Page 12 of Beneath the Stain

“The one you wrote this afternoon?” Her face was a perfect oval, and she’d done something complicated with her blonde hair, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to rip it all out by the dark roots. Grant hadtoldher about that? “Grant couldn’t stop bragging about you,” she said, smiling like he’d be happy about this. “He thinks you’re a genius. He keeps saying about how you’ll put our little town on the map, and I’m like, ‘Mackey? If he’s smart, he’ll just forget we were ever here.’”

She winked at him, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be mad at this girl who just wished him the same wish he’d had for most of his life.

Wouldn’t it be great to not live in Tyson anymore? Live in a place with his own bedroom? Not have to deal with the daily rounds of “Hey, kid, your mom’s pregnant again!”

“I wouldn’t forget you,” he said, surprised to hear himself saying something civil.

She laughed and patted his knee and then talked to Kell and Grant through the front seat, but Mackey wouldn’t forget. She’d tried to be nice to him.

And he wasn’t lying about not being nervous, either. In fact, being up on stage was….

It was like flying.

“Heya,” he said when the moment came, listening for a giddy moment as his voice boomed back at him under the mirror-ball lights. He stood up with his mike, with the guys around and behind him on the small stage. Behind Steve’s drum set was the DJ stand—which swung out to the side when the band wasn’t playing—but in front of it?

Well, nearly two hundred and fifty people, waiting for the five boys to play.

Mackey tapped the microphone and felt a little bit of bitch welling up in his chest. “Did I say ‘heya,’ y’all?’” he asked, and the attitude? Oh, it caught their attention.

The swell of sound and the applause was all Mackey needed.

“That’s more like it! So, we’re Outbreak Monkey, and we’re gonna play you some music. I’m gonna sweat somebloodon this little stage—you all wanna see that? Wanna see someblood?”

In an instant they were rabid, and Mackey grinned, the same grin he’d given Grant in a burnt-out car. “Well. We’ll fuckin’ see.One,two,one two three four….”

And they launched into “Satisfaction” before the teachers could stop the show.

The kids, the ones Mackey had fought in grade school and ignored in high school, the ones who threw food at Jeff and Stevie and who bitched behind Grant’s back about how Grant’s daddy kept him safe—thosekids—were suddenly eating out of Mackey’s hand.

And he reveled in it. He abused them. He taunted them. He stuck his tongue out and licked their figurative balls, then shook his ass and grabbed his crotch, and they hung on every fucking word.

They’d started with six songs on their roster. By the time they were done with “Screaming for You,” their original song, the crowd was foaming at the mouth. Kell hunched his shoulders and turned his back on them, eyes closed in concentration. Grant flirted with them, winking and shaking his hips. Jeff did the bass thing, just like Mackey told him to, aloof and self-contained, and Stevie kicked back on the drums, rhythmic and regular and dependable for every beat.

Mackey closed his eyes and sang. He screamed. He moved his body and opened his soul, and those kids who hated him surged, thrust, ravished, and Mackey gave it up. Everything. He gave them everything.

And they reached with greedy hands and shrieked for more.

By the time they were done with “Freebird,” sweat sopped Mackey’s new jacket and ran from his hair into his eyes. He flipped his head and tossed it out, and finished the goddamned song.

They screamed for more.

Mackey met Kell’s eyes as they were bowing in the middle of the noise volcano, and Kell shrugged and looked at Grant.

Grant reached for Mackey’s guitar, which sat on the side of the stage and brought it to him, bowing a little as he handed it over.

“Yeah?” Mackey asked, his voice below the mike.

Grant smiled faintly, his mouth moist and parted because he left sweat on the stage too. “Let them see you,” he said, so quietly Mackey had to cock his head to hear. “Let them get lost like I do.”

Mackey shivered and turned toward the crowd, fixing the strap of the guitar over his head and plugging it into the amp during the sudden burst of applause. The rest of the band faded back, and Tony must have done something with the lights, because suddenly Mackey stood alone in the spot, staring thoughtfully out into the sudden black hush.

His fingers started moving on the strings all by themselves. The rush of blood in his veins, the rasp of his breath, the chill of sweat, all of the symphony of Mackey Sanders wove liquid emotion through the air.

Hewasmusic, everybody’s music, every soul’s note, played on the splintered stage of Graham Winters High School auditorium.

“Will you see me crying or would you rather see me high?”

The song ended with a question, destruction or sadness, and the startled silence that followed his last guitar chord simply echoed their shared pain: Mackey and the audience, bound by sweat and blood as long as the music played.