Boring Girls

by Sara Taylor

  “Whore,” he croaked, and Fern pulled back and kicked him — in the side of the head — hard. His head snapped to the side and he groaned.

  “Shut the fuck up,” she said, hissing down at him.

  “Fern, what’s going on?” I whispered, feeling a jumpiness of my own beginning, clenching and unclenching my fists.

  “I’m not sure. I’m not really sure, Rachel.”

  “Okay. Okay. Who is this guy?”

  “I was coming out of the venue,” she said. “I heard a girl, she screamed. It was some druggie chick, some homeless girl.”

  “A stupid bitch like you,” the guy said, and Fern kicked him again, this time connecting the toe of her boot to his jaw, and my mouth filled with saliva as I saw his face tilt to the side to spit out a tooth in a drool of blood.

  “He grabbed her,” Fern said. “He was touching her and he hit her, Rachel, and he dragged her into this alley. And I just followed him in. He had her down on the ground. He was pulling off her clothes, and she was crying, Rachel. She sounded like a little girl.”

  “I bet you bitches’d love to know what I was gonna do to ’er,” the guy slurred.

  “What did you do, Fern?”

  “There’s a bunch of old liquor bottles lying around.” Fern gestured absently. “I grabbed one and I just hit him in the head with it. A couple times. He sort of rolled off her. She ran away.”

  We stood silently. The only sounds were his ragged breathing and spitting. I felt blood race through my veins, making them feel icy, cold, snaking through my body. I knew where this was going. I was stunned by her violence. Her excitement was contagious, and I wanted it to continue, but I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to get caught here. I dimly thought about Toad, about the guys, if they came off the bus. They would come looking for us.

  “What do you want to do?” I said.

  She didn’t say anything, her hair hanging in her face, her eyes locked to mine. “He’s a dirty son of a bitch rapist.”

  We stared at each other, trapped in this weird purgatory, and I swallowed hard, not sure what to say or do to tip the scales and cause whatever was going to happen to happen. I knew at any moment someone could find us, and my ears were alert, almost aching to catch and decipher any sound.

  Fern looked around, and I watched as she bent and picked up a dark piece of cinderblock or brick. She turned her full attention down to the man on the ground, who, for some reason, was making a repetitive, low, raspy chuckle like a skipping record. Fern stepped over him, paused for a moment, and then raised the brick over her head.

  I have a snapshot in my mind’s eye of Fern in this moment, her hair blocking her face from my vision, her long, lean arms stretched high. To be honest I don’t know if I could have done it — been the one to change things forever the way she did, been the one to raise the brick. As she brought it down, I felt the way you feel when you go down that first hill on a roller coaster. That relief, but at the same time, that twinge of regret. Here we go, too late to stop it now — do I want to stop it? Is this terrifying or fucking amazing —

  I don’t know what sound was made when she slammed that brick into the guy’s face because a shriek of laughter erupted out of me at the same time it impacted.

  You know, I wish I could say that all the fantasies I’d had, the weird convoluted images of Judith and the maidservant and putting me and Fern into those roles, came to life for a moment. I wish there had been this sort of mysterious, mythological, candlelit romance to it all — but there wasn’t. She brought that brick down onto that guy’s chuckling face a few times, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. And I was trying to keep quiet, trying to keep that laugh in, with my hands over my mouth, gasping. It was really weird. And she ended up falling, I think she was crying — and by this time it was pretty horrible, the guy on the ground didn’t have much of a face. It was too dark for me to really tell, and I didn’t want to see, really. But he was making this weird whistling noise, this wheeze, so he wasn’t dead, it was like air was still moving in and out somewhere. And she was just sitting there and she was crying and told me to finish it, to finish him.

  And I was still laughing. Fuck, I don’t know why. I reached down for the brick, I tried to carefully avoid the wet end of it. It was heavier than I’d expected and my arms felt rubbery and weak — for a second I wasn’t sure if I was going to drop it. But I grasped it in both hands and I brought it down on the mashed dark blur where it seemed his face used to be. I raised it and brought it down again, trying to ignore the warm splashes on my arms and face. I mean, this really was disgusting. I shut my mouth pretty quick — I didn’t want any of that shit going in my mouth and giving me diseases or whatever — but I still managed to laugh through my nose, like a true maniac. At least Fern cried.

