I weighed hanging with Terry versus a bike that wouldn’t die if I hit too high an MPH. Without the killswitch I could go fast enough to alter time. But then Terry would be a permanent fixture in my life, and Terry was no Wayne. Gah. It was like a conundrum of epic proportions.
“You can do that?” I finally said. Yeah, I could hardly believe I had just said that.
Terry grinned and his eyes lit up like Christmas lights behind his glasses. “No problem, man. Terry-saurus Rex can hack it. Didn’ja notice there’s no locks on the school computers? I have the whole place wired, man. Hack city.” I had noticed that, actually, considering the amount of porn my lab partner was able to download. Terry folded his arms old school Vanilla Ice style, trying waaay too hard to earn that cool card, as far as I was concerned. “Tell me I’m the man.”
As I watched the black van pull out of the parking lot, inspiration hit me, a way to find out what I needed to know about Aimi without going to Snowman. I turned my attention back on Terry. “Rex,” I said, “you are the man. If I ever need to get inside the Pentagon computer, you’ll be my go-to guy.”
He developed a sly look. “Rex,” he said with approval. “That rocks, man.” He smiled like he could probably do it, too.
5
Technically speaking, I don’t have a curfew. My dad’s a pretty straight guy. He trusts me to be home before nightfall, unless something’s come up, in which case, I’m supposed to phone. So by visiting The Hole and not telling him, I was breaking the unwritten rules. But the concert was from seven to nine, and my dad never wanders up to the loft before nine anyway, so I figured I could catch the concert and still make it home before him if I left a little earlier than everyone else.
In my defense, I hadn’t expected all hell to break loose. I swear. More on that later.
The Hole looked pretty seedy from the outside, the kind of place where drug dealers in action movies hired professional assassins to knock off the competition. Needless to say, my dad would have had a triple cow if he saw it. As I rode toward the building, I stared up at the age-pitted brownstone, grey and almost luminous in the dim streetlights, with black iron bars over the windows and an iron gate in front of the door.
I parked Jennie around back, in the weedy little lot adjacent to the chainlink-fenced backyard of the project next door. There seemed to be a lot of cars. But just to be sure, I walked around the corner and found the colorful murals of graffiti emblazoned on the side of the building that I’d heard about. The place looked like a condemnable dive, but it was definitely it.
The heavy pneumatic door had the words ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER spray-painted across it—not an encouraging sight. I stopped and stared at it, wondering what I hoped to gain from this little venture. I mean, Snowman hadn’t been kidding when he’d said Aimi had problems.
Terry’s hacked school computers had inspired me earlier. I’m not exactly a cyber-slacker, after all. After making it home from school I sat down at my dinosaur of a laptop and did some serious web research.
It wasn’t difficult to find Destroyer information and fan blogs on MySpace, Facebook, all the usual suspects. True to what Michelle had said, Aimi’s fans considered her a “bad girl,” the kind that all guys want but would never bring home to meet their families. She had been expelled from virtually every school in New York City, and rumor had it she’d spent more time in rehabilitation clinics for various addictions than River Phoenix, had at least two DUIs on her record, and had been a cutter since she was thirteen years old. She had a social worker and a therapist, neither of which seemed to be doing her any good.
But her dad was loaded, so, as you can imagine, that helped a lot. He was used to getting Aimi out of all kinds of fixes with plenty of money and maybe a few threats on the side. Maybe, I thought, Aimi really was sick. So sick, she was living for everything it was worth, trying to cram a lifetime into a few short years of life. She wouldn’t be the first. Some of the kids who’d survived San Francisco had turned kamikaze, like they had to prove again and again that they were really, truly alive. Some wound up in the news for alcohol or drug-related crimes. Some went to prison, and more than a few had landed in mental health institutions.
As I’d read various blogs, I’d felt a sick knot tighten in my stomach at the thought that Aimi was on the short road to self-implosion. I had no idea how I could help her, but I knew I needed to talk to her. I had to know she was all right. I steeled myself, grabbed the door handle and pulled. Then I was in.
