Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (5 page)

Mackey smiled at her, because she was proud and happy, and he didn’t want to burden her with the stuff that had been roiling around in his gut since the day Grant had shotgunned smoke into his mouth and touched their lips together.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said softly. “I gotta go get changed.”

He’d kept his suit neatly in the closet, away from Cheever, tucked carefully in the middle of everyone’s Sunday school clothes that Cheever knew he
must not touch
.

Jeff was combing his hair in the little mirror they kept by the window while Mackey pulled on his suit, and when Jeff turned around, he grinned.

“Mom knows her shit,” he said proudly, and Mackey grinned back. Jeff didn’t say much, but it couldn’t be argued that the boys loved their mama.

Then, before Mackey could say anything, Jeff swept his eyes up and down the tailored shirt with the tails and the low-hipped jeans.

“Oh Jesus, Mackey—did you have to
shave
?”

Mackey nodded, thankful he could confide in this to someone. “I had to shave
again
,” he muttered. “It was growing back
itchy
!”

Jeff laughed. “Well, if I ever have to shave my balls for music, I know who to ask!”

Mackey scowled. “Wasn’t my balls, it was just… you know….”

Jeff took in the low-slung jeans again. “Well, if they’d been any smaller, it woulda been your balls. You better hope you don’t get a woody or that thing’ll pop right out.”

Mackey stared at him. “Sometimes brothers are a real fuckin’ plague of locusts, you know that?” he snapped, and Jeff laughed quietly all the way out the door.

S
TEVIE
AND
Grant arrived, and they all piled into Grant’s minivan. Samantha already sat in the front, but she moved to the backseat for Kell. On one hand that seemed really gracious, but on the other, Mackey didn’t give a fuck.

It was so easy to blame her.

“So, Mackey, you nervous?” she asked, and Mackey gave her his best smile, which, at the moment, was thin as January sunshine.

“Not really,” he said, being honest. “I memorized that last song real good.”

“The one you wrote this afternoon?” Her face was a perfect oval, and she’d done something complicated with her blonde hair, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to rip it all out by the dark roots. Grant had
told
her about that? “Grant couldn’t stop bragging about you,” she said, smiling like he’d be happy about this. “He thinks you’re a genius. He keeps saying about how you’ll put our little town on the map, and I’m like, ‘Mackey? If he’s smart, he’ll just forget we were ever here.’”

She winked at him, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be mad at this girl who just wished him the same wish he’d had for most of his life.

Wouldn’t it be great to not live in Tyson anymore? Live in a place with his own bedroom? Not have to deal with the daily rounds of “Hey, kid, your mom’s pregnant again!”

“I wouldn’t forget you,” he said, surprised to hear himself saying something civil.

She laughed and patted his knee and then talked to Kell and Grant through the front seat, but Mackey wouldn’t forget. She’d tried to be nice to him.

And he wasn’t lying about not being nervous, either. In fact, being up on stage was….

It was like flying.

“Heya,” he said when the moment came, listening for a giddy moment as his voice boomed back at him under the mirror-ball lights. He stood up with his mike, with the guys around and behind him on the small stage. Behind Steve’s drum set was the DJ stand—which swung out to the side when the band wasn’t playing—but in front of it?

Well, nearly two hundred and fifty people, waiting for the five boys to play.

Mackey tapped the microphone and felt a little bit of bitch welling up in his chest. “Did I say ‘heya,’ y’all?’” he asked, and the attitude? Oh, it caught their attention.

The swell of sound and the applause was all Mackey needed.

“That’s more like it! So, we’re Outbreak Monkey, and we’re gonna play you some music. I’m gonna sweat some
blood
on this little stage—you all wanna see that? Wanna see some
blood
?”

In an instant they were rabid, and Mackey grinned, the same grin he’d given Grant in a burnt-out car. “Well. We’ll fuckin’ see.
One
,
two
,
one two three four
….”

And they launched into “Satisfaction” before the teachers could stop the show.

The kids, the ones Mackey had fought in grade school and ignored in high school, the ones who threw food at Jeff and Stevie and who bitched behind Grant’s back about how Grant’s daddy kept him safe—
those
kids—were suddenly eating out of Mackey’s hand.