  The whistling noise stopped and I paused with the brick, listening. I could hear Fern’s ragged, short breaths. The man was still. The alley was still and heavy. I stood like a statue. A heavy, meaty stench began to drift, moist and hot, from the pile of body beneath me. My stomach lurched.

  “Don’t puke,” Fern ordered, standing up beside me. She took the brick from my hands. “We have to go. We have to clean off and we have to bring this brick with us.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounded slow and stupid. Fern took off her dark, pleated skirt, and started wiping her face, her arms. As I watched her, I heard the familiar rumble of the bus engine from the parking lot at the end of the alley. Roger was back on the bus. How long had we been back here?

  “We have to go,” Fern said urgently, tossing me her skirt. I hastily wiped off my face, my arms. I gave her the skirt back, and she began to walk down the alley, hopping back into it.

  “They’re going to know,” I mumbled, walking behind her, tucking my hair behind my ears. It was stiff and clumped — probably a real nice mixture of days’ worth of show sweat and blood.

  “Just go fast. It’s too dark, no one will see,” she replied, tucking in her blouse. I saw she was carrying the brick. The murder weapon.

  We emerged back into the parking lot, and in its orangey light I looked down at the palms of my hands. There were some smears on my arms, some brown streaks, and thank god I’d worn black. The front of Fern’s white blouse was spattered. There was nothing to be done. The Gurgol bus was gone. I hadn’t heard it leave, which seemed odd. I’d been paying such attention to every sound, I thought I’d been so aware back there.

  Fern yanked the bus door open, and I climbed up behind her. Roger was sitting in the driver’s seat, which, thankfully, was pretty dark. “Almost left you girls behind!” he joked, not even looking up from his map book. We laughed in unison, high and feminine, and pulled back the curtain to enter the front lounge.

  Socks and Toad were still playing their game. Fern pushed immediately to go through to the bunk area, and I was right behind her.

  “Not so fast,” Toad said. We stopped and looked at him. His eyes remained locked to the television screen. “I don’t know what you girls were doing out there, but this is a bad city.” He finally took his eyes off the screen to look at us. “You look like shit! Jesus!” We didn’t answer. “Anyways, for fuck’s sake, we all need a shower. It’s a day off tomorrow, and I want everyone fucking washed up and doing their goddamn laundry.” He said it as though there were more people here than just me, Fern, and Socks. “This bus is starting to smell like shit.”

  “Yes, it is,” Roger confirmed in a good-natured voice from up front through the curtain.

  I glanced at Socks, and he was staring at me. I looked away, then wondered if that was a suspicious thing to do. Fern held the brick behind her back. I didn’t dare look at it. She murmured some affirmative to Toad, then went into the bunk area, closing the door behind her. I opened the door to the tiny bathroom in the lounge and flicked on the light.

  The bus started moving, and I instinctively grabbed the counter to brace myself
until I could adapt to the motion. It was becoming second nature at this point — I’d got my sea legs from standing, walking, and sleeping on a moving bus. Looking in the mirror, I was relieved to see my face was clear of blood. It had dried in my hair, though, and there’d be no way to wash it until we were at a hotel shower — or at least a proper-sized sink. I grabbed some paper towels, wet them in the pathetic drinking-fountain sized bus sink, and began to towel off my arms.

  Socks’s massive frame appeared in the bathroom door. “Can we talk?”

  “Of course,” I smiled at him. It wasn’t unusual for any of us to towel off in a sink, and I went quickly, wiping the areas where I’d spotted the worst streaks while I retained eye contact with Socks.

  “Where’d you guys go tonight?”

  “We were just in the venue, then we walked around a bit.”

  “Shit, Rachel! Don’t do that! I was too scared to go anyplace in this city. You could’ve been fucking killed.”

