Boring Girls(87)

“Kill them, huh?” A small, amused grin appeared.

“I’m serious,” I said, looking into her eyes, feeling almost ready to plead with her to understand. “Fern, we kill them.”

She stared for a few moments. “How?”

“It doesn’t matter. However. Poison them or light their bus on fire. However we can. But we work hard, Fern.” Tears were streaming from my eyes, pouring down my face, and splattering onto my chest in giant drops. “We work hard at the band and we get famous. We get on a tour with DED. We get close to them again and we f*cking kill them.”

She was silent, and I mopped at my eyes with my sweater sleeve. “I know it sounds crazy, but they have to pay for what they’ve done to us.” My breath came in gasps; I was losing control, and I struggled with myself, heaving air into my lungs, grappling for poise. “You know they’ve done it before and they’ll do it again, and no one else is going to stop them. And I don’t give a f*ck, I want to stop them. I want to show them. Make them sorry they ever messed with us.”

I sat down in the leaves and covered my face with my hands, rubbing my eyes and breathing deeply to calm down. When I looked at Fern again, she was smoking a cigarette and studying me.

“Do you really think you could do it?” I was pleased to hear a lack of sarcasm in her tone. She was taking the idea seriously.

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.”

“Why not just go to another show, get backstage again,” she swallowed hard, “and do it then?”

“Because no one would care if some psychotic faceless slut did it.” Anger built up in me. “I want to show them. I want to be someone, Fern, not just a random groupie in the back room. I want people to listen to us and ask us why we did it. I want everyone to know.”

She puffed on her cigarette, looking off into the distance. “I don’t know if I can kill anyone, Rachel.”

“I know I can,” I said. “I’ll do it. I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me.” Tears threatened once again, and I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand, pushing them away. “I want them to pay. I don’t care. I just need us to work together on this, Fern. You’re the only one who knows what happened.”

She smiled sadly. “You know we’ll do this together.”

I smiled back and felt wetness in my palm. My fingernails had drawn blood, I had dug them in so hard. I raised my eyes back to Fern, who was still smiling, and saw no joy in her eyes despite that big smile. I don’t think I’ve seen much in her eyes since that whole thing happened, to be honest.





THIRTY-FIVE


I finished school — the three of us did. School had been pretty much irrelevant to me since I’d started the band. I got good grades, but I didn’t care. Every free minute I had I tried to spend working on the band. I applied but I wasn’t going to go to college and I didn’t worry about telling my parents my decision. They stayed away from me, and I gave them nothing to worry about. I kept to myself and finished school, I wasn’t loud, and I wasn’t going out to parties or coming home late. They couldn’t complain, right? Besides, Melissa was starting to enter some annoying rebellious phase, and Mom and Dad had to focus on her messes instead of mine.

The only places I went at all, really, were band practices and to see Edgar, Socks, and Fern. Socks was looking forward to the summer — he wanted to book a tour and just hit the road for a few months. Edgar was balking at that idea, Fern and I were all for it, so we ended up talking about money a lot, which wasn’t what I was interested in at all. Edgar always was pretty sensible, wanting to make sure everything would work out. Socks was maybe too easygoing. I don’t know what was going on in Fern’s mind those days, but all I wanted to do was get on the road and get things going. I had energy and nowhere to channel it except at rehearsals and into my artwork.

Socks and Edgar noticed that something was different with me and Fern, but after asking us once what was wrong, they dropped it. I tried to cover it up with enthusiasm, but I’m pretty sure it was all overwrought and seemed weird. Fern, on the other hand, had become very quiet and more observational, nodding instead of discussing. It disturbed me. I hoped that she would regain more of her old self. In practice, instead of being aggressive and confident, she seemed timid and weak. I had no idea what was going on in her mind, but I could see myself trying to channel everything into my plans, to turn everything into drive and energy. Mad is more productive than sad, right?