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“We'll get fucked up and pretend to be Mormons,” Biesty said, grinning. “Like old times.”

“I don't remember that,” Dustin lied.

He watched the shimmering green signs of the freeway pass overhead. They were headed to Manhattan Beach, where some of Biesty's rich UCLA friends had rented a house for the summer. Dustin hadn't been to a party since the accident, and Biesty had turned it into a Religious Event: he'd decided that Dustin needed to go, and there was no convincing him otherwise. He'd even driven all the way to Antelope Valley in his beat-up Karmann Ghia to pick him up. Dustin suspected he was feeling guilty, both for not visiting him very often and for going off to college while Dustin had to stay home and rot. Actually, rotting was one of Dustin's favorite activities, but the fight with his dad earlier had made him want to grab some fresh air.

“So the band's playing tonight,” Biesty said, glancing at him before switching lanes.

“What?”

“Now a Major Motion Picture.”

Dustin stared at him. “That was my fucking idea. The name.”

“Was it?” Biesty smiled, unfazed. “As soon as your arm heals, you'll be playing lead guitar. That's why I wanted you to meet the guys.”

He honked at a Mercedes that was trying to edge into their lane of traffic, flipping it off through the sunroof without losing his smile. This was part of his Moonie routine. If he stopped smiling, Dustin's face might catch him off guard and insert itself into
their friendship, like an unwelcome girlfriend. Dustin pulled the eyedrops from his jeans and cocked his head back, lifting his sunglasses to drip some in. The lid graft was supposed to have fixed his tear ducts, that's what they'd told him in the hospital, but their promises weren't worth shit.

“Plus there's going to be a surprise tonight,” Biesty said. “Something you'll like, I think.”

“What?”

“If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise.”

Biesty slipped a tape into the stereo, a melodic crush of guitars. Dustin managed to eject it with his thumb.

“It's the new Hüsker Dü,” Biesty said. “You don't like it?”

“No.”

“It's a bit of a sellout, I guess.” Biesty opened the glove compartment. “What do you want? I've got some X.
Wild Gift
.”

“How about some silence for a change?”

Biesty glanced at him with his stupid smile before stretching to pick up some tapes that had slid into Dustin's lap. The truth was Dustin couldn't bear to listen to any of the music he used to like. Eventually they turned off the freeway and headed into Manhattan Beach, the streets narrowing into a warren of touristy, beach-flavored shops. Dustin felt a sudden rush of fear. It was still light at eight-thirty, though with his sunglasses on everything seemed strange. They passed a Jeep full of shirtless boys, surfboards jutting out the back, their leashes flapping like tentacles in the wind. It amazed him that people still drove around with hunks of foam, that they waxed them and floated on top of the ocean and stood up on waves. Downtown a few girls were walking around in their bathing suits, the tops of their bikinis showing through their T-shirts. Dustin's heart filled with sorrow. He stared at the surf shops and taquerias and tiki bars spilling with people. They seemed to belong to another world. He'd thought a lot about this world since the accident, but had failed to remember its sparkling invulnerability. It was like peering out of a spaceship: it was hard to imagine that he'd ever lived out there, sharing the same air.

They picked up some burritos at a taco stand and ate them in the parking lot. Dustin took a couple bites and then put his burrito back in the bag, too sick with fear to eat. At the party, he stayed in the car after Biesty climbed out, his hands clasped in his lap. The seat went back; he could stay there and maybe even sleep.

“Come on,” Biesty said.

Dustin didn't move. Biesty leaned into the driver's-side window, still sporting his infuriating grin.

“What are you going to do? Sit in the car all night?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Jesus,” Biesty said, looking at him more closely. “Are you shaking?” He stopped smiling and got back into the car. “What is it? Your . . . face?” Dustin could tell he was embarrassed to talk about it. That was the worst thing, how this horrendously life-shattering thing could happen to you and it just ended up embarrassing people, like a fart. “Look, no one's going to care. We'll go and drink some twiggen. Like old times.”

“Old times,” Dustin said bitterly.

“How did we come up with that anyway? ‘Twiggen'?”

“You mean because it's so stupid?”

