Tone Deaf(6)

I still haven’t figured out if Tony is a genius at marketing or torture, but whatever you call it, Tone Deaf owes its fame to his skill. If it weren’t for that, I’d ignore his advice and stay away from social media like the plague that it is. I got into this industry for the music, not for the vapid comments about my hair and fashion choices.

The RV door slams open, and Killer comes prancing inside. He looks like he always does after performing a concert—all smiles and light footsteps and happy-rainbow attitude.

I yank off my headphones and pin him with a glare. “Killer, what the hell? Have you ever heard of knocking?”

He walks over to the couch across the room from my desk and collapses in it. “Yeah. I think that’s the word in the dictionary between oh-my-god-dude and get-over-it.”

I turn back to my laptop screen and roll my eyes. On first inspection, Killer looks pretty harmless: super thin and kind of tall (but he still totally sucked at phys ed), nerd glasses that he’s convinced are cool (he’s blind without them), and skin he says is “a shade between cocoa and burnt umber.” But, in reality, he’s not harmless. Far from it, actually. He’s a gigantic thorn in my side.

“You on Facebook?” Killer asks.

“No, Twitter.”

“Then tweet Arrow. Tell him to get his pretty ass over here.”

“I am not publicly calling my cousin’s ass pretty. Use your own phone and text him.” I shoot him a look as I stretch my arms above my head, trying to ease the pain in my ribcage. Jumping around onstage is expected of rock stars, much to my bones’ despair.

Killer lets out a loud, put-out harrumph. With his high voice, it sounds more like a sneeze. There is a very, very good reason Killer is our keyboardist and not the lead singer. Sure, he has an awesome London accent, and he would have taken the spot, but the world has endured enough chipmunk imitations with that Bieber kid.

Killer pulls out his phone, although he’s probably still going to tweet Arrow instead of sending a private text. I shake my head. When we first came into the media spotlight, Arrow had wanted to keep his bisexuality quiet. That lasted about three days, until Killer kissed Arrow onstage.

Killer is about as subtle as a bullhorn.

I hear a deep grunt and the click of nails against tile, and a second later, Cuddles comes trotting in the from the kitchen. My pit bull wags her tail madly as she shoves her head into Killer’s lap, demanding an ear scratch. She has a strange love for Killer, even though he was the one who dubbed her with her ridiculous name. Cuddles weighs nearly as much as I do and has jaws that could intimidate a lion. But Killer clearly doesn’t care as he pushes his face up against her nose and coos a hello, making my dog’s tail wag even harder.

“What are you doing in here, anyway?” I mutter at Killer. “This is my RV, you know. You can’t just barge in whenever you want.”

“Arrow told me about your run-in with the deaf girl,” Killer says, patting Cuddles on the head. “We thought you might want some company after what happened.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, but he just grins his dorky smile at me, like he thinks my glare is the ultimate portrayal of undying love.

“Sooo,” he says, drawing out the word in the annoying way he always does. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened,” I mutter, but I can’t stop my eyes from drifting to the little calendar in the corner of my laptop screen. June fifth. Why the hell did I have to run into that girl today of all days?

“Arrow says you gave her the finger. That’s something.”

“Do you two always gossip behind my back?”

“Jace, Arrow is my boyfriend.”

I scoff. “Yeah, believe it or not, I’ve noticed. So what?”

“Webster defines boyfriend as ‘a man who becomes deader than meat upon withholding gossip from his true love.’”

“Make that reason number twenty-one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three I’ll never enter a serious relationship,” I mutter.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he says. Cuddles lays at his feet with a heavy thump, and Killer turns his attention back to his phone. He types a little and then repeats, “What happened with the deaf girl?”

“I was just in a bad mood.”

“Don’t try to fool me, Jace. You’re always in a bad mood when it comes to deaf people, but not that bad.”

“It’s June fifth.”

He stares at me blankly. “Huh?”

I rake a hand through my hair and hold in a frustrated groan. “How the hell can you have the first thousand digits of pi memorized, but still forget what today is?”

Killer squints at me and blinks a couple times. Then his eyes go real wide. “Oh. Shit. June fifth.” Then, as if he thinks I’m the one who needs reminding, he adds, “Your mom died on June fifth.”

“Correct,” I say, offering him a slow, sarcastic clap.

There’s a long minute of silence after that, the only sound coming from the humming RV generator and the soft whirring of my laptop. Then the door bangs open again.

“Hey, guys,” Arrow says as he walks up the last step and into the RV.

Killer disgustedly throws his phone across the couch, where it lands safely on a cushion. “Seriously? I tweet you three times, and that’s all I get? ‘Hey, guys?’ Not, ‘Hello, my darling love,’ or ‘I missed you bunches, sweetie’?”