“We have to pay four-hundred dollars. Four-hundred dollars or this trip doesn’t happen!”
“Okay what’s wrong with the brakes?” I said, searching over Martin and Nick’s faces to see how they were feeling about the situation. They looked tired, as though Brandon had already worn them down.
“Our brakes are going to break!” he said, near tears.
“Okay, calm down,” I said, taking him into a hug and going into my “mommy” mode. I hated when Sierra gave me shit for it, because it could come in handy from time to time. “We can find brakes cheaper than that,” I said calmly into his ear, even though I really didn’t have any idea. “Besides, money won’t be an object for long. Fun Aim wants to have Bad Moon record on a promotional E.P. tonight!”
“Really?” Brandon pulled away from me, scanning my face for any hint of a lie.
“Really. Are the brakes good enough to get us to the gig? We can deal with this shitty van stuff early tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah,” he said, finally taking in the deep breath I prescribed. “We don’t even really have to get them tomorrow. But soon,” he said, his wide eyes still filled with fear. “Terrible things could happen if we don’t.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s go to the Arkansas House and pray for some tips.”
“What are they paying us any way?” Martin asked.
“Free beer,” I winced, pulling up Aamir’s text for the address.
We piled into the van and the guys gobbled down the pizza. We headed down the winding streets, eventually coming into a kind of rough area of town where the paint faded from houses, and trash and junk cars littered the front yards.
“So this is the gig Aamir got us, huh?” Brandon said slowly. I heard a snort in the back and I knew it was Trent. Hot shame washed over me. Did Aamir really think this was all Bad Moon was worth?
“Hey, we don’t know yet okay? Maybe the crowd will be totally into your sound. Getting fans is super important. We just won’t leave any equipment in the van at night.”
I tried to ignore the nagging feeling that told me something wasn’t right.
“There it is!” I said, pointing to a crummy looking house with a bunch of young people milling about the lawn and patio. They were wearing torn up clothing, a lot of them with big, black boots they probably picked up at an army surplus store, and half shaven heads. It was like they didn’t know that 1977 was over and it turned out God didn’t understand sarcasm, because he had most definitely saved the queen.
“We’re not a punk band,” Martin said slowly.
“I know that,” I snapped. “But if they like Fun Aim, they’ll like you guys. Plus it’s just an aesthetic I’m sure. Most music appreciators don’t just limit themselves to one genre.” I tried to believe myself as Brandon ran over the nearly dead lawn to park next to a beat-up motorcycle.
We stepped out of the van and were treated with blank stares. Once again, I became painfully aware of our motley crew, me being the least “alternative” of the bunch.
“Hey,” I said, putting on a big smile and approaching a bald girl with a strange tribal tattoo on her face. It took everything I had not to laugh. “Do you know where Rick is?”
The girl gave me a mean look. I know I stuck out in my cardigan and beige slacks, but it wasn’t like I was being rude or anything.
“Yeah,” she said, before hawking a loogie into the grass.
‘Oh I see how it is,’ I thought, not allowing the disgust to show on my face. If she wanted to test me, she could go right ahead. I wasn’t going to give in.
“Well, where is he?” I said, the tone of my voice firm as I gave her a terse smile.
“Out back.” She nodded her head to a chain-link fence on the side of the house to where the backyard was. “You guys the band for tonight?”
“Yes, they are.” I nodded toward the guys who were unloading their instruments as they looked around wearily.
“Alright,” she said, giving us a nod of approval. She stumbled away towards a cooler full of PBR and Steel Reserve. It took everything I had to keep from raising my middle finger towards her staggering frame.
“Where should we put things?” Martin called out.
“Give me a minute,” I said over my shoulder, “you guys just wait here.” I walked over to the gate and fiddled with the latch for a few moments before realizing it was broken.
‘Of course it is,’ I thought as I took in the beer cans and broken bits of furniture. In the backyard things were worse—there was a mattress with several greasy punks lying on it, giggling, and several sofas with ripped up stuffing surrounding a pit with charred up coals, wood, and broken solo cups.
