How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (7 page)

Tough

There
was only one place where I knew music would be going on at noon on a Sunday, so
when I got out of the shower, I took a handful of ibuprofen and headed down to
Rowdy’s.

Dodge
was about halfway through the service when I got there. I sat in one of the
back booths and watched the serious Jesus freaks sing and dance along. There
wasn’t any preaching—as far as I know, there hadn’t been any in Halo since Dad
went all Soldier of Heaven—but the music was enough to get the message across.
It even kind of made me feel better. Not the part about how we’d sing glory
hallelujah, because obviously I wouldn’t. But with the drums driving and the
way the guitar lifts you up…and anyway, that kind of music’s written to make
your heart fly.

The
hangover still had a pretty solid hold on my stomach, but if I didn’t move my
head too fast it didn’t hurt, so I closed my eyes and leaned back in my booth,
listening.

I
don’t remember the first song I learned how to play, but the first one I
remember playing said something about laying death in its grave. It was Sissy’s
favorite, even after Mom and Dad were dead and she was trying to take care of
us and stop Kathan. I wish I could remember more of that song. Once I asked Rowdy
whether he knew a gospel song with “death in its grave,” and he said I was
supposed to be the preacher’s kid.

When
the service was over, Dodge came back and slid into the booth across from me.

“What’s
up, Tough? Still no—?” He pointed to his throat.

I
shook my head.

“Sorry,
man.” He took off his camo hat and scratched his forehead. “I can’t believe
Jason would pull that shit with you. It’s not like he ever wanted to be a
country singer. Not when he was in school anyway. Some people, I guess.”

I
shrugged.

“So,
what’s the deal, you’re back and everything’s cool?” Dodge said. “You’re
not…like Colt, are you?”

I
did my best sarcastic nod.
Yeah, Dodge, I’m a familiar. That’s why I’m here
and hung over instead of crawling on my hands and knees in front of Mikal.

Dodge
pulled his hat back on.

“I’m
not trying to be a dick,” he said. “Sorry about Colt. I know you guys didn’t
get along, but still.”

Yeah,
still.

Dodge
blew out a long breath. “So, what now? You taking over the family business?”

I
snorted and he laughed, too.

“Good,
because we need you back on guitar.” He must’ve seen some of the pissed-off
that shot through me right then, because he smacked his hand on the table. “Aw,
come on! You heard Willow, she’s terrible. We got to get her off the guitar and
back on the drums. And even if you can’t sing anymore, you always were a hell
of a guitar player. Morning Fang ain’t the same without you. Everybody says
so.”

Most
of me wanted to. Just the part of me that wished it could’ve killed Jason and
got my voice back because why the hell did he want to live out my dream—and
anyway, it was my fucking band in the first place—didn’t. Right then, though,
that part of me had the majority of the vote.

“This
shouldn’t be that hard a sell,” Dodge said. “I’ll cut you back in and you can
put together the sets. I never could figure out how you did it so good, anyway.
You always knew the right song to play next. People really felt what you—”

I
waved him off before he started telling me my dick was made out of gold and all
the girls for miles around worshipped it.

“You’ll
do it?” he asked.

I
shrugged, but inside I was happier than I should’ve been. It was like that
little rush you get when you decide to buy some meth or a needle of fae glitter
for a big night. Maybe I really was addicted to music.

“Hot
damn!” Dodge slapped his hands together and stood up. “I’m telling everybody.
This place is going to be double capacity. See you later?”

Yep,
I’ll be the one wishing I was singing instead of you.

Desty

Bub’s
Diner didn’t have wireless, but the air conditioning felt like heaven on my
sunburn, and the waiter kept my water full, even during the lunch rush. I sat
at a two-top by myself, nibbling at a cheese sandwich and pickles and trying to
drown my dehydration in ice water.

Maybe
I could head back over to that bar again and ask around some more. This time
I’d be ready for Schoolgirl. If she gave me any trouble, I’d tell her I wasn’t
interested in Tough anyway, and that she could shove her attitude problem up
her butt next to whatever else she had wedged in there.

While
I was daydreaming about having enough attitude and guts to defend myself, a
group of faeries came in and sat at the big family table in the center of the
room. I’d seen faeries in person before, but the shimmering always took me by
surprise. They were so sparkly.

One
faerie said something that made the rest of her friends laugh. Then she touched
the tabletop and a blue rose with glowing orange veins blossomed from the
laminate. The spikey-haired faerie sitting across from her scooped the rose up
and popped it in his mouth. He burped and a puff of blue smoke drifted out.

I
ducked my head and took a drink of water so the faeries wouldn’t see me smiling
and realize I had been watching. The last thing I needed was to get trapped in
some eternal dance party or made into faerie wine.

