Beneath The Skin(163)

I am my father’s son.

Out of nowhere, Brant comes around the couch, the sight of him pulling me mercifully out of Yellow Mills High. I look up at him, confused. “Forgot my lucky glove,” he mouths, swiping it off the coffee table. He freezes, noting the expression on my face, if I had to guess. “You alright?” he asks, his brow furrowing.

I shake my head no.

Brant abandons his lucky bowling glove like it means nothing to him, plopping down on the couch. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“Dessie,” I mumble.

He swipes my phone away and types:



Didn’t you bang her





the other night?





I snort and grab my phone back, then shake my head no. “We talked,” I mumble sourly. “It was good.”

“Good??” he asks, not caring to mask his disbelief.

To him, a night of sitting on the couch with a hot girl like Dessie and just … talking … is probably the most boring thing he’s ever heard.

“I’m tired of …” I start to say, then swallow my words. Something about remembering all the kids I’ve beaten up, all the girls I’ve dicked around with, all the mistakes of my parents I’ve blindly—or perhaps even freely—repeated … I feel so shitty suddenly.

Brant waves his hand, urging me to go on, his bright blue eyes flashing at me with urgency.

I try again, but with a different tack. “That anger problem my dad says won’t go away. My inner demon. My bitterness. I’m so tired of using it to … to just keep all the … to keep girls away, or …”

Brant slaps a hand on my shoulder, which shuts me up. He leans in and says something I don’t catch.

So I ignore the words and push on. “But I’m afraid I can’t help it. I feel like I piss on everything I care about. And I barely know her. We just started getting to know each other, but I feel … I feel like …”

Brant moves his lips again. “You’re talking a lot,” I think he says.

I am. I meet Brant’s eyes, realizing that he’s one of the only things that kept me sane during all of my worst years. Between those visits to the principal’s office, there was Brant throwing his arm over my back. Brant, telling people to fuck off. Brant, my pair of ears when I had none. Brant snuck into my house while I was suspended, even skipping a day to spend it with me behind my parents’ backs. Brant may very well be the reason I’m still alive.

If I didn’t have him in my life …

“I want … I want to talk more,” I push out. “I have a … I have a fucking voice.”

“You have a fucking voice!” he repeats back, a smile spreading across his face as he grips my shoulders and shakes me.

Dmitri pokes his head out of his room, shirtless and sweaty. He signs at me: What the fuck about a voice?

“Nothing,” I say back to him, pushing the words out despite my discomfort. “Just that I have one.”

Dmitri squints, confused, then signs: Oh.

I smirk. “You can go back to jerking off, Dmitri.”

He flips me the finger, then shuts his door.

Brant slaps my thigh, bringing my attention back, and he tells me I’m not going to hurt her. Or maybe he’s trying to convince me that I won’t. “You don’t piss on everything you care about,” he tells me, mouthing the words so distinctly, it looks like he’s shouting. Maybe he is. “Now message her and go get some dinner!”

I shake my phone. “I did. She won’t answer.”

Brant pats my leg, then flips on the TV and grabs an Xbox controller. I stare at him quizzically. He lifts a brow at me when he notices. “What?”

“Your bowling thing,” I mumble at him.

“Fuck it,” he says, then adds something about the team being doomed because the lesbians are going through something and are gonna break up any day. Or maybe that’s not what he said at all. He shrugs, then mentions something about catching one of them giving him “the eyes” and how he’s pretty sure she goes both ways. “And also, I want to be here for you when Dessie answers,” he says, nudging my phone with his elbow. Then, he faces the TV and starts playing.

I grab the other controller. When Brant notices, a grin spreads across his face.

“Oh, it’s going down,” he says, his teeth flashing.





CLAYTON



An email from Dr. Thwaite puts some extra speed to my getting-ready routine early Tuesday morning.

Mr. Kellen Michael Wright, our Official Lighting Designer Douchebag, has flown in early from the big apple to work with us here in the rotted grapefruit and he wants me to meet him at seven at the theater.