by eden Hudson
“Tiff,” I breathe. “I love y—”
That’s all it takes. She kisses me before I can even finish saying it. I lick the inside of her teeth. Search out her fangs with my tongue. Press my hips into hers. She sighs. I give her a deep, hungry kiss that rocks her down to her bone marrow, then I lead her to my bedroom.
Tiffani’s good—great even—but there’s something awful about having sex with her. That second when everything comes back, too loud, too real, too bright, and I realize that I did this to Tiffani. My-bodyguard-Tiffani. My-partner-Tiffani. My-everything-Tiffani. I used her body to get away from the noise and now all I want is for her to get out, to stop touching me, to be anyone else in the world so I can tell her to fuck off and leave me alone.
“Shannon?” Tiffani brushes the hair out of my eyes.
Inside, my stomach clenches until I feel sick.
Outside, I smile. I push up until she’s laying down. Then I start all over again. I get away from the noise.
Danny
At the end of our junior year in high school, the Lost Derringers signed with an indie label out of Jeff City and went on tour to promote My Lucky Bullet. People around Halo started talking about Shannon like she’d been the loosest girl in town. They swore she ran around on me. Then the magazines started doing stories about the band and their wild life on the road. They made it sound like Shannon’s bedroom had a revolving door on it.
By the time school started back up, I could barely get out of bed in the morning. My dad and I couldn’t be in the same room without fighting, my grades took a nosedive, and I got detention for the first time in my life for yelling at Coach Walden when he asked me why I wasn’t at the varsity basketball meeting. I was becoming one of those teenagers I hated—rebellious, spiteful, angry all the time. I wanted to stop, but I didn’t know how. It felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t get my head back above water.
Then one morning, Shannon called and I heard some guy tell her to get off the phone. Ten minutes later we were done yelling at each other and it was over.
For the longest time I tried to just be depressed and lonely, but once the truth hit, it wouldn’t go away. I had to face the fact that I’d had a choice—Shannon or me—and without even thinking twice I chose to save myself.
Two weeks ago, I almost asked a girl from one of my classes out. Amanda. Five years is a long time to hang onto something. Starting over seemed like a good idea. I thought I could do it. I had talked to Amanda a few times outside of class and it was fun. She was really analytical. And our circles overlapped—she was friends with Noah and her roommate was in Clare’s study group—so I figured we could hang out a couple of times with friends. Then maybe we could go out on a date just the two of us. Maybe, if I gave it a chance, I could fall in love with Amanda. Maybe I could start sleeping like a normal person again and not have this constant nagging ache between me and God.
Maybe I could squint at the mule long enough to convince myself it was a horse. That’s a really offensive way to use one of my grandpa’s sayings.
I got sick the night I decided to ask Amanda out. Hundred-and-three fever, vomiting, chills. Noah and Clare had to go demon hunting without me. I stayed on the couch with my Bible and thesis notes spread out on the coffee table and a bucket handy. And even though it was only one-thirty in the morning when I fell asleep, I didn’t dream about Shannon. I dreamed about Amanda—her and I in the middle of our wedding. I was about to say my vows when God spoke to me.
He said, “Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. A man should fulfill his marital responsibilities to his wife.”
I never asked Amanda out. It wouldn’t have been fair. I could never love Amanda the way Christ loved His Church. The only time I’d ever had the chance to love someone like that I’d given her up to save myself.
Tonight, I’m the only person in my subway car. As I brace myself against the sway of the train, the words of God from that dream come back to me again and I have no idea what to do with them. I used to look at my parents’ marriage and know someday I would share that with Shannon. I knew it. We would get married, raise our children, grow old together. In forty or fifty years, I would die in my sleep, an old man lying next to the only woman he’s ever loved.
“What, then?” I ask God, my voice almost lost in the noise from the tracks. “I thought it was supposed to be better to get married than to burn with desire. Am I supposed to be like Paul, alone forever?” I feel the spike of tears behind my eyes again. To stop them, I press on my eyelids. “I don’t want to be alone. Please.”
