Torn Read Free Page A

that got them the gig. He smiled back, almost missing his harmony on the chorus:
    And where were you
    When I bled about our love?
    And who were you
    When I crawled from underground?
    The crowd wasn’t huge for a Friday night, but it was big enough, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Feet stomped, hands clapped, hips twitched. Torn was going over. It was a big night for their little nu-metal garage band.
    Get out
    Lock the door
    I can’t take you anymore.
    Devin felt like he should be thrilled, proud, or pleased, but he wasn’t any of those things. Instead, he felt out of it, like he was watching everything from somewhere far away, judging. Why? What was wrong with him? He had what any seventeen-year-old guitarist craved: a rock group finally breaking into the Macy club scene and a relationship with the hot drummer, but all he could manage was this weird disappointment, as if he’d gotten to the promised land, but it had turned out to be trashy.
    It wasn’t the club. The long, dark space with the curved fieldstone roof and walls used to be a train tunnel. What could be cooler than that? During the nineties freight trains used it to carry textiles in and out of the adjoining warehouses, but textiles were on the way out all over the state and the town was hard hit. The line was abandoned, the warehouses emptied. Now the only active warehouse held a children’s discount furniture store.
    Two years back, Allen Bates bought the tunnel; bricked off the front and back; added doors, electricity, plumbing, and ventilation; and brought the funky structure up to code. Now, on Friday and Saturday nights, the place was packed with local teens who danced under the spinning lights until the gray stone walls grew slick with their sweat.
    Playing Tunnel Vision had been Torn’s only goal for the six months they’d been together. Now they were here. So what bothered Devin?
    Last gasp
    Make it pound
    Why are you still hanging ’round?
    Maybe it was the song. Maybe deep down he thought “Face” sucked and sooner or later somebody would figure that out and call him on it. It had taken only ten minutes to write. That didn’t bug Cody. Torn’s totally psycho front man launched into his searing guitar solo with extreme gusto. The new axe sounded great, even if it was a complete mystery how someone as financially strapped as Cody could afford it.
    Maybe Devin was just looking for something to be wrong. If he was, he found it. Just as the number was ending, Karston, their skinny, anxious, self-conscious bassist, lost his place. The crowd had already started applauding, so most likely no one in the audience noticed, but Cody did. He spun and gave the bassist a killing look with his bright green eyes.
    Leave him alone! Devin thought, grinding his teeth, as if Cody could hear him. The last thing we need is to make him more nervous!
    Before Cody could fire away with any morelaser-beam glances, Devin nodded at Cheryl and they launched into “If It Doesn’t Kill You,” Cody’s song. It was a trick he and Cheryl used on Cody. Whenever he got out of line they’d hold up something bright and shiny to distract him. Sometimes Cheryl would flirt with Cody playfully; sometimes they’d go into a song. Devin and Cheryl were good together that way. In a lot of other ways, too.
    Devin’s chords blasted through the amp, rolling between A and F-sharp minor with a fast, easy rhythm. The crowd started up again, clapping to Cheryl’s beat. Cody forgot Karston and went at the vocal with major passion.
    For some incomprehensible reason, the incident made Devin relax a little, like it made everything seem more real. He even started enjoying himself during the last of Torn’s three-number tryout set, “Flush with Your Foot.” It was an early effort, stupid fun, written a year ago, when Devin was sixteen. Cody really let loose on that one, vamping up and down the stage, and