This choice: Possess the rest of Suburban Howl • Go Back...Chapter #21Mars Attacks by: Seuzz   The question that's been haunting you all day—What the fuck am I doing?—gets an answer next period. You've just fallen into your desk and are slouching with your phone when Beth Larter (who is also in that class) comes slinking over. You don't stop yourself from giving her an appreciative once-over: she's dressed in sloppy, hip-hugging jeans and a football jersey, and you get a rise out of the brief fantasy of throwing her onto a bed and pulling the clothes off her.
"So I heard your practice got crashed yesterday," she says, and slouches in a way that thrusts her boobs in your face. "Can anybody come out to watch or is it just, you know—?" She shrugs.
Behind her, you see Mandy Simpson and Natalie Dawkins—two of the "Rumorati"—shifting their heads to watch and listen.
"It's s'posed to be practice, not a block party," you mutter back.
"That's too bad," Beth says. "So it's just Dana and Logan who get to come out and watch?"
"Go sit down," you growl, and with a sniff Beth obliges. You accidentally catch Natalie's eye, but quickly look away and turn around in your seat.
But you're not mad at Beth. That little scene was just her way of telling you that she's up to speed on what's going on with you. But it also crystallizes a thought that's been slowing forming in your head: I gotta stop just randomly possessing whoever.
Yourself and Beth were an accidental pair. Dana is a friend of yours, but she's got nothing to do with Beth. Mars has nothing to do with any of the others. All this jumping around isn't going anywhere. No wonder you're asking yourself what you think you're doing.
Do you have a plan? No. Could you have a plan? You don't know what it would be. But you could at least stop being so goddamned squirrelly and focus on possessing a group of bodies that actually belong together. Right now, just as it's weird to have Beth come up and confront you—
And you can tell it's weird by the way Natalie and Mandy are whispering to each other.
—or having Dana show up at practice, it would be weird to have any of your quartet of bodies hanging out with each other.
Which doesn't mean that they can't start hanging out. It only means that you need a base to build on.
And with Mars Renteria, you've got a couple of different ones you can build.
And so, during seventh period, which is your study hall, you go looking for Eli.
* * * * *
It's his study hall too, a fact you know only because Eli happened to mention it one day last week, not because he and Mars hang out together. You start by looking in the cafeteria, where most study halls (except during the two lunch periods) are supposed to be held, then go looking outside. You almost miss him: he is lounging on the bleachers next to the practice field, sitting on his shoulder blades with his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes closed and his face turned up to the sun. A cigarette is burning between two of his fingers.
Eli isn't tall, but he seems tall because he is so lanky. He has long legs that you've never seen because he only dresses in scruffy, baggy jeans, and a long torso that is always wrapped in a soft gray hoodie so big that it's more like a poncho. His face is pale and heavy lidded under a shaggy mop of chestnut-brown hair. Eli isn't "too cool" to give a shit. He's too boneless to.
Which makes it all the stranger that's he so good as a bass player, being able to bridge Mars's driving rhythms with Dylan's looser melodies. He says he can't read music, but he has a natural knack for finding a bass line that not only fits but sometimes finds a melody of its own. Just made it up, he once told Dylan when the latter asked him how he came up with one particularly striking progression, and turned away with a casual shrug of one shoulder as though too bored to talk about it.
His eyes crack open briefly as the bleachers creak under your feet, then he resettles himself and closes his lids again. "Hey," he growls. (His voice is surprisingly deep for a kid with such a scrawny frame and shallow chest.) "Fuck you want?" He puts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag.
"I wanna talk business."
Phf, Eli sighs. "Talk, don't 'spec me to listen," he murmurs.
You feel Mars bridle and bristle, but force yourself to remain calm.
"We need to tighten our shit," you say. "We're all over the place, all out doing our own thing. Dylan, that shit he was pulling yesterday." Mars actually apologized to Dylan for stomping out of practice, but it was insincere. "That's gotta stop."
"I thought it was cool," Eli says. Without opening his eyes, he casually flicks some of the ash off the end of his cigarette.
