Notes from the Blender (15 page)

Here’s where I was supposed to melt, throw my arms around his neck, and whisper, “I love you, too,” so we could live happily ever after. So why was I just standing there, completely numb?

“Neilly, please,” he said. If I didn’t know him better, I’d think he was about to cry. “Just let me prove I’m for real by taking you to your dad’s wedding. And we can see where it goes from there. No pressure, okay?”

I thought about Griffin’s forgiveness theory and decided it was time to let another grudge go. “Okay,” I heard myself saying.

I’d have to tell Dec later he was no longer obligated to be my mercy date. Now he’d be free to wear his corpse paint and listen to screamo with his friends all Saturday night instead of having to get in a penguin suit for me. He was sure to be relieved as hell.

And for the first time in recent history, I was at total peace with myself. I mean, at least I thought I was at total peace. Until Sam leaned over to kiss me, and all I could think was:
Wow, what would that have been like if it had been Griffin?

When the last kid finally left, Ulf and the band had packed up and gone home, and nothing remained except some limp beet chips and dip, I made some tea and set out to relive the evening with my stepfrère. After much searching, I finally found Dec in his room, looking not at all like a guy who’d just thrown the best party in the history of our high school.

“What do you want?”

His words felt like an arctic blast, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where his night had gone wrong. He’d been so happy head banging when I last saw him. “I…wanted to talk to you about how great the party was, but I guess now isn’t the best time for that.”

“Now is just as good as any time.”

I figured he was bummed about girl stuff. Chantelle, probably. I thought maybe I could even help. “What’s up your butt?” I asked, going for humor to lighten him up. “Your metal chicks turn into pumpkins before you got a blow job?”

He scowled. “Funny. Not.”

“Seriously, Dec, what’s the problem? Can I help?”

He wouldn’t even look at me. “Don’t think so. Especially since the problem
is
you.”

“I’m
the problem?” I asked, pointing to my chest, starting to get just as pissed at him as he seemed to be with me. “What’s
your
fucking problem?”

“The problem is, you could have at least had the decency to let me know you no longer needed my services as your chaperone next weekend,” he said, spitting the words out like nails. “I had to hear it from Sam.”

I was thrown for a loop. Why did Dec care that I was letting him off the hook for our not-date? It didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, Dec. Sam practically begged me, and I figured you’d be psyched to be let off the hook—”

“I already rented a tux. You owe me seventy-five bucks. Cash only.”

“Come on, Dec. I thought you’d be happy to have Saturday night to hang out with your friends—”

He gave me a stare that could turn hell into an icicle. “Well, you thought wrong.”

GIRLS.

This should have been the happiest night of my life. I hosted a party that was pretty well attended, despite the fact that all the invitations had said, “No Booze, No Drugs. Violators will be fed to the Thing Below.” We didn’t have to feed anybody to the Thing Below, nobody tried to sneak in booze, there were severed limbs everywhere, and I got tons of street cred from the school’s scary/degenerate population because Slaughter of the Innocents had played
at my house.
Hell, even the hippies saw me in a new light when they found out the band was vegan.

So far, so good. But girls had to wreck it.

First, Neilly straddled me before the party. I mean, does she have no idea? No, I don’t think she does, which is why I was about to tell her. Thank God I chickened out. Still, her tiny perfect body on top of mine is definitely an image going straight into the spank bank.

Then Chantelle didn’t show up. This, despite her giving me a “maybe” response that I, perhaps too optimistically, interpreted as “I’ll be there, and we’ll totally make out.”

I thought maybe I could break through Lulu’s thinking of me as a sibling, but I kind of forgot about how girls love musicians. She spent the whole night about six inches from Slaughter of the Innocents, banging her head relentlessly and talking to Andy, the guitarist, every time the band took a break.

And then Sam approached me and told me it was a kickass party, and he was really sorry about misunderstanding everything, and he’d really learned a lot and was looking forward to going to the commitment ceremony with Neilly.

“Yeah, should be a good time,” I said. “Well, enjoy the party—vegan non–pig in a blanket?” I said, offering him the appetizer tray.

“Uh, I’m gonna pass. I liked that punch with the brains in it, though.”

“Cool!” I said, and disappeared into the chaos and banged my head some more.

Then Neilly came up to me after the party, and I was a dick to her.

I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up really late cleaning up. I slept in the next morning, and when I woke up, this note was pinned to my door:
THX FOR CLEANING! YOU ROCK!—N

I crumpled it up and put it in my pocket and went downstairs for coffee. I had to make my own, since it was noon.

I was grinding beans when Neilly came in.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I answered. “
Feliz Día de los Muertos.”

“Um. What?”

