I stood out on the side porch drinking a soda, waiting patiently. Well, as patiently as it gets for me, which ain't a whole lot of patience. I kicked at a weed Craig had somehow managed to miss in his otherwise pristine lawn and tried not to smile when I head the car engine rev up. As soon as they pulled out of the drive way and were gone I went back inside.
For all rights and reasons I was alone in the house. Stormer was upstairs taking a shower and Craig and Aja were going to be gone until late tonight, gone into London for a show. Craig's band the Blue Bloods were playing somewhere in the city and Aja tagged along like a faithful little groupie. Funny to call a regular star a groupie, but the girl had her moments when she was nothing BUT.
I decided to take advantage of the first time I'd had alone in the house and explore the place. For the record, when a girl like me says 'explore', she means 'ransack'. So I was snooping, officially. Sue me. I think I was entitled.
Craig hates my guts. This is no big secret. I hate him, too, so we're even. The only reason he invited me-- yes, HEINVITEDME-- out here was because of Stormer. His little sister was a wreck and Big Brother Craig finally had to admit that Meat-Head doesn't know best and call in some reinforcements; namely, me. Personally, I'm gonna chalk that one up to Miss Aja Leith. Count on her goody-goody Hologram sensibilities to have kicked in and 'do the right thing' right on queue. But that's good. I told her to call me if it was an emergency. Aja's a lot of things and she ain't my favorite person in the world, but she's nothing if not dependable. And I know she gets along ok with Stormer; I knew she'd call me if something was wrong.
I skipped the basement which I knew was nothing but studio equipment and musical gear and started with the den. The room was half office, half library, and I figured if I was gonna find some dirt on Brother Dearest without having to literally go through his dirty laundry, this'd be the place to start. I was looking for dirt on the guy, anything I could use against him. You know, just in case. They'd practically made me sign a blood oath that I'd behave if they let me fly out here and stay at Craig's house, so a little turn about is fair play if you ask me. You never know when something like juicy blackmail material might come in handy. Did I mention that Craig hates my guts and that the feeling is mutual? So, yeah, call it my 'plan B' if things went to hell.
Craig had called me a week ago and told me he was worried about Stormer. She'd been in the UK for like three weeks and had seemed fine every time I'd talked to her, but apparently she'd taken a turn for the worse. He and Aja had come home one night and found that she'd demolished his room up on the second floor with the piano in it. Apparently she'd had some kind of break down and they'd found her standing out on the balcony bawling and la-de-da, connect the dots, he was convinced she was suicidal and depressed and ran me the riot act about 'had she said anything, had she been going to a shrink back in L.A. ' after the 'incident' and blah blah blah...
'The Incident', ha, that was funny. And, yeah, duh, of course she was depressed. In fact, trashing musical instruments had sort of become her M.O. as of late, but that's not the point. Here Craig Phillips is this over-protective jerk half the time he's around his baby sister Stormer and he can't even say the words, name what happened to her. It's just 'the incident'. I don't know why I found that amusing, but I did. Probably cuz he acts like he's so much better than the rest of the Misfits most of the time. And yet... He can't even look her in the eyes and talk about it. Talk about funny without actually being funny.
Long story short, he was worried about her and asked me to fly out. Why me? Cuz wouldn't it just figure that I'm the lucky girl who's been playing baby-sitter for her since she got out of the hospital. If anyone of the Misfits knew what was going on with Stormer, it'd be me. Gotta hand it to Craig for having the guts (and humility) to ask me of all people for help. I guess that's how I knew he meant business, he never would have called me if he didn't think it was serious, if it wasn't really bad.
Craig is still a jerk. Whatever. Back to business.
The library/office contained an entire wall, floor to ceiling, of nothing but book shelves. There must have been hundreds. Unless it's a comic or the latest catalogue from a music company, I don't really have much time for books. Reading's never been easy for me, so go figure it ain't something I do for a hobby. But what caught my eye was the rows upon rows of large volumes that lined the bottom shelf. They didn't look like regular books, and when I pulled one out I found I was right. Picture albums. Most of them were the spiral kind, like a fat notebook with loose pages that you could remove willy nilly. I flipped through one randomly. The faces of people I didn't recognize stared up at me in faded ochre and black and white. I put it back and picked another, this time using an ounce of discretion, meaning I bothered to read the spine which clearly listed the approximate dates of the photos contained within. The one I'd flipped through had been a slice of the Phillips' family history, 1920-1930. The tome I now held was a damn sight more recent. I opened the book.
Two kids smiled up at me from the first page. Both of them had auburn hair, the boy's more dark while the little girl had a more red cast to hers, both with the same brilliant blue eyes and rosy cheeks. They were both dressed up in their Sunday best, looking sharp and adorable. The caption read "Craig, age 11. Mary, age 4. Easter" in a pristine black cursive scrawl at the bottom. I snorted. This was not exactly the kind of black mail material I was looking for, but who knew, maybe I'd find something humiliating from his childhood. If nothing else, I was in for a good laugh. Mary, ha!
I flipped the page. Pictures of what I guessed where Craig and 'Mary's' parents running after their kids on the beach playing in the sand. There were pictures of the happy family at Christmas and standing with Mickey Mouse. Pictures of Craig blowing out birthday candles, others that could have been duplicates except for the fact that it was Mary. My favorite was a picture of Stormer-sorry-- 'Mary', holding up their pet, a kitten named "Smokey" according to the label. Going by the date listed, she would have been seven then, going on eight. Same soft smile she has now, same concern in her eyes. Endless love for the little furball, pride that she got to be the one to take care of it. I wondered if she'd actually taken care of the thing or if her parents did that for her. Knowing her, she'd have been all over making sure the thing was pampered and loved. Leave it to Stormer to have always been the world's largest mush ball.
