I finished school — the three of us did. School had been pretty much irrelevant to me since I’d started the band. I got good grades, but I didn’t care. Every free minute I had I tried to spend working on the band. I applied but I wasn’t going to go to college and I didn’t worry about telling my parents my decision. They stayed away from me, and I gave them nothing to worry about. I kept to myself and finished school, I wasn’t loud, and I wasn’t going out to parties or coming home late. They couldn’t complain, right? Besides, Melissa was starting to enter some annoying rebellious phase, and Mom and Dad had to focus on her messes instead of mine.
The only places I went at all, really, were band practices and to see Edgar, Socks, and Fern. Socks was looking forward to the summer — he wanted to book a tour and just hit the road for a few months. Edgar was balking at that idea, Fern and I were all for it, so we ended up talking about money a lot, which wasn’t what I was interested in at all. Edgar always was pretty sensible, wanting to make sure everything would work out. Socks was maybe too easygoing. I don’t know what was going on in Fern’s mind those days, but all I wanted to do was get on the road and get things going. I had energy and nowhere to channel it except at rehearsals and into my artwork.
Socks and Edgar noticed that something was different with me and Fern, but after asking us once what was wrong, they dropped it. I tried to cover it up with enthusiasm, but I’m pretty sure it was all overwrought and seemed weird. Fern, on the other hand, had become very quiet and more observational, nodding instead of discussing. It disturbed me. I hoped that she would regain more of her old self. In practice, instead of being aggressive and confident, she seemed timid and weak. I had no idea what was going on in her mind, but I could see myself trying to channel everything into my plans, to turn everything into drive and energy. Mad is more productive than sad, right?
I’d lie awake in bed and imagine glorious ways to destroy that band. The concept of lighting the bus on fire was always a good standby; the image of that fat asshole’s swollen, split flesh and the crackle of their hair blazing always calmed me. I entertained myself with images of poisoning them, putting something into their drinks and watching bloody foam stream from their lips. Even something as simple as driving a plain old stick from the backyard into Balthazar’s eye could often do it. When an image of his face would pop into my mind unbidden, I would immediately imagine driving my thumb into his eye, relishing the warmth of the spasm and clench around my thumb, the eye bursting beneath my thumbnail and all that weird congealed jelly stuff squirting out and down his cheek.
I also developed a pretty bad habit of digging my nails into the palm of my left hand, causing cuts that would bleed, as I had that day in the woods with Fern. I’d pull off the scabs when the wounds tried to heal, and after a while my palm was a mess and only got worse. I ended up getting a bunch of blood on my bed sheets because I tore off the scabs before bed or unknowingly in my sleep. The skin around the scabs would harden into dry ridges and I would tear those off too, stripping them along as far as they could go into the healthy areas of my palm and causing more blood to well up. I would wad up a white sock and clench it in my palm whenever I picked at it during the day. I kept all the bloody socks in a bag under my bed.