The crowd wasn’t huge for a Friday night, but it was big enough, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Feet stomped, hands clapped, hips twitched. Torn was going over. It was a big night for their little nu-metal garage band.
Devin felt like he should be thrilled, proud, or pleased, but he wasn’t any of those things. Instead, he felt out of it, like he was watching everything from somewhere far away, judging. Why? What was wrong with him? He had what any seventeen-year-old guitarist craved: a rock group finally breaking into the Macy club scene and a relationship with the hot drummer, but all he could manage was this weird disappointment, as if he’d gotten to the promised land, but it had turned out to be trashy.
It wasn’t the club. The long, dark space with the curved fieldstone roof and walls used to be a train tunnel. What could be cooler than that? During the nineties freight trains used it to carry textiles in and out of the adjoining warehouses, but textiles were on the way out all over the state and the town was hard hit. The line was abandoned, the warehouses emptied. Now the only active warehouse held a children’s discount furniture store.
Two years back, Allen Bates bought the tunnel; bricked off the front and back; added doors, electricity, plumbing, and ventilation; and brought the funky structure up to code. Now, on Friday and Saturday nights, the place was packed with local teens who danced under the spinning lights until the gray stone walls grew slick with their sweat.
Playing Tunnel Vision had been Torn’s only goal for the six months they’d been together. Now they were here. So what bothered Devin?
Maybe it was the song. Maybe deep down he thought “Face” sucked and sooner or later somebody would figure that out and call him on it. It had taken only ten minutes to write. That didn’t bug Cody. Torn’s totally psycho front man launched into his searing guitar solo with extreme gusto. The new axe sounded great, even if it was a complete mystery how someone as financially strapped as Cody could afford it.
Maybe Devin was just looking for something to be wrong. If he was, he found it. Just as the number was ending, Karston, their skinny, anxious, self-conscious bassist, lost his place. The crowd had already started applauding, so most likely no one in the audience noticed, but Cody did. He spun and gave the bassist a killing look with his bright green eyes.
Before Cody could fire away with any more laser-beam glances, Devin nodded at Cheryl and they launched into “If It Doesn’t Kill You,” Cody’s song. It was a trick he and Cheryl used on Cody. Whenever he got out of line they’d hold up something bright and shiny to distract him. Sometimes Cheryl would flirt with Cody playfully; sometimes they’d go into a song. Devin and Cheryl were good together that way. In a lot of other ways, too.
Devin’s chords blasted through the amp, rolling between A and F-sharp minor with a fast, easy rhythm. The crowd started up again, clapping to Cheryl’s beat. Cody forgot Karston and went at the vocal with major passion.
For some incomprehensible reason, the incident made Devin relax a little, like it made everything seem more real. He even started enjoying himself during the last of Torn’s three-number tryout set, “Flush with Your Foot.” It was an early effort, stupid fun, written a year ago, when Devin was sixteen. Cody really let loose on that one, vamping up and down the stage, and in the end adding an outrageous, unexpected solo.
Which was not good. Unexpected things, that is. Not with Karston at the bass. He’d been doing better since his “Face” screw-up, but now lost it completely, hitting the wrong notes, off tempo. He sounded like an elephant with bad gas farting into a mike. Cody caught the mistakes just as he was going down on his knees in a dramatic stage move. Devin watched as Cody, in the middle of finishing his lick, tried twisting his head to give Karston another nasty look.
It wasn’t pretty. The usually graceful frontman went off-balance, catching his bare shoulder on a jagged metal clip on the corner of his amp. Blood, looking black in the blue light, flowed freely down his long arm, spotting his shirt. It was a moment that could’ve spelled disaster. But it didn’t.
The pain didn’t stop or surprise Cody. It set him on fire. He went on with his solo for another eight bars, then finished as the crowd cheered wildly, not one of them caring about or remembering Karston’s mistakes. They were all too busy watching Cody finally proving to himself and the world that he was the real thing.
Allen Bates beamed at them, his large hands again slapping together, this time loud enough to be heard over the crowd.
“Torn!” Bates screamed again. The band headed for the storage area behind the stage that passed for a dressing room. Devin knew—they all knew—from Bates’s face they’d be invited back. They’d done it. Now all they needed were enough songs to fill a twenty-minute set.
Once the door was closed, Cheryl flew into Devin’s arms. Borrowing her enthusiasm, he swung her around, feeling the heat of her body against his.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she screamed. “It’s like I’m dreaming and I don’t want to wake up!”
She kissed him hard, finally giving him the buzz he’d craved from the crowd. He’d have to be dead not to react to her. Devin had never thought he’d have a chance with a girl as beautiful as Cheryl, and now they’d been seeing each other for three months. At first he used to get jealous when he saw how other guys looked at her, even Cody, but tonight he figured she was all his.
He stopped kissing her long enough to say, “Tomorrow!”
His parents had gone away for the weekend, and after Torn came over for some recording, he and Cheryl had a big night planned. Usually when they wanted to be alone, they had to head to an abandoned housing development near his home and park. Even the roomy seats of his Dad’s SUV could be awkward in that situation, but tomorrow they’d have a whole big, empty house, at least from nine, when rehearsal ended, until Cheryl’s midnight curfew.
Cody strutted into the center of the room like a prize bull, ignoring them. He stretched his Les Paul high over his head and made a sound that could only rightly be described as a roar. Ben, also known as One Word Ben, since he seldom spoke, applauded. Even Karston grinned sheepishly.
“We are so damn cool!” Cody cried.
“Not that it’s going to our head or anything,” Devin said, still holding Cheryl aloft. She was so light, he felt like he could carry her forever.
Cody laughed. “Whatever.
Everyone took it as a joke, until Cody glanced over at Karston and the gleam in his eyes shifted from glazed megalomania to something more predatory. Cody snarled and moved as if he were going to attack. Karston visibly shriveled.
Tensing, Devin reluctantly let Cheryl slide off his body, in case he had to pry Cody away from the smaller, thinner teen. Cody could be brilliant and exciting, but so could lightning. The singer had a penchant for explosive, demanding, infantile, and downright psychotic behavior. Devin looked around for another shiny object to distract him, to break the tension, when he noticed the blood still dripping down the side of Cody’s arm.
“Going to do anything about that cut?” Devin asked, pointing.
Cody howled wildly, twisted his head, and licked the fresh blood off with his long tongue. “Yum!” he said, pleased with himself.
“Disgusting,” Cheryl said, but she looked a little tickled.
“How would you know? You haven’t tasted me yet,” Cody answered. He wiped the cut with his broad, long- fingered hand, looked at it a moment and slapped Karston on the back.
A silence followed, during which Devin held his breath, but then Cody just said, “Come on, let’s get some free