I closed that volume and pulled out the next three, laying them on the floor next to me. It was purely masochistic, but I was hooked. I looked through under the guise of still trying to find something on Craig but at that point I really didn't care. Watching the lives of these four people unfold before me on 4x6 glossy paper was kind of like looking at a train wreck only without all the gross stuff. Hard too look at for the exact same reason I couldn't pull my eyes away-- they all looked so happy. They had a nice house in the suburbs of Los Angeles, two perfect parents with their two carbon copy children and their dogs and cats and family outings and holidays spent together by the fireside gorging on turkeys and yams and exchanging big gifts with even bigger bows. Ok, so I'm exaggerating. They'd been living in Southern Cali; there was no point in having a roaring fire going in the background, not even in December.
What got me is how real it all looked. I know that sounds funny, but my normal reaction to happy scenes like that is "It's a bunch of fake crap. Nobody's parents really care about them". Pizzazz and I always shared the belief, even though her dad is filthy rich and buys her anything and everything-- just enough to shut her up. Jetta, as much as we don't get along, also has this belief in common with us. We gave Stormer endless amounts of shit for having such a big sap of a brother when all he did was stick up for her. Two whole years we gave her nothing but grief for acting like she gave a shit about us. It's fake, right? Nobody does nice stuff for you unless they want something, and usually they're out to collect double what they gave. For a long time I thought Stormer was a sissy and an ass kisser and a fake, too, because how could anyone be that nice and not want something back? But looking at her life in pictures I knew how it would be possible. Her family was real enough. They loved each other. You could see it in their eyes and in their smiles and the way they touched each other; this is what a family was supposed to be. They loved each other and she hadn't grown up thinking anything less was possible. She'd had two parents who'd WANTED their children and had loved them until their last moments.
It was sickening how different our lives had been up until we'd crossed paths. I couldn't deny the stab of jealousy I felt. I was so envious it made me want to vomit. She was so, so unbelievably lucky.
So far I was Oh and Zero for dirt on Craig Phillips, but I hardly cared. By then I'd all but forgotten my original mission. I sprawled out on my belly and dove in full force now. It was like seeing them grow up. Craig was a young man in high school by the time Stormer was in the third grade. There were dozens of photos of him in a football uniform, posing with his number emblazoned across his chest, high school colors of black and gold setting off his dark hair. There were just as many pictures of him at band meets or out playing with a group of his buddies in the garage in what I can only assume was his first go at forming a rock band. He appeared to be an energetic, young stud well on his way to big things. I bet the cheerleaders loved him.
There were just as many pictures of Mary, most of them at the piano. The kid seemed to live there for the next five years, though none of them were pictures at recitals or things like that. Of course there were the requisite school photos, class pictures with dozens of children lined up on the brown lawn of the elementary school she'd attended. Where Craig had dozens of photos with friends from school, Mary had few, but there were a bunch with her sitting on her mom's lap at the piano plunking out a song, both of them smiling like idiots.
Craig was the social butterfly, Mary was the shy one, no real surprise there.
I worked my way up through Stormer's 15th birthday. The prior year had a picture of Craig at the airport, bound for the UK. He was 22. There were only a few more pictures after she turned 15, some candid sneak-attack shots of her writing, another at the piano, one with her mother. I stared at it, soaking up the image. They each had one arm draped across the other's shoulder, heads bowed together as they smiled at the camera. I thought they were beautiful. They looked like they could have been best friends.
Flipping forward, there were no more pictures in the book. I glanced at the shelf and saw that there was a gap. Where each year prior had been meticulously documented, there was now a five year period of nothing at all.
That's when they died, I realized. Stormer had told me her parents had died in a car accident just before she'd turned 16. Craig had flown back from the UK to stay with her while she'd finished high school because they had no other living relatives. I flipped back to that last picture of Stormer and her mother and just stared at the woman's eyes. This was the last photo of her before her death and there was nothing but happiness and love in her face. Nothing to hint at the wreckage to come.
Curious, I grabbed the next book on the shelf. Chronologically, it should have contained the next year, but the photos jumped ahead drastically, a huge chunk of time missing. The next picture of Stormer wasn't even a real picture, but a photo from a magazine from when the Misfits had first hit it big. Bright blue hair instead of her wavy auburn locks; this was the Stormer I knew. The picture of her and her mom was still open, and having the two images side by side, it was hard to imagine Mary Phillips and Stormer of the Misfits as the same person. One was sweet looking, innocent, the other was tarted up like a two dollar whore and had a definite mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Hey, I can say that. Back in the day, the Misfits were pure glam-trash, but we made it look so damned good, how could you resist?
There were a few other magazine snippets and then an actual photo of Craig and Stormer together. The caption read "We must be psychic!", which must have been in reference to the fact that they'd both dyed their hair exactly the same shade of blue without knowing the other had done it. There were a few pictures of Craig with his band with various unidentified friends, and a bunch of him on stage. Most of the book was his stuff with just the few magazine clippings of Stormer thrown in. I'd bet it was all he'd seen of her during that time. I bet he didn't even clip those until after Jetta joined the band; it hadn't seemed like he'd even known she was IN the band before that to hear Stormer talk about it. She was in L.A. and he was in the UK, and neither of them went visiting much. Maybe she never even told him she was in the Misfits before that. Knowing Craig, she probably figured he'd disapprove and hate us and stuff, and she wouldn't have been wrong. Maybe some day I'd remember to ask-- not like I cared, though.
The back of the volume took on a little more order, and by the end there were labels for everything. Seemed like there were still huge chunks of time missing, though. Aja started showing up in pictures here and there. They looked like a happy couple you'd seen on adds for toothpaste or butter. Always smiling, hugging, sometimes they were kissing in the photos. You'd almost think he wasn't such a dick to look at them.
