I wanted to feel sorry for that guy in the cemetery, but the whole thing was so confusing. He was a weirdo and he’d probably tried to hurt Fern and the only person who needed to feel guilty for this was Balthazar fucking Seizure. I listened to her laughing in the front lounge and I thought about how light she’d been lately, how happy and enthusiastic about everything, and I figured she was probably insane. I was probably a little insane too. Maybe she had lied about the guy in the cemetery. But I’d stabbed his throat and ripped all those weird tendons with the knife. I’d dug right in.
One thing was for sure. I wasn’t going to be able to compart-mentalize shit. A long time ago, I’d promised Fern that we would get revenge. We’d come a long way since then, and Fern had turned it into reality. If I could smash a stranger’s face in, if I could rip out some guy’s throat, I could kill Balthazar Seizure.
FORTY-NINE
We carried on. Fern was crazily happy, and I think Edgar and everyone started getting creeped out by her. She was always smiling, always giddy. She was acting weird. I knew why. I kept waiting for another situation, another night, another call from a shadowy alley, another whispered prompt from my friend to do it, finish it. I felt sick when I thought about it. I wondered what my mother would think of me. My little sister. I never called home much anyway.
One night we were in Ripsawdomy’s dressing room after a show. Everyone was drinking. Socks and Edgar were there, even a few of the guys from Gurgol were hanging out. Fern was there. She was talking animatedly. I was next to Chris on the dirty couch. I was desperate to have fun as well. It was hard for me to feel social. All I wanted to do was go lie down in my bunk. But it was nice to be with Chris, despite the fact that we didn’t seem to be going anywhere. We were still taking our walks, but his silence was starting to bother me. I didn’t watch his shows anymore, and if he was watching ours, I wasn’t really noticing.
Chick came into the dressing room with some girl. He was wearing his show clothes, but he’d changed into flip-flops. They sat down on the couch, the girl beside me, Chick on the other side of her.
“Hi,” she said to me blearily. She smiled at me, eyes half-lidded.
“Hi.”
“You were in the band,” she said. “You were so awesome.”
“Thanks.”
Chick put his feet up on the coffee table in front of the couch, and I stared at his toes. The skin was dry and his toenails were long and yellow. I wrinkled my nose in disgust, irritated.
“His toes are fucking disgusting,” I said to the girl.
“Huh?”
“His toenails.” I pointed. “That’s sick.”
She just looked confused, so I turned back to Chris. He was chatting with one of the Gurgol guys, but when he saw me looking at him, he smiled and put his arm around me.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Chris, what am I doing here?”
“What do you mean?” He took a swig of beer.
“What am I doing here?”
He stared at me blankly, then frowned. “Getting wasted?”
“Chris, I’m not even drinking.”
He studied my face. “You mean, ‘what am I doing here,’ like, for your life?”
“I guess.”
“I believe we’re here for love. Just to chill out and absorb everything. Like music.”
“Smoke some weed, play some acoustic?”
His face lit up. “Yes. Exactly. We should do that sometime.”
“I was just kidding,” I said.
He hesitated, then laughed awkwardly. “I know.”
We stared at each other, and that’s when I realized that his silences and his frowns and his furrowed brow stares, all of which I’d thought hid some level of deep thought, of quiet intelligence, were really just nothing. Chris was kind of an idiot. A nice idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. And we had nothing in common.