Brendan Dude

“God, all of these gigs suck,” I groaned. When I leaned back in my chair, the seat squeaked and nearly cracked under the sudden weight. “I swear, they’re all 21 and older crap. Why can’t they just let a few teenagers play?”

Ren shrugged. His head was plopped into his arms, resting on my desk. “At this point I don’t even care what kind of shows there are to play at. We haven’t found a decent one yet.”

“That’s the problem. None of them are decent. And when they are, we’re not old enough,” I sneered.

He sighed. After a moment, he added, “I hate people.”

“I hear you, man.”

To be honest, at the moment we really should’ve been doing homework. It was a Sunday and the next day we’d be going back to school after a nice weekend after all, but sometimes there are just more important things.

Finding a gig, for example.

Ren ran his hands through his hair, tousling his already tousled ‘do. “Dude. This sucks. We, like, need a freakin’ commercial or something to advertise us. God knows posters aren’t doing anything. And the talent show won’t do much outside of our school.”

I pursed my lips. “I know it.”

I know it wasn’t the most responsible thing to be doing at the time, but hey. It was more fun than math. Even if it was a little discouraging to find out that there were no venues in Claymore or Orange Park or even Jacksonville that would take a bunch of eighth graders, at least we were trying.

I mean, I had faith in Plaster Caster. I really did, and I put a lot of it in us. But there’s nothing quite as depressing as realizing that when it comes to live shows, you’re screwed if it’s outside of school. And we weren’t a part of that whole “underground music show” scene all those freakin’ hipsters were a part of. I didn’t wanna try to submerge myself in that, either. None of the scenes would take a couple of kids who didn’t exclusively like one genre.

I clicked out of Google and analyzed the paper Ren had in front of him with possible venue choices. So far, not so good. The only place that was open was this bar down in Fleming Island that was right across from a fish camp, and I didn’t want bottles thrown at me.

“So we’ve got Mercury Moonshine and that’s it, and if we wanna play there, it’s gotta be during the day,” Ren recapped. “Basically, no one’ll come if it’s during the day, so that’s outta the question.”

I bit my cheek and refrained from swearing at everything that ever existed. “And that’s it.”

“That’s it, yeah.” His eyes were full of doubt and exhaustion.

I grunted long and slow, throwing my hands up behind my head. It was hardly two in the afternoon and I wanted to go to bed. I was yawning up a storm.

“I guess we could keep an ear out for parties coming up around school,” he suggested halfheartedly.

Rubbing my eyes, I refuted that with, “Dude, all of the kids who throw parties just get a DJ or a boombox. They don’t do bands.”

He was silent. Then again, he always was.

Ren could be a chatterbox when we were around Luke and Soria (Soria especially), but whenever I was one-on-one with the kid, he shut up real fast. Even after a year of knowing him, he still never started a conversation.

He couldn’t see it, but I was starting to grin a little.

“So tell me, Hawker. Have you banged Soria yet?”

And just like a charm, he darted his head up and looked at me with wide eyes like I just asked him how big his dick was. He nearly fell outta his chair, too. It took work to keep a straight face for me.

“I’ll take that as -”

“No! Dude!” he growled, turning bright red. “I’m not even fourteen.”

“What, so you wouldn’t even if you had the chance?” I prodded.

“N – well…” he’d choked out. He pulled one hand out of his hair and put it to his chin, staring up at the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or real, honestly. I don’t think he’d know how to deal with a vagina if it hit him in the face. No offense.

I smacked him on the back and let a smile fly. “Save it. I don’t want to hear about your sick fantasies.”

Ren smirked right at me and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you definitely don’t wanna hear about those.”

Before I could drive the conversation into more awkward territories, the bedroom door swung open and David paraded in, a SkyPod blasting in his ear and a backwards baseball cap covering the dark roots of his bleached hair.

He didn’t notice me or Ren sitting at the computer and instead strolled right through the piles of dirty clothes lying on our floor, flopping on his bed face-down.

I sort of looked at Ren funny, and he cocked his brow at my heaping pile of big brother who was listening to some of the loudest shit I’ve ever heard come out of a SkyPod.

“So where were we?” I said, wanting to ignore David.

“Well, I was just about to tell you about all of my fetishes…” Ren explained with the straightest face I’d ever seen.

“They’ll laugh about it to my horror! When my body’s rotten and hollow!” David suddenly sang, flipping over on his back and punching at the air above him.

As he sang those words, awful off-key lyrics rolling off his tongue, Ren’s gaze shot over to him curiously. He was smiling in a way as that song progressed, and when David tried to continue his rendition, Ren took over.

“And the lights are finished on time, nothing left except for my bones!” he’d finished, casually crooning.

David sang along, but when he heard another voice with his, he sat up and stared at the only non-Veins family member in the room weirdly. I could hear the song still pounding away in his earbuds, a punk rock breakdown, but my brother wasn’t paying attention to it anymore.

“Dude. You know that song?” he asked Ren.

“Heck yeah. I love Saves the Day,” Ren answered, nodding. “’Bones,’ man. That’s one of their best songs, if not the best.”

I was just sitting there and trying to wrap my head around watching this shy little kid talk to my brother, a stranger to him. The only time they ever met was way back last Christmas when David got a hold of some fake snow and I called him and Luke and Soria up to come over.

David shook his head in disbelief, ripping his earbuds out and turning off his music. Shaggy dyed-blonde hair hung in his eyes. “You’ve gotta be the only other kid in this town who knows them.”

Tilting his head, Ren told him, “Nah, I got my friend Soria into ‘em. I’m trying to make her learn a few of their songs so we can play them at a show or something.”

My brother’s face went blank for a moment. “…Oh! Shit! You’re that kid who’s in Brendan’s band, too. Fuck. You’re the singer, right? Damn. I thought you looked familiar.”

I didn’t really understand the string of swears he chose to add to that realization, but I nodded along anyway with Ren.

“You guys should learn how to play ‘Bones,’” David told us. “That’s a hell of an awesome tune. I wanna hear you play it someday. It’s my favorite song.”

Ren turned to me and shrugged. “Yeah, it couldn’t hurt.”

“I’d have to actually hear the song first,” I said.

“Well, shit, no problem!” David beamed, scooting off the bed and standing up. “Open up SkyTunes on your computer thing and look for it.”

Have you ever been at a party with your parents and everybody ends up drunk? Like, when you’re the youngest one there and you’re stuck surrounded by a bunch of drunk-ass moron adults who can’t take a hint and get the hell out of your face? It sucks, doesn’t it? It’s terrible. You don’t want to scream at them since everybody’s a different person when they’re drunk, but you don’t want to keep enduring that everlasting annoyance and put up with it.

Well, Ren wasn’t drunk. And I don’t think David was drunk either since he was always sort of slow like that. But sweet Jesus, they were obnoxious. I never thought I’d describe Ren as obnoxious (he’s not loud enough), but holy hell, that day he was.

Within seconds they were blasting “Bones” and screaming the lyrics in my ear, driving the uplifting melody and morbid lyrics straight through my brain. That song would haunt me that night. And later on, it would still give me nightmares. It keeps me up, even to this day.