The club was low and almost pitch-black under the dimly burning black lights. I saw a rundown juice bar, a dozen tables scattered around, and a raised stage that dominated most of the floor. Pop star watercolor murals, foreign movie posters and fliers for various local bands covered the otherwise derelict walls.
A group of kids in glittery dark club wear floated by, making me feel direly underdressed in my jeans and jacket. I was about to follow them when the doorman asked to see my ID. I flashed him my driver’s license, and when he saw it he said I shouldn’t worry about the cover charge. I wondered if Aimi had had anything to do with that, or if I just looked so damned destitute that he felt sorry for me. He stamped my hand, and then I was swallowed into the dimness and thudding heartbeat of The Hole. Vendors lurked in the shadows, selling overpriced T-shirts, music CDs and cheap homemade jewelry. I tasted cloves and saw wisps of smoke rising as thick as cream through the blue and red strobe lights.
I’d been half-thinking about the crushed pack of extra-light Newports in my jeans pocket all day. I’m not proud of the habit, mind you, but if you want to talk health with me, you ought to know I inhaled enough tar and debris in San Francisco to pave a road twice over. I’ll be lucky to see fifty without being on an oxygen tank. A Newport now and again isn’t likely to have a huge impact on all the fun future health issues I knew I was sure to face. But after that little incident with the flaming cigarette, I’d been reluctant to light up. Nobody told me that cigarettes were combustible.
Onstage, twin girls in vinyl silver cyber dresses and flight goggles were screaming hoarsely into the mike and stomping their monster plats rhythmically against the stage. Everyone was on the dance floor, back dancing frantically in and out of the motion-detection lights, but I wasn’t going anywhere near the dance floor, thanks; I’m not that brave. Instead, I installed myself in a dark corner table and waited.
Around eight the owner climbed up on the stage to introduce the band. Around that time they started taking donations. The bartender came around, asking if I wanted to donate to the San Francisco Relief & Rebuilding Fund. I felt like saying, What San Francisco? But like everyone else, I dug dutifully through my wallet and spotted the guy a fiver, even though that meant no smokes for me for the rest of the week.
All the kids in the club—the place was more mobbed than ever—migrated to the front of the stage to mull and weave in anticipation. Then the band appeared from backstage and started climbing up, hefting their heavy instruments with them, and everyone started whooping and stomping. I stayed where I was, back in the shadows, and just watched.
I spotted Aimi lugging an enormous cello case onstage and felt my heart lift a little. She was dressed in a huge black birthday dress of a gown that looked like something from Revolutionary France, froths of lace and bows everywhere. Her face was a death mask of white, with blue and black henna scrawled around her eyes in crazy loops. She looked so small and doll-like up there, like the crowd could swallow her alive. Yet she handled the cello with surprising strength and dexterity, uncasing it, bending it to her bow.
Snowman, dressed in an outrageous suit of black glitter and reams of white ruffles like a Gothic version of Liberace, moved to the microphone up front. The audience (mostly girls) cheered and catcalled shamelessly. He gave them a cocky smile and slung an electric guitar around his broad shoulders. The other members of the band took up their instruments and began several slow strains of music. Snowman cupped the mike in his hands, eyed the audience in a serpentine way,
and said low and sly into it: “This…is a restoration…”
The Indian girl who looked like Raggedy Anne launched in first with the violin, playing it like a gypsy. Aimi followed with the cello, and the African-American twins filled in with keyboard and drums. I was expecting boring “big” orchestra music, but it was loud, raucous, and it pretty much rocked.
Snowman began thrashing side-to-side in rhythm, rapping harshly over the beat, whipping the audience into a frenzy and pounding a shiver down my spine with his snarling, throat-tearing lyrics:
Yeah! This is a restoration
What can’t you understand? You can’t key my plan
Oh yeah! This is my respiration
Don’t touch me don’t touch the plan don’t touch the man who plants the seed
I learned a grudging respect for Snowman in that moment. He was an ass—but a talented ass. He had a voice like a throttled chainsaw. He knew his guitar, could tear riffs from it like a demonic version of Eddie Van Halen. Not to mention he had this thing—he started charging back and forth across the stage, singing directly at the audience like he meant every word of the message for them. Nothing hesitant, nothing afraid. Like he owned the stage. Like he owned the world.
