Break the Skin Read Online Free PDF Page B

plate-glass window, and I saw her on the sidewalk looking back toward the door, hesitating just a moment, hoping, I imagine now, that I’d be coming out soon to check on her. If I’d been a better person, I would have, because I knew what it was to be on the outside looking in, to feel lost.
    I turned away from her, and maybe that’s when she decided her next move, or maybe it came to her later, after Delilah said, “Rose, that spell worked. You sure as hell brought me a man.”
    His name was Russell Swain, but he said everyone called him “Tweet.”
    “Like Tweety Bird,” Delilah said, and then she did something I couldn’t believe. I’d never have had the nerve. Not in a million years. She put her hands on his back and turned him so he was facing away from me. Then she lifted up his shirt, hooked her finger in the waistband of his jeans, and tugged them down just enough so I could see the tattoo of that cartoon bird on his left hip. “How do you like that?” she said.
    All I could think to do was to ask him a question, one that didn’t have anything to do with that tattoo, or how Delilah had so quickly discovered it, or the fact that I was looking at not only his hip but to be more to the point, the swell of his butt, and I was finding it hard not to stare. “How come you’re called Helmets on the Short Bus?”
    He tugged his jeans back up, and Delilah smoothed his shirt down. “I used to drive one,” he said. Then he told me how he drove one of those little buses for special-ed kids, the kids who had to wear helmets so they wouldn’t bang their heads on something and hurt themselves.
    “That’s mean,” I said. “Calling your band that.”
    He seemed genuinely hurt that I’d think that. “No, no, no. You don’t get it. We’re not being mean. Those kids frickin’ rock!” They liked listening to him sing on those bus trips, he said. He’d get them all bobbing along to something like Ween’s “Waving My Dick in the Wind.” That was the one that got him fired. He shrugged his shoulders. “Go figure.”
    “Spilt milk,” I said.
    “Ancient history.”
    He gave me a sheepish grin. Now he was jockeying cars for the Ford dealer in town, running trades to other dealers in the Tri-State and bringing a vehicle back in return. The band played gigs at clubs in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri while they waited for their big break.
    “Yeah, and when’s that going to be, you think?” I surprised myself with how forward I was. It was easier now that I knew he’d fallen for Delilah. I could be a smart-ass if I wanted. What’d I care if I pissed him off? “When pigs fly?”
    “Laney!” Delilah said.
    “It’s cool.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “Who knows, Laney-Girl.” Just like that, he gave me a nickname, something better than Little Bit, or ’Lil Sis, and I fell in love with him again. “It’s a long way to the top,” he said.
    I couldn’t help myself. I took a big breath and belted out a little of the chorus from that AC/DC song, the one about the hard road to thetop playing in a rock ’n’ roll band: “If you think it’s easy doing one night stands / Try playing in a rock ’n’ roll band.”
    He joined me on the last line, and even without a mic, our voices soared over the noise of the South End.
    When we were done, I realized that people had stopped talking and were looking up onstage. Delilah’s mouth was open, like she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Jesus, Laney,” she finally said. “I had no idea.”
    Now it was my turn to shrug my shoulders. I felt the heat creep into my face. “I guess I can sing a little.”
    “A little?” Tweet said with a laugh. “Laney-Girl, you could sing with this band any day. Better get your helmet on.”
    I wanted him to mean it the way Delilah did when she said she was going to rattle his bones, but I knew he didn’t. He said it the way a big brother might goof with his little sister, and there I was again,