The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [120]
Buster looked at the tour dates for The Vengeful Virgins. They were playing this very night in Kansas City, Missouri. Tomorrow they would be in St. Louis.
It was shocking to Buster, after how hard he and his sister had forced themselves to let go of their parents, to accept their deaths, how quickly the two of them jumped right back into the frenzy and uncertainty of searching for Caleb and Camille. The plan, which Buster devised quickly, was that he and Annie would travel to St. Louis, go to the show to see The Vengeful Virgins. They would figure out some way to get backstage, and then confront the kids with their knowledge of the song, and try to get them to tell Buster and Annie where their parents were. That was it. That was the whole plan. It had some holes, he admitted. If their parents had made the decision to allow these two kids in on their disappearance, then they must have known that these two boys could be trusted. So how would they get the kids to tell them what they needed to know? And what if the twins had no idea what they were talking about? What if their parents really were dead, as they had finally accepted, and this was all some strange coincidence? He tried not to think about it, focused only on the sharp, painful feeling inside of him that he was closer to the thing that he needed to know.
Annie sat on Buster’s bed as he packed a duffel bag with clothes and toiletries. “Okay, so let me ask you this,” she began. “You think these fucking kids somehow know Caleb and Camille and they gave them this song?” Buster considered the statement and then nodded. “So,” Annie continued, “that means that The Vengeful Virgins probably know about the Fangs and that we made all this art.” Buster again nodded. “So they probably know who we are, if they know enough about our parents to know that they’re hiding out. So don’t you think they’ll recognize us when we meet them?” Buster had not considered any of this. “Maybe,” Buster admitted. “Definitely,” Annie corrected. “It won’t work this way. We have to be smarter than them. We have to find a way around their defenses.” He began to unpack his bag. “I guess we’re not going to St. Louis,” he said, frowning.
And then, before he could return a single article of clothing to his dresser, he heard his sister laugh. He turned around to find Annie, smiling as if she knew the secrets of the world and did not care if revealing them would ruin everything, signaling for him to move closer to her. “Caleb and Camille only care about art,” she told him. “Nothing else matters.” Buster nodded in agreement, still puzzled as to what was coming. “These kids, they’re so young, I imagine there are still some things they couldn’t resist.”
“Money?” Buster asked, still struggling to catch up to whatever his sister had already realized.
“Fame,” Annie replied.
As she continued to outline the rudimentary elements of her plan, Buster half-listened to The Vengeful Virgins still pounding through the speakers of the stereo and felt the overwhelming urge to carve his name into something, letters so large that they could be seen from space, to claim everything that was undeniably his own.
Later that night, unable to enact their plan until daylight, Buster sat on the sofa in the living room and, once again, listened to