Fear and Laundry (16 page)

“
Don’t even think about it
,” sang Lia, once again modifying her song. But the pixie had already hurled the thing.

This time Lia wasn’t fast enough. The tomato hit her in the shoulder, exploding on impact. Juice and seeds ran down her arm. Within seconds, she’d dropped the microphone. It hit the stage with a thump and a squeal of feedback as she launched herself at Ridley, tackling her to the floor with ease. The two of them rolled, Lia ending up on top. The bony blade of Lia’s elbow sliced up and down through the air a few times as she drew back and punched down gleefully – until Penny and the others finally came to life and jumped in, yanking her off their mistress.

Absurdly, the rest of us had continued playing. But now Jake ripped the guitar from his neck and let it fall. He dropped from the stage and went immediately after Electric Torch’s singer, a skinhead from Bart named Malcolm who seemed to be trying to pin Lia’s arms back so Ridley could punch her in the face.

Without thinking, I stood and climbed out from behind the kit, hurrying toward the roaring crowd. I’d almost reached it when Paige caught a handful of my t-shirt in her fist and yanked me backward, almost off my feet.

“You kidding?” she laughed at me over the sounds of battle. “Wanna get yourself killed?”

I stared into the knot of people yelling and pulling at one another, trying to glimpse Lia. But I only saw Jake. He had blood on his face. “We have to do something!” I shouted at Paige. I struggled to get away from her but she wouldn’t let go of my shirt.

“Think they can handle this part,” she nodded. I looked and saw Roy and Trent forcing their way from the back of the room to where the fight had swallowed up almost everyone who’d stood nearby. “Come on,” she said and dragged me toward the drum kit.

When we got to it, she released me and knocked Sierra’s snare drum over. A hi-hat went down with it, clanging deafeningly to the stage. I spread my hands and gave Paige a look that asked what the hell she thought she was doing. She didn’t say anything, only took the bass from around her neck and used it and her feet to hammer and kick at the kit until it collapsed completely with a tremendous crash.

“Are you nuts?” I screamed at her. She pointed behind me. I looked back and saw that the riled up crowd, distracted by our commotion, had turned their attention to us. “Oh, crap,” I said, backing up a step as people scurried toward me, presumably to join in on the destructive fun. Paige grabbed my wrist and dashed off the side of the stage, yanking me out of the way of the onrush. She scrambled up onto a nearby chair and hopped from there to the nearest table. I followed right behind her.

“You
are
nuts!” I told her when we stood together on the tabletop. It tottered unsteadily beneath us as people swept by, and I clung to her shoulder.

“It helped, didn’t it?” she asked breathlessly. Her face was flushed, green eyes glittering with exhilaration.

I looked around and had to admit Paige’s stunt seemed to have broken up the crowd just enough for Roy, Trent, Jake, and some other people to wrestle Electric Torch out of the building.

However, onstage, people were now ripping apart our equipment. As Paige and I watched, someone picked up Jake’s discarded guitar and stabbed it neck-first through the front of Sierra’s toppled bass drum.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” I answered as a guy ran by, slapping our table with his open palms and whooping maniacally at us.

Paige threw one arm around my neck and shot the other triumphantly into the air, forming horns with her upraised fingers. “Yeah, baby!” she growled after the guy, laughing.

***

“C
’mon, Roy, everyone loved it. It’s one of those nights people’ll talk about for years. A legendary event,” Lia twisted back and forth on a barstool, grinning as she worked to convince Roy of the brawl’s upside.

The show was over and Lynch’s was empty of everyone but Roy, April, the singer for The 50s Housewives and the members of Impressionable Youth. Jake sat on another barstool, probing his jaw with his fingers as Paige and I stood by, watching Lia get scolded.

Roy was still a little worse for wear, his t-shirt bunched up and apron hanging askew, a pale strip of doughy stomach peeking out. One horn of hair stood up on the back of his head and his glasses sat crookedly on his nose. He looked at Lia like she’d lost her mind. “We’re lucky no one called the cops,” he said. “Ridley still might. You gave her a good beatin’” Who knew, he grumbled, she might even sue.

“Yeah, ‘cause that’d be really punk rock of her,” Lia said sardonically. Then she told him to relax. What was he afraid the lawyers would take from him? His bankrupt restaurant?

Roy frowned.