And he reveled in it. He abused them. He taunted them. He stuck his tongue out and licked their figurative balls, then shook his ass and grabbed his crotch, and they hung on every fucking word.

They’d started with six songs on their roster. By the time they were done with “Screaming for You,” their original song, the crowd was foaming at the mouth. Kell hunched his shoulders and turned his back on them, eyes closed in concentration. Grant flirted with them, winking and shaking his hips. Jeff did the bass thing, just like Mackey told him to, aloof and self-contained, and Stevie kicked back on the drums, rhythmic and regular and dependable for every beat.

Mackey closed his eyes and sang. He screamed. He moved his body and opened his soul, and those kids who hated him surged, thrust, ravished, and Mackey gave it up. Everything. He gave them everything.

And they reached with greedy hands and shrieked for more.

By the time they were done with “Freebird,” sweat sopped Mackey’s new jacket and ran from his hair into his eyes. He flipped his head and tossed it out, and finished the goddamned song.

They screamed for more.

Mackey met Kell’s eyes as they were bowing in the middle of the noise volcano, and Kell shrugged and looked at Grant.

Grant reached for Mackey’s guitar, which sat on the side of the stage and brought it to him, bowing a little as he handed it over.

“Yeah?” Mackey asked, his voice below the mike.

Grant smiled faintly, his mouth moist and parted because he left sweat on the stage too. “Let them see you,” he said, so quietly Mackey had to cock his head to hear. “Let them get lost like I do.”

Mackey shivered and turned toward the crowd, fixing the strap of the guitar over his head and plugging it into the amp during the sudden burst of applause. The rest of the band faded back, and Tony must have done something with the lights, because suddenly Mackey stood alone in the spot, staring thoughtfully out into the sudden black hush.

His fingers started moving on the strings all by themselves. The rush of blood in his veins, the rasp of his breath, the chill of sweat, all of the symphony of Mackey Sanders wove liquid emotion through the air.

He
was
music, everybody’s music, every soul’s note, played on the splintered stage of Graham Winters High School auditorium.

“
Will you see me crying or would you rather see me high?
”

The song ended with a question, destruction or sadness, and the startled silence that followed his last guitar chord simply echoed their shared pain: Mackey and the audience, bound by sweat and blood as long as the music played.

The silence lasted a heartbeat, two, and then exploded, fireworks of sound. For a moment, Mackey was terrified, threatened by that neediness, alone, a child surrounded by demons, all of them screaming for his blood.

The moment passed, and he curled his lips at the frenzied students, then bowed. “Y’all can listen to my music anytime,” he said.

They were still screaming his name as he walked off the stage.

He found himself whirled away, hustled off the stage and out of the auditorium while the DJ got back behind his setup and attempted to restore order. Mackey was giddy, high as a kite on adrenaline and—suddenly, uncomfortably—aware of how tight his pants were.

But he wasn’t going to tell his brothers that, especially as he was engulfed again and again in their press of bodies, in the hugs and congratulations and general whooping and hollering, because, dammit, it was a
win
, and Mackey’s brothers knew enough about life to know that didn’t happen nearly enough.

“Mackey,” Grant said, his voice low and throaty. “God, Mackey, you were amazing!”

“Hear hear!” Stevie said, and he and Jeff did a high five/down low like they rehearsed it.

“That was
awesome
,” Mackey said, his voice shuddering in his chest. And then
he
was shuddering, because it was cool outside and he was sopping with sweat.

Everyone else seemed to agree, and by consensus they all wandered back inside to get some punch, because besides everything else they were dying of thirst.

Inside was the last place Mackey wanted to be.

It was loud, it was dark, it was hot. People who hadn’t given him the time of day
that morning
suddenly wanted his attention, and he didn’t want to talk to those people. Why would he?

So he found himself by the snack table, munching on a brownie and drinking some punch with way too much sugar in it, having stilted conversation with Tony Rodriguez.

“Are they really both dancing with Carly Padgett?” Tony asked, and that made Mackey smile. Sure enough, Carly had her arms around Steve’s waist and was laying her head on his chest while Jeff whuffled in her ear from behind, making her laugh.

