Boring Girls(113)

And so we continued. I’d watch Marie-Lise walk her little dog — she’d started smiling more at me and Fern, but she and the Gurgol guys stayed on their bus, whereas the Ripsawdomy guys were usually backstage, ready to have drinks and chill out. Socks and Edgar hung out with them a bunch. I gathered that Gurgol were all vegan and into meditation and didn’t drink. They’d hang out with Ripsawdomy sometimes, as they were all old friends, and everyone respected the fact that they were doing this tour their own way. I was bummed out that it didn’t seem like Marie-Lise was interested in being friends. I’d envisioned somehow that we’d bond. She was still absolutely amazing onstage, but she really would disappear at the end of the night.

I guess some bands want to party all night, some bands want to keep to themselves, some bands want to do drugs, some bands want to avoid meat and dairy. Colostomy Hag was always right in the middle. We were social, but not insane. We liked to get our sleep, but we’d hang out. Socks, Edgar, and lately Fern were always up to having a few beers and joking around in the dressing rooms. Toad was definitely up for partying. I was a bit more withdrawn than all of them. I wasn’t into drinking, and besides, I would usually go off with Chris to hold hands.

xXx

The tour moved into Louisiana, and we had a day off in New Orleans. Ripsawdomy had gone on to Baton Rouge for the off day, because their drummer had family there, so I wasn’t going to see Chris. Which was fine. Our bus was parked behind a hotel near downtown. Toad, Socks, Edgar, and Timmy decided to walk down Bourbon Street to find cheap alcohol, and Fern and I wanted to explore the less booze-soaked parts of the city.

“Now look — and I mean it — don’t go anywhere stupid,” Toad said. “You stay on the main streets. There are some really ugly parts of this city, you know what I mean? You stay where there’s people, on the main streets. You don’t take chances.”

It sounded pretty melodramatic, but as Fern and I walked away from the downtown area, I could see what he meant. Some of the area was scarily vacant and creepy. Buildings sat empty; giant abandoned houses were overgrown with weeds and tall grass, their windows smashed out. As we walked past, I thought I could feel eyes following us, and my skin crawled.

There were some beautiful buildings. Fern took a lot of pictures, both of destroyed and preserved architecture. We’d look down side roads as we wandered, seeing shady characters hanging around, so we kept moving. The sun beat down hard on our shoulders.

We found the large, walled-in graveyard where the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, was buried. We opened the rusty gate, and it screeched loudly, making us pause, but we entered. It was like a miniature city, with rows of small cobbled walkways leading along blocks of vaults and crypts. There were beautiful statues, crumbling angels, crosses, and obelisks. We walked slowly, reading names and dates. A lot of them were illegible. We walked in silence, looking for the Voodoo Queen’s grave.

“I have to pee,” Fern said.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“No, I want to find the grave. I’ll just go back around the corner into those bushes and we’ll keep moving.”

“Fern!” I was shocked. “You can’t pee in a graveyard!”

“It’s not like I’m going to just piss on someone’s grave,” she said, and laughed. “I’ll just go in the bushes. Don’t worry. No one here will mind anyway. They’re dead, right?”

“I guess.”

“Wait here.” She started moving back along the path. “Keep your eyes open in case someone comes along.”

She disappeared into a thicket of bushes beside one of the nearby vaults, and I looked around. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be someone else in the graveyard. We hadn’t encountered anyone, but there could easily be someone else wandering through this stone maze. The stones and crypts were too tall to see over. I shivered.

The bushes where Fern had disappeared rustled violently, and I heard her voice, muffled at first, then rising to a shout. I threw myself towards the sound, scratching myself on the thorny branches to reach her.

In the seclusion of the little thicket, the sun twinkled through the leaves to dapple Fern in moving light. It was cool and shady here, quite nice, really, but sweat prickled my skin. She stared down at a guy.

He looked a bit older than us, and he was dirty. There were leaves in his dark, greasy hair, and he wore a filthy plaid shirt and torn brown pants. He was sitting cross-legged, hands spread in front of him as if under arrest, his eyes huge and unblinking, staring up at Fern.