Pretty
soon the waiter would probably tell me to order some more food or get out and I
would go because I didn’t want to spend any more of my blood money and I didn’t
have anyone to sit and talk with.

I
flicked a sandwich crumb into the green pool of pickle juice on my plate.

Twins
weren’t made to be alone. If I’d learned anything from the last eight months,
it was that.

Tough

I
expected it to hurt worse, but the truth is, I was gone halfway through the
first song. Not being able to sing was kind of how I imagine losing your sense
of taste would be—it blew like a hundred dollar hooker, but my other senses
overcompensated. Sometimes before, my picking would get a little sloppy or I’d
drag my fingers, but that first night back at Rowdy’s, I was on, all the way.
Figure in the packed house, the energy flying off the crowd, the music hitting
that sweet spot between the real world and something higher… It was like being
free again. Like I could hit the highway out of Halo and never have to look
over my shoulder for the Tracker.

Near
the end of the second set, I saw Desty squeeze through the crowd to the bar. I
hadn’t been very drunk last night—at least not while I was talking to
her—because the way I remembered her was pretty much the way she looked. Short
hair, cute nose, big eyes, worn-out boots. Her legs didn’t go on forever, but
they went far enough in those shorts.

I
kept an eye on her through the last song of the set, “Flirting with Disaster.”
She talked to a few different people—a couple tourists and Beth Anne Hicks, the
rip who runs the pharmacy. Whatever Desty was asking them always got a negative
answer. Maybe she wanted to know about Finn, whether he had come in, where
dumbass vamps spent their time so she could find him. That happened sometimes.
Girls got hung up on guys too retarded to appreciate them. Whatever she was
asking, she didn’t see me.

“Hey,
Tough, you in there?” Dodge was setting his bass on its stand.

Willow
was already gone, probably on her way back to Rowdy’s office to call and check
on her little girl, and Owen was halfway off the stage, his fiddle laying in
its case.

I
hung up my Gibson and followed Dodge and Owen to the bar. Desty could go
chasing after whatever asshole she wanted. I’d been around her one time when I
was about three shots in. I barely knew her, couldn’t even remember what we had
talked about except that she swore she wasn’t drunk and then got all
embarrassed like she knew I knew she was lying. And there was that whole thing
about my name.

Up
at the bar, I got a Whitney special—a shot, a longneck, and a shot—from Rowdy.
Killed the shots, then leaned back against the bar and tried to watch Desty
through the crowd. Not exactly an easy thing to do, considering everybody kept
talking to me.

“Hey,
Tough, good to see you back in town… Sounding great tonight, man… Really
killing it… Band needed you back… Wasn’t the same without you…”

No
one mentioned Colt, probably because that was month-old news. No one made any
vamp-whore jokes or asked me any questions they wanted a response to because
everyone knew about Mitzi and Jason stealing my voice and taking off.

I
looked around Owen at Desty. She was by the stage talking to Willow.

Willow
shook her head, but they didn’t stop talking. Will was like that. Something
about her made you feel safe, made you want to stick around. Except for her
baby-daddy, I guess. Willow was a year older than Scout and she had a
three-year-old, so if you did the math, you came up with a fourteen-year-old
Willow having unprotected sex with a tourist. But you’d never have guessed it,
talking to her. She didn’t even cuss.

Willow
nodded in my direction and Desty looked at me. When Desty saw that I was
already looking at her, she looked away real fast. Willow raised her drink to
me. The top part of my cheeks got hot, so I took a drink of beer and nodded at
whatever Owen was saying to Dodge and me.

Out
of the corner of my eye, I could see Desty and Willow keep on talking. I sure
would’ve liked to know what about.

Desty

“You
could try Seventh Circle, the angel club on the north end of town,” Willow
said, tucking a long, red-orange curl behind her ear. “They let humans in
sometimes.”

“Maybe
I will,” I said.

“So,
why would your sister want to become a familiar?” Willow asked.

The
question caught me off guard. I laughed, but it sounded as uncomfortable as it felt.

“Starting
us off with an easy one, huh?” I said.

Willow
smiled.

I
took a drink of my orange juice and stared down into the cup.

How
do you explain to someone that after sixteen years your dad suddenly started
liking women closer to your age than your mom’s? Like that, I guess, pretty
much word-for-word, unless you still kind of wished he’d get over his midlife
crisis and come home.

“A
few years ago, our dad left,” I said. But that wasn’t far enough back to make
Willow understand. “See, before, Tempie and him were always really close.
They’d go deer hunting and do stuff together. But then he ran off with this
girl who was only like five years older than we were. Tempie went after him.
She said he took her out to eat and told her that he was happy with Gianna—that
he was starting a new life and he needed some time alone to adjust. It really
hurt her.”

“What
about you?” Willow asked.

“What
about me?”

“You
must’ve been pretty upset, too.”