Hell. Don’t think about who it is, man, I thought, just enjoy the music.
But that was just it. I was.
And it was pissing me off.
6
Kids mobbed the stage the minute the band had finished their third encore. There was no way I was getting through that solid, impenetrable wall of sweating taffeta and brocade. Feeling somewhat letdown since there was no way I was going to see Aimi tonight, I decided to give it up.
Trying not to look like a lovesick puppy that had been kicked, I started for the door. But as I was stepping outside, the doorman handed me a sheet of paper (I noticed immediately that it was the same material as the letter) and a little wink.
It said:
Meet me out back. I’ve missed you. –Aimi
7
I sat side-saddle on the bike behind the club, a wormy nervousness crawling down my spine, listening to the sounds of cabs blaring in the street as they moved uptown, and the occasional, jarring whine of a siren. I kept looking at Aimi’s note, trying to decide if it was for real. Maybe it was a joke. A really cruel joke Aimi was playing me. In a minute or so she’d step outside with the band and they’d all point and laugh at the idiot new boy sitting here, waiting for her. There was no other reasonable explanation.
Just then the back door opened and I saw Aimi standing on the stoop of the club in her big black birthday dress. She lifted her skirts and descending the steps to the pavement, looking like a negative version of Scarlet O’Hara racing breathlessly down the stairwell on her way to meeting Rhett Butler. I sat up and looked around, but I didn’t spot Snowman anywhere; she seemed to be alone.
“Kevin,” she said, coming to a stop inches from me. She let the hem of her dress drop. “You came to the show!”
I crumpled up the note and hid it in my pocket. I had been thinking about what I would say to her all night, but now that it came down to it, the only thing I could think of was, “Yeah. The show. I came.” I sounded so lame, mostly because I was. I was finally going to be able to talk to Aimi, and I had no idea what to say. On top of it, I was feeling pretty horrible about the ugly thoughts I’d had about her.
She bit her lip. Her makeup was perfect, doll-like, and her expression expectant, like she was waiting for me to say something. “I liked it,” I added, trying not to sound like a complete ass. “It was a really good show.”
Her dark eyes flickered up, down. She was as stoic and austere as a character in an Emily Bronte novel. I was afraid I had blown it with just about the most perfect girl in the whole world when she finally smiled, and her whole face lit up. “Good,” she said. “I was so nervous…with you in the audience, I mean. Watching and everything. I almost missed by cue!”
“You were nervous?” Somehow I couldn’t believe that—that I could inspire anyone else to nervousness. It didn’t seem even remotely possible. “But you were so good! I never noticed.”
We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, and the ice was broken. I knew then it would be okay between us. She came and sat down on the bike with me. “Of course I was nervous! You’re just about the biggest hottie in school—well, you and Snowman—but everyone is too afraid to talk to you. Haven’t you noticed all the girls in the halls always watching you?”
I shook my head to show her I had no idea what she was talking about. What girls? What watching?
She gave me a solemn look and put her hand out, actually touching my arm. I would never wash that arm again, I swear. “There aren’t that many people here who are like us…different, I mean. Not at school, anyway,” she said. “Do you ever get teased about being different, Kevin?”
I licked my wind-chapped lips, searching for the right words. “Well…sure,” I said, my voice choking up a little because I could smell her chocolatey perfume and it was making me feel dizzy. I just kept staring at her, probably solidifying her opinion of me as a total idiot. But she was so adorable, so yummy, I couldn’t imagine anyone teasing her about anything, especially not anything so pathetic as being half Japanese. “But I always figure, if someone is stupid enough to just look at the differences and nothing else, and that bothers them, then that’s not someone I want to hang with.”