  I laughed sharply. “You worry too much.”

  “Look, promise me you won’t do anything like that again. Me and Edgar worry about the two of you, you know.” He lowered his voice. “Fern’s just not right anymore, and I get that you and she are really close and need time to yourselves. I know that. But please just don’t take any dumb risks.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What the fuck is that shit on your shirt?” he asked, eyes flicking down.

  I looked down and saw dark splatter on the black fabric. It was so obviously blood. I looked up at Socks, met his wide blue eyes, and didn’t know what to say.

  He sighed, clutching at his own shirt. “I totally puked on this shirt three days ago and tried to wash it out at the venue with that pink fluorescent pump soap,” he confided. “It still smells. All our shit’s so dirty. You want to hit a Laundromat tomorrow?”

  “After I wash my hair,” I grinned, holding up a matted, blood-crusted handful off my head.

  “I hear you. I puked in my hair too,” he said, “and it’s still stiff.”

  We smiled at each other and he retreated back to his seat beside Toad. I finished rinsing all visible areas of my arms and face, then brushed my teeth with bottled water. Fern then appeared in the doorway. She’d changed into a black shirt and cut off sweatpants.

  “My clothes are in a plastic bag in the back lounge. I had to get changed in the bunk area cause the others are back there, but they didn’t ask any questions.” She talked in a quiet voice, but with a casual lilt to it. I stepped out of the bathroom so she could get in, and I watched her hold some paper towels under the tap.

  “You okay?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “You?”

  “I’m great,” she said and smiled at me. “I think it’s going to be okay.”

  I left her in the bathroom and went into the long, dark corridor of the bunk area. The door to the back lounge was closed. I went to my bunk and in the darkness, quickly took off my soiled T-shirt and jeans. I wadded them up in a ball and put them at the foot of my bunk. Then, just in my underwear, I pulled the covers over me.

  After the sticky heat, the rush of air conditioning made my skin erupt into goosebumps, crawling over me unpleasantly. I pulled the blanket up to my nose, loving the soft feel of the pillow, relieved we would have a day off tomorrow, that I would step under the clean spray of a shower. My eyes drifted closed, and my thoughts turned to Chris. It seemed I hadn’t thought of him for so long, as if days had passed. I wondered where he was going to be spending his day off tomorrow.

  FORTY-SIX

  We stopped halfway to the next show at a Florida hotel. Socks, Fern, and I stepped off our frigid bus into that humid soup. The sky was blue, the sun blazing. Fern was chatty, and that dank alley felt the hundreds of miles away that it was. I hadn’t had time to process last night. Part of me felt like it hadn’t actually happened, but then I would catch Fern’s eye and she’d smile, and I knew it was real. Her smile was bigger than it had been for a long time, and her positive mood was infectious. As the three of us made our way towards the hotel, she linked arms with Socks and joked around — I hadn’t seen her like this in forever.

  The three of us carried backpacks full of dirty clothes to the laundry room, and there was Edgar, grinning smugly at us as he pulled his clean clothes out of a dryer. He was always up before the rest of us.

  “Anyone want to hit the beach?” Fern said brightly. Edgar immediately looked at Socks and me for an explanation for her good mood. I shrugged.

  “I’ll join you,” Edgar said, smiling at Fern. It felt good. When the band was first forming, Edgar and Fern had spent so much time working out parts together. Her withdrawal had caused a lot of confusion for Edgar, and he’d become quieter and less outgoing as well. He was a quiet guy to begin with — and Fern had brought him out of his shell.

  “Awesome! I want to get some cheeseburgers. I feel like I haven’t eaten in fucking forever.”

  While Edgar, Socks, and Fern talked about how to spend the day off, I crammed wadded handfuls of my wretched laundry into a washing machine. The clothes smelled sweaty, wet, and musty. I quickly shoved in last night’s clothes.

  Once the laundry was set, Edgar and Fern took off to check out the restaurant next door while Socks and I headed up to the room. Toad, who’d left us card keys and a note with the room number, was lying on the bed in a clean shirt and shorts, his long hair wrapped in a white towel.

