Get Bent (3 page)

From behind me, Dax starts a beat on his drums while that skinny druggy dude sneaks in from my right and blindsides the shit out of me by taking control of the lead guitar position, leaving me to play rhythm. It only takes me a second to get into the music and once it's got control, that little demon fucker screws with me hardcore and doesn't let go, sinking its teeth into my hands and sliding its tongue down my throat.

The crowd swells and breaks up into pieces before crashing together into a new whole, eliminating the us and them, becoming a single entity, one shining face shouting its joy and pain to the world, knowing that it's safe to spill secrets, that they'll get caught up in the strands of our music. Tangled webs are weaved as we unravel those motherfuckers, unleashing our fury into them and watching it get smashed back tenfold.

At first, my voice is low and weak, like I'm coming out of a Goddamn coma or something. That isn't fucking me, has never been me. If I let love make me weak, then I wouldn't be Turner fucking Campbell.

“
Unwitting cruelty bathed in beauty sings to me, brings me down, and lifts me back up. Takes me high, soars above, and all the while I'm falling. I am falling. Falling. Falling so far that I move right through you, and you don't, you refuse, to see me.
”

I get somewhere inside that maybe Naomi was singing about me. I think a lot of her songs are about me, but maybe I'm just an arrogant little bitch. There's that, too. But I like to think they're about me. All of mine are about her, whether I knew that or not. I wish I could tell her. I wish I'd done a better job of breaking my feelings to her. Jesus, I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. It wasn't the blood or the ambulances or the unknown.
I miss the shit out of that girl.

“
When you tried to catch me, it was all a lie. When you tried to soothe me, you only made me cry. Because I'm falling. Falling. So far into you. And I'm bleeding. Bleeding. Because you cut me through. My heart is sore.
”

My eyes scan the crowd and catch on smiles, tears, frowns. I pass right over all of them, trying to remember what it was like to have her onstage next to me. It might've been only days ago, but the rift between then and now is so wide that it makes it seem like years. I feel my body responding to the thoughts, the memories, and I end up with the most inappropriate, raging, fucking hard-on. But I won't apologize for it. It's just my dick reacting to what my heart already knows.

The crowd loves the shit out of me for it.

“
And I can't go on.
”

And then as I'm scanning, as I'm pretending this call and response thing isn't happening between me and that chick with the dual colored hair, that it's Naomi that's answering me, I see the barefoot girl.

“
My life.
”

She's standing in the back, the only still person in the venue, the only one whose body isn't throbbing with the music. She hasn't lost herself in the crowd. She's still a single person, and she's looking right fucking at me. The Devil himself would cry if that girl stared at him the way she's staring at me. I almost choke on my next words. My fingers fumble a bit, but I pick it up. If anything, I'm a Goddamn perfectionist at heart. I can't fail at this. I won't.

“
It's all come undone. I can't get air.
”

I feel like the girl's trying to grab me with her gaze, trying to warn me with those crazy blue eyes that swim like the sea. I want to stop playing right then and there, call her out, have the crowd bring her to me, throw her at my feet, so I can shake the shit out of her. She knows things. What, I'm not sure, but Naomi told me about her,
warned
me actually. What if she's the one responsible?

“
And I no longer fly.
”

I keep playing, knowing that she'll be gone before I can get to her, and I try to learn everything I can from her face, from the way her hand clutches her stupid, plastic purse, the way her lips part and her face fills with fear. I see her mouthing words, and I think she's trying to tell me something. Then I realize, that's not it at all. She's singing the lyrics, the response bits, the ones Naomi would've done if she'd been onstage with that anorexic bitch, Haley or whatever the fuck her name is.

“
Because I'm falling. Falling. Falling into you.
”

When she saw the carnage on the bus, she said she was too late. That
he
got there first. Who the fuck is
he
? What the fuck is going on? The girl starts to move back, white dress dirty and torn, melding into the shadows, taking her answers with her. In my grief, I had forgotten about her and now, here she is, three hundred miles away from the last place I saw her.

I belt out the last lines of the song like a plea, like I'm praying for her to stay, to answer my questions, but if she hears me, she doesn't cut me any slack.

“
And then I know it's the end and even my descent is done.
”

The last thing I see before she goes are her lips, mouthing the words like a curse.

“
I hit the ground and I'm gone. I hit the ground and
we're done. Forever.
”

For some reason, I think I hear an angel singing, strumming the beat of my fluttering pulse with words that are my own, penned in a dirty, spiral notebook, born of the pain that kissed my spirit a lifetime ago. I accept that this is my end and relax into the rhythmic cadence of his beautiful breath.

After the set, Trey brings a couple of girls back to the bus just to piss me off, practically forcing a little blonde onto my lap.

“Give her some of your coke, Turner,” he says as he wraps himself around a brunette and smiles across the table at me. What he doesn't fucking get is that I'm not playing anymore. I don't want this girl or any other. I just want Naomi Knox back. If that can't happen, fuck if I know what I'm going to do. I just sit there for awhile and watch him make an ass out himself. I shot up again in the bathroom, but I don't feel any better, not really. The emotional charge I got from being onstage has totally fucked with my head, and I can't seem to snap out of it. I feel like a zombie, marching along to the beat of a necromancer's drum. I'm moving, but I'm not in control. I'm functioning, but I'm not living, not anymore. “Come on, what's your fucking problem?” Trey asks as the girl runs her fingers through my hair. I let her, but only because I'm an emotional wreck right now. I'm not thinking of her or the words she's whispering into my ear or the way Trey's acting like a damn fucking fool. I'm thinking of the girl with the bare feet and the buzz cut. I looked for her. Oh, you can bet your sweet ass I looked all over the damn place. But I knew I wasn't going to find her.