Within me, the Holy Spirit is silent and that nearly kills me. My dad likes to say that “no” is an answer, too.
“Is this a punishment?” It’s a petty question, but it’s how I feel—low, childish, mean. I put my head in my hands and can barely force myself to look up each time the train stops.
I get off and find my way back to the hotel. I don’t think I can face either of the guys, but Noah’s waiting up when I get to the room.
“You get lost?” he asks, looking up from his Bible.
“I was with Shannon,” I say.
“She doesn’t have a phone?”
“It was unplugged.”
Noah stares at me.
I can feel my face turning red, but I try to ignore him. I sit on the rollaway bed and untie my shoes. Kick them off. On the other side of the room, Clare turns over onto his back and starts snoring.
Noah hasn’t looked away yet.
“Got something you need to say?” I ask him.
“Flee from immorality,” Noah says.
“Thanks for the tip.”
“And carry change.”
“Change?”
“For payphones,” he says.
I snort.
“Me and God had an interesting conversation tonight,” Noah says.
“Maybe that’s why I kept getting the busy signal,” I say. “You were tying up the line.”
Noah gives me a flat stare. “God hates the willfully ignorant.”
“I’m going to go take a shower,” I say, standing up.
“Almost four years now I’ve known you,” Noah says. “I’ve never once seen you break your word or pick a fight with somebody trying to help you, let alone make provision for sin.”
I look past Noah at the bathroom door. All I wanted was to come back to the hotel, grab a shower, lie down and think. I could sort this out if I could just think.
“If I had a razor blade and I was cutting my wrists right now, you’d stop me wouldn’t you?” Noah asks.
“Don’t,” I say. “I’m sick and tired of illustrations. I just—”
“All right, straight talk,” he says. “Shannon’s your pet sin.”
I sit back down on the rollaway bed. I’m so tired I don’t even feel like fighting anymore. I just want to get this over with so I can take a shower and try to lie down for a while.
“Give me my sin again,” I say.
That gets Noah laughing. “Yeah, quoting a play about two teenagers killing themselves ought to lend you some credibility.”
“It’s how I felt since I seen her the other day,” I tell him. “Like being with her again would justify anything.”
“Would it?”
I rub my hands across my face. Remember the bad times. Fighting with Dad. Always feeling tired, never being able to sleep. The times I felt like I’d fallen through the ice on a river and gotten dragged away from the hole.
“I left her to drown instead of me,” I say.
Noah leans forward. “Speak up, Country. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“She stopped being herself.” I wish my accent wasn’t so thick right now. I sound like an ignorant hick, but I can’t make it go away. “I knew she was going down and I couldn’t stop her ‘cause I was, too. Instead of helping her, I let her go. I was too scared of drowning myself.”
To his credit, Noah doesn’t give me any trouble about how I’m talking.
> “I wondered…” I don’t want to say it out loud, not to somebody who’ll judge me for it to my face. Just goes to show how much of a coward I really am. “I wondered whether this whole thing wasn’t punishment for that. Whether God won’t let me be with anybody at all ‘cause I was too selfish to love her right.”
I can’t look at Noah. He’s not saying anything.
“I didn’t stick with her when I should’ve,” I say. “It’s my own fault—all this is.”
Then Noah squeezes my shoulder.
“You’re smarter than that, Country. Use what you learned at school, use your Bible—what the hay, use your common sense if you’ve got any.”
I make a wrecked sound that was supposed to be a laugh and he gives me a shake.
“You don’t know that God wants you alone,” Noah says. “Not for sure.”
I try to say that I don’t want to know for sure, but my voice breaks. I wish like heck I’d made it to the shower. Noah’s seen me cry once before when I found out that Henry and Charlotte had been killed, but if I have to be humbled before God tonight, I wish it would’ve been alone.