"Whatcha up to?"
I glanced over my shoulder. "Nothing. Being nosy." I corrected, not giving a damn if Stormer liked it or not. I smirked at her. "You never told me you were such a cute little kid."
She snorted and knelt down next to me. "Please, spare me."
She obviously needed a refresher. I flipped open to the kitten picture, pointing. Then, just for giggles, I dug through the books until I found a picture of a toddler Mary in nothing but a diaper, and then it was half hanging off of her. "And nobody's blackmailed you yet, I'm so surprised." I remarked sarcastically.
Stormer rolled her eyes. "You can change your name and dye your hair, but your past will always come back to haunt you." She waxed philosophically and pulled the kiddie book closer. Wasn't Craig cute? He looks so much like Dad in some of these. There's a whole book of Dad at the same age; you'd swear they were twins."
"Yeah?" I said. "You look a lot more like your mom."
"Actually, I've always been told I look just like my great-aunt Theresa," Stormer said, leaning forward until she found a specific volume. "She's in here somewhere... There."
She pointed, I looked. There was a striking resemblance, especially in the shape of their eyes and nose.
"Too bad she never dyed her hair blue; then we would have known for sure."
Stormer laughed. "Yeah, right. From what I heard, she was a real clown, so maybe she would have. I don't think Manic Panic had been invented back when she was my age."
She ran her fingers over the picture and then closed the book. "I only met her once. She lived on the East Coast and came out for Christmas one year. I barely remember it. She died when I was seven."
"I like this one," I said, going back to that last picture of Stormer and her mom.
She smiled. There was a little bit of sadness in her expression, but she smiled. "Me too," Stormer said softly. "My dad took that one like two months before the car crash. I always thought she looked so pretty in it."
"You both do." I looked up at her wistfully. "Its funny, to me your natural hair color is midnight blue. You look so strange with brown hair."
Stormer giggled. "Well, that's the idea. You're lucky that all you have to do is lighten yours- talk about a pain in the butt to have to touch it up every couple weeks." She shook out her wet hair. Touching it up is exactly what she'd been upstairs doing all afternoon.
"Definitely some benefits to being a natural blonde," I nodded.
"Kind of silly, huh? All these old pictures..." Stormer flipped one of the books closed, then another and started putting them away.
I pulled one of the Phillips' family albums closer and gazed at images of Craig and a pint-sized Stormer playing in the back yard with a fluffy caramel and white colored mutt.
"You guys are lucky. All these pictures are great, it's like watching you grow up." I frowned a little bit. "Normally I'd give you a ton of shit for stuff like this--"
"Which is why I never showed any of them to you guys. Buncha vicious bitches," Stormer teased.
Í grinned at her for that little remark. It was true enough. "But it's cool. A hundred years from now your great-great grand kids are gonna flip through all these picture books and get to see how talented and cool you were back in the day."
Stormer chuckled and shot me a funny look. "Yeah right. If they look at THOSE books all they're going to see is how shy I was."
"No way. Craig's got pictures of you from the Misfits in one of these. Nobody would ever think you were shy." I flipped through the pages and was witness to a family trip to the zoo, kids posing near the lion cage. Despite myself, I smiled a little longingly. I was never gonna have anything like this. Hell, I didn't know who any of my family was other than my mother, not even my dad's name or anything. I don't even know if my mom knew his name. "Like, you can look through these and be like 'yeah, this is where I came from'. Its kinda neat... in a weird, sappy, sentimental bullshit kinda way," I said. My cheeks turned pink from my semi-jealous babbling.
Stormer stopped what she was doing and gave me a look that could only have been called sympathetic. Possibly confused. Maybe she figured I'd been body snatched; I sure sounded like it. "You don't think it's stupid?"
"I think you're lucky as hell-- and don't you dare repeat that!"
Stormer smiled at me and hopped up. "Hold that thought." She disappeared upstairs, reappearing a moment later with a garish hot-pink zebra striped book that had to be about five inches thick, and a boot box that verged on overflowing. "I've been working on this one for the last couple weeks; haven't really gotten too far into it yet, though." She laid back down next to me and made room for the big pink photo album.
"Where the hell did you get this?"
"At the mall, as scary as that is. It was perfect, though- had to get it," she said and opened it up. The very first page had the Misfits logo in neon purple with a four-panel spread from a photo shoot. Each of our images filled one square as we struck various poses. Our names were listed below in silver Sharpie, outlined in thin black ink.
"You're doing a Misfit book?" I looked at her, eyebrows perched high on my forehead.
She nodded, turning the page. Dozens of photos filled each page at skewed angles. First they all showed just three of us, Pizzazz, Stormer and me. They were pictures from some of our first live performances, grouped together with a small tag at the bottom that showed the date and venue when she'd remembered it. There were a bunch of publicity shots that had never been used for anything, pics that I knew for a fact Pizzazz had thrown in the trash for one reason or another. Stormer must have gone back and salvaged them later on. Occasional images of Clash showed up with us at parties. There was a picture of me sitting outside Flash Studios on a long bench, bathed in bright white florescent light.
"Damn, look how skinny I was," I frowned.
"This was like a week after the band had been put together," she explained, taking the Polaroid image out and flipping it over where the date was clearly displayed. "You culdn't have weighed more than 90 pounds- you were so rail thin."
Living on the street would do that to you. "I look like a starving rat."
Stormer giggled. "Starved, maybe, but definitely not rat-like. I thought you looked cute, though. Miserable, but cute."
"Thank god I don't look like that anymore."
