Beneath the Stain - Part 1 Read Free

when I left her this morning!”
    “I will fucking—”
    “You will? I’d like to see that. Wait. Nobody would like to see that. Suggest something else.”
    “Oh God—”
    “Me? I’m your god? Wow, you didn’t have to! Hey! Go get that!”
    “Go get what?”
    “Your self-worth—I just kicked it off the sidewalk!”
    “What does that even mean?”
    “When you find your self-worth, you’ll know! Fetch!”
    The rest of the school just stopped talking to him, because, well, Mackey made a fool out of them.
    But okay. He didn’t need anyone but his brothers. And the band. Kell could fight for him anytime, but if he had the music to look forward to, Mackey didn’t need him.
    Mackey could do just fine on his own.
    But he carried that thing , that pixilated fuck-off-and-love-me thing into the music.
     
     
    S O HE gathered the guys in Stevie’s dad’s garage—praying that Stevie’s dad didn’t show up, because they could only bug out of there so fast with their instruments, and sometimes they had to leave Stevie behind and that didn’t sit right—and Mackey told them how to play.
    “We’re doin’ Nickelback, ‘Rockstar,’ first,” he said, and nodded, waiting for them to nod back. “And Offspring, ‘Pretty Fly’—”
    Grant laughed. “Can you do the voice?” he asked. “Which one of us is doing the ‘Uh-huh-uh-huh’?”
    Mackey smiled lazily and shook his bangs out of his eyes. “Tell you what. You do the ‘Give it to me baby,’ and I’ll do—” And all the guys joined in, “Uh-huh-uh-huh”
    They laughed then, all together, and Grant winked at him. “I can’t wait to see you do your thing, Mackey. It’s gonna sell the show.”
    Mackey preened, swinging his shoulders, strutting around his little circle of godhood like he was a big man. Then he turned and said, “Nah—it’s Kell and you who’re gonna sell the show. We got two lead guitars—man, that’s right out of Southern Fried Rock right there. You guys gotta play back and forth, ’kay?”
    Grant and Kell looked at each other and grinned, then held up their secondhand Gibsons and made fake guitar battle gestures.
    “Whaddo me’n’Stevie do?” Jefferson asked, all in one breath. It was how he and Stevie usually talked, which was why he never did backup vocals if there were real words in them.
    Mackey smiled at him—not the flirty, cocky smile he gave to Grant or Kell when they were playing either. Jefferson and Stevie were… well, sort of special. They were quiet. In class the teachers just sort of overlooked them, and they hid in the back and got Cs and spoke an entire other language that not even Mackey could fully translate. They had the softest features, round faces, round chins, and the same sandy brown hair which they wore parted in the middle and falling layered to the sides, and they had the same faded blue eyes. They looked like cousins maybe, but Mackey and Kell had asked Stevie straight out if any of his male relatives had the last name Jefferson, and he couldn’t think of one.
    “Well, you’re bass,” Mackey said, nodding and trying to give Jeff a complete picture. “You sort of have to ignore all the rest of us here and coordinate with the drums. So Stevie’s gonna be giving us a beat and you’re going to be reinforcing that.” He paused and saw that Jefferson looked sort of downcast. “You don’t get it!” Mackey watched every performance he could find on basic cable. He stayed up late to watch talk shows that had bands in them—hell, it was the only reason to watch Saturday Night Live . “See, the bassist has mystique . You look totally… what’s that word? Alone… no! A loof ! You look aloof from all of us. The bassist always has sunglasses in the daytime, and he’s just totally his own person. So Stevie’s gonna be spazzing on the drums, ’cause that’s his thing, and Kell and Grant’ll be dueling guitars, and I’m gonna be—” He executed some pelvic wiggles and a few jerky dance