“Want me to pray with you?” Noah asks.
I wipe my eyes on my shirt. Shake my head, stand up.
“How about for you?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. Then I can feel myself blushing again. “If I’m alone with her again, we’ll have sex.”
“Did you tonight?”
“Almost.”
Noah puts out his fist and says, “Accountability buddies?”
“I wish you were a worse friend,” I say, bumping my fist against his as I pass.
“Proverbs 27:6.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
At the bathroom door, I turn around and lean against the doorjamb.
“Did you guys at least have a good time at the concert?” I ask.
Noah gestures toward the snoring lump that is Clare. “So much fun I had to bring the little guy home and put him down.”
“You guys didn’t get gassed, did you?”
“We heard about it on the news. By the time the police showed up, we were already gone. Clare was going to rush the stage with everyone else—then he saw something big and definitely bad.”
This is something I can stand to think about.
“You all went after it?” I ask.
“We tried, but Clare lost the scent once it got outside.” Noah leans forward. “But get this—it had a human body and black wings.”
“Like—”
“Exactly like.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“Maybe just that fallen angels like rock and roll,” Noah says. “But maybe something worse, too.”
I nod. With demons, it’s always something worse.
Shannon
When I wake up, the bedroom smells like stale smoke and there’s a pack’s worth of cigarette butts in an ashtray on my nightstand. I didn’t smoke those.
I get up and take a shower. A long one. Then I head out to the main room, following the warm, delicious smell of orange-cranberry scones. Tiffani’s banging things around behind the cooking island. It and she are covered in a fine layer of flour. She sees me and starts washing dishes in the sink, even though I bought us a dishwasher brand new when we moved into this apartment.
“Hey,” I say, pulling out the barstool opposite her and sitting down.
“Hey.”
“Shouldn’t you be dark already?” I ask. “Or are you trying to catch on fire?”
“Not long and the scones’ll be done.” Tiffani scrubs the pizza cutter she’s holding until the wheel bends.
I reach over the bar and grab her wrist, but my hand is shaking, so I take it back.
“Don’t be weird about this, Tiff.” When I realize what I’m about to say, a disgusting feeling creeps into my stomach. “We had a great time last night. It was fun. Really fun. I needed that. Thanks.”
She nods, but she won’t look at me.
“The scones are done.” Tiffani takes them out and lets the oven door slam shut. The sound makes me jump. She drops the baking sheet onto the counter. “Okay, going dark.”
I watch her go, glad I don’t have to deal with her right now.
Fuck. I’m such a bitch.
After a few minutes, I go over to the couch, pick up my acoustic and sit down. Rest the guitar on my lap. I go through the motions of tuning, even though it’s right on.
My thumb picks at low E for a while. Nothing scary or possessed or intricate. Not even a rhythm, just a meditation. I close my eyes and listen to the solid, steady thrum, and try to think about anything but what I did to Tiffani.
Danny hates me. That’s something I can hold onto. He thinks I’m a whore. With good reason—I can remember how I became one.
Three days before our junior prom, Danny stopped me in the hall at school told me he wasn’t allowed to go.
“Are you crazy?” I said. Maybe yelled.
“Dad won’t let me,” he said.
“Why the hell not?”
Danny’s conscience was why not. He had told Pastor Gauge—his dad—that we’d made out in the back of Anna’s mom’s van on the way back from a show. That he wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d wanted to go further. When Pastor Gauge asked Danny whether he would leave the prom in the middle if I asked him to, Danny said he would.
“He said if I can’t control myself, I can’t go.”
“Tell him you can.” I was desperate. My dress had cost me eighty-one dollars—second-hand, not returnable. Did Danny even understand how much money that was?
“Yeah, like Dad’ll believe me after that,” Danny said.
“This is going to be my only prom!” Burn Down had already signed the Derringers and I knew in my gut that once we left Missouri, we were never coming back. I had already filed the drop out paperwork with the school.