I pressed my lips together in a tight line. I didn't like seeing myself like that; was bad enough remembering how hard those years had been. Being with the Misfits meant three square meals a day no matter what, and though I was still thin, I'd gained enough muscle to fill my bones out so that now I looked strong and healthy. Definitely an improvement.
Stormer snorted. "You're still cute."
I rolled my eyes and stuck out my tongue.
"Here, I like this one of you."
Stormer flipped forward a couple of pages and pointed to a shot of me on stage, worm's eye view. I had my bass in hand, one of the first ones I'd owned, the pale pink Warlock that I'd painted that color on my own. Red and gold lights framed me, giving my white hair the appearance of being on fire. There was just a hint of a smile on my blood red lips.
"I remember that show- it was our first gig at the Storehouse."
"Yep."
"Oh my god! Look at Pizzazz!" I laughed. Our fearless leader appeared passed out under a bench at an airport with a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under her arm. She was wearing a ratty looking faux leopard coat that had been splattered in hot pink paint. There were dozens of other photos that had us in stitches as we looked through her collection. Jetta eventually made her first appearance on page twelve, and Clash disappeared altogether around page seventeen. A page later the pictures abruptly stopped.
"This is fantastic," I said, wiping my eyes. "How come you never showed me this before?"
Stormer chuckled. "Come on, any time I do anything that seems like I might remotely care about you guys, I get nothing but flack."
"Yeah, but this is awesome!"
"It's not finished yet," she said with a hint of pride, reaching for the box she's brought down with her. "I've still got all of these to go through." She popped the lid. There were stacks of photos still in their wrappers from when she'd picked them up from being developed, loose photos and magazine clippings. The entire history of our band up until the present, crammed all together.
"You look like such a bad ass," I laughed. There were several pictures of Stormer standing in an alley lighting up a cigarette, leaning against the wall, giving the camera her most ferocious grin and another where she wore a seductive little smirk. She looked gorgeous. "Who took these?"
"Jetta." She wiggled her eyebrows. Stormer leafed through the pile and pulled out a picture of the two of us. "Remember that?"
I looked at our images reflected on the paper, Pizzazz, Stormer and me. We weren't exactly hugging but the three of us were pressed together. We were clad in little more than flowers and grass skirts. "Hawaii?"
"You guys looked so cute with all the flowers in your hair. The sports event sucked but the luau the night before rocked," she sighed, fishing through the box. She pulled out a picture and rolled to her side, holding it to her heart. "Ok, this is my absolute favorite picture of us together. If I show you, you can't laugh."
"I can't promise that!" I was laughing already. "Besides, if I'm in it, I can laugh all I want!"
Stormer rolled her eyes. "Cheater." She handed me the picture. I appeared front and center, she was behind me, both arms slung around my neck. My hands rested high on her arms and our faces were kind of turned into each other. Grinning like fools. The image was dark with a few flashes of bright colored lights behind us. I couldn't tell where we were, but I could see why she liked it. She was looking devilish and for once I wasn't flipping someone off or looking irate about something. We looked like were laughing over something she'd whispered at the moment the picture had been taken.
"Where was this at?"
"You don't remember? The jacket alone should clue you in-- we were at an amusement park taking all those pictures cuz Pizzazz was hell bent on putting out a rock fashion book to one-up Jem."
"Oh god! Of course." I did a mental slap of my forehead. It was before Jetta had joined the band. I had gone through a vicious purple and yellow phase which resulted in the supreme abuse of zebra stripes-- not that I didn't love that jacket, but it was garish, plain and simple.
"You looked like you were having fun," Stormer smiled at the photo.
"I guess so," I said, though she was right. "All I remember about that day was that it was roasting out and Pizzazz didn't want to take any of the pictures." Which suddenly struck me as odd. "Oh my god, that's right! Pizzazz took off to go flirt with that freak who was in charge of the Haunted House."
"So we could pose with some of the displays, uh huh," Stormer added.
"And I handed the camera to... to... Hm." I scratched my head- the memory became fuzzy at that point.
"It was some high school girl, remember? She had on her boyfriend's lettermen sweater and after they took the picture and left, ou went on and on about how stupid that sweater was."
I chuckled. "Right, cuz it looked straight out of the 50's or something. Like John Travolta at the end of Grease." I smiled at the memory as it came back to me. "You know, that's probably the best picture we took all day? I don't remember ever seeing it before, though. I forgot all about it."
"No surprise there. Pizzazz junked more than half of those pictures and ALL of the ones she didn't show up in. I rescued them all and kept the ones where nobody's head got cut off." She explained, reaching forward for one of the Philips' albums and flipping to the back. It was the most recent book I saw, the one with so many pictures of Craig and so few of Stormer. There were more pictures of Aja in the book than there were of Stormer, I noticed the second time through.
She found the next empty page and left it open as she dug around for a slip of paper and the silver Sharpie she seemed so fond of. On a thin strip of black construction paper she wrote both our names and the year the photo had been taken.
"What are you doing?"
She didn't answer with anything but a sly little smile as she peeled back the cover sheet on the page. Top center she laid the photo and placed the caption below it. With what seemed to be a little bit of reverence she pressed the cover sheet into place, the slightly sticky page taking hold of it and the photo.
"You can't put that in there- that's for family pictures."
"Aja's in there," she said and continued on her business.
"Yeah, but Craig's gonna marry her. They're engaged! You guys are practically family already."
Stormer shrugged again and leaned against me, our shoulders pressed together. "So?"
I blinked. Something about having my picture in one of those books that were reserved for blood relations felt weird to me. "I don't know, you don't think it's weird?"
"Why's it weird? It's just as much my photo album as it is Craig's," she smiled at me, eyes soft blue and full of... something. "And besides, you're family."
I stared at her and tried to come to terms with what she'd said. Seven syllables in plain English had never made my heart feel so strangely giddy. "What, like the Misfits are your wicked step sisters, huh Cinderella?"