Her eyes grew as large and grave as space. “I never thought of it that way. I usually just get mad. Then things happen. Then my dad gets mad at me for losing control, then it all gets worse, you know?”
I nodded, thinking about what I had read, all the schools she had been thrown out of, wondering if that was it, and what it must have been like for her. “There are times when I wish I had gotten mad. But I never did, not till…not till I moved here.” I almost said not till my mom died, but I decided I didn’t want to go there. Aimi didn’t need to shovel my emotional crap.
Aimi bit her lip in sympathy. “Things must be really different here than they were in San Francisco. It must be like another planet.”
I shrugged. Yes, no, maybe. “A little,” I said. But I didn’t want to talk about San Francisco. That was like another planet, one that didn’t exist anymore. “You play a wicked cello,” I said to change the subject. “I mean, I never thought of it as a ‘cool’ instrument, not until tonight.”
She smiled a smile that could have lit up all of downtown Brooklyn. “Snowman taught me. He can play seven instruments,” she said, glancing fondly over at the club. Then she read something in my face—I guess I was pretty transparent about my opinion of Snowman—because she added, “I’m not dating him, just so you know. Snowman is Snowman. He’s…well, he’s different too. He’s like a big brother to me. The brother I wish I’d had.”
She had been going to say something else. What, I didn’t know, but like me, she had changed her mind mid-sentence. I just wondered what that other thing was. “In the beginning it was just the two of us, playing guitar,” she said, glancing off into the night. “Then the others joined. Morta. Dust and Ashes.”
The twins were named Dust and Ashes? I mean, were they serious?
Aimi dropped her eyes, lashes like fallen soot on her porcelain cheeks. “I know you think it’s silly. That we’re silly. All of us. Maybe we are. Maybe nothing will ever come of the band. But Snowman’s music helped me. He helped me through so many bad times, Kevin. You have no idea.”
“He said you two were best friends.”
I didn’t want to actually say it, but there it was, lying between us like a small mountain. I waited for her to look up, to tell me that was none of my business, but she only looked sad and a little defeated. “He is my best friend. He tutors me when I’m too sick to come to school. He’s always been there for me, even when my dad wasn’t.” She looked up with an expression of profound pain. “Oh Kevin, there’s so much you don’t know. So much you don’t understand about me. So much out there tha
t’s bigger than us.”
I didn’t know what to say, what was appropriate, so I just took her thin little lacy hand in mine. She looked up at that, surprised by that simple contact, which broke my heart. She looked so fragile, so small, in the big black dress. I just wanted to take her and hold her and take away all the pain and loneliness she had undoubtedly dealt with for years.
Honestly, I wanted to kiss her in that moment, more than I had ever wanted to kiss anyone. I think she knew, because she tilted her face up and said, “Chuushite kudasai,” with a small, playful smile. “That means—”
“I know what it means. And I know that it’s polite in Japanese culture to always ask.” I’d been hitting the language books, you see. “Um…chuushite kudasai?”
“Hai,” she answered.
I moved my hand up to her hair and touched it softly. It felt as soft as the fur of a kitten. I wondered if her solemn white face would feel just as soft. I touched it and was surprised by her coolness. I traced the contour of her cheek and the shape of her lips. She closed her eyes and laughed nervously. “Your hands are very warm, Kevin,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you have a cold heart, does it?”
I glanced down and wondered if I was seeing things correctly—my hands seemed to be glowing with a faint golden light. It had to be the poor neon lighting here, I thought. There was no other explanation. I dropped my hands to Aimi’s shoulders and drew her gently to me. We leaned in close and she tilted her head. My world was filled with her scrumptious perfume in the seconds before Snowman suddenly appeared right beside us.
I swear I never saw him coming. He just materialized out of nowhere. I thought for sure he would push me, the way he had at school. But I guess he’d had enough. This time he executed a right hook that impressed the hell out of me even as I went down hard on the gravel. I didn’t feel a thing—that would come later, after the adrenaline rush had worn off.
Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) Page 5