“Day of the Dead. Big Mexican festival, you know? Skeletons?”

“I think I remember that from Spanish class. Anyway. Um. I’m sorry?” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I mean, listen, Dec, I feel awful. I just thought—”

“See, I don’t think you did. You didn’t think…I mean, okay, I get it, I’m not—you can kiss me on the cheek and straddle me on the couch and stuff and not have the first idea of what that might be doing to me because you don’t think of me as a real guy. I mean, okay, join the club, nobody else does, either, so why should you be different, and fine, right, I can live with that. I mean, it’s like we’re practically siblings, it would be weird, so it’s probably just as well. I guess I just wish you had some small idea of the power you have as a beautiful girl, and that you’d be a little bit careful with that. But whatever, you’ve got low self-esteem, you put up with guys treating you like shit when you don’t have to, you probably don’t even get that. So fine, it’s never gonna happen, it
was
never gonna happen, but I thought at least if you didn’t think of me as a guy, you at least thought of me as a friend. Like, I thought we had some kind of bond here.… I mean, it’s been nice to have an ally in the house and not just have it be me against the old people. But it turns out you don’t even think of me as a friend. Right? Because you don’t ditch friends that way. Right? Do you remember talking to me when you were so upset about that guy? And the first time he—not that he’s such a terrible guy, but why would you give somebody a second chance to be a douche bag? You know? I mean, I’ll give Chantelle that much—she told me straight out I wasn’t getting another chance, and she stuck to it. At least she’s got the balls to stand up for what she believes in. You…you just go running back to some guy who mistreats you. Do you really think he’s learned his lesson? Here’s the lesson he’s learned: cheat on Neilly, get away with it. Do you honestly think he won’t do it again? Or do you crave that kind of treatment? Do you, like, hope he’s going to cheat on you because you think you deserve it? Or are you just completely spineless?”

Fortunately the teapot was whistling by this point, so I put the beans into the French press, turned off the stove, and poured the hot water over the beans. I looked up and saw Neilly was crying.

“That’s a really horrible thing to say,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, well, the truth hurts, I guess.”

She ran from the room, and I sat there and felt horrible. It didn’t make me feel better to have her be sad. Weird. I thought if I really let her have it, I would kind of transfer all my bad feelings to her. Instead, I kept mine and gave her some, too. Well, too bad. She deserved it.

I pressed the coffee down and poured the bitter black elixir into the mug Carmen had given me as a housewarming gift. On one side it read,
I LIKE MY COFFEE BLACK
…and on the other side was a grinning Satan holding a cup of coffee, with the words
LIKE MY METAL
!

I took my coffee and went to the computer to send Ulf a little thank-you e-mail, since they’d played for free, which they totally didn’t have to do. Ulf had beaten me to it, though.

“Declan—I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to play last night. We sold twenty CDs, which is twice as many as we’ve ever sold at a gig. And fifteen T-shirts, which is just like free money at this point. Some kid at your party said his dad books the VFW and could get us booked for an all-ages Sunday show. It’s pretty discouraging trying to make music sometimes, and we really feel like we’re on our way for the first time. So thanks. PS—check our Facebook.”

Wow. I thought I was scamming free live music. I didn’t know I was doing a public service. I checked the Slaughter of the Innocents Facebook page, and found my picture prominently displayed. “This is the coolest person in Oak Heights. Except us, of course,” it said in the news section, which went on to talk about what a killer party I threw and that I had balls to stand up against unthinking alcohol and drug use and how I made kickass vegan appetizers as well. (Carmen actually made most of the vegan appetizers, but I wasn’t going to quibble.)

I had twenty friend requests. I accepted them all, thus making real people outnumber bands on my friend list for the first time ever. Twelve of the twenty were female. Four of the twelve girls were smokin’ hot. Five others I would classify as pretty. The other three were female.

Maybe things were looking up.

Dad came in and peeked at the computer screen as I was perusing the photo albums of one “veganchick17.”

“Is that SuicideGirls?” he asked.

“Dad, I’m gonna ignore the fact that you not only know the name of a porn site but know that it features tattooed hotties like veganchick17 here, and tell you proudly that this is an unpaid encounter, that this girl wanted to friend me because Slaughter of the Innocents said I was cool. Also, I don’t know if you get this from the handle, but she’s seventeen.”

“Hey, that’s great. Listen, Dec, I just wanted to thank you for the job you did cleaning up. I really thought we’d be spending the whole day today digging out from your party, but the place looks—well, not great, but not really any worse than it did before the party.”

“We aim to please.”

“Anyway, Dec, listen, Sarah’s running a special Day of the Dead thing this afternoon. You wanna go? There’ll be skeletons …”

“And …?”