Stormer laughed and bumped me with her shoulder. "Yeah, right. Something like that." She glanced mirthfully at the open page of Misfit pictures she'd amassed. She looked up at me briefly and dropped her eyes again. "But I think... you're just as important to me as my real family is. More in a lotta ways."
"You mean that?" I asked, a little bit skeptical.
"Well of course I mean it. I love you."
I snorted. "You are so sappy. Misfits don't do friends, Stormer, and they sure as hell don't do--"
"I'm not talking about 'The Misfits'. I mean, I love all of you, but--" Stormer froze and blushed a warm pink. Her blue eyes darted away from mine.
I stared at her for a moment -- until I was suddenly overwhelmed by this weirded-out feeling of I-don't-know-what. Something in her expression had my stomach doing flips and I knew what she had wanted to say but hadn't. No, I knew what it was, why she had backed away from finishing that sentence and why there was suddenly a flock of rabid butterflies fighting for control of my guts. It was easy enough to brush off her sappy words once, but she was skating on thin ice-- or maybe WE were.
We'd always been tight, especially after Jetta joined the band. Except for a few times, it was always me and Stormer vs. Pizzazz and Jetta in pretty much everything. Last August only solidified that, if anything. Except for the first few weeks she was out here in the UK, there hasn't been a single day that we hadn't been together. It was like she needed the support and I lost my mind and went all protective.
Last August... God, what a nightmare...
One of our own got hurt and hurt bad. Two, if you count me getting stabbed all to hell breaking up that ugly scene. Four girls who can't admit they care suddenly have to deal with the notion that one of their own might never wake up. No, we care. We all care, just can't show it, can't deal with it. Can't admit it. Easier to tease and harass and attack each other than it is to admit you care. Isn't safe to let your guard down. That's what it really amounts to; three of us Misfits grew up where is wasn't safe to wear your emotions on your sleeve.
But Stormer nearly died and the three of us damn near didn't survive the month waiting for her to snap out of it.
And then Stormer woke up. She was fine. The doctors released her after a week, calling it a miracle that she wasn't a drooling shadow of her former self. That's when the fun really started.
Pizzazz was a wreck up until Stormer got out of the hospital, and then she did a 180. It was business as normal. No, it was business at a frantic pace that none of us could possibly hope to achieve anything at, and guess what? We didn't. Jetta, on the other hand, was cool as a fuckin' cucumber the whole time Stormer was in ICU. When she got out, BOOM! Our resident razor-tongued wise ass clammed up like nobody's business. She couldn't be in the same room with Stormer for more than five minutes before bolting. Took her a month to chill out with that routine and I wanted nothing more than to kick her ass for making Stormer feel worse than she already did. In between all of that there was a lot of crying that went on that none of us will ever fess up to doing.
Our methods were different, but the results were the same-- Stormer said it felt like we were isolating her away from the band. I knew it wasn't intentional. They'd been at the hospital with me a good half of the time I was there. I'd seen each of them break down into snotty tears and sob like the world was gonna end tomorrow because they were distraught about everything going on-- even Jetta who WAS as cool as a fuckin' cucumber when she wasn't bawling, which was still better than the rest of us.
The night it happened not one of us didn't lose it. The weeks that followed were some of the most gut wrenching I'd spent with Pizzazz and Jetta. The thing was, nobody knew for sure if Stormer was going to pull out of it. If she woke up at all there was a good chance she was going to be a vegetable for the rest of her life the doctors said. Or maybe she'd get lucky and just suffer some paralysis. Either way, the odds were not in favor of her ever returning to the Misfits.
It might seem cold and callous to sit around and talk about the future of the band when one of your best friends might never wake up, but don't be fooled. None of us would ever admit it, but this band really IS a family. A really crazy and dysfunctional one, but a family at any rate. Anything happened to them and I'd be lost. Even Jetta, the girl I love to hate. I don't have anyone else I trust or count on like I do them, and I know they all feel the same. So when we sat around talking about the future of the band, we were really talking about what would happen if we lost Stormer. Man, even thinking about it tears me up inside. Of all the girls in the band, Stormer's been my best friend and... and there I've gone and got all wordy and shit.
I had a point in there somewhere-- Things didn't go back to normal once Stormer got out of the hospital. In fact, things got worse for a while. The band kind of fractured. Pizzazz buried herself in work and Jetta tagged along. Through an odd set of circumstance Stormer and I started spending all of our time together.
The media was all over it; you couldn't get away from it. For once that kind of attention from the press was exactly what we did not want, especially not after Stormer got out of the hospital. Couldn't avoid it, though. I'll hand it to Pizzazz on that one, she might have gone off the deep end throwing herself into work, but she did one hell of a job keeping that junk under control. Still had people clamoring for pictures and interviews and stuff, but that you gotta expect.
The media treated me like a damned hero half of the time, but only wanted to hear the part about how I kicked the shit out of the guy who attacked her. They didn't want to hear the rest of the story. It was like people couldn't really deal with the idea that something like that could happen to someone like Stormer, someone famous who's supposed to be perfect and live in this perfect world, you know? Things like that don't happen to girls like her.
Of course, there were people out there who said it was precisely because she is who she is that she got attacked at all. Because she's famous, she's out in the public eye, that part's fairly clear cut. But there were a few media sources (Cool Trash being a big one) that came up with some fucked up notion that it was because she was a Misfit that it happened. Bad things happen to bad girls, they said. As if she needed to hear that shit.
