I had never planned on meeting Stevie.  I hadn't planned on being anywhere near him that night, but Eli solicited and I conceded, because I've never been able to say no.  So I went with him to the American Legion Hall, where as soon as I stepped out of his car and the smell of cologne and pine freshener fell away under the heavy odor of pot and cigarette smoke, I was crushed under the oppressive wall of hard-driving, chaotic metal blasting out as if the building itself were wailing.

Inside, a vast crowed of girls milled around at the back of the Hall, applying make-up and adjusting breasts while the boys were at the front, by the stage, pushing and shoving each other in a circle around the few who were bold and angry enough to throw punches.

Eli looked down on them with obvious disdain, and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket before nodding at a table off to the side, close to the girls.

It was too loud to talk, but I understood.  This wasn't the right time.  Eli had gone there for the same reason he went anywhere: to pick up girls.  I was only along to create the facade of nonchalance.  I didn't know whether to be offended or not, I just hoped the current set would end soon.  The screeching of the amplifiers and the unintelligible guttural noise of the lead singer's voice made it feel like my eardrums were cracking.

Eli was letting his cigarette smolder, watching the girls primp with hawkish scrutiny.  He never looked so intelligent as when he was picking out the girl who would get him laid the quickest, and I do suppose it was something of an art, one that I didn't understand, and had only a perfunctory interest in, anyway.  I left him to it, while I turned my attention to letting my annoyance with the current act boil, and for a moment, I thought that I understood the rush of those violent, primal urges that caused the kids near the stage to lash out.  I toyed with the idea of snatching the empty bottle from the table next to ours and throwing it at the crowd, but a lifetime of meekness won out over a few moments of violent passion and the set was over shortly, anyway.  Eli went to look for the guy who always came to these garage band concerts selling beer out of a cooler, and I was left alone to stew in the bad mood I had already decided to hold onto for the rest of the evening.  I hadn't wanted to come anyway.

The next band took ages to set up and Eli seemed to have disappeared completely into the crowd.  When the set finally started, I was quite ready to hate them, too, especially when I realized what band it was.

Of course I'd heard of Fucken Hardcore, how could I not, attending Robert M. Williamson High everyday where no conversation could go five minutes without mentioning one of the four boys on the stage in front of me?  I'd never spoken to any of them, but I knew more about their personal lives than could possibly be considered decent, though I can assure you it was through no fault of my own.

Just walking innocently down the hall that Tuesday, I learned that Dylan McKenzie had just broken up with his third girlfriend that month.  In the lunch line the same day I heard a five minute conversation about whether or not Colin Murphy's black eye was really from a baseball, like he claimed, or from his brother.  During morning announcements on Thursday, the girls sitting behind me had a hushed (not hushed enough, obviously) discussion about newly discovered details surrounding Andrew Byrd's recent MIP citation.

But all these annoying and pointless things, I could deal with, really.  Dylan, Colin, and Andy; they were just normal kids.  I may have been tired of hearing about them, but nothing could compare with the wretchedness I felt every time the name Stevie Bell was mentioned in my presence.  Over the course of that week, I'd heard all about how his girlfriend, Karin Headley (the most popular girl in school, naturally) had caught him kissing the cheerleading captain, Vanessa Alderete right after they'd finally had sex after going out for almost six whole months; how there were rumors that an honest to god modeling scout had approached him at the mall and he'd turned her down because he was just that passionate about his music to let anything distract him; even about his latest fucking haircut for crying out loud.

I had no desire to hear anything further about him for the rest of my life, but there he was, centerstage again, microphone in hand as if he needed it for the room to hang on his every word.

"Hey guys, how's it goin'?" He smiled like he'd just made a great joke and there was a buzz of appreciation from the audience.  I sloshed my Coke down my front in disgust.  Behind him Andy Byrd strummed his guitar, and the note hung in the air in anticpation.  "Sorry we took so long to set up."  He looked down and scuffed the toe of his shoe on the stage.

The audience laughed and some "booed" good-naturedly.  One guy shouted, "Get off the stage!"  The laughter renewed itself and Stevie joined in.  I cast one last desperate look around the audience, searching for Eli.  No luck.

