Dead, Sweet Boy (Book One - Dead, Sweet Series) Read online

Rick leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. My thoughts raced to try and capture anything Claudia could say to completely embarrass me. It was a blur, and maybe that was enough. She witnessed so much. “Okay. Happy birthday Claud. I can hardly wait to celebrate.”

  The girl’s car was a nightmare, filled with so much crap that the two of us could have lived out of it for a month. I don’t think I had ever seen a VW bug that old before, that was still running. And the paint job? Well can you say ‘spray paint?’ The most frightening part of the adventure was the sound of the engine and the fact that she had to pump the brakes to get them to obey. “We should have borrowed my mom’s car.” My dad sold my car. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be replaced.

  “Why? This car has been my best friend for a couple of years now. She never lets me down. Well except the time the muffler fell off on the highway.”

  “So you decided against fixing the muffler?”

  “My friend Joey patched it.”

  “Really. You can hardly notice. And I’m surprised that you can get it to go so fast.”

  At that moment, we got uncomfortably close to the car in front of us, and while she pumped the brakes, it didn’t seem to faze her that we stopped just inches in time not to hit them. “Jesus Claudia. You think you can stop a little sooner?”

  “Relax, I know this car better than I know myself.”

  “Great.”

  “Sunny, would you get the stick out of your ass and loosen up? I promise we’ll get there safe. I’ve been driving longer than you.”

  I sat back in my seat but held onto the door handle so tight that my hand hurt. Maybe it would be better if I didn’t agitate her while she was trying to operate such a complicated piece of crap.

  “Do you want to drive?” she asked, leaning herself in my direction.

  “Watch the road Claud! Geez. You know I can’t drive.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “You know, maybe we should have stayed at my house, locked in my room. That’s what I’m used to with you. I could have had Patty bake you a cake.”

  “Don’t you get it Sunny? We are free to do whatever we want. I can dress how I want and I don’t even have a curfew. And you? Well you can do whatever it is that you do to have fun.”

  “We have parole officers. That kind of limits our freedom,” I said. My hope was to let her know I had boundaries I didn’t want to cross. My feeling was that we were headed for trouble.

  “What’s this we thing? You have a parole officer, not me. What the frick do you think I am? A criminal? Frick. Frick. Frick. And frick again dude.”

  “No, why would I think that. Oh wait, we were both locked up together.”

  “That’s not locked up. I have a couple of friends who were really locked up. They would laugh at the conditions we had.” Just then she swerved. “Look at that asshole taking up the whole road. Oh sorry, I mean look at that poop hole.”

  “Don’t pass him Claudia!” How many times did she have to drive into the other side of the road to know the road was too busy for her to pass? “You know what?! This is crazy. I’m in this car with you Claud. If you want to drive like this while you’re alone, go right ahead. But I have some say about this trip while I’m in the car. Knock it off now!”

  My hands started to shake I was so angry, and for the first time since she showed up at my house, Claudia actually heard me. It was a relief when she slowed down and it was an even bigger relief to know that she knew how to drive safely when forced.

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey Sunny. Did you bring any money with you? I’m a little short on cash and we’re going to need gas.”

  My head nodded up and down like a bobble head. This little trip was going to be on my dime. And I didn’t even know what we were going to do. We were headed for her neck of the woods. Where she hung out before she was incarcerated. I guessed I was going to be submerged in her culture for the day, with a bunch of people like her.

  When she pulled into the gas station, she put her hand out for the cash. No shame at all. And then she offered to get me a drink with my own money.

  “No, I’ll get my own drink.”

  “Get me a slushy if they have one. I like the blue ones.”

  There went my head nodding again. And yes they just happened to have blue slushies at the gas station, as if she didn’t know. I met her at the register, just as she bought a pack of smokes with my money along with the gas. What could I say? I gave her the money. “I hope you aren’t going to smoke in the car,” was all I could get out.

  “It’s my car.”

  “They’re my cigarettes.”

  Slam! Finally. Her mouth was hanging open and she didn’t know what to say. I silenced the squawk box. I’m so good, I’m the bomb. I celebrated in my head a little too quickly.

  They were only words. She lit up as soon as we got in her piece of junk car, not even waiting till we were away from the pumps. I was a prisoner again with the same roommate. It was sick. My aversion to her smoking was my aversion to her. All of the guys in the band smoked, even Mack, and I know that when they weren’t around me they smoked more than tobacco, which made me think for a minute why Rick hadn’t smoked in all the time we had spent together.

  I might have smoked right alongside the boys, but Mack would have had such a fit, it wasn’t worth it. Somehow I was better than that. It didn’t matter what it was, I was better than whomever it was that was doing what he didn’t want me to do. The thought made me smile.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I said as I snapped out of my flashback.

  “Well then something’s wrong with your face, cause I never saw it do that before. Oh my God. Are you sick? Do you need emergency medical treatment? Was that a smile or gas?”

  This was nuts. I was in a car with someone I had nothing in common with, practically forced to spend the day with her and I didn’t know why it was happening. “What do you want Claudia?”

  “For my birthday?”