“Great,” I mumbled to myself, looking around for the guy who might be Rick. As I moved further into the surprisingly spacious yard, I noticed that there was a high porch that seemed modified to be a stage, with long eaves covering the wooden deck. There was a blonde guy with waist-long hair wearing muscle tee that revealed a red dragon tattoo wrapped around his arm on the deck, tossing some lawn chairs haphazardly onto the dirt below. I had a sneaking suspicion that that was our man.
“Rick?” I called out to the guy. He turned around and looked at me, as did the greasy punks on the mattress. I knew I looked like a PTA mom next to these people, but I didn’t care. The sooner we got this gig over with, the better.
“That’s me,” he called out in a lazy voice, “who’re you?”
“I’m Bailey, the manager of Bad Moon. It’s nice to meet you,” I chirped, trying to make my smile as natural as possible as I approached the porch. I realized with dismay that, like a real stage, there were no stairs leading up to it. I looked up at him, trying to act like it wasn’t weird or awkward.
“Manager, woaah,” he laughed, and the mattress punks did as well. “Who sent you here again?”
“Aamir from Fun Aim,” I said, suddenly realizing that I didn’t even know Aamir’s last name.
“Oh, those dudes,” he said. Someone from the dirty mattress club snorted. “Hey, don’t mock my boys,” Rick snapped, his laidback voice taking on a surprisingly harsh quality. They immediately shut up—this guy clearly had power in this scene.
‘Oh crap,’ I thought. ‘No one here is going to like Bad Moon if they have to be forced not to snigger at Fun Aim.’
“Awesome,” Rick said as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. “Tell them they can set up back here. I just cleared it out for them.”
I looked at the stage, littered with flyers and bottles and just nodded. It was already past 6:00 pm. We would play here for an hour or two and I would find us a hotel. Or we could make our way to Atlanta. Whichever was fine, as long as we didn’t have to stay in that pigsty any longer than we had to.
I walked out of the backyard, avoiding eye contact with the grubby punks who were high off of God-knows-what. Pushing open the rust-stained, broken gate, I suddenly wondered what kind of guy Aamir really was. Maybe his roots were in this scene; maybe everyone here considered him a sell-out. Maybe he liked to drink shitty beer and shack up with girls he hardly knew on the regular. But I thought back to his sweet charm at the pizzeria and smiled to myself—there was just no way he was like that.
“Hey guys!” I called over to them. Martin was chatting with Brandon and a short, red-haired girl who was undeniably punky, but had a good-natured smile on her face. Nick was beating his drumsticks on the front of the van, and Trent was sitting on an amp, looking forlorn as he stared off into the distance.
“Whatever,” I muttered to myself.
“Hey Bailey,” Brandon grinned at me. “Meet Marie. She says she knows Aamir.” I froze and forced what seemed like the billionth smile on my face that day.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, he was my ex. He used to live here,” she said with a ridiculously cute smile. She looked like a curvy imp, with perfect little dimples fixed into her cheeks.
“Oh yeah? How...neat,” I said, at a loss for words. Neat? I would put my own foo
t in my mouth if I were flexible enough.
“Yeah, Bailey knows Aamir pretty well,” Martin said with a chuckle. I could punch him square in his pretty face, he looked that smug.
“Oh? How so?” she asked with a tone so unassuming I wanted to puke.
“I don’t know him that well,” I laughed, trying to brush it off. I knew that everyone was having a bad day, but I sensed Brandon and Martin might make it a habit to cheer themselves up by trying to irritate me, and that...well, it irritated me. I had to hand it to them, they were good.
“Anyway, you guys can go set up in the back. Hand me a guitar or something.” I walked over to the pile of black cases and Martin handed me his guitar.
“I’ll help!” Marie chirped, and I swear it took everything I had not to roll my eyes.
“Oh you really don’t have to...” I said in a tone that said, ‘but really, don’t.’