So for the last several months she'd been living the circus sideshow freak life and I'd been cleverly lumped into the same boat. I don't know, it's weird. It's like suddenly people were treating her weird and... and even when they weren't, they still didn't have a friggin' clue. I think that's part of why we started spending so much time together. It happened to her, but I'd been there. We'd both been hurt because of that stinkin' turkey and there wasn't anybody who could understand quite the same, not even Pizzazz or Jetta who'd been there five minutes after I'd knocked the guy clean out. It was like suddenly Stormer and I had this really fucked up thing holding us together.
There's probably a name for what I'm talking about, that feeling when people who live through something really rotten bond because of it. I should go look it up, but you know how much I love studying. Whatever it's called, we had it.
And then there was the blow up at the studio. I'm the one who took her home after that little incident. "Incident", ha, now I sound as lame as Craig. That makes it sound so neat and tidy, so sterile. We were in the middle of rehearsal-- or what passes for one with us. It was only the second one we'd had since she'd gotten out. She trashed the place. Right in the middle of the song Stormer froze. Pizzazz turned around and asked her what the big deal was, missing her lines like that. Stormer had this glazed over expression on her face and then she blinked. A big wet tear rolled down her left cheek and then BOOM! She turned and smashed her synth against the wall. Shattered the thing in a dozen pieces just like it was glass. Pizzazz started shrieking for her to stop, Jetta stood there dumbstruck, and I just watched her do tear the place to shreds and tried not to get hit by the flying debris. Her synth was the first to go, then she took out the stacks of keyboards and half of the amps before she stormed out of there.
I ran out of the studio after her, caught up with her in the hall. She was shaking she was so angry. You could see the pain all over her, practically touch it, feel it in the air around her like a cloud. I asked her what was wrong knowing damned well exactly what the answer was.
"I gotta get out of here," she managed to croak out, gasping for air like she was drowning.
Pizzazz and Jetta had came up behind her but stopped short about ten feet back like they weren't sure they should come any closer. I waved them off with a shake of my head.
"Give me your keys. I'll take you home," I said. Stormer sniffled and nodded and with a parting shrug to Pizzazz and Jetta that bordered on reasonably apologetic. I led her down the hallway to the parking garage.
Stormer closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall of the elevator the entire thirty floors down. I stood there silently staring at her for the length of the trip, wondering what was going through her mind and feeling sorry for her because I had a pretty good idea. All the color had drained from her face to the point where she was whiter than Jetta. Her fists were clenched tight. She looked wound and ready to snap again at any moment.
The elevator stopped and let us out in the parking garage. Wasn't much to find her bright red Porsche at that late hour, there were only three other vehicles still there-- all belonging to Misfits.
Stormer had been staying at her family's house since she got out of the hospital. It's quiet and small, your typical run of the mill middle class neighborhood. No throngs of gawkers or reporters to contend with every time you go out to check your mail. The drive there is a pleasant one, lots of stars, lots of fresh air. It's like entering another country far, far away from Hollywood.
We got there shortly after midnight. She seemed to have calmed down a lot, but I offered to come in with her anyway. She led me into the living room and we crashed on the couch. Stormer leaned her head back against the cushions, closed her eyes, rubbed her hands over her face and held them there.
"Are you ok?" I felt lame for even asking it. Of course she wasn't ok, it was only blatantly obvious how totally not ok she was. "I think you scared the hell out of Pizzazz when you threw that mic stand her way. She probably thought you were aiming for her head." I tried to sound light about it.
Stormer exhaled a jagged breath and folded forward. "I don't think I can do this anymore."
She sounded so chilly and hollow and far away it made me shiver. "Do what? Lob gear at people? I don't think you'll get any complaints about that." I kept trying for levity.
She tried to smile at me but she just looked miserable.
"You wanna talk about it?" I asked, praying that, she didn't. Really dumb question.
Her shoulders slumped and she wiped her hands over her face again. "Pizzazz called me yesterday and said she wanted to get everyone together for a rehearsal. Nothing major, just go over some old stuff, get back in the habit of it." She sighed and rested her forearms on her elbows, hair draped over her left shoulder like a royal-blue waterfall. "I'd been having a shitty week anyway, don't think I've got more than four hours of sleep and I didn't really want to go out, but I was just sitting her doing nothing and going crazy, so I said sure. She said if I had anything cool in my vault to bring it along. No pressure though," Stormer snorted and I frowned.
"Yeah, right. No pressure my ass." I rolled my eyes.
"Exactly. Pizzazz says something like that, it's cuz she wants a new song. I hung up with her and thought it couldn't hurt to take a look through my files, though. I've got a ton of stuff we could use, I figured I could find something to bring." Stormer's eyes got this hazy look for a minute and darkened. "But then I sat down and started going through them and--" She looked up at me, a spark of the anger I'd seen in her there in those big blue eyes of hers.
I let out the breath I was holding. "What happened?"
She blinked and a few heavy tears slid down her face. Stormer shook her head and wiped them away. "I, I really don't know. I was staring at all these songs and I just..." She smiled sadly up at me and whispered like it was a secret, "It was like the studio today."
I gasped when it sunk in what she meant. "Oh my god, you didn't..."
She laughed. Or sobbed. Both at the same time. "There's nothing left." She sniffled. Her brow creased together and suddenly she laughed hysterically. "It's all gone."
"Oh god..." I bowed my head and touched my forehead with two fingers. I had to will myself not to get up and run down the hall, to take a look, not that I really wanted to see it if she was telling the truth- and I knew she was.
"I was looking at all that stuff, all those songs, everything... and I felt so..." She shook her head and exhaled, mouth opened and hung there in a silent sigh like her spirit was departing. Her head faced forward and only her eyes rolled to look my way. Tears crested her lower lids and slid down, down, down. "I'm so angry."