  “Timmy should be out soon — once he’s done jacking off,” Toad said, flicking channels; I could hear the shower running through the closed bathroom door. He looked at us. “You guys look like shit. Rachel, your hair looks like a wig made out of dog shit.” I glared. He laughed.

  xXx

  Once Timmy came out of the bathroom it was my turn — and my god, that shower felt good. I washed my hair, horrified by the dirty water that rinsed out, and then shampooed twice more. It sucks how gross touring can be. We’d had thirteen shows in a row — and nothing but a sink shower on any of those days. Girls who want to sleep with rock stars should remember that. The guy you’re making out with may not even have brushed his teeth, let alone washed his ass, for days.

  I put on a clean sundress and left the bathroom. Timmy and Toad were both lying on one bed, Socks on the other, all staring at the TV. I took Socks’s place when he got up to shower.

  I’d like to say that I felt some overwhelming need to meditate on the events of the night before, that it was haunting me, that I felt the urge to confess to the others what we had done. But honestly, the only thing that had really followed me into that morning was the grossness. The blood and the whistling noise. The sweat and the darkness. The smell. The worry of getting caught. As Toad flipped channels, I wondered if anything would be on the news about the dead guy. But I wasn’t very worried about it. I felt cool, clean, and comfortable lying on that big bed.

  The telephone rang in our room. Toad answered. “Hello? . . . yeah. Oh, hey man. Good, good. You?”

  He chatted for a few minutes. I tuned him out until he held the phone out to me. “Rachel, it’s for you.”

  “What? Who is it?”

  “Just answer it and find out,” he said, so I took the phone and held it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Rachel?” a male voice asked.

  “Yes . . . Who is this?”

  “Uh, this is Chris, from Ripsawdomy,” he said. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No,” I said, immediately breaking into a nervous sweat.

  “I got your tour manager’s room number from ours,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “Yeah! It’s fine.”

  “So you guys stopped in the same city we did,” he said. “Toad said you’re staying at the Cherrywood Inn.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you want to do something today?” I could tell he was nervous too
, and I found myself grinning. He said he would come by the hotel and look for our bus in the parking lot in about two hours. We hung up.

  “So?” Toad asked as Socks came back into the room.

  “I’m going to meet him, we’re going to hang out or something.”

  “A date!”

  “Shut up,” I said, glaring at Toad. I fixed Timmy with a glare as well. Even though Timmy and I barely spoke, he seemed to be Toad’s little follower, so I figured I may as well treat him the same way.

  “With who?” Socks said.

  “With Chris,” Toad tattled.

  Socks looked at me. “Really?”

  “It isn’t a date,” I said.

  “Go, Rachel!” Socks laughed. “Marry him and get us famous.”

  “Rachel doesn’t exactly strike me as the guy’s type,” Toad said. “I mean, he dated Sophie Cleaver.”

  “Yeah, totally,” I said. “Normally he likes hot chicks. What a step down, eh, Toad?”

  “I’m just kidding, don’t be so sensitive!” Toad said.

  “I think Sophie Cleaver’s ugly,” Timmy said.

  “Well, it isn’t a date anyway. And I don’t care who he used to date, or currently is dating, or whatever.”

  “Yes, it is,” Toad said. “And you totally do.”

  xXx

  “She’s so skinny,” Fern commented. She and I were on the bus. I’d decided to get ready for my outing with Chris there, to avoid Toad’s remarks from his bed-throne. Fern and Edgar had brought back a bag of tacos, and once we’d eaten, Fern had followed me back to the bus. Now she was reading one of Toad’s tattoo magazines with a feature on Sophie Cleaver.

  “It’s because that stupid corset she’s wearing is yanked so tight,” I muttered, trying not to overdo my eyeliner. A few weeks of putting on show makeup had kind of ruined my gauge for what looked pretty and what looked garish.

  Fern turned the page. “She’s got her own clothing line. Shit, this girl must be rich.”