She either didn’t get it, or was really good at acting like she didn’t. She just smiled and tugged at Brandon’s bass handle and followed behind me to the backyard. We put the equipment up on the porch, and it didn’t take me long to realize through her interactions with the burnouts and Rick that she more than belonged there, but in fact, that The Arkansas House was her house.
Just what I needed—if we didn’t get out of there fast, I was going to have to talk to this chick and avoid looking guilty of banging her ex. And I’m a not the best liar. When I was in seventh grade I told my teacher that my hamster ate my homework. Seriously. I thought it was more original and believable than the dog thing.
So they set up their equipment and just started playing right away. It’s not like they needed an intro or anything, and it didn’t seem like anyone cared much what they were up to. A few punks wandered in, but only one looked vaguely interested in Bad Moon. The rest hid their laughter behind crumpled beer cans. It was pretty demoralizing, to say the least.
“Hey, they’re great, aren’t they?” Marie said, coming up to approach me with that sickly sweet smile. I wanted to claw her eyebrow piercing out so badly I had to hide my balled up fists behind my back.
“Well, I sure think so. I am their manager after all.”
“Oh wow, that’s a pretty awesome job,” she said, twirling a ginger curl around her finger. “I’m just a stupid freelance marketer. Totally boring, but it pays the bills,” she said with an obnoxious pout. “Still, it’s really cool you don’t have to work for the Man.”
I seriously wanted nothing more than to close my hands around her stupid throat. “One of the many perks,” I said between gritted teeth.
“So, Aamir. How did you say you knew him again?” she batted her ridiculously thick lashes.
“I didn’t,” I responded, giving a humorless laugh. She laughed back but continued to stare. She wasn’t about to let up.
“We met at their last show in Orlando,” I said. “Bad Moon opened for them.”
“Oh did they now...” a look of understanding dawned over her face.
“Yeah...did you know about it?” I said, sensing a strange energy from her. Her smile fell slightly, and I felt a shudder shoot down my spine. There was something really freaky about this girl, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.
“Yes, I’m more familiar with you than I realized,” she said, her voice losing its buoyant quality. It was trance-like, falling through the air and striking an unfamiliar pattern of notes. It was not the sweet, cheerful voice from before.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she stood up and turned away from me, sauntering slowly towards the stage. Rick stood before it, bobbing his head and swinging his long blonde hair. Marie tapped him and he leaned down so that she could whisper something in his ear.
‘Great, they hate us. Whatever, they’ll be done in a few songs.’ I was about to pull up my phone and search for hotels when something strange happened. Martin suddenly stopped playing. He just straight up stopped. His limbs fell to his side and he dropped his pick to the floor, a dead look in his usually lively eyes.
Brandon shifted his gaze towards Martin, and he looked as perplexed as I did. It wasn’t like Martin was angry, or bored, or goofing off. It was like he had become nothing. Then I followed Brandon’s gaze down to Rick and Marie. Marie had her arms raised over her head, as if she were in the thriller music video.
Or controlling Martin.
But there was no way.
Before I could ponder on it any further, however, Martin lunged for Trent, his guitar still strapped around his neck, making a terrible clashing sound as the strings moved against Trent’s back. Trent threw his arms out in surprise, and Martin’s fingers clasped around his friend’s throat, tightening until his knuckles went white.
“Trent!” I screamed, feeling the wind leaving my body. I was hysterical, running up to the stage and trying to hoist myself onto it, until I felt a hand on my ankle tug me back towards the lawn.
“You don’t want to do that, little missy,” Rick said, making a disapproving clicking noise with his tongue.
“What the hell is going on?” I snapped. He just shrugged.
“It’s not our problem if they hate each other.” I looked up at the stage and saw that Brandon had clung to Martin’s back, and was pulling him backwards into the drum set. It crashed to the ground with a horrible, thunderous noise. Suddenly, punks were flooding in the backyard to see what was going on. Some of them cheered and others joined in the chaos, forming little circles and moshing into one another.