Upset?
I didn’t like hunting or fishing, and camping was definitely not for me.
Reading—that was pretty much the extent of my hobbies. Dad and I had hung out
as much as two people with only genetics in common could, but he was still my
dad. If he emailed me tomorrow and said he wanted to take me to Freezer for a
butterscotch milkshake, I would go running home like my butt was on fire. Of
course I’d been upset when he left, but there had been school and work and
college applications and trying to get Mom to eat and act like a living,
functioning human being. So, yeah, I was upset, but not everybody gets to
self-destruct.

Willow
touched my arm and I jumped.

“Sorry,”
she said. “You looked like you were about to cry.”

“It’s
okay.” I tried to laugh. “I forgot, what was the question?”

“I
was just wondering why your sister would want to be a familiar. Why would
anybody? I mean, they have to know what happens when the angel moves on.”

I
took a deep breath and let it out.

“Tempie
said all this stuff about wanting to be part of something bigger and truer on
her blog, but you have to know her. She’s romantic, but she’s really spiteful,
too. She left me a note the night she ran away.” It was weird to hear myself
talking about the note out loud. Willow was the first person I had told.
“Tempie said if some guy was going to screw her over anyway, she wanted it to
be hard and fast and to have his complete devotion while it happened. She said
at least fallen angels let you know what you were in for up front.”

Willow
hmmed and took another sip of her white Russian.

“Where’re
you from?” she asked.

“A
little south of Hannibal.”

“On
the river?”

I
nodded. “Close enough that ten acres of our farm is overflow for the levee.”

“So
you guys had plenty of sirens,” Willow said.

“Yeah.”
It seemed like small talk, so I relaxed. “Some of the idiot guys in my class
actually hunted them.”

“Is
Hannibal crow or coyote territory?” she asked.

“Coyote.”

“I
thought so,” Willow said. “But you guys don’t have any fallen angels.” She
traced the rim of her drink with her thumb. “No one who lived in an angel town
ever wanted to become a familiar, I bet. You can’t see the castoffs and still
convince yourself you want that.”

I
bit the inside of my cheek. So much for safe conversation.

“I
don’t have anything against Kathan,” Willow said. “I assume he’s an okay mayor.
I’m not much into politics, but he must be, right? I mean, he made the ‘every
human in Halo has to have a protector’ rule so the vamps and sirens wouldn’t
just go around sucking everybody dry and the werecreatures wouldn’t be
constantly fighting over who was hunting on whose land, so, you know. That was
really great of him, considering he could’ve just had Mikal and the foot
soldiers wipe us all out instead of letting our generation live. But Kathan
really, really hates Tough’s family.”

Willow
nodded at Tough. He was leaned up against the bar with a beer, watching us. I
looked away, but Willow just raised her glass in a little salute to him.

“It’s
okay,” she said to me, “You can look. He’s pretending to listen to Owen now
because we caught him.”

I
flipped my bangs out of my face and stole a glance. Tough was nodding at an
orange-haired guy, but even in the dim light I could see the top of his
cheekbones turning red. Something about the blush touched off a spark in my
brain, as if I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Tough’s
brother Colt is a familiar,” Willow said. “He was killing the people Mikal
enthralled, so Kathan gave Colt to her, kind of like a poetic justice thing.
Angels are really into that. Anyway, what I think people don’t get is that,
sometimes, fallen angels use being a familiar as a punishment. Like, they can’t
think of anything worse than— What’s wrong?”

“I
saw him,” I said. “Yesterday. Tough’s brother. When I went on the Dark Mansion
tour.”

Willow
leaned forward. “How did he look?”

Naked?
Smoking hot? Subservient? Madly in love? House broken?
My
dad used to have this term he thought was really funny, but I couldn’t say
“pussy-whipped” out loud.

“Ironic,”
I said, remembering his tattoos.

“Huh?”

“No,
I mean, he has these—” I shook my head. “He seemed fine.”

“Was
he like…? I don’t know what to ask exactly,” Willow said. She looked over at
Tough again. “But I guess that Mikal still has him is the answer.”

“She
didn’t look like she was going to cast him off anytime soon.”

“Mikal
goes through them pretty fast,” Willow said.

The
eighteen day average popped into my brain. Willow looked at me like she could
tell I’d heard the numbers and she didn’t want me to have any illusions about
them based on a nationwide figure.

“A
few months ago we had five castoffs zombie-ing around Halo trying to kill
themselves,” Willow said. “Mikal is brutal. A week with her would be like
forever.”

“How
long has Colt—”

“Thirty-four
days today.”

I
couldn’t say anything to that. Well, maybe I could have, but it would’ve been
something that would’ve blown the rest of the stupid from the last few days out
of the water, like “Wow” or “Golly.”