"It was cool, but it doesn't fit. It didn't fit what I was doing or what Casey was doing." You drum your fingers on the edge of the bleacher. "And what Casey was doing, that didn't fit in either."
"We ain't doin' bad," Eli says.
That gets another rise out of you. Ain't doin' bad is one of his stock phrases, his answer to every query about how he's doing or how things are going. Ain't doin' bad.
"When's the last time we had a gig?"
Eli cracks one eye open to look at you, then shuts it and resettles himself again.
"You know what Dylan'd say if you asked him that, right?" he says. His mouth twists into a half-snarl. "Who the fuck got us banned from the Warehouse?"
And that gives you a massive clench.
The Warehouse is the premiere party spot in Saratoga Falls—a rowdy, no-holds-barred rave that occurs every Friday and Saturday night in an abandoned warehouse in the city's decaying industrial district. Hundreds of high school students will show up each night to buy drink and drugs from each other, fool around, and dance to pounding music provided either by a high school dee-jay or by a band like Suburban Howl. It's also the place where bands build their buzz, which leads to actual gigs in town.
During Mars's sophomore and junior year, it looked like Suburban Howl was following the same trajectory as previous successful bands, and the buzz around them was actually pretty hot. Mars and Dylan and Casey (especially) were stoked.
But the Warehouse is also a place where lots of fights break out, and last spring, when Ethan got in one, Mars jumped in to help out. Both of them (and the guys they were fighting) were busted by the football/lacrosse goons who run the place and provide security, and were hauled outside for a savage beating that stopped just short of broken bones.
And they were all banned from the Warehouse for life. Which meant that Suburban Howl was banned as well.
It almost busted them up: Casey and Dylan actually went sniffing around to other groups, looking to see if there were openings, and came crawling back only when they confirmed there were no alternatives. By some unspoken consent, the incident never gets talked about.
So for Eli to bring it up—even if only to pretend to put it in Dylan's mouth—pisses you off.
"We all need to get on the same page," you say.
"Good luck with that," Eli says with a half-smirk.
"Oh, I know how we can manage it," you say, and glance around to confirm that there's no one nearby watching.
Then you roll yourself sideways and over, to straddle Eli. You just have time to see him open his eyes in a frown when your own eyes roll back and everything goes black. Your jaw seems to unhinge, and your guts rush out. You go numb all over.
And then you are someplace warm again, and the warmth separates and resolves into limbs and torso and head. You gasp, and suck down a wad of goo that is wriggling inside your mouth, and snort back the heavy mucous that is clogging your nose. It melts and vanishes into you. You blow out one quick, hard cough, and open your eyes.
Mars is straddling you, his hands pinning your shoulders to the bleacher and staring down into your face with a hard and unwinking gaze. You return his stare with an even one of your own, then give him a smirk. Before you can say anything, though, he rolls off you to perch nearby. You sit up with a jerk, and resettle the soft hoodie you are wearing, and brush a stray lock of hair from your eyes. You lift your hands to look at them—your fingers are very long and white—and notice that the cigarette is gone. You glance around and look down at the grass beneath the bleachers. Mars—perhaps at some unvoiced command of yours—hops over to the edge and jumps down, then crawls under the bleachers to find and extinguish the butt.
You've hopped to the ground by the time he crawls out again, and together you lope off back toward the school. Neither one of you says anything.
In the nearest restroom, Mars takes a piss while you wash your hands and slap a little cold water onto your cheeks. Silently you study your pale face and shaggy, chestnut-brown hair from under lids that you let droop. As with Dana, you find yourself in a body with no memories, and as you tug and resettle your hoodie, and push the sleeves up past your skinny elbows, you have to practice Eli Berman's slouched-stoner pose from memory. Head back; chin up; eyes half-closed. Chest out but with shoulders slumped. Standing on one leg and bent slightly back at the waist, as though inclined to topple backward and to the side.
Ain't doin' bad, you murmur at your reflection as your lips twitch. Ain't doin' bad at all.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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