“But we don’t know where she went,” Shirley argued, sniffling.
“Perhaps,” Mary whispered, “but we know she moved on. I have to believe heaven finally made a place for her.”
“Anne will be angry with us,” Shirley said.
“Anne is always angry with us,” Daphne replied, giving Shirley’s shoulders a tight squeeze, knowing she was about to agree to the game. “Next time, we’ll let her roll first, and she can take three turns if she wants.”
“Maybe we just shouldn’t tell her,” Shirley suggested.
“A capital idea,” Daphne said with a laugh. “So, you’re in?”
Shirley let a smile creep over her tear-stained face. “Why? Are you writing a book?”
The girls laughed. Quickly Daphne pulled away and spun one of the desk chairs to face Shirley’s. Mary turned and gently brought another chair forward until the three desks formed a blunt triangle. She set the Clutch on the desk before her and waited. The familiar excitement of playing the game flooded her.
“Shall I?” Mary asked, indicating the vermillion bag.
“Well, Anne opened it last,” Daphne said, “so it is your turn.”
“But we won’t tell Anne,” Shirley insisted.
“We won’t say a word,” Mary promised.
With trembling fingers, Mary touched the smooth fabric. She stroked the velvet material, let her fingertips pause on the hard lumps made by the bones. She parted its mouth and upturned the Clutch. Bones, coppery with age, spilled into her palm. She felt the smooth side of the skull and the sharp points of claws. They tingled, as if eager to be rolled.
With a gentle shake she let the bones fall on the desk, and knew instantly that she had not won.
“My turn,” Daphne said. But she too failed to roll the winning combination.
And so it went, one turn after another. Mary. Daphne. Shirley. Then Mary again. Excitement and disappointment mixed in the girls as each turn produced no winner.
“Maybe we can’t play with just three,” Shirley said, dejected after her last failed roll. “Maybe it has to be all four of us.”
“We’ve rolled a lot longer than this with no winner,” Daphne said. “Let’s keep at it. Mary?”
And again the bones were in her hand: at turns soft and smooth, jagged and rough. Mary studied the tiny symbols etched into the bones. She concentrated on the one symbol that meant the most: the symbol that must appear on three of the bones for her to succeed.
She rolled.
“You did it,” Shirley gasped, as if it were a genuine miracle.
The room around her grew very quiet, and Mary held her breath, waiting for the story. No sound of rain or thunder touched her now. Something was coming.
A great whooshing, like a hurricane wind, filled her head. There were faces and voices and odd machines…
Then there was music.
1
The band’s intro by club owner Allen Bates was short and sweet. The thirtysomething entrepreneur grabbed the mike at the center of the small stage, brought it to his lips, and screamed “Torn!” like it was four syllables long. Then he stepped back, slamming his hands together wildly, nodding for the crowd to do the same. As the applause rose, blue lights came up on the five figures on Tunnel Vision’s stage. Showtime.
Devin slammed an easy E on his refurbished Fender. Cheryl ripped along the drum kit, her hair flailing back and forth across her face like a long blond whip. Ben doubled Devin on the keyboard, and even the bassist, Karston, came in almost on time for a change. The sound rode the cheering, revving the crowd.
As the tempo built, square-jawed Cody, his bed-head spiky hair bleached white, leaped into a spotlight with a spanking new Les Paul hanging from his neck. His insanely deep, raspy voice flooded the room:
Wind up
Going down
I won’t be your dancing clown!
Eat this
In your face
Or disappear without a trace!
It was an easy number, Devin thought as he watched and played. He could sleepwalk through the changes.
Aching brain coming out my skull,
Looking back at the hole in my eyes.
Just don’t know who I am today—
The mirror breaks and I die.
Cheryl, her strong but feminine arms flashing from her sleeves as she confidently crashed out the beat, stopped swinging her head long enough to give Devin a wide, sexy smile. “Face” was his song, the one that got them the gig. He smiled back, almost missing his harmony on the chorus:
And where were you
When I bled about our love?
And who were you
When I crawled from underground?
The crowd wasn’t huge for a Friday night, but it was big enough, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Feet stomped, hands clapped, hips twitched. Torn was going over. It was a big night for their little nu-metal garage band.
Get out
Lock the door
I can’t take you anymore.
Devin felt like he should be thrilled, proud, or pleased, but he wasn’t any of those things. Instead, he felt out of it, like he was watching everything from somewhere far away, judging. Why? What was wrong with him? He had what any seventeen-year-old guitarist craved: a rock group finally breaking into the Macy club scene and a relationship with the hot drummer, but all he could manage was this weird disappointment, as if he’d gotten to the promised land, but it had turned out to be trashy.
It wasn’t the club. The long, dark space with the curved fieldstone roof and walls used to be a train tunnel. What could be cooler than that? During the nineties freight trains used it to carry textiles in and out of the adjoining warehouses, but textiles were on the way out all over the state and the town was hard hit. The line was abandoned, the warehouses emptied. Now the only active warehouse held a children’s discount furniture store.
Two years back, Allen Bates bought the tunnel; bricked off the front and back; added doors, electricity, plumbing, and ventilation; and brought the funky structure up to code. Now, on Friday and Saturday nights, the place was packed with local teens who danced under the spinning lights until the gray stone walls grew slick with their sweat.
Playing Tunnel Vision had been Torn’s only goal for the six months they’d been together. Now they were here. So what bothered Devin?
Last gasp
Make it pound
Why are you still hanging ’round?
Maybe it was the song. Maybe deep down he thought “Face” sucked and sooner or later somebody would figure that out and call him on it. It had taken only ten minutes to write. That didn’t bug Cody. Torn’s totally psycho front man launched into his searing guitar solo with extreme gusto. The new axe sounded great, even if it was a complete mystery how someone as financially strapped as Cody could afford it.
Maybe Devin was just looking for something to be wrong. If he was, he found it. Just as the number was ending, Karston, their skinny, anxious, self-conscious bassist, lost his place. The crowd had already started applauding, so most likely no one in the audience noticed, but Cody did. He spun and gave the bassist a killing look with his bright green eyes.