“Kid’s got a point,” the lead singer of The 50s Housewives spoke up. She’d told us to call her Barbie, though I doubted it was her real name. I guessed it was some kind of handle, meant to be ironic like the band’s image. She’d donned a pair of yellow rubber dishwashing gloves for the Housewives’ set and as she put a comforting hand on Roy’s shoulder, the top half of a mermaid tattoo peeked out of the cuff.

She’d witnessed many an audience lose their shit, she told him. Way worse than ours had. Tonight was nothing. “Wouldn’t worry about a lawsuit. Most you’ll probably end up with is a good story, like the kid said.” She told Lia she liked her spirit and to “Keep on truckin’” Then she winked and waved and was gone, the rest of the Housewives already waiting for her outside in their van.

I was relieved to hear Barbie sound so supportive and friendly. After the riot we’d caused, I was worried the Housewives would decide we were a bunch of unprofessional idiots and refuse to play or something. But after April had calmed the audience and we’d cleaned up the stage, the Housewives had performed their full set. So in the end, the headliner was content, the crowd was happy and Roy wasn’t as pissed at us as he might’ve been.

Still, the situation was less than ideal. A cursory inventory had revealed at least some of our equipment was probably screwed. And I grimaced at the state of Lia’s right eye, which had swelled steadily for the last couple of hours. April had promptly wrapped some ice cubes in a dish towel and instructed Lia to hold the pack to her face, but she’d been lazy about it, only intermittently icing the blackening eye while watching the Housewives’ show from the back of the room. Even now, she held the dripping towel in her lap, away from her face.

“Would you hold that up?” I scolded, forcibly bending her arm so the ice pack touched her cheekbone.

“I found the first aid kit,” April announced, holding up a white metal box painted with a red cross. “God, you’re really messed up,” she said to Lia, handing me a damp dish towel. “And you, too,” she told Jake, grabbing his chin and turning his face to the side. He winced. She was right: he’d somehow escaped without a black eye, but Jake nevertheless looked pretty wrecked. Not just his face, but his right hand, too. The knuckles were mangled. April opened the first aid kit and set about cleaning him up while I worked on Lia.

“Quit whining,” Lia griped at Jake when he cursed and complained at April’s touch.

“It
hurts
,” he griped back.

“Who told you to jump in, anyway?”

“What was I supposed to do? Stand there while my little sister got her ass kicked?”

“As if,” Lia scowled. I dabbed the dish towel at a bright red scratch on her chin. “He wasn’t even any help,” she said to me, rolling her eyes.

“What?” Jake was offended.

“You were hitting people that weren’t even part of the fight,” she told him.

“That’s true,” Paige chimed in. “I saw you wail on Dustin Tran for a solid minute. And he’d just been standing there.”

“Did I?” Jake looked at me. “I must’ve gotten caught up in the moment.”

I reached over and pressed the towel against his face until he hissed in pain. “I’m not impressed,” I told him. Lia cackled. “With you, either,” I told her, raising the towel toward her next.

She stopped my hand. “Oh, come on. Like you haven’t wanted to punch Eugenia Ridley in the face about a million times before? Or Penny, for that matter?” This’d been a long time coming, she told me.

“Not the point,” I said. “There’s this thing called restraint...”

“On which you are the undisputed expert,” she groaned, sliding off the barstool to avoid any more of my ministrations.

“Your parents are gonna freak when they see you guys,” I said.

“Eh,” Lia flapped a hand.

“The anniversary party’s this weekend.” I reminded her. Lia and Jake looked at one another. “Don’t tell me you hadn’t thought of it,” I said. “I’m sure your mom’ll really appreciate having to fill her anniversary album with pictures of her kids looking like they just went a few rounds.”

Lia cursed, drawing the word out. Paige laughed.

***

W
hen the phone rang, I opened my eyes and then quickly re-closed them, burrowing my face into the pillow. I’d dreamed about a riot of some kind, people being beaten and dragged away.

The phone rang again.

“Mom,” I mumbled, wondering why she wasn’t answering it. Then I remembered it was the weekend and she probably wasn’t home. On Sundays, she went out for coffee and shopping with her friends.