"Yeah, yeah, let's just get started."  I was at least thankful that the banter was stopped when as soon as Stevie's sentence ended Dylan McKenzie attacked his drums and the set took off.  I was thankful again that while what I was hearing now was not what I would call good music, it at least wasn't metal, and Stevie wasn't screaming.  In fact, if I tuned out the lyrics, his voice was almost pleasant (albeit nasal).  But the lyrics could be hard to tune out.  I wasn't sure whether they were playing a cover, or their own music, but the words that came out of Stevie's mouth were so banal and annoyingly self-involved that I was quite ready to believe they were his own creation.  However, if that was the case, I was impressed with the band's songwriting ability (and by impressed, I mean astounded that they could manage to crudely paste together a tune slightly more complicated than "Mary Had a Little Lamb").

I knew, though, that this new set meant I wouldn't see Eli again for the duration of the evening.  The girls had moved to the front of the Hall.  This was what he'd been waiting for and counting on: The fact that every girl there wanted inside Stevie Bell's pants, and that obviously not all of them could get it (at least in one night), leaving the rest open to advances from any reasonably attractive member of the opposite sex.  Eli considered himself the foremost candidate.

So it looked like I would be there for the duration of the evening, watching Stevie Bell show off and everyone else eat it up.  I reached over the empty bottle on the table next to me to retrieve the half-empty next to it.

This would not be remembered as a proud moment.  I downed what was left in one go, and as Fucken Hardcore (and they thought it was such a clever, ironic name) started in on a cover of "Good Vibrations", wondered how many more of those I would need to make the night bearable.

Unfortunately, I never got to find out.  The rest of my time at the concert was disappointingly free of mood-altering substances, though I think I must have been the only one.

By the time it was over, I was quite ready to go home and sleep off my renewed repulsion toward the population of Williamson High, but that was not to be, either.

The parking lot was devoid of any sign of either Eli or his car when I got out, and I was stranded in the odorous, muggy nighttime along with a small contingent of kids who were rather jovially too incapacitated to drive.

I threw myself down on the side of the stoop under the faintly glowing porchlight and the druggie kids asked my name and offered me a clove cigarette, which I tried not to choke on.

I was fuming, trying to discern how in the world I was going to get home and what I was going to do to Eli when I saw him next, but the smoke from the druggie kids' joints calmed me down and their conversing voices lilted and soothed.  I was just feeling as though maybe life wasn't so bad after all when a kid wearing a boy scout jacket said, "Whadda you think they're doing in there, it's been like half an hour."

Another boy, this one with vivid green hair laughed.  "Stevie's doing everyone he can find, that's what."

"How is that gonna take thirty whole minutes?"

Great.  The conversation had wound its way back around to fucking Stevie Bell.  I tried not to groan too audibly.

"Why the shit did Karin take him back, anyway?"

"Who fucking knows?  Man, I thought finally I'd get a shot at her and then she goes back with him?  Fuck."

"Like she'd open her legs for you anyway."

"If she'll do it for Stevie, she'll do it for anyone."  A rolling, giddy laughter had built up among the druggie kids.

"She does it for Stevie cos he's good-looking, assface."

"Where the hell is she, anyway?"

There was a moment of silence while the gears turned in their heads.  I could have told them where Karin Headley was.  Visiting her grandmother in Shreveport.  That morning, second period, from the same two girls who'd inadvertently informed me about Andy Byrd's MIP.  But I kept my mouth shut.

"I think she's in Brownsville," the boy with green hair said slowly and the rest of the party mumbled in vague agreement.

There was a brief pause and then Boy Scout grinned.  "You think I could convince her to sleep with me?  You know, for revenge?"  Everyone laughed and those sitting closest to him punched his arms and shoved his head.  I hoped desperately this was a call to change the subject, but then, directly behind my back the door to the Hall opened, hitting my spine.

I jumped instinctively out of the way and looked up to see the dark, curly head of Andy Byrd looking down on me with a curiously cheerful expression on his face.  "Sorry," he said, his smile turning goofy, and he stepped out of the doorway, followed closely by Colin Murphy and Dylan McKenzie, who were talking animatedly to each other and didn't even glance at me.  Then there was Stevie Bell himself.  He stepped out into the warm night air, smoke curling out of the corners of his lips and a self-satisfied smirk on his face, lit only by that lone, moth-covered porchlight.  The stark shadows made him look more sinister than any seventeen-year-old ever should.

On the asphalt at the bottom of the stoop, Andy Byrd had started singing, loud and tuneless.  Colin Murphy and Dylan McKenzie were now busy talking with Boy Scout.  Stevie Bell looked down at me and smiled.

"Who are you?"