically shadowboxed my way up the fire escape in the alley where Knight let us into the shop through the back door.
As I waited for him to get the door unlocked I noticed a few tiny bowls on the stoop filled with cat food and water.
This Bobby guy must really like taking in strays, I thought. Like Knight.
When we crossed the threshold, Knight flipped a few switches, illuminating the shop. It was weird seeing it sober. It was almost like I had only been there in a dream.
The back door opened into a skinny hallway, lined with doors on the interior wall that led all the way to the main studio. I assumed one of them belonged to the bathroom with the traumatizing wallpaper. I did remember that.
Knight opened the second door and flipped a switch inside. I peeked my head in behind him and saw a small room that resembled the break room at Pier 1—only this one was painted black. It had the same black and white tile floor as the rest of the shop. A simple white counter ran the length of the left wall, supporting a sink, coffee maker, microwave, and minifridge, and white cabinets hung above and below. A worn, but comfortable-looking black leather couch took up the back wall, and in the center of the room was a cheap aluminum table that looked like patio furniture with a few matching chairs shoved underneath—tattoo magazines fanned out across the glass top.
Knight walked in and opened one of the cabinets, pulling out a bottle of Southern Comfort and two shot glasses. I moved out of the way as he exited the room with them and continued down the hall into the main area of the shop. Knight flipped up at least four light switches, then made his way over to his station in the back corner.
I hadn’t seen the shop fully lit before (or while fully conscious). It was the coolest fucking place I’d ever seen. Framed flash art adorned almost every square inch of the blood-red walls. There were eight stations, each with its own black leather dentist-style chair, rolling black leather stool, rolling tray table, and shiny red tool chest—like the ones mechanics used. Knight’s tool chest had a partially deflated Congratulations balloon tied to it.