When the phone rang a third time I remembered there really had been a fight last night. Afterward, Jake had driven both Paige and our equipment home and Lia had dropped me here, saying she’d call me in the morning to update me on the fallout. Maybe that was her, now. Squinting, I rolled over and lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Nic,” At the sound of Jake’s voice, I sat up, running my hand through my hair as if he could somehow see me over the phone. “Were you still asleep?”

“What time is it?” I peered at the alarm clock.

“Almost one. Sorry to wake you but I figured I’d let you know we won’t be able to practice today. My parents got a look at Lia’s face this morning and had a fit.”

“Oh,” I said, still trying to clear my head of sleep. What did he think they’d do to her? I asked.

“Probably nothing,” he said, unconcerned. “For now they’ve got her shut up in her room and won’t let her talk on the phone.” But I shouldn’t worry, he said, reminding me Lia’d never been grounded for longer than a day or so. He said he was sure Lia would call me as soon as she’d been “paroled.”

I thanked him for letting me know what was going on. Expecting him to hang up, I was surprised to hear him ask how I intended to spend the rest of the day, now that rehearsal was out.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking around. “Maybe I’ll clean my room. Give my mom a fit, too.”

When I asked, he told me he hoped to sneak over to Caleb’s place to rehearse with his other band. Sneak out? Wasn’t he too old to be grounded, I asked? Yes, but he wanted to avoid John and Elyse anyway. “They already laid into me pretty well for not protecting Lia. For letting their precious little baby get her face all smashed.”

“Surely they know she can’t be contained?” I said.

“You’d think,” he said. “See you tomorrow, Nic. Bright and early.” He hung up.

I lowered the receiver, staring at it before hanging it up. As I gathered a change of clothes for the shower, I replayed the conversation in my head. Had I really told Jake I was going to clean my room? I berated myself for giving such a lame answer. And then for caring how I sounded to him.

***

W
hen Jake had asked how I planned to spend the day, I’d said the first thing that popped into my head. But after my shower, I really did feel inspired to clean up. It would keep my mind off him, I figured, and keep me from worrying about Lia. Also, it seemed less daunting than any of the homework assignments I had due tomorrow.

Thinking I’d tackle my laundry first, I brought a plastic basket in from the utility closet and piled it high. I’d just started the washing machine and come back for another load when my phone rang again. I picked it up, expecting Lia. I was about to make a crack about her earning work-release when I heard Alex’s voice greeting me, instead.

“Hey,” I said, startled. After our Thursday night dud of a date, I hadn’t expected him to call me again. He’d been friendly enough in class on Friday, but I figured that was because he was a Nice Guy. Someone I could still be friends with after he inevitably decided he didn’t want to be with me in a romantic way.

“What are you doing today?” he wanted to know. A Kopy Shak co-worker had needed to trade shifts and now Alex found himself with a free Sunday. If I was free, too, he wanted to take me to a movie. Maybe
Natural Born Killers
, which he remembered my mentioning the other night?

“Seriously?”

“Sure, why not?”

I’d resumed walking around, gathering laundry into the basket as he spoke, but now I stopped again. I thought about it.
Yeah, why not?

I told him I needed to finish up a few things at home, but then I’d meet him at the theater around four. I assumed Mom would be home by then and would either drive me or let me borrow the car.

“Great.” Alex’s beaming smile was audible in his voice. “Oh, and, hey, Veronica? Have you heard of a place called Scout’s?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Some friends of mine are going to be there tonight. Maybe we can stop by and hang out with them for a while? After the movie?”

I thanked him for the invitation, told him I’d think about it and let him know at the theater. Hanging up, I hoped Lia would call soon. I wanted to ask her what she thought I should do.

But she didn’t call.

***

N
atural Born Killers
was amazing. My first thought upon exiting the theater was that I couldn’t wait to talk to Jake about it. Considering I’d seen the movie with Alex, I felt bad. At least I hadn’t let Alex pay for my ticket.

The Maribel Theater, where Scott Connor had worked, housed a small arcade, and Alex and I played a few rounds of air hockey after the movie. We tied. It was fun. And I learned Alex and I had something in common after all. When I asked him if he’d liked the film, he said he had, though Oliver Stone had never been one of his favorite directors. Who was, I asked? Kubrick, he said. Then we spent a good half hour discussing the artistic merits of
A Clockwork Orange
and
Full Metal Jacket
and trying to discern the possible meaning of
2001: A Space Odyssey
.