Biesty looked at his lap. Dustin knew he was trying, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough, because it implied someone could make things better. Casually, Biesty reached into the glove compartment and pulled out some sunglasses, a pair of fake Wayfarers with little silver flecks in the corners. He slipped them onto his face, prepared to go into the party like that. They'd both look like jackasses. Though he didn't admit it, Dustin was grateful.

The party was in someone's backyard. Longboards, in various states of disrepair, leaned against the fence. In one corner of the lawn, next to a garden gnome sodomizing a plastic deer, was a Jamaican flag nailed to a shed. Biesty introduced Dustin to the band, who shook his gloved hand carefully in a way that suggested they knew about his accident. The drummer was wearing a T-shirt that said
UCLA: UNLIMITED COEDS OF LEGAL AGE.
Dustin was relieved he didn't have to take them seriously. While Biesty helped set up the amps, he went to look for the keg, squeezing past some surfers smoking a joint on the patio steps. They gawked at him openly. Dustin went into the house, which through his sunglasses seemed dim as a church. A girl and a guy were making out in the middle of the hallway. You could see the guy's hard-on through his Jams; he was not embarrassed, flaunting it like a loud or wacky tie.

“Looking for something?” the guy said, eyeing Dustin's glove.

“The keg.”

“Who invited Michael Jackson?” he said after Dustin had walked on, which made the girl giggle. Dustin found the keg under a card table stocked with plastic jugs of liquor. He grabbed a jug of vodka and then went into an empty bedroom, locking the door behind him. It was a guy's room, filled with guy things. There was a poster of a surfer getting tubed by a glassy wave, poised like a tap dancer at the end of his routine. By the bed, a topless
Sports Illustrated
model stared off the end of a dock, her ass seasoned carefully with sand. She pushed it toward the camera as though it were a gift to mankind. Dustin pulled the poster off the wall and crumpled it in his left hand as best he could. Then he sat on the bed and took some swigs from the jug of vodka, holding it with two hands because the weight hurt his arm. His skin itched like murder. He unzipped a sleeve of his Jobst shirt and scratched as hard as he could, digging his fingernails into the bone until blood seeped from the welts.

He stayed there for a long time, swigging from the jug. Outside the party grew louder: he could hear everyone getting drunk, laughing boisterously and bragging about how wasted they'd been the night before. How moronic they sounded. Dustin wondered if God ever eavesdropped on people's conversations and wished He had a machine gun. Someone rattled the bedroom door, banging on it with his fist. At one point Dustin heard his own name, Biesty's voice describing what he was wearing. It was like being invisible. In the corner of the room, snagged on some coral, was a lone seahorse floating in a fish tank. It was limp and dead-looking, swaying in the current like the lost half of a monogram. Dustin had always pictured seahorses as free and happy creatures—they were his favorite animal in second grade—but found the truth to be oddly gratifying.

After a while the band started. Drunkenly, Dustin walked to the window and parted the blinds, which afforded him a view over the patio to the crowded lawn below. He was shocked to see how many people had come. Biesty was crooning into the microphone, some song about a guy who removes his own brain and keeps it as a pet. He no longer stalked around like Iggy Pop but sang stiffly into the mike, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. The lyrics—if you could call them that—didn't make any sense at all. Plus the music wasn't punk. It was slow and melodic, the guitarist strumming his guitar like a folksinger. Dustin expected them
to get booed offstage, pummeled by plastic cups. But the partiers seemed to be enjoying it. There were even some people—girls—who seemed to know the words, sloshing beer on themselves as they danced on the grass. The chorus came and the music suddenly erupted for no reason, a squall of arty feedback, Biesty screaming the words “Roll over, play dead!” while the crowd jumped up and down like Muppets. Dustin watched in disbelief. The next song was much the same, a piece of bubblegum pop that veered into a forced crescendo. He watched the whole set from the window, heart poised like an ax.

“There you are,” Biesty said when Dustin found him during the break. He was sweaty and beaming, still giddy from being onstage. Dustin tried to focus on his stupid grin, though the blurriness of Biesty's face was making it difficult. Dustin bumped into a surfboard leaning against the fence and it knocked against two others, causing them to tip over like dominoes. “Jesus. Are you hammered?”