"I. Am. So. Angry." She said the words again, biting them, chewing them, destroying them between her tongue and teeth and her fists clenched in and out. "It hurts so much and I think..." She shook her head and looked to the ceiling. "I hate him. I hate him so much. I want him to hurt. I want him to hurt like I do. I want to hurt him." The words came out in a frantic string, taught with fierce emotion.
I nodded but said nothing. The rage in her voice was real, the most real thing in the world right then. The pain cut me to the quick, but I understood it all.
"I wish I was dead, Roxy." Her gaze had fallen to the floor but you could see the pain in her expression. Her words chilled me to the core. Tears were streaming rivers down her cheeks and her voice was broken and desperate. "Craig left me, Kimber's in Japan, you guys have hardly spoken to me since I got home, my stupid boyfriend won't return my calls, there's nobody here and I-- I need somebody to hold me," she sobbed and I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted blood.
It killed me to hear her like that.
The Misfits aren't exactly a touchy feely group. We don't do friendship and love and all that bullshit the Holograms are so keen on making songs about. But even so, I got up and moved over next to her. I felt awkward as hell and the idea of touching her was about as appealing as laying my hand on a hot burner, but I did it anyway. I'm not good at this stuff. Laid my hand on her shoulder and pulled away like it might sting. Tried again and held my hand there, forced it to stay. Felt her curl around and fold into me, wrap her arms around my neck and cling to me for dear life. Felt her breath heavy in her chest, felt each sob like it was coming out of me. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, feeling insanely out of place and like this was all off limits and... god, I wished I'd had someone to do this for me years and years ago.
That's what I thought. What I felt was grief-- for her, for myself. Bitter anguish and ice-cold anger that someone had made her feel this way. I hated the guy who had done this to her, hated that it happened to her. This wasn't supposed to happen to her, not to any of the Misfits. When I came out to California all that ugly painful shit got left behind in Philly. The day I joined the Misfits I started my life over and nothing was ever gonna hurt me like that again. That kind of stuff was behind me, a distant memory; we were famous, untouchable, invincible. I wanted so bad for it to be true, I needed it to be... This kind of thing was not supposed to happen to a Misfit. Especially not Stormer. She's the best of us, the kindest person I have ever met, generous to a fault. Why that fucker had to go and pick her...
Why he had to do it to anyone at all.
I clung to her and held her tighter. Swore to god or anyone who was listening that never, never again would anyone hurt her or any of us. Prayed to be stronger, faster, meaner, tougher. Prayed to make the hurt go away.
I can't describe the level of guilt I felt for not being there with her, not getting there to stop it before it started, for fucking failing her so, so badly when she's been there for me time and time again. I mean, all it would have taken to avoid the whole rotten crumby event was for me to have just gotten up and walked down the hall with her after that show, that's it! But no... I was beat and Jetta had cracked open a fresh bottle of rum and we were gonna party. Stormer ran down the hall to find a soda machine, get some cokes, she didn't come back. I should have just gone with her!
She's my best friend, the only person I really, really trust. She's been my ally and my little sister, my confidant and my partner in crime, I think I would die if I lost her. She means more to me than I had ever realized before all this happened, more than I could probably ever admit aloud. I didn't even realize I was crying until suddenly I heard her whispering it would be ok over and over. Her telling me she loved me over and over. Stormer saying it was all gonna be ok.
Oh god, the irony. This from the girl who had totalled years worth of work in a flash of grief stricken rage. This from the girl who just told me she wished she was dead.
I pulled away and tried to laugh. "Shouldn't I be saying that to you?"
I woke up the next morning next to her, still on the couch. I don't remember falling asleep there. Hell, I don't remember much of anything but a lot of gut-wrenching crying. My eyes felt like sandpaper, but most of all I felt drained, like a big hole had been dug through the middle of me. My stomach chose just that moment to grumble loudly. Ok, so maybe I was just hungry.
Stormer was sound asleep, breathing softly, eyelids fluttering lightly every so often. Her back was pressed into my chest, my arm around her. She was holding my hand. Our fingers were laced together. I lay there feeling exhausted and thinking... She's so small. The two of us fit on her couch with room to spare. So, so small, her body felt thin and tiny in my arms. She's not really shorter than me, maybe an inch or two at the most, but she felt so small. Has to be from her stay in the hospital, she hadn't gained the muscle back yet. Small, but on fire. Her skin felt hot against mine, warmed me to the core.
Stormer shifted and moaned softly in her sleep, rolled around and curled into my chest, wrapped an arm around my waist. Christ all-fucking-mighty, I gulped. I clenched my eyes shut and tried to breathe-- not cuz she was holding me so tight that I couldn't, just cuz she was holding me, period. It felt nice one second and a split second later my skin was crawling, had to get out of there. Talk about your strange evenings.
I ended up spending the rest of the weekend there with her, tried to salvage some of her manuscripts and put her studio back together. She was in a really bad place and... Ok, it'll sound really weird for ME to say this, but I was worried. I mean REALLY worried. She didn't look good and I didn't want to leave her alone like that.
She needed somebody to be there for her and I got to be that person. Honestly, I was glad to be there. I felt like I'd let her down and this was a way I could make up for it. Craig had failed her by flying back to the UK and leaving her, her boyfriend had left her (and had made it on to my mental shit list, next time I saw him the guy was as good as pulverized, the other Misfits weren't there, Kimber was out of the country, and I suddenly felt very protective over her. Hey, it happens. You walk in on your best friend getting nearly murdered by a lunatic and see what it does to you.
She asked me to move into the house and I said sure. I was practically living there anyway. It was common knowledge among the Misfits that I was staying with her, but neither Pizzazz nor Jetta ever brought it up. They all knew the 'why' behind it, anyway. Fishing for more detail would mean having to talk about 'it'. I think they were just glad Stormer was able to show up for a few rehearsals and function normally for the most part. Only for the most part because she was angry and sullen and snappy more often than not-- in other words, she was acting exactly like the rest of us which was pretty much out of the normal for her. At least she stopped smashing stuff.