And what did I do? I screamed of course. I screamed bloody murder.
Nick stood up and raised his arms, and a strange, hissing melody came from his lips. It was surreal. I couldn’t make out what he was saying from where I was, but I could see his moving lips. Could tell it wasn’t English. The look in his dark eyes was otherworldly, as though a hint of red was gleaming in them.
And then it stopped.
Well, the fighting on stage stopped. The chaos around me only escalated as every punk and their mother thought it would be a good idea to start breaking bottles. I managed to clamber up onto the stage, this time kicking Rick in the face when he tried to pull me off. My foot made contact with his nose, and made a delicious cracking noise as he fell back onto the lawn. Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I threw myself onto Trent, inspecting his neck for damage.
“Are you alright?” I yelled over the chaos. His eyes were wide and he looked bewildered, but gave me a nod. A bottle went sailing past his head and shattered on the wall behind him. “Then let’s get the hell out of here!” I yelled, turning off the mic and pulling it off the stand. Everyone around me started gathering the equipment, haphazardly throwing wires into guitar cases and shoving picks and sticks into pockets. The drum set looked a mess, but I didn’t have a spare moment to wonder about the damage. There was a door behind us that led into the house, and as I suspected, it was unlocked.
“Let’s go through here!” I yelled out, and everyone but Martin responded with a bolt to the door. Martin looked dazed as he slowly put his guitar in the case, closing each latch with determined care. Rick started to stir down below, and Marie had taken to tending to his bleeding nose. She looked up at me with a piercing gaze that looked inhuman.
“Martin…we need to go now,” I said, running over to grip him by his arm and grab his guitar case for him. There was an amp still on stage, but I considered it a sacrifice to the mob; we didn’t have time to be concerning ourselves with it if we wanted to get out of there alive.
The house was like a maze of horrors, filled with rotten food, terrible smells, and strange, horrific posters on the wall of men screaming with white face paint. Luckily there didn’t seem to be anyone left in the house except for a single guy passed out on the couch. The front lawn however, was a different story. There were people rioting out there, one girl on top of a guy beating his face to a bloody pulp. It was horrific and surreal; I looked back at Martin to see if he was okay, but he looked more bewildered than I was.
“Come on,” I said,
gripping his hand in mine and running towards the van where the guys were tossing their stuff into the van. Some guy approached Nick with a switchblade, a maniacal look on his bloodied up face. All the air in my body escaped in a split second. I was too horrified to scream. It was like everything was swimming in water as the punk extended his right arm, the dull gray blade shooting out in front of him towards Nick’s abdominals.
I was sure he was a dead man standing. I was about to watch a man die, and nothing was going through my mind except a panicked, ‘No!’
But in the nanosecond before the blade jabbed through Nick’s stomach, he held up a hand and the guy froze momentarily, before flying back in the air, ten feet or so before falling with a thud onto the street at the feet of a middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair, screaming into her cell phone.
I was paralyzed with fear and confusion, and probably would have continued to stand there and gawk if it weren’t for Martin, who was tugging at my hand and pulling me away from a six-foot-tall girl with a Mohawk, coming at me with an insane grin.
“Come on!” he said, pulling me towards the van. He ripped the guitar case from my grasp and threw it on the floor of the van before pushing me in. The doors slammed around me in a series of loud bangs, but I could hardly notice a thing except for my insane shivering as Nick backed up the car and drove away, a wailing siren and bright red lights passing by us as the van dipped down the hill back onto a main road.
“What the hell was that?” Martin barked, snapping me out my daze.
No one said anything for a moment. I turned around to look at Brandon, whose lips were closed into a single line. Clearly, he knew something I didn’t. And I suspected that Nick and Trent did too.
You know, because Trent can turn into a wolf and Nick just propelled someone back into the air several yards with a mere wave of his hand.
When still no one said anything, I decided it was my turn to badger something out of them.
Bad Wolf Page 3
