Free Edinburgh by Alexander Chee Page A

there to the show.
    At the Goodwill, everything Peter finds he grabs one of for me, and there are patch-elbow sweaters, brand-new indigo jeans rolled high, T-shirts from rival high schools or faraway ones, their letters faded off, and then the precious black overcoats. Ten dollars. Good deals, Elizabeth says, who has found an old beaded black dress. I want to wear it now, Elizabeth says, and hops in the car. Play lookout, she orders, and starts to pull her clothes off. Peter and I sit on the sidewalk and paint our thumbs silver, because, we decide, we walk around with our thumbs in our pockets anyway. From far away, sitting down, it looks like we have a nickel out, ready to call, heads or tails.
    Later, Peter and I stand together at the back of the all-ages hardcore show. Elizabeth is drunk and hitting on skinheads. The band starts to lean into their guitars and the lights blink. Everywhere around us, kids are throwing themselves into each other, banging and falling. A few, like me, pretend that nothing is happening and light cigarettes. Peter takes a straight razor from his pants and runs the razor up his forearm. A bright bead of blood follows. He does it again. And again.
    Peter, I say. What the hell.
    Don’t worry, he says. You cut across, so you don’t slice a vein. He begins on his other arm. And then he hands the razor to me. His arms a red crisscross. He winds himself up with a kick and throws himself into the boys.
    Blood starts to come off on the other slam-dancers. I look at my arm, the skin there starts to look like it could be anything. I test the blade there but I can’t press down. Peter returns, winded. Splashed ’em, he says. God, that’s good. And he jumps back.
    I try to imagine myself at swim practice, my arms marked. I wouldn’t be able to swim with open cuts. I take out a cigarette and light it. The smoke takes the image away.
    Dick-face, Peter says, reappearing in front of me. Blood now dried dark on his arms, across his white T-shirt. Give me that. And he takes my Zippo. He runs fluid over his hands and closes the tank, and flicks it across one hand and then the other. His hands on fire now, blue-white, he raises them over his head and spins back into the bodies. Ha! he shouts, and goes down to the floor, and then up again, and with his hands still burning he leaps from the edge of the stage and lands across a tangle of boys. His fire-hands go out.
    I am watching Elizabeth. She has been drinking, talking all night to a cute skinhead boy about four inches shorter than she is. I find myself wondering if he will grow those four inches this year. He looks almost our age.
    My sister is such a slut, Peter says, as if he can see what I am watching. He sits down. She’s had every skin between here and Portsmouth between her legs, he says, and he lights a cigarette. He just moved here from Boston and he’s heard of her, I bet. He spits on the floor behind us.
    According to my mother, I’m over at Peter’s. According to Peter’s mom, Elizabeth has taken us to a late movie. Somehow after the show we go to an apartment building up off Congress Street, where loud music sprays the sidewalk and seventy-odd skinheads and punk kids drink beer and try to have sex. Peter and I are hiding outside the house, in a shadow now, trying to avoid the mean skins, our coats wrapped around us. They are threatening to shave our heads. Make you a proper skin, they say. Crewcuts are for hippies. We went outside when one of them asked me what I was.
    What do you mean, I said.
    Are you a gook or what? Eh, Charlie? Eh?
    She’s passed out for sure, Peter says, looking down the dark street. Street lamps post bleary light in rows away to either side. Lucky for us all those skins want a piece of her more than they want to shave our heads. I’m sure they’re upstairs on her. His breath clouds on the winter air, a personal weather.
    Peter takes my Zippo out of his pocket, twists and pours