How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (13 page)

Tough

After
I let Dodge know I hadn’t missed the Welcome Home bonfire because I’d skipped
town again or gotten eaten, I headed over to the Matchmaker’s office.

“Hey,
Tough!” Addison bounced to her desk and typed something into her computer. “Oh
my gosh, I was at Rowdy’s last night. You guys were incredible. I don’t know
how Morning Fang got by without you. If you were still singing, I bet Cris
would have to get a set of those velvet ropes and people would be lining up
down the street. No wonder Jason won
Country Idol
with your voice.
That’s got to make you feel a little better, huh? Knowing you were good enough
to be a star, even without your body?”

She
smiled up at me and I wondered whether all that hair-bleach had given her brain
damage over the years.

“You
can go on back, she’s ready for you.”

I
tried to shake it off as I headed back to the Matchmaker’s office. If I didn’t
know any better, I would think Addison had said all that so I would feel like
someone had smashed my face into a concrete slab.

“Have
a seat, Tough,” the Matchmaker said. “How’s the job search going?”

The
good thing about getting your face smashed into concrete is that it makes
everything else feel numb. I only half-noticed the twinge in my side when I
handed the Matchmaker the paper with the band’s information written on it and
how much Rowdy paid. Surely no one but Addison was stupid enough to think I’d
be happy that dumbass and his icy nympho wife had stolen my voice and ran off
to win a million bucks with it.

“This
is how much you make each week?” the Matchmaker said. She sounded like she
couldn’t believe it.

Well,
we did the tip jar thing for a little while, then Rowdy figured out it’d work
better on his taxes if he took the tips and paid us per set. Makes it look like
he’s losing money or something.

“You
don’t do any work on the side?” she asked. “This is what you live on?”

It
wasn’t like I spent a lot on gas or clothes. Just split the groceries and
utilities with Harper and Jax, get a bottle of SoCo and a case of beer every
couple days or so. People at Rowdy’s had bought me and the band enough drinks
that our tabs were paid up for the next year.

Then
I got what the Matchmaker was saying.

Oh,
you mean banging chicks for money. No, I don’t gigolo on the side. I’m a one-vamp
man-whore.

She
looked back down at the paper and tried to change the subject. “Morning Fang?”

It’s
a joke about fucking a vamp and morning wood,
I told her.
A
classy, respectable chick like you probably wouldn’t get it.

“I
wasn’t trying to say anything about who you are or what you do, Tough.”

Maybe
she really wasn’t, but when you grow up to be the shittiest possible version of
who you should’ve been it seems like all anyone’s ever trying to do is remind
you. I leaned back in my chair. The Matchmaker propped the paper up in front of
her computer screen. She clicked on something, then started typing.

After
a while, I thought at her,
You know I went to Nashville once before?

“I
heard something like that at our class’s memorial service for Ryder,” she said.

I
nodded. You go to the service when someone in your class dies, even if they
were the biggest dick that ever lived. Jason would probably go when Colt died.
Addison would go when I died.

It
took the Tracker eleven weeks to catch up to me that time because I kept moving
around. I slept on crosstown buses and played two or three different bars a
night. I thought if I could make it big before he found me… But I talked to a
guy from a label. They won’t sign anyone under eighteen without parental
consent and since we never legally had a guardian after Mom and Dad died—
I
made the jacking-off sign and let my fist drop open.

“Makes
sense, doesn’t it?” The Matchmaker said.

Can’t
have a prison with just three walls.

She
looked up from her computer for a second.
“You’re pretty gloomy today.”

I
shrugged. I got that way sometimes. Especially when I woke up early with an
I’m-really-back-in-Halo hangover. That little story was just the first time I
realized there was only one way out of this damn town.

“Contemplating
suicide?” The Matchmaker shook her head. “That really won’t look good on your
protector application.”

I
snorted. She wasn’t as much of an NP bitch as she seemed like.

“And
you’re not as dumb as you look.” She typed something else on her computer and
waited. “You’re sure you won’t consider any of the fae folk?”

Faeries
love music and they’re great singers, but there was a lot of other stuff about
them that freaked me out. Like how even the guys shimmer. And how fae glamour
can turn you on whether you’re into guys or girls. I didn’t want to take the
chance that someone might misunderstand the arrangement with Jason and Mitzi
and think I’d be cool doing stuff with a guy, even if he did sparkle.

The
Matchmaker clicked on something, trying not to smile.

“Okay,
no faeries it is.” She looked at the screen. “There aren’t any matches yet, but
you’re in the system. I’ll let you know as soon as something comes up.”

I
nodded.

The
Matchmaker opened a desk drawer, found a folder, and pulled a piece of paper
out of it.

“Now,
Tough, about your payment.” She looked down at the paper in her hands, rolled
her lips together, then handed it to me. “Because of your financial status, I
thought we could come to an agreement based on your previous arrangement with
the Gudehauses.”

Under
Payment Due, it said, “services rendered.” It took me a minute to get what she
meant.

Oh,
hell, she wants me to nail her.

The
Matchmaker half-winced, half-laughed. “If you find it that distasteful—”

No,
I didn’t mean it like that. You’re pretty. I just sort of have somebody I like
and I don’t want to fuck around on her.

That
seemed to help a little. It made the Matchmaker smile, anyway.

“That’s
sweet, Tough.”

Sure.
So, if we could work something else out, that’d be great.

“The
monetary price for my services is over a thousand dollars,” she said. “I was
going to permit the exchange because I knew you couldn’t afford the payment.”

A
thousand bucks? I couldn’t keep a damn bank account open, so I probably
couldn’t even get near that kind of money.

“I
could call Mayor Dark,” the Matchmaker said. “I’m sure he would agree to make
the payment for you.”