“I don’t know if the world’s quite real for them when they’re split up,” Mackey said, meaning it. The story was, Mackey’s mom had been pregnant with Mackey himself and cleaning houses between shifts at the restaurant to pay her medical bills. Kell had met Grant, and Jeff had met Stevie while she was scrubbing their parents’ toilets and getting paid out of pity. Grant lived in one of the big “dragon houses”—as Mackey thought of them—outside of town: the places of money, what usually people like the Sanderses only saw when scrubbing toilets. Later, much later, Mackey put together the cost to Grant for being friends with the Sanders kids. But when you’re a kid, that doesn’t really come into play. When you’re a kid, all that matters is that your brother’s friend is part of your life and nothing seems to stop him from riding his bike or running away to visit your two-bedroom apartment. To Mackey, Grant was like Kell, Jeff, and Stevie. Everything outside his brothers had no bearing on his life.

But Grant
was
part of his band of brothers, and Grant was being pulled away by Samantha, outside through the back door of the gym. Mackey couldn’t help but watch him go.

Before the door closed, Grant’s eyes sought his out in the darkness, a look of uncharacteristic bleakness on his face as the door closed behind him.

“He does not look happy,” Tony murmured by Mackey’s ear, and Mackey jerked back, startled.

Tony sighed and took his own step back.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, and Mackey fought irritation.

“Man, why you gotta do that. It’s not like I got any real friends, you know?”

Tony looked up at him, sudden pain aching in his eyes. “One guy on campus who knows how I feel, and he wants to be friends?
Fuck
that!”

Tony stalked away, leaving Mackey surprised at how much that hurt as well.

Fuck that? Oh fuck
this.
Home was two miles away—Mackey could fucking walk.

He found Kell, dancing in a corner with a girl whose dress was doing a worse and worse job of covering her tits.

“Goin’ home,” he muttered, just loud enough for Kell to look up distractedly and nod.

Good. Mackey had done his job. He slid out the same way Grant had gone, because that was the only way he could get out without six teachers jumping his shit and making sure he wasn’t getting drunk or stoned or fighting in the parking lot or something. The door Grant had taken led to the dark and silent loading and unloading parking lot. Anyone who didn’t want quiet and dark might have been intimidated by how black the countryside was after it cleared the circle of the one lamp the school had up back there.

Mackey wasn’t. He slept on the bottom bunk, tight in the corner, ignored and unbothered. He liked it that way. The darkness reminded him of that space, private and safe, and he stuck to the shadows, letting the shaking fade as he calmed down.

He made the mistake of passing Grant’s mom’s car, though, and he heard it, Sam’s voice, plain as day.

She was moaning, muffling sex noises against something, probably Grant’s chest.

“God, Grant, please… not just… can’t you…? Please?”

“Don’t got no condoms.” Grant’s voice was harsh. “C’mon, Sam… c’mon… you can do it….”

Her repressed scream of orgasm made Mackey’s eyes burn. Oh God. Really? He had to listen to this?

But he couldn’t get out of it, he realized. A hurricane fence ran along the side of the school, and the minivan was blocking the gate. Oh hell.

With a little whimper, he sank deeply into the shadows, tucking himself in a corner between the gymnasium and the locker rooms, staying out just enough to be able to hear when they left.

For a long moment, there was silence, punctuated only by what must have been their breathing.

“But Grant,” Samantha complained, “you didn’t even… don’t you want….”

Mackey had known Grant most of his life. He knew the way his voice sounded when he lied.

“No worries, darlin’,” Grant murmured. “I came just getting you off.”

Sure you did. You didn’t come. I don’t think you even got hard.

“Oh no! Grant—your slacks!”

“You go back inside, babe. I’ve got a rag in here I can use to clean up, okay?”

“You sure? Man, one of these days you’ve got to remember condoms, babe. We’re gonna have our V-cards forever!”

“No crime in that,” Grant said gently. Mackey heard what must have been a kiss, and he saw her stumbling across the parking lot, barefoot, her pantyhose probably wadded in her purse.

Mackey waited until he heard the slam of the door back into the gym before he took a step out of the shadows—