“And I’m gonna say a little something about your mom. What do you say?”

“I say that sounds like it would make me really sad. Pass.”

Dad looked pained, like he was about to say something, but he held it back, whatever it was. “All right, Dec. I’m not gonna force it.”

“Sweet. Have fun.”

“Yeah, I don’t really think it’s the kind of thing you classify as fun, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Cool.”

I retired to my room to play Xbox and feel sorry for myself. Which worked fine for a while, but I eventually got stuck at one point on level twelve for like half an hour, and I knew I just needed to turn off the Xbox and try again later. Also, I knew I had been mean to Neilly just to hurt her, and I felt kind of bad about it. That’s not true. I felt horrible about it. I pretty much felt horrible about everything.

I hadn’t really eaten anything, which couldn’t have helped my mood, so I wandered downstairs for a snack.

Carmen was sitting at the table with probably two pints of Ben and Jerry’s in a mixing bowl in front of her. She looked up kind of guiltily at me, but I couldn’t very well give her any shit about her dairy consumption when she was the person who’d been most supportive of my vegan ways.

“Hey, Carmen. How’s Junior?” I asked.

She laughed. “Junior is demanding a whole lot of Chunky Monkey today.”

“Sweet.”

“Yeah, the soy stuff just wouldn’t do.”

“Carmen, I don’t expect you to go vegan, you know.”

“I know. I just…I don’t want you to think I’m not being supportive.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re the only other person who eats the stuff I make!”

“Yeah. Well, it tastes really good. So how are you doing?”

“Honestly? I feel like a piece of crap.”

“Lot of that going around today. Neilly said more or less the same thing before she left.”

“She said I was a piece of crap? I’m not really surprised. I pretty much deserve that.”

“No, I mean, she said she felt horrible.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s my fault. Where’d she go?”

“She went to the Day of the Dead thing with your dad.”
Well, that was weird.
“I guess—so you guys had some kind of fight or something?”

“Or something. It’s actually pretty embarrassing. I don’t feel like talking about it. I don’t…I mean…I don’t know what the…I just feel totally lost right now. You know? I just want to be happy, and I guess I don’t know how. I kind of thought that having a girlfriend or whatever…I don’t know, like the girl I thought I liked didn’t show up last night, and Neilly had told me to give up on her ages ago, which I guess I should have done, but anyway. It’s like, I scared Chantelle away by being angry, and Neilly’s been, like, my best friend, like the person my age who’s really stood by me, and now I was a dick and drove her away by being angry. And I’m always barking at Dad. I’m too…I’m mad all the time, and I kind of like it, you know, but it gets…I guess I’m just tired. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. I think so.” She ate a bite of Chunky Monkey. “I know this is kind of a dumb question, but is it just your mom that you’re mad about? I mean, this”—she gestured around the room with her spoon—“this was a big change that we sprang on you, and I know it’s got to be—”

“No. Dad was right about that. It’s better. It’s more fun.” I paused for a minute. “I guess I should maybe tell him that.”

“He’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah. Well. Anyway, I guess, yeah, I’m mad about mom. I just…It’s not fair that so many people who suck are still alive and my mom is dead. It’s not fair that other people take their moms for granted and I’ll never get to know mine at all, not really, I mean, not like who she was besides being a little kid’s mom.” And now I started to cry. “I mean, you know? It’s not fair. None of it’s fair. I miss her. You know? I mean, I’m happy for you guys, I actually am, and you can tell Dad I said that because I’m probably too chickenshit to say it myself, and I’m glad for Junior that he’s going to have two parents. I just miss my mom. I want my mom back, and she’s never ever coming back.”

My head was down on the table now, and Carmen put a hand, freezing from holding the bowl of ice cream, on the back of my head. It felt good. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said.

“And”—my head was still on the table, and I was talking tearfully at the wall—“I don’t want to be mad all the time, you know, but I just don’t want to…It’s like being mad about Mom being dead is the only thing left that connects me to her. It feels like I’d be betraying her if I stop.”

Carmen rubbed my head some more with her freezing-cold hand. I guess that’s, like, a thing moms do. It was really nice. But it made me cry more. “Sweetie,” she said, and I didn’t mind her calling me that, “do you think your mom would want you to be mad forever?”

“I don’t know if I can help it,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “I have an idea.”

She told me her idea. It was so incredibly awesome, I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of it myself.

“Dad will kill us both. I can’t be responsible for you guys breaking up before Junior’s even born,” I said.

“Don’t be a pussy,” she said, and I was suddenly just thrilled to have this woman in my life. It started out pretty shitty, but this might just be the best Day of the Dead ever.