  “No. From me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No. No. Be straight with me. Why did you come to my house today? I think it’s obvious that you don’t even like me. Why would you drag me out to spend the day with you? What do you want?”

  Claudia swallowed hard and then shook her head in a hurt way. For a minute I thought we were driving off the road, the way she pulled the car over and brought it to a rough stop.

  “Great. This is just great. Is that what you think? You think I don’t like you? What did I ever do to you? I was your roommate for six months and never did anything to you. If I didn’t like you I could have asked for another roommate. You were the only criminal in the joint and they couldn’t force me to room with you if I didn’t want to.”

  “What? I was the only criminal? Right.”

  “You were Sunny. You were the only girl there that had committed a felony. Well, drugs could be a felony, but no one there was selling drugs, they were just victims of drugs.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “It’s true. Everyone knew it. You were there because your daddy got you in, well and because you didn’t have a record of any kind. But that place doesn’t take hard cases like you.”

  The reality of what she was saying was so harsh. I hated her at that moment for bringing me into the light. I was the worst person in that joint, while the whole time I thought I was nothing like them. Maybe even better than they were. I thought I was a victim. “Thanks for pointing out how awful I am. Like I need your help.”

  “No problem.”

  That was it. She pulled back onto the road as if nothing had happened. It was loony. Maybe she’s loony and that’s why she was there. Maybe I was going to spend the day with a real nutcase.

  “So what did you do?” I asked, while I looked away and out the window.

  “All that time together and you don’t know why I was your roommate? Were you even there with me? Did you ever listen to me?”

&nb
sp; “Spare me the drama Claudia. I’m already quite aware of what a freak I am. Just tell me what you did.”

  “I ran away.”

  “That’s it? You ran away and they locked you up. No fights? No theft? No attacking a police officer?”

  “Fourteen times. I ran away fourteen times. Once for every new daddy my mom moved in with us. Oh, they never got the title officially by marrying the cow, but they got to be the head of the house for a short stint. And don’t ask me about my dad. I’ll save you the breath. I don’t know who he is. That my dear freaky friend is the whole story. Well, not the whole story. I left out how half of the daddies tried to put their hands on me. I didn’t give the other half a chance.”

  “So they put you away for that?”

  “I was glad. Finally, someone did something. So for a few short months, I ate better than I ever had and I could sleep without someone coming into my room to try to molest me. It was just enough to give me the break I needed. You know, to be an adult. They probably kept me from doing something like you did.”

  The thought made me shiver. To think of Claudia sneaking up on her mother’s house and lighting it on fire, like I had done to Linda’s, really shook me up. Part of me wanted to see the thought to the end. If anyone deserved it, it was the animals that hurt Claudia. When I looked over at her metal clad face, I saw someone more innocent than I’d seen before. It was up to me to change the tone of the adventure. She wasn’t doing anything more wild or crazy than I had done with the band. Really, if I thought about it, she was just a little different, and mostly similar.

  I pushed her shoulder lightly with my hand and smiled when she looked at me.

  “What?”

  “You picked me for a roommate because you want me to burn a house down. Right?”

  We both started to laugh. Maybe it’s not funny, but it turned into one of those sick things people laugh about to break the tension of how awful it is. We laughed harder and harder, and suddenly I forgot about how she was driving. I was laughing so hard that I was crying. “That’s why you came to my house…hey Sunny, got a match?”

  “Yeah, thank God you have the gas money.”

  “We…are…so…sick,” I managed to get out between laughs.

  Finally, we calmed down. Still, laughing once in awhile when we thought about it, but calm enough to talk. That’s when Claudia said the most precious thing.

  “You know what I wanted from you Sunny? No kidding?”

  “What? Gas money?”

  “Hey, not nice.”

  “Sorry. What? What on earth could you want from a felon like me?”

  “I couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to spend my birthday with. I wanted to spend it with you. I guess I’m used to being around you.”

  “That’s nice. Wow. That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Naw, you just weren’t listening. What is it I see in you anyway? You don’t listen to me and you act like such a prude when you really aren’t.”

  So, in one sentence she says something really sweet and in the next she takes it away. “I act like a prude? No, I don’t think so. You just think I’m a prude because we’re different.”

  “There you go. That sounded like a prude. You said we’re different. What does that mean? That you’re better than me or something, because that’s what it sounds like sometimes.”

  “I don’t think I’m better,” I lied. I didn’t feel it in a snobby way, or least I didn’t mean it that way. I think.

  “Oh come on. You’re this cool rocker chick who writes music and has a band. You act like some sort of preppy who is above even what you love.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well maybe not so much now. You look a little more comfortable in your skin somehow now.”

  “Oh, so I have to dress like you or something to not be a snob.”

  “No, but you’re hiding behind the sweet and innocent thing a little too much. It doesn’t fit you. Oh, forget it. I can’t explain it. It’s almost like you’re afraid of what someone is going to think. Maybe your parents.”

  It was better to drop it than argue the point, because something in what she said really hit a note with me. It wasn’t my parents. It was Mack. He was more protective of my image than my parents were.