Danny and I screamed and fought. Principal Baumeyer called us into the office. We fought some more in front of him. I cried. It didn’t matter. Danny couldn’t go.
So I went with Adam Stillings, a senior whose girlfriend had come down with a freak case of adult chicken pox. Danny was in the crowd at the Grand March, sullen and jealous. I flipped him the bird as I walked past.
Adam was nice enough, but a real jock. He wasn’t very much fun and he didn’t dance, so for most of the night I danced with Mena and Terri and he hung out with his friends. And honestly, I only thought about Danny every now and then—how mad he was and how justified I was. I was having a great time and I would’ve missed out just because he couldn’t tell his dad one white lie.
Then prom was over and I got in Adam’s truck to go home. I could smell alcohol on him. We were passing the lake outside of town when he put his hand on my leg.
Some guys get touchy-feely when they drink—I’d seen it plenty of times when we played at clubs or frat parties—so I just shoved Adam’s hand off, thinking he’d realize what he was doing and stop. Then it was back on my leg, higher, and then we were parked at the lake, not driving to my house. He scooted over next to me. Put his arm around me. Kissed me.
The whole time Adam was touching me and kissing me, I didn’t believe it was really happening. It couldn’t be happening because if it was, I would’ve stopped him. Even back then I wasn’t some quiet little mouse who would let a guy walk all over her. Maybe I was mad at Danny, but I loved him. I would never do this to him. I wouldn’t just go along with Adam, thinking eventually he would leave me alone, so there wasn’t any point in making a big deal out of nothing and embarrassing us both.
I remember having to keep pushing my dress back down because Adam kept trying to get into my underwear. Then he put my hand on his fly, over his erection. I loved it when I could see that I turned Danny on, but this made me feel disgusting. But I wasn’t sure how to tell Adam I didn’t want to do this. I said something about just walking home, but he didn’t stop then, either.
When Adam finally dropped me off at the house, I snuck around back and shoved
my underwear down to the bottom of the burning barrel, then went inside and got in the shower. I scrubbed and washed and scratched my skin until the water ran cold, but I could still hear him and feel him. The rest of the night I lay awake in bed telling myself it was my fault. I’d been stupid and let this happen. I had ruined everything, just like always.
The next morning before the sun was even all the way up, I went over to Danny’s. I told him I was sorry for going to prom without him. And instead of getting pissed off and yelling at me for being such a bitch, Danny said that he was the stupid one for getting so mad and that I had every right to go to prom before I left school.
I couldn’t tell Danny about Adam. I was crying too hard. Then Danny was hugging me and saying over and over again, “If I’d known it was this important to you…” All I could do was laugh at how unreal everything was.
A month later, the band went on tour to promote My Lucky Bullet, our indie album. Danny and I tried to make the long distance thing work, but I only had time to call him in the morning and he did chores in the mornings. He had time at night, but I had media stuff and shows at night. During daylight hours, it seemed as if the band was always en route to somewhere. Every time Danny and I finally did get ahold of each other, one of us was always tired. If I caught him after a show, I was wound up and he was falling asleep. If he got me in the morning, I was doing everything but propping my eyes open with toothpicks.
And something else was happening that felt worse. I could almost hear him not saying the things he was thinking. I kept stuff to myself, too—a fan who had jumped on stage and kissed me, the admiring and kind of sexy fan letters I had started getting from guys—things Danny wouldn’t understand that would just make him more jealous.
One night after this packed show on the west coast, the band and our usual entourage—roadies, a couple indie ‘zine guys, and we’d hired Corey by then—were all hanging out in this hotel bar and Anna was sneaking me drinks. I started talking to Soda, one of our roadies, about music. He played a few instruments, had a band. It seemed like he really got why this was all so important to me—the music, the life, everything. Eventually Danny came up. How it seemed like there was so much more than space between us now. Soda got that, too. He’d been in long distance relationships.
