Torn

down.”

Cody made another face, then forced a more somber expression to his features. They both stood there awhile, looking at the dead boy. After it started to feel too long, Cody said, “Well, you know, this does kind of solve our other problem. Now you don’t have to fire him.”

Devin flushed with anger. Words forced their way out as he desperately tried to keep his voice low in the funeral parlor. “How can you be such an ass?”

The last word was loud enough to earn a “Shh!” from someone in the front row.

Cody pulled him away from the casket. Devin shook his arm free and kept walking, out into the quiet lobby where the moldy smell was only slightly dampened, then through the glass doors and out onto the sidewalk, where the sky was dark, the wind cool, and cars rolled by, going about their business as if no one had died at all.

Cody popped out of the door behind him. He came up, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out toward Devin. There was a time when Devin had pretended he smoked, to impress people like Cody, but that time had passed. He shook his head no.

Cody popped one in his mouth, lit, and took a drag. “Look, Devin, I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I didn’t not like Karston or anything. I wouldn’t wish that on people I hated. Man, his face looks like putty. But we’re here now, and sooner or later, here is where we’re going to have to move on from.”

“Yeah, well, you ever stop to think that if maybe you hadn’t borrowed money you couldn’t pay back that we might not be here? That Karston might be alive? Or if I hadn’t helped you that you’d be dead now instead of him?” Devin said.

Cody took a step back. “Whoa. Now that’s cold.”

A few Argus kids stepped out from the funeral parlor. One was listening to something. Seeing Cody and Devin, he stopped and gave them the thumbs-up.

“Torn rocks!” he said. He pulled out an earbud and held it toward them. Even with the tiny volume, Devin recognized a few beats from “Face,” the MP3 they’d finally made with his bass line. Devin told Cody it was Karston on bass, and Cody didn’t bother to question it, maybe because the rumor that the “dead kid” was playing on it gave the cut some steam.

“All right!” Cody said, grinning back and playing some air guitar.

A girl in the group wearing a red hooded sweatshirt said, “When are we going to hear the haunted song?”

“The what?” Devin said, scrunching his face.

The girl shrugged. “That song you were playing the night he died.”

“How did you…?” Devin started, but Cody cut him off.

“Soon! Soon!” he said. Then he slapped Devin on the shoulder and said, “Hey, I forgot to mention, I fixed your song.”

“Fixed?”

“Here’s a preview!” he said to the group. Playing his best air guitar, he screeched:

I’m lyin’ to the angels,

Lyin’ to the angels…

Devin shoved him. “Stop it! We’re in front of a funeral parlor!” When Cody didn’t respond immediately, Devin shoved him again, harder.

“Oh yeah, right. He’s right, you know. Catch you later!”

Smiling and nodding, the group wandered off.

Devin glared at Cody.

Cody made his face sheepish and sad. “You’re right. That was wrong. That was really wrong.”

“The haunted song?”

“I had nothing to do with that. Nothing. It’s a chat room thing. I don’t know where they got it,” Cody said, but he looked like he was lying. He tossed his cigarette down and stomped on it. “But why not take advantage of it? It’s like the Blair Witch.”

Before Devin could quit Torn in disgust, One Word Ben and Cheryl emerged from the funeral parlor. Cody nodded at Ben. “You still in? You can pick up the bass.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”

“All right!” Cody shouted, again too loud.

“In? In with what?” Devin asked.

Cody smiled. “We’ve been invited back to Tunnel Vision. A whole night’s ours if we want, for a tribute to Karston. We’re going to need at least twenty minutes to do a full set.”

“And when were you going to mention that to me?” Devin asked.

Cody shrugged. “I was like, trying to respect your grieving process. I’ve been waiting for you to bring up Torn, man. But you didn’t.”

“It’s cold,” Cheryl said as she slid next to Devin and shivered. He opened his jacket and wrapped it half around her, but he kept staring at Cody.

“What else has been going on without me, Cody? If you didn’t tell them about the song, how could they know about it? There isn’t even a recording.”

He felt Cheryl stiffen. There was something strange about the way she and Cody looked at each other.

“Yeah, there is,” she said quietly.

Devin stared at her. “You started that rumor?”

She shrugged. “All my friends heard the story and everyone kept nagging me. So I told them what you saw in the shadows and all. And I put the video on our site….”

Devin’s brow furrowed. “The one you took of me singing the song.”

For the second time, Devin was about to quit in frustration, when a creaking voice like a dying animal called to them from the door.

“Get out of here!” it said. “How dare you stand around like a street gang in front of my son’s funeral! You don’t have any damn respect! Nothing!”

Karston’s mother staggered toward them. As Devin had thought, she was drunk. She wore an ill-fitting black dress, and the edges of the shawl wrapped around her shoulders lifted in the breeze. Strange, but he’d never seen her standing before. Even in the funeral parlor, she never got up. Now he could clearly see how short she was, and that there was something wrong with her back that made her wrinkled face lean forward from a curved neck. As she walked, it looked like her angry, accusing face was coming closer all on its own, without her body.

“You make me sick. Thieves and a slut! You’re all worthless!” she shouted. “That should be you in there, all of you, not him! He never hurt nobody in his life, nobody! And he idolized you! He was too stupid to see what you really were.”

They were all silent, terrified, ashamed. Even Cody.

We’re sorry! Devin was about to say, but the words never made it out.

“You killed him!” she shouted. “Killed my boy.”

She lurched forward and swatted Cody in the shoulder. Maybe it was because he happened to be closest, maybe because his white hair color made him easier to see. He moved his hands to block further blows, but none came. Instead, she sneered, spun, walked across the street, and entered a bar.

The four of them watched her go, staying silent until the wooden, windowless door of the bar swung closed.

Cody nudged Devin. “Hey, why don’t you go in there now and offer to buy the bass?”

He started laughing. It was so stupid and ridiculous, Ben started laughing too. Even Cheryl snickered before she stopped herself.

“I don’t believe you,” Devin said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe any of you.”

He pulled back, swung, and punched Cody full in the mouth. Cody stopped laughing and staggered back.

“Hey!” he snarled. He wiped his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. “Hey!” he said even louder. He tensed, pulled back, ready to swing.

Devin just stood there, as if saying, Go ahead, do it.

But he’d helped Cody against the Slits. And Cody needed him for the band.

Cody dropped his fist, then wiped his mouth again.