“Not
very many people around here liked Colt,” Willow said. “You saw him, so you
know he’s hot, but there was just something about him, you know? Whitneys are
natural troublemakers.” She shrugged. “I mean, their dad got all our parents
killed in that whole mess with Kathan. Tough’s just the fun kind of trouble.”

Even
though I’d heard the generation-sweep fact from Know-It-All on the Dark Mansion
tour, I wasn’t prepared to hear someone who had lived it say the words.

“Willow?
I’m sorry about your parents.”

“I
was little,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t really remember them.”

“How
did you— I mean, who took care of you?”

Willow
pointed at the orange-haired guy she had called Owen earlier. He was racing
Tough to drink the long line of shots on the bar between them. Tough grabbed
the middle shot before Owen did, downed it, then threw up his fists in victory.

“My
cousin and his girlfriend,” Willow said. “I think they did a pretty decent job
for a couple of sixteen-year-olds.”

A
heavyset guy in a camo hat tapped Willow’s arm as he passed her.

“Got
to go,” she said to me, leaving her drink on the edge of the stage and hiking
herself up beside it. “You sticking around for the last set?”

“Sure.”
I’d paid my eight bucks. Might as well get my money’s worth.

Willow
grinned. “Cool.”

I
squeezed into an empty spot along the wall. Camo-Hat plugged in his bass.
Willow put on a pair of headphones and played a bored little ditty on her
snare. At the bar, Tough and Owen were doing another round of shots.

Willow
pretended to check a wristwatch.

Camo-Hat
leaned into his microphone and said, “Save some booze for the drunks, guys.”

They
slammed their last shots, then weaved through the crowd swarming the dance
floor.

I
guess I didn’t realize that they were waiting for Tough, too. He hadn’t been
playing with the band the night before, so it surprised me when he hopped up on
stage, picked up a guitar, and slipped the strap over his shoulder. He spent a
couple tipsy seconds hooking an amp cord through his belt loop and plugging it in.
Then he pulled a pick from his pocket and gave the crowd a wave and smile as if
he was apologizing for being a little drunk.

Somebody
on the other side of the room laughed, but everyone I could see looked like
they were holding their breath.

And
watching Tough.

He
faced his band mates and nodded—two, three, four times—then picked out the
opening to “Streets of Bakersfield” as he turned back to the crowd. Willow
whooped and she, Owen, and Camo-Hat jumped in.

I
don’t know how to make music, but I do love it. I appreciate it like someone
who eats five-star meals but doesn’t know how to boil water. Camo-Hat, Owen,
and Willow were good—“awesome” Mom would’ve said back when she still cared
enough to talk—but even I could tell they weren’t in the same class as Tough.
He was so good that he made the rest of the band look better. He shined like a
jarful of sunlight and the crowd worshipped him.

For
a second, I kind of wanted to hate him. How could he be smiling like that? His
brother had been enthralled by the most vicious enforcer I’d ever heard of. If
I knew for sure that Tempie was a familiar, I wouldn’t be having fun in a bar.

But
if Tempie was a familiar, what could I do? Suicide-proof the house and wait for
her angel to cast her off? If she was with an alpha, that could take months.
How long could I just sit around doing nothing, knowing my sister’s brain was
corroding?

Tough’s
brother Colt was thirty-four days into something that he shouldn’t have
survived past day eighteen. I’d heard Willow say it and I knew it was amazing,
but it hadn’t dawned on me what that really meant—Colt was beating Mikal. He
couldn’t hold out forever and, if the articles were right, then the more
brutality Mikal got to use to break him, the more fun she would have. But Colt
had already gone almost twice what most people enthralled to an enforcer had.

I
hugged my arms around the pain in my stomach. Maybe it hurt like heck to know
your brother was a familiar, but maybe it was also a twisted kind of comfort to
know he hadn’t lost yet.

When
the song ended, Tough cocked his head and looked right at me. The pause
stretched out. People started yelling requests, but Tough kept staring at me
like he was trying to see inside my skin. I squirmed. What if he could read
minds?

Don’t
think about how hot he is. Or how hot his brother is. Or how you saw his
brother’s—

Stellar
job, brain. Great first instincts.

Finally,
Tough started another song, banging out raw resentment with a country twang. I
didn’t recognize the tune, but the crowd went nuts.

Camo-Hat
laughed and started to sing—

“You
kept me cheap and down,

Bullshit
me all over town,

Taught
me to love pain,

That
I ain’t worth anything.

But
anymore the sex don’t distract

From
the bitch I’m looking at.

Now
I’m pretty sure

I
ain’t the only whore,

And
I’m done crawling back for more.”

Everyone
who knew the song started yelling along with Camo-Hat when he got to the
chorus.

This
town can suck me.

Protection
can fuck me.

You
can keep my soul.

I
already leased out that hole,

When
I lost my halo in your bed.