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honey i'm home - destroy boys

"i only know one route and it's straight to your house, any other way and my tires blow out."

I scrunched up my nose in concentration as I leaned towards the easel, my hand shaking slightly as I touched up the fur around the red panda's eyes, the smell of acrylic paint flooding my nose. It had been exactly nine and a half months since my run-in with Nate Macauley, and boy had my life changed. Two weeks later, I'd cut my hair shorter. Now it barely dusted my shoulders. I started dressing in brighter and bolder colors, tacky floral shirts.

Everybody seemed to notice except my parents, as absent as ever.

I hadn't hung out with Simon and Janae in weeks. Neither had Maeve. Alexia and I were on our own, but that felt okay in it's own right.

I reached over to my workbench, taking up half of one bedroom wall in our ranch house, to grab the hairdryer. The quicker my paints dried, the better.

The knock on my door startled me, one pale pink wireless earbud falling to the carpet, the jaunty punk rock of Creeper crying tinnily from the speaker as it nestled itself further into the carpet.

"Christ, T.J!" I complained. "I'm painting here!"

My brother stood in the open doorway, a devilish grin on his face. "So that's why the entire hallway smells like toxic waste." He said, in reference to the smell of the acrylic paints. T.J nodded his head in the direction of the wall above my bed. "You took your Black Parade poster down."

I followed his gaze, to the spot where the pale cream colored wall now sat covered in a hanging canvas I had done of a garden gnome looking at the stars. "So what?"

For three years, that patch of wall had been taken up by a poster of My Chemical Romance during the album cycle for The Black Parade, fully decked out for the title track's music video. I'd taken it down a week ago, the feeling almost like barbed wire wrapping around my heart.

My anxious inability to let things go.

"You loved that poster."

"I needed to grow up, T.J. I needed to leave my emo phase behind." My voice sounded wistful as I spoke, almost as if it ached for that familiarity. That phase I'd lived in for so long, even if I hadn't listened to the songs from the Black Parade in what felt like a decade.

T.J stood in the open doorway in silence for a minute. As the silence began to drift into awkward territory, I reached for the earbud lying on the floor, urging T.J to get on with whatever it was he came to tell me.

"Look, I'm heading out to that frat party over by Pastor Stadetlers. Are you going to be okay if I leave you here with mom and dad? Nobody's gonna be calling homicide, everybody is still going to be alive?"

I rolled my eyes. Alexia Staedtler's father was a pastor at St. Christopher's Church in Bayview Square. Named after the patron saint of travelers, Pastor Augustin Staedtler opened the chapter after moving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife, Denise. His brother Malcom was the congregations saxophonist, and going to church on Sundays with Alexia quickly became one of my favorite things: the dancing, the music, the unity. And the food. Definitely the food.

"I'll be fine." I reached for my phone, sitting nect to the haridryer. "Actually, I'm not even staying. I have to go and see Nate."

"Charis," T.J's voice took on a warning tone. "you know I don't like you going to meet Macauley on your own."

"That's the only way he'll have it, T.J." I snapped, tired of having this argument. "And I don't need your permission. Might I remind you that I'm nine months older, T.J? I can handle myself!"

"I never said you couldn't! I just don't trust Nate!"

I exhaled slowly, snapping my earbuds back into the case. "I know you don't. But this is the only shot I have at getting the meds that I need."

"You realize you'll be in deep shit if you get caught?" T.J's tone changed, dropping four decibels and changing into one of concern

"I won't get caught then." I said, reaching up to pull the massive hair claw out of my golden locks, the thick waves falling back down to my shoulders. "But I'm going to need you to drive me. The strip mall is on the way to Alexia's, the frat party is only a couple of blocks over."

Two streets from Alexia's house, a group of university students had rented a townhouse to stay in while they all commuted to Berkley or Stanford or Cali State. I should know, when Jeremy Ruffalo was home for the summer, he stayed there with Flynn Jacobsen instead of going home to his father. I'd spent many a night sneaking out of the second floor. There were still so many aches from that summer, the Ruffalo boy tattooed all over my heart.