I took over one of the spare bedrooms, but six nights out of seven we ended up sharing a bed. Either I'd stay in her room or she'd come creeping into mine late at night. Only thing odd about it was how normal it all became. She had been having the worst time sleeping and usually we'd end up staying up late, watching TV or talking until we both passed out. It was like an endless string of slumber parties... with a lot of heavy emotional crap thrown in. That part I could have done without, but whatever. She got better, or at least she seemed like she was getting better.
The months that followed before she went to the UK we were closer than ever. We were always together, more often than not when we were sitting around the house one of us was using the other as a pillow. We slept in the same bed almost every night. We ate, drank, played, went to the studio, shopped, and did damn near everything but bathe together.
It was so gradual that I didn't even notice it until weeks after the fact, when Jetta pointed it out to me-- we'd walked into the studio together, Stormer in the lead, our hands locked. Don't ask me why, I don't remember anything significant happening that day, but we had been doing it all the same. I brushed it off as Stormer's fault which was plenty of explanation for Jetta. (Not that it stopped her for razzing the hell out of me for it and singing how we were two little love birds sitting in a tree. I socked her in the arm, hard. Jetta shut up.) It wasn't until then that I realized we'd been doing that a lot. Not all the time, but we'd gone out a few evenings before to see a band play and she had her hand in mine the whole time. We'd gone to a movie the week before and sat there holding hands through the whole thing. I'm sure part of it was like a 'security blanket' kind of thing for Stormer, but the other part? And then I had to wonder, had anyone noticed that? Jetta's got a gaze like a fuckin' hawk, but we'd been holding hands IN PUBLIC. The thought made me blush and feel like a freak despite as nice as it felt.
That thought stopped me cold. Felt nice? What the hell was that all about?
I couldn't deny it; as soon as I thought it I knew it was true. I liked it. It did feel nice. It had been a long, long time since anyone touched me in a way that didn't hurt, and this was just so small and... and innocent. It wasn't bad at all and I'd never had that. I liked that I could trust her like that. She could touch me and I knew it wasn't going to hurt. It wasn't much, just being with her when she cried and holding her, holding her hand through it or a hug now and then. For me, it was huge. There was other stuff, too. My shoulder had been cut up pretty bad trying to save her and part of my physical therapy got me into going in for a weekly massage. It helped, but for a while I was in serious pain. Stormer started giving me extra massages, any time my shoulder started hurting really bad. Sometimes she'd run her fingers over the scar on my shoulder when she was massaging my arm, slow and soft over every inch of it. It was the one gesture that felt anything but innocent but I never stopped her.
There were times when she'd touch me like that where I swear I thought was going to try and, I don't know, kiss me or something. She'd get this funny look and there was this... I'm not sure how to describe it, like, this kind of 'tension' between us... I knew it wasn't just me thinking crazy because she'd blush hot pink and pull her hands away. We never talked about it and always found something else to do. Our relationship had taken on this whole other layer, we both felt it but pretended it didn't exist. This was not any kind of spoken agreement, it's just the way it happened.
So yes, we were skating on thin ice. We may not have talked about it, but she knew it as well as I did.
We'd slipped into silence as we looked through her box of photos my hand slipped into hers and she smiled without looking at me. There was a stack of photos of the two of us in Dallas from a few years back, acting like god damned fools and grinning like idiots, having fun.
"That was a good trip, huh?"
"Hell yeah. Remember the Alamo?"
I snorted and laughed. So cheesy. "How could I forget?"
"I think-- yep, there's the proof." Stormer fished three little Polaroids from the stack-- us defiling an historical landmark. "So naughty."
"Come on, how many phone calls do you think Jetta actually got because of it?"
Stormer grinned. "Dozens. She ended up getting her number changed, remember?"
"I liked that she blamed it on me when it was really your fault," I said, smirking at the picture of Stormer scrawling 'For a good time, call Sheila...' and the next photo of us grinning like maniacs and posing around the little bit of graffiti as we flashed a thumbs up at the camera. Oh yeah, couple of real bad girls there.
"Only cuz you guys are constantly picking at each other." She nudged me and looked back at the picture. "We make a good team."
"Ain't none better." I turned, smiling at her.
And that was it, no more 'skating on thin ice'. She smiled back softly and leaned in. Pressed her lips to mine for the longest thirty seconds in my life and pulled away to stare at me, looking scared like she thought I was gonna hit her. Trust me, I was way too stunned for that.
My heart was thudding in my chest and my breath came so quick I'm surprised I didn't hyperventilate. She looked about as nervous as I felt, but it didn't stop her from doing it again. Longer, harder, everything about it more frantic, totally desperate, and it just hit me like a bolt of lightning from my toes to the top of my skull.
I pulled away suddenly and sat up gasping for air. This was sheer insanity, my hands were shaking and I felt like, oh god, just plain crazy!
Stormer sat up and rubbed her hands over her face. We sat there staring at each other for god knows how long. Yeah, it was crazy, we were both out of our minds... and then we did it again. Just slid together like we belonged there, like it was perfectly normal and sane and rational for us to be doing this. She brought one hand on either side of my face and held me. Felt her lips on mine, her breath in my nostrils, and I-- god, I wanted to touch her. I couldn't bring myself to put my hands so much as on her shoulders. Just COULD NOT do it.
Something inside me snapped. I was on my feet and out of there so fast, slammed the bathroom door behind me and stood there shivering against the wood paneling. Touched two fingers to my lips, slid my hand up over my eyes and sank down against the door, sat there and tried to stop shaking.