Yeah,
I just bet he would.
Then I could spend the last couple weeks of my
life sucking Mikal’s dick.

“This
is serious, Tough. You agreed to payment.” The Matchmaker stood up and came
around to lean against her desk in front of me. “I thought this would be
easiest for you since you’ve already done this sort of thing before. If you
have something else to offer—”

A
shitty truck, a shitty house I didn’t own even half of, some shitty
hand-me-downs from that asshole Ryder who this bitch had obviously had a crush
on in school and who she’d said she thought I looked like. Why the hell hadn’t
I remembered that earlier?

“If
you’re so damn against this, you have guitars,” the Matchmaker said. “Shannon
Colter’s tattooed acoustic alone—”

No
fucking way in Hell.

I
took off my hat and rubbed my eyes. Blew my breath out. What the hell had I
thought she was going to ask me for? A beautiful song? Trick-ass whores pay the
bills with sex. That’s how the real world works.

“Tough?”

I’m
kind of in bad shape right now,
I told her.
Messed up rib.
Would you take a hand job?

“A
thousand dollar hand job? You can do better than that.” She looked down at the
rips in the knees of my jeans. “Can’t you?”

Colt

“Just
being a pussy is all, and he gets away with it because he’s the baby,” Ryder
said. He glared back across the snowy pasture toward the house, then shook his
head like he could see Tough sleeping.

I
shut the gate behind the last cow and Ryder hooked the hotwire back up.

“He
didn’t know we were putting Mom in the ground,” I said, thinking back to the
pallbearers lowering the casket into the grave and Tough losing it. Could
eight-year-olds even understand death? Dad’s sermon had said Mom’s soul wasn’t
in her body anymore, but I was eleven and still having a hard time getting my
head around that.

“Tough
cried more than Sissy did and she’s a fucking girl.” Ryder was fourteen,
shorter than me and most of the guys in his class, and a preacher’s son. He
knew every cuss word there was, plus some I was pretty sure he’d made up.

“You
cried, too,” I said because Tough was my brother and I stuck up for him. When
he was born, Mom had said she got him for me because Sissy had Ryder and Ryder
had me, but I didn’t have anyone.

Ryder
stared down a heifer as it hoofed past us to the hay ring.

“So
did you,” he said, “But you didn’t start screaming and make Sissy miss her own
fucking mom’s funeral.”

“Mom’s
safe now, isn’t she?” I asked. “Nothing can get her in Heaven.”

“Dammit,
Colt, don’t start bawling again.” Ryder’s voice cracked. “Dad’ll see you.”

I
nodded and wiped my face on my jacket sleeve.

Dad
had dumped the bale in the hay ring and shut the tractor off. Now he was
leaning against the side of the bale stabber, watching the cows come running.
It was weird to see him in his Sunday pants and Carhart coat doing chores, not
even wearing mud boots. He hadn’t changed when we got back from the burial. All
he did was take off his suit jacket, put on his coat and tell us to come on,
but Sissy had made us put on work clothes before we went out.

“You
all remember to shut the gate?” Dad asked.

“Yes,
sir.”

“Good
deal.”

We
stood there while the herd crowded around the hay ring. They breathed huge
whooshes of steam out their noses and banged against the metal. Muddy hooves,
manure, piss, and coarse, warm hair. Mom was dead and the cows came up to eat
anyway.

“Dad—”
Ryder’s voice cracked again, but I was the one who started crying.

Dad
grabbed us both, one arm around each of our necks, and hugged us.

“It’s
over,” Dad said. I could feel him shaking. “The time for preaching is over.
What they’re doing is wrong, and if we let them keep doing it, it’s like we’re
helping them. Do you boys understand? If we just turn a blind eye, it’s like we
killed Mom. You guys remember the verse from the service?”

“‘On
the day when I cried, You answered me, my strength of soul You increased,’” I
recited. It had been running through my head since I’d heard Dad say it.

“That’s
right, but that’s not the one I mean.” Dad let us go and sat back on his heels
to look us in the eyes. He was crying, too. “‘Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who
trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.’ Boys, I cried out to Him and
He answered me. The final battle is coming. I won’t be around for it, but we
can’t allow Mikal to be around for it, either. Without her, Kathan can’t
command his army. God chose us to stop them. He anointed our family as His
soldiers with Mom’s blood—”

Leave
it to you to put off escapism until the very end,
Mikal
said. I could feel her studying the memory.
Are you giving yourself a
pep-talk or trying to lose yourself in the good old days?

You
know, before I met you I thought you were a man whenever Dad said your name,
I
told her.

Mikal
laughed.
Would you rather I be a man? I use this form because I prefer it,
but I can change if I choose to. It would be easier for you to hate me if I were
male. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To hate me? That’s why you came back
here.

No,
it’s not,
I said.

Mikal
liked hearing me deny something she knew I wanted. It made her happy and that
made me happy, but in a way that felt like getting pistol-whipped and seeing
the world spin underneath you. She was right. I did want to hate her—I needed
to hate her—but that wasn’t why I wanted to relive the day of Mom’s funeral.

Do
you know what would really make me happy?
Mikal asked.

You
want me to explain why I’m here,
I said.

The
tar-covered wings stroking my brain sizzled with her approval, but I was either
too far gone to hear the answering screams or—hopefully—dead. I should’ve tried
to fight her, but I was so fucking tired.

Just
make me,
I said.

You
know that’s not how this game ends, Colter.

I
watched the cows push each other around, eating, and listened to a man who had
been a preacher his whole adult life telling his sons that victory wasn’t in
the word, but in the actions. He talked about swords and war and death and the
final battle and every struggle leading up to it.

This
was the first time in my life that everything was absolutely clear,
I
said.