  “You know when I first saw you, I thought you looked and acted like a little kid. It blew me away that you were in a band and that it was a core band. I figured you were some kind of psycho kid or something, like in the movies. I was curious.”

  She was right. I was stuck in the image of a young and innocent girl. “I think I know what you mean.”

  Claudia took me to a mall I didn’t even know existed. It was her turf, so she knew it well. I told her to pick something from the mall for her present, and what she wanted was surprising.

  “No, it’s supposed to be your present, not mine,” I argued.

  “That’s what I want. Don’t you want to do something different with your hair? I like your natural color, but you can add color to it and make it amazing. You don’t have to get really wild or anything. Come on Sunny. Who do you want to be? Who are you? Seriously girl, I cannot stand looking at that cut anymore.”

  “Okay, we can go look at pictures, but I’m not promising anything.”

  “You are going to love these guys. They are amazing at color. Come on!” she grabbed my hand and pulled me all the way to the salon, if you could call it that. It was a one stop shop for everything radical. They did piercings and even tattoos.

  “What am I getting into?”

  “Dory? This is my friend Sunny. She needs some color ideas for her hair.”

  “Cool,” the woman said. “I’d say she needs more than color. You should sue whoever gave you that cut.” She was the epitome of all that could be done to one person’s image. I didn’t want to think about the other places she might have piercings, because she was fully loaded. Her hair was about six different colors and even though it looked really cool, it wasn’t for me. Personally, I thought she was a little long in the tooth to be wearing the outfit she had on, even if she did have a good body. Then I heard the snob in my head that Claudia was talking about. Stop it Sunny. Just try to relax for once.

  “So what do you have in mind?” Dory asked. She put down the magazine she was reading and got off her chair to offer it to me.

  “I’m not sure. Nothing too crazy, but hip.” Oh my God. Did I just say ‘hip’ to her? “I’m not good at seeing the colors in my head, so I have no idea what would look good.”

  “I know what I would do if I were you,” she offered.

  “Oh?” I was nervous.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes!” Claudia blurted out. “Have at it.”

  Dory went off to mix the colors. The plural of the word color made me a little nervous. “Are you sure she knows what she’s doing?”

  “I’m sure. You like my hair don’t you? Well Dory did my hair. She’ll find the real you.”

  I didn’t know how to tell her that I didn’t want my hair to be anything like hers. The only thing that kept me in that chair, was the fact that I knew a good salon that could fix whatever damage was done that day.

  “You see that painting over there?” Claudia asked.

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the chick sitting with her guitar?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I painted it. I did that one over there too. Dory took them in trade for this hairdo I get.”

  “You did those? Wow. They’re good. No, they’re great.”

  “You think so? That’s my big talent. Well that and the drums.”

  The paintings were more like cartoons. No color. The girl in the one painting reminded me of Claudia, but Claudia didn’t play guitar. The creation was like an Emo cartoon, except better or the best I had seen.

  When Dory came back, the two of them wouldn’t let me look in the mirror the whole time my hair was being done. It didn’t make me feel any better w
hen they both raved about the color, while Dory blow dried and ironed my hair. Finally, when she was finished, I closed my eyes as she turned the chair to face the mirror. Claudia took her sticks from her back pocket and gave me a drum roll. They had to tell me a couple of times to open my eyes before I could get the nerve up to do it. But when I did, I was overwhelmed with delight. My hair was gorgeous. The colors were amazing. Dark mahogany brown mixed with my own light auburn, and strands of cream in just the right places. It was my look. An original and it was perfect.

  “Don’t you like it?” Dory asked. I was taking too long to answer I guess.

  “Oh, I love it. Look at me. The color is amazing, and the cut? Well it’s been a long time since I had a real cut.”

  Claudia laughed, while I jumped out of the chair and wrapped my arms around Dory, thanking her profusely.

  “Hey, what about me? It was my idea?”

  My arms went around Claudia next. For someone who couldn’t touch anyone, I was doing a bunch of touching lately. I felt great. I was a new me and it showed on my face as we bounced and flitted around the mall, drawing a lot of attention. It was kind of weird though that we didn’t run into any of Claudia’s friends. The mall was full.

  She decided that we needed to find some more outfits for my new doo. And while she talked me into stuff that would look great, I picked up the stuff that she admired too. The kicker was her face when I handed the stuff over to her. She jumped up and down and had tears in her eyes. She was so happy and grateful and bubbly that I could almost picture her as a cheerleader. That’s when I got an idea.

  Chapter Nine

  This Song Has no Title

  If I was an artist who paints with his eyes

  I’d study my subject and silently cry

  Cry for the darkness to come down on me

  For confusion to carry on turning the wheel

  (Elton John’s, Yellow Brick Road)

  So my mom was a little surprised when she saw my new friend. The one I called and asked her to make a little party for. Rick picked up the cake, and Patty made burgers for us. We all sang the birthday song, and my mom was funny when she offered to put Claudia over her knee for spankings. Something was different about my mother. I know, I keep saying that. I expected the act she was putting on to change, but she was different. No one could pull off an act like that for so long.