"I can drop you off, but I don't know how you're going to get home. You really need to work on getting your license, Charis."

"I'm working on it." I chided my brother, glancing over at the state of California's driving handbook. Every time I opened it, I could feel the panic rise in my chest, For the time being, I was fine taking rides in T.J's Dodge Charger.

I stripped out of my painting smock, trading the paint stained button down for a bold Hawaiian shirt, thrown hastily over my white tank top embroidered with the logo for The Ramones. I reached for my tote bag and stuffed a cardigan, as well as my earbuds and my spare phone charger inside the canvas bag before shooting a quick DM to Nate and following t.J out of the house, our parents preoccupied in yelling at the sport of choice on the TV. Tonight it was MMA, tomorrow cricket.

Nate Macauley and I didn't exactly run in the same circles. Alexia and Simon thought it was strange when we started following each other on Instagram, even though Simon follows virtually nobody, only hanging onto the app to collect dirt for AboutThat, and Nate follows almost every girl in the Bayview area anyways.

As T.J pulled out of the driveway, I reached for the stero, flipping the audio over the AC/DC album that had been stuck in the radio since T.J bought it off the sketchy-ass car lot.

"Aight, the good stuff it is!" TJ laughed, turning the volume up from the steering wheel and opening the sunroof.

Since we were little, T.J and I had always enjoyed a good Australian rock album. Our father emigrated from Perth about a year and half before he met our mom, and before that he was in the Royal Australian Navy. Guys on the boat called him 'CO', short for commanding officer. He wa kind of a big deal before he retired after getting shot in the leg. But AC/DC had always been a big deal for the both of us.

T.J slowed his pace as he pulled into the strip mall, stopping in front of the Domino's Pizza. He brought the Charger to a stop, sunlight reflecting off the tangerine paint.

"Be careful out there, C." T.J sighed reaching into the pocket of his cargo shorts, knocking his vape pen out of the cup holder in the process. He didn't vape often, just enough for his surfer friends to think he was cool. "Here's some cash, I feel bad letting you pick up Macauley's fees all the time on your own like that."

"TJ, you didn't have to." I said, not really meaning it as I took the crumpled bills from his tanned hand and slid them into my own pocket. "I'll be alright, baby bro. Nate's probably gonna drop me off at the bookstore, like usual. After closing I can walk home, it's not that far."

Only two blocks, but I didn't feel like taking that walk at night. I should have brought my damn bike.

"Love you, Charis." T.J said, putting his hand out for a fist bump. We never were the most affectionate of siblings.

"Love you too, Tyrone." I said with a grin, giggling as he grimaced at the use of his full first name.
T.J groaned "Don't call me that."

"It's your name, isn't it." I laughed, giving him a fist bump and grabbing my Van Gogh tote bag, Starry Night painted on the side of the canvas in vinyl.

I waved at T.J as the bright orange Charger pulled out of the parking lot before turning back to my phone. The lockscreen was a digital drawing Maeve had done of The Breakfast Club. Back when we were all still friends, when the Rojas girl still spent a lot of time in the hospital for her cancer treatments, she had drawn lockscreens for each of us based on our favourite eighties movies. Simon's was Heathers (which made sense considering how much like Jason Dean he turned out to be), Janae's had been Back to The Future and Alexia's was Dirty Dancing.

The screen lit up, a little grey box showing off Nate's profile picture, a blurred image of shirtless Nathaniel in his aviator sunglasses, a beer bottle in his hand, no doubt taken at one of Jake Riordan's infamous parties.

natemacauley666_ : behind the tanning salon, you cant miss me.

I clicked the phone off, tucking it into the back pocket of my cutoffs before heading to the back alley of the strip mall, keeping my eyes open for Nate's motorcycle, one earbud at full volume in an attempt to make me feel at ease. Listening to WSTR wasn't exactly helping.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you rock n' roll was dead sweetheart?"

NOTES!!!

here it is! ive been so excited for this for such a long time so hopefully updates can stay pretty frequent?!?!