I let out a sigh that the blonde mistakes for a come on. Her hand reaches down between my legs and strokes over the bulge of my crotch. I clamp my hand down on her wrist hard, maybe too hard and she lets out a yelp.

“Don't.” Just that one word, stiff as steel. I push the girl off and rise to my feet. “I'm not in the fucking mood right now.” I pull a cigarette out of my pocket and light up while the woman starts to screech obscenities from behind me. She even throws a tube of lipstick at the back of my neck.

“Turner, get your ass back here!” Trey shouts as I kick open the screen door and move down the steps, slamming my head against the side of the bus and sliding down to the rocky pavement. I was not expecting love, but I was more than willing to embrace the shit out of it. This whole wallowing in the depths of despair crap? Not so much.

“You alright?” I don't have to look up to know that the voice above me belongs to Ronnie. There aren't many people on this earth who can make the gods cry with a simple question like that.

“Do I look alright, Ronnie?” I snap, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead and letting the ash from my cigarette fall onto my jeans. I think about tossing Asuka's name out there, just so he'll freak out and I won't have to be alone in my misery, but even as trashed as I am, I know better than that. There are certain lines that even I'm not willing to cross. I glance up at him as he pushes the screen door closed on Trey's rant and presses his hands flat against it.

“Don't hold this against Treyjan, Turner. He doesn't know any better. He just wants you to be happy is all.”

I sigh deep and drop my wrist to the ground, letting the burn of my cherry fizzle out against the cement. My other knee comes up, and I drop my head to the rough, dirty denim of my pants, the ones that have dried, black blood splatters around the ankles.

“He's a fucking tool,” I tell Ronnie, and he laughs, moving up close to me, smelling like pot and allspice. I remember the day that Asuka died, the stricken look on Ronnie's face, the way his lips went white and the color drained from his face. My memory of those first few weeks after her death is a little shady, clouded with a lot of horrible all-nighters – girls, booze, drugs – but I'm pretty sure he didn't change his shirt for a month. He'll get it, at least. He'll offer me a joint and stand by my side, and he won't try to push some groupies on me or make me pretend that nothing's wrong.

“He is, yeah, but that's why we like hanging out with him, right? Makes us feel better about ourselves.” I get that it's a joke, but I don't laugh. I feel drained. Even with the dope, I don't feel like such a big shot anymore. I feel small. Miniscule. Sitting here like this, I'm aware of how little I mean to the world, how unimportant I really am. I might have fans, a following of people who like my music, but so what? If I've made any mark on this world, it isn't a positive one. A stain, maybe. Like, look at Naomi. I left her a fucking wreck, used her and tossed her aside like I do everything and everyone else. Maybe in my quest to be respected, I forget to give it back? Maybe I've become the one thing I've never wanted to be?

“I want to believe that she's not dead, Ronnie.”

“There's a chance,” he tells me honestly, scooting closer, feet kicking aside loose pebbles as he adjusts himself and leans back against the bus. Inside, I can hear Trey's false laughter, loud and raucous, full of forced cheer. I don't know what he wants from me, but this shit isn't helping. If anything, it's highlighting exactly how screwed up it is that I am.

“But nobody believes that except for me.” I sink deeper into myself, wrapping my arms around my legs, halting my breathing so that it comes out slow and controlled. Inside though, inside my heart is pounding and slamming against my ribcage and my pulse is racing. My hands shake and my jaw is trembling with adrenaline.

I hear Ronnie exhaling long before he speaks. When he does, I can tell he feels bad for me, that he understands what I'm going through, that he's desperate for me to be right. He wants Naomi to be alive, so I don't have to go through the shit he went through. All of that self-loathing crap, those moments of pure terror when he'd wake up screaming her name.
Asuka.
I think the worst though was the silence that followed the screaming, the frozen slice of hell that Ronnie would sit in, eyes glazed over, sweat pouring down his face. I always knew he was remembering that she was dead, clawing his way out of nightmares and into something much, much worse. Harsh ass fucking reality.

“Does it matter then? Why not hope? Why not hope like hell until the truth comes out? If it turns out you were wrong, get depressed then. But don't get bent out of shape yet. You can always kill yourself later, right?” Ronnie pulls a joint from his pocket and lights up with a silver lighter, casting an orange glow over his stubbled face. The crackling end of the joint makes the snake tattoos on his neck look like they're writhing, constricting around his neck and choking the life out of him. Sometimes, I think he'd like that, to die without having to make a conscious decision about it. Suicide's hard. It takes a lot of courage, and Ronnie and I both know that he's a damn pussy.

I reach my hand up for the joint, and he passes it over.

I'm about to take my first hit when Dax comes over and pauses a couple feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his black jeans.

“Hey,” he says and then looks over at Ronnie like he isn't sure he wants to talk around him. Ronnie's my fucking boy though, and there's no way in shit I'm telling him off. Either Dax says what he needs to say around him or he doesn't say anything at all. I don't want to be left alone right now. I need Ronnie here, gay as that might sound. I take my hit and hold the joint up for Dax. He ignores it. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”