“I'm taking my brain for a walk,” Dustin said.

Biesty stopped grinning. “You didn't like the music?”

“Oh, is that what that was?”

“I thought you'd be into it. It's like Bad Brains meets the Beatles.”

“Fuck, that's good.” Dustin laughed. “Don't you mean ‘on acid'? Bad Brains meets the Beatles
on acid
?”

“The crowd seemed to like it,” the guitarist said haughtily. He was wearing a T-shirt that said
CONFUCIUS IS SEXY
.

“Right. The Jimmy Buffett set. Sigma Chi Delta.”

The guitarist's face hardened. On closer inspection, his shirt said
CONFUSION IS SEX,
a Sonic Youth LP. “Most of them aren't in sororities.”

“Jesus Christ, I'm not talking to you. Why don't you go learn some more chords?”

Biesty took off his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. His face looked the same as it always had. “I thought maybe you'd forget to be an asshole tonight. That the band might even like you.”

“‘The
band.
'
Listen to you. Are you on Casey Casey yet?”

“Casey
Casey
?” the guitarist said, smirking.

“Oh, and Toxic Shock was bound for stardom,” Biesty said.

“Maybe if we'd had a decent singer.”

Biesty laughed. “We're a hundred times better.”

Dustin recognized this, suddenly, as the truth. It enraged him. He marched over to the Stratocaster leaning against its amp and slipped the strap over his shoulder, stumbling forward when he tried to turn up the volume and almost falling on his face. He couldn't hold a pick but began to play anyway, slamming his gloved fist into the strings and launching into the first delicious riff of “Los Angeles,” his arm singing with pain. Dustin was dimly aware of how bad he sounded, just as he was aware that the partiers had stopped talking and were watching him. People yelled at him, demanding he put the guitar down. He approached the microphone, defiantly, but knocked it to the ground. A plastic cup bounced off his chest. Someone tried to pull him offstage and he fought him as best he could, punching at him with his left hand, which caused everyone to laugh—a chorus of jeers—until someone else surprised Dustin from behind and wrestled the guitar from his shoulders, slowly enough that Dustin turned and flailed at him too and got what he wanted, a bright burst of pain in his jaw, sharp and gratifying, and he stumbled backward through the grass, guitarless, the world tipping like a ship.

A sweet, murky warmth entered Dustin's mouth. No one helped him up. He stumbled through the crowd—a sea of wheeling faces—until he found his way out of the party, collapsing on the curb under an arc lamp, his jaw throbbing to his pulse. He spat into the street: a gobbet of blood. The world seemed brighter somehow, more colorful, as though he'd stepped from a cave. He took off his glove and scratched at his hand. He didn't know how long he sat there; he could hear the band start up again, Biesty's peppy voice singing,
There's some integrity on my clothes, and I can't get it off.

“That was quite a performance.”

Dustin looked up to see two girls in front of him. The two girls merged into one, a fuzzy teenager in a Billabong sweatshirt and rubber thongs. Except for the beach clothes, and for the fact that her hair was blond, she looked suspiciously like Taz.

“You're not who I think,” he said angrily.

“How do you know?”

“What happened to your wuzzit? Witch's forelock?”

“I dyed it.”

He peered at her again, squinching his eyes to bring her into
focus. She seemed nervous, fingering the little mole on her lip and trying not to stare at his face. Same as everyone. He realized with dismay that his sunglasses were gone. Somewhere inside his drunkenness Dustin felt a hopeless
poof!
In his fantasies, replayed often in his mind, she'd looked him straight in the face and spoke to him like she used to, insulting as ever, unashamed of his ugliness. He asked her what she was doing here.

“Mark called. He said you were coming.”

“Biesty? You're pals now?”

“He called me out of the blue, pretending to be a youth minister. That's what he told my mom.”

“You look like a cheerleader or something,” Dustin said.

Taz frowned. “It was supposed to be a surprise. That I was coming. He said you'd told him about us.” She stared at